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Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

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Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#251

Post by s17n »

DrThunder wrote: post #229
s17n wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equitable, adj: fair and impartial. If you actually believe that legacy admissions are a fair and impartial way to decide who gets to go to Harvard, I'm not really sure what to say.

Equity is an outcome. You're suggesting we FORCE an outcome and apparently you don't want to base it on legacy. So, what are we basing the forced outcome on? Race? Victim-hood? Gender? Class? Are lower class people of color more deserving of equity? How do you make something equitable? You need to think through the process of how that works. It's every bit as "fair" to gift admissions to family members as it is to so…

TBH I'm probably fine with any system that doesn't give preference to legacy and faculty admits

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#252

Post by segfaltnh »

kevinsync wrote: post #200
karaterobot wrote: post #46

> There’s the age-old question of how we pay for this. Sanders proposed a Wall Street financial transactions tax. A 0.1 percent tax, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, could raise $777 billion over 10 years. Or we could hike taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. I have no problem taxing wall street or "the wealthiest Americans", but I don't see the connection between this proposal and…

This sounds pretty dumb and naive as I'm typing it, but we live in a world of massive computational models and technological progress -- instead of relying on academic pundits, think tanks and goofballs on social platforms floating economic ideas and theories on how to pay for things, why hasn't anybody modeled thousands of possible scenarios to figure out the top 10 over-optimized plans showing how to tax fairly + e…

I would imagine all such models would rely on thousands or more factors which, when tweaked based on individual bias, show widely variable outcomes.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#253

Post by segfaltnh »

econonut wrote: post #194
dinkleberg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is remarkably depressing to see.

It's also wrong. His numbers are exaggerated and provided without any source. In 1970, it was closer to 250 hours of minimum wage for tuition alone (no living expenses) as minimum wage was $1.60 and the cost of tuition for a public university (near me) was $420 for 30 credit hours. Today, that same university is $6,270 for 30 credit hours of tuition, which is around 520 hours of work at $12/hour (which is $1.60 expre…

What if you include living expenses?

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#254

Post by segfaltnh »

flashback2199 wrote: post #90
AmVess wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a problem with taxes in general, and this is yet another stupid idea. Increased tax loads always get passed on to the consumer. What we will end up with is higher cost of doing business and 100% for certain federally run universities will still need taxpayer bailouts every single year. Lose lose all the way around. I have an even better idea: get rid of all freebies. If someone wants something, they can get of…

> Increased tax loads always get passed on to the consumer Yep, taxes are a little bit worse than that too because the cost also gets passed to the producer as well in the form of decreased demand. The result is fewer goods and services exchanged - ie less economic activity - than there would have been with a lower tax. Formally, it is called deadweight loss in microecon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss…

Is there an example of negative repercussions of this in modern society? I hear people complain about extreme taxation relative to history, but I also have plenty of access to goods and services in my region, so it seems there must be other, perhaps higher weighted, factors?

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#255

Post by flashback2199 »

segfaltnh wrote: post #254
flashback2199 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Increased tax loads always get passed on to the consumer Yep, taxes are a little bit worse than that too because the cost also gets passed to the producer as well in the form of decreased demand. The result is fewer goods and services exchanged - ie less economic activity - than there would have been with a lower tax. Formally, it is called deadweight loss in microecon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss…

Is there an example of negative repercussions of this in modern society? I hear people complain about extreme taxation relative to history, but I also have plenty of access to goods and services in my region, so it seems there must be other, perhaps higher weighted, factors?

I learned about it in intro microecon in college. My understanding is that it is part of standard microecon curriculum.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#256

Post by godelski »

rented_mule wrote: post #223
godelski wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of this too is that the top universities are really good at metric hacking. I do agree that the biases are baked in, but the other aspect is the compounding effects. E.g. MIT students have a better "foot in the door" for internships, research opportunities (especially at undergrad), and so on. Not only does their name do lifting, but they get more recruiters and the universities themselves do a lot of li…

Yeah, it certainly can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the MIT students we hired eventually left us to create a startup when they were accepted into a Y Combinator class. When it came time to pitch for their series A at Andreessen Horowitz, their YC advisor told them to wear their college sweatshirts to the pitch (MIT and an ivy). Apparently, the business plan / product hardly even came up in the pitch - accord…

I've heard plenty of stories like this actually. It just makes me surprised because it clearly leaves so much efficiency off the table. But then again, the system they're trying to optimize might be about something else...

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#257

Post by jncfhnb »

Jensson wrote: post #249
jncfhnb wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t really matter if someone becomes passively wealthy in a liquid form they don’t access. So long as you catch edge cases like collateralizing those shares for debt it’s still fine. They don’t need to make a lot of trades either. Taxing the rich is incredibly hard because first you need to quantify how rich everyone is.

> collateralizing those shares for debt If you take a loan (collateralizing future income for money) should you pay taxes on that loan today? It isn't a tax loophole, it is insane to think that taking a loan should make you pay taxes on future income, it would cause so many issues for everyone. The taxes will be paid some day, you don't get richer or pay less by taking a loan. The reason these people take loans on th…

0.1% same as any transaction involving the shares would be fine

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#258

Post by semiquaver »

kevinsync wrote: post #200
karaterobot wrote: post #46

> There’s the age-old question of how we pay for this. Sanders proposed a Wall Street financial transactions tax. A 0.1 percent tax, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, could raise $777 billion over 10 years. Or we could hike taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. I have no problem taxing wall street or "the wealthiest Americans", but I don't see the connection between this proposal and…

This sounds pretty dumb and naive as I'm typing it, but we live in a world of massive computational models and technological progress -- instead of relying on academic pundits, think tanks and goofballs on social platforms floating economic ideas and theories on how to pay for things, why hasn't anybody modeled thousands of possible scenarios to figure out the top 10 over-optimized plans showing how to tax fairly + e…

This question reminds me of the computer scene from “Willy Wonka”.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tMZ2j9yK_NY

I’m imagining the computer guru presenting his plan to Congress: “my 100% infallible computer model says here’s what the tax law should be. Please overhaul society now and make sure you don’t let any of your prior opinions cloud your judgement now that the computer has told you what’s best.”

Computational models are models: they work best with systems we already basically understand the rules to or can at least approximate. Like weather or physics.

Economics is a social science. Economies are incredibly dynamic systems because they’re made of people. Every change to the system causes the participants to change their behavior. People are significantly more complicated than Game Of Life gliders. A model that can correctly simulate the economy requires strong AGI or magic, neither of which have been invented yet.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#259

Post by cscurmudgeon »

darth_avocado wrote: post #238
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think Indians (like me) move for higher education when given the opportunity.

Also, since I can’t edit my other comment, by your logic, if you are able to move from India to US, get into great universities for higher education, I would consider that as a testament to the fact that publicly funded education absolutely works, unless your argument is that only people who went to private schooling can make it here.

> unless your argument is that only people who went to private schooling can make it here

Most students who come here are from private schools.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#260

Post by cscurmudgeon »

darth_avocado wrote: post #236
buzzert wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60.08% of Stanford students come from out of state, and 12.26% come from out of the country. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/...

I think you’re missing the context of my comment. What I meant was most people moving from India don’t move to US purely for “education”, if that was the case, they’d be going back to India after they were done. The parent of my comment was arguing that public education in India (schooling and college) is not great and therefore people move to US. In reality that’s far from the truth. Sure, there’s always exceptions…

My point is pretty simple and obvious.

If Indian public education is better, why aren't US students going there (and coming back)?

If Indian public education is better, why are Indian students coming to the US?

> publicly funded education is never good is just plain disingenuous

Pretending that publicly funded education is always good is just plain disingenuous and frankly silly.

Anyone who has lived in India will attest to the utter failure of Indian public education (sans some handful of exceptions like IITs).

Even with IITs, IITians come to the US for their MS or PhD or MBA.

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