All education financing systems try to solve the same problem: students need education before they can make the money necessary to finance it. The natural solution to that problem is to let students get the education first and then pay for it later. This is true of college education just as much as it is… Continue reading Do not double student loan rates
A case for equal pay and universal day care
Recently Hilary Rosen questioned Ann Romney’s wisdom on the economy’s effect on women, claiming that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life. Ann then quipped back via twitter that she worked very hard raising her five boys. Then all hell broke lose in the bored media and blogosphere. Eventually, people pulled up… Continue reading A case for equal pay and universal day care
Balance sheet accounting for student debt
As I wrote previously, student debt is generally an overblown issue. Students, as a class, are a relatively affluent bunch and are set to make, at the median, an extra $1 million over the course of their lifetimes. Like most groups, students would like society to give them more money, but to present that desire… Continue reading Balance sheet accounting for student debt
Confusion around food deserts
The reason poor people face so many problems is that they do not have very much money. This seems like a simple point, so simple in fact that even raising it borders on condescension. But this fact seems lost on a great number of so-called activists. One such group of activists are those who call… Continue reading Confusion around food deserts
The poor pay 16x higher excise tax rate than the rich
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities put out a nice series of charts today detailing the distributional impact of various regressive taxes in the United States. One of the findings is that the lowest quintile of households pay 1.6% of their income in excise taxes each year while the top 1% pay only 0.1%… Continue reading The poor pay 16x higher excise tax rate than the rich