By Hunter Wallace
If the top marginal income tax rate on the wealthy was raised from the current 39.6 percent to 40 percent, The New York Times is saying it would raise enough revenue – from just the top 0.1 percent – to eliminate college tuition at public 4-year universities:
“To get the most accurate picture possible, throw in all the scraps of income, from the most obvious (like wages, interest and dividends) to the least (like employer contributions to health plans, overseas earnings and growth in retirement accounts). According to that measure — used by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution — the top 1 percent includes about 1.13 million households earning an average income of $2.1 million.
Raising their total tax burden to, say, 40 percent would generate about $157 billion in revenue the first year. Increasing it to 45 percent brings in a whopping $276 billion. Even taking account of state and local taxes, the average household in this group would still take home at least $1 million a year.
If the tax increase were limited to just the 115,000 households in the top 0.1 percent, with an average income of $9.4 million, a 40 percent tax rate would produce $55 billion in extra revenue in its first year.
That would more than cover, for example, the estimated $47 billion cost of eliminating undergraduate tuition at all the country’s four-year public colleges and universities, as Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed, or Mrs. Clinton’s cheaper plan for a debt-free college degree, with money left over to help fund universal prekindergarten. …”
Compare the $47 billion dollar annual price tag of eliminating college tuition at public universities to the $2 trillion dollars already squandered on the cuckservative crusade in Iraq alone or the extra $100 billion a year we are paying on medical and disability claims from veterans after a decade of useless wars in Muslim countries.
Most of those poor soldiers joined the military to finance their college education. How much cheaper would it have been just to have free college tuition like Germany? How many more Christians would be alive today in Iraq and Syria? How many fewer refugees would be pouring into Europe today from Libya, Iraq and Syria were it not for the US campaign to destabilize the region?
The fact the Times is so nonchalant about the federal government paying tuition at state public universities shows how ignorant these people are of federalism. They fetishize the Founding Fathers yet are a disgrace their fundamental beliefs.
This is the core suspicion that one must have about the GOP in General. They dog whistle racial solidarity and at the last minute cut their own folk to the bone.
Warspite,
You don’t get why Hunter is posting this info.
The debt slavery associated with college (Here we can include technical fields as well.) is competely avoidable. Of course you know which side your bread is buttered instinctively as shown in remainder of your commentary.
If the US had kept free college for the top 15-20% test scorers and carefully combed the low income for brainy underachievers or rough diamonds I doubt that our birth rate would have collapsed so precipitously.
It’s hard not to see this as feature of the phony democracy we get to enjoy.
Bernie Sanders’ new entitlement is far less expensive than Bill Kristol’s neocohen foreign policy.
The “neocohen” thing is so cheap and low class. Because every neoconservative was/is Jewish. Sort of like every gentile beats up his wife now & again?
Is it not possible for you people to get past Jewish-issues, Jewish-envy & Jewish ignorance to get to some real issues ?!?
Nothing definitive on Biden running yet tonight.
Have you seen those wounded warriors commercials? It would be cheaper for everyone to have free college tuition (paid for by raising taxes on Zuckerberg, Singer, Adelson, etc.), and not be a debt slave to a bank, than to pay for that.
Consider the fact that instead of paying taxes these billionaires like Adelson use the money they save to fund Super PACs that corrupt politicians.
How many White families put off having children because of ridiculous student loans?
It’s difficult to analyze complicated issues when a gentleman such as John sees everything through the prism of “Race”. I want to comment on one problem related to the fed proposal.
The federal government already exercises too much control over people’s choices. In addition, while there may proposals to “help” families by paying for college tuition, these same benevolent forces have never demonstrated any real interest about tuition at private colleges rising to astronomical amounts w/o regard to inflation or cost of living.
Any entry of the Feds will result in disaster. If universities want fed $$, it means fed rules. Affirmative action, an offensive, illegal and clearly racist policy tags along with any fed $$. This will water down the U of Va, Berkeley, Univ of Michigan and other top public schools towards mediocrity. The schools will have to find students for a 13% Black student body & 15% Hispanic student body. Actual Black & Hispanic applicants that can maybe supply half this number in qualified students. So right off the bat at least 15% of the student body at Univ of Va. won’t deserve to be there. That 15% will be Black & Hispanic. Every time you’re in class you will wonder if that cute Black gal is amongst the 1 in 2 Black students that don’t belong there based on merit.
But it’s even worse than that. Genuinely smart minority kids don’t want a big albatross around their neck. They will opt for private universities, esp since they end up getting 100% financial aid from colleges desperate for qualified minorities. This further reduces the # of top minorities available to public universities. Any good minority students left will be snapped up by Virginia, Michigan, Berkeley and a few others.
This situation will devastate the second tier & lower public universities. Schools like Maryland, Missouri or Univ of South Carolina will end up academically damaged in a severe manner. Half the campus will be at a level deserving to get into a community college. Meanwhile private universities that in some cases right now run $75k/yr with all costs included, will see a huge gap in quality open up with public universities as the top 10 or 15 get all the qualified and reasonably qualified kids.
The above skips the problem of colleges right now using de facto quotas to drastically restrict the number of Asians. This is an issue right now in front of one or two federal courts. Blacks and Hispanics not qualified for admission, e.g., Univ of Michigan are getting in, while (over!) qualified Asians are being rejected. Apparently liberals don’t want there to be too many Asians in our best public universities.
For those unfamiliar with the present admissions problems with colleges, the last thing we need is the Feds involved. Other than sports, music, a few arts, only a small number of scholarships exist at colleges for Caucasians. A system of “financial aid according to need” exists for Caucasians. Minorities like Blacks & Hispanics end up with 100% aid even if they are from well-off or wealthy families.
Because I have gone through the college admissions deal multiple times with my kids it is a subject with which I am familiar. The costs of college right now are ridiculous, but involvement by the Feds on paying tuition will academically scuttle many public universities. Anyone with any doubts should look at the history of CCNY.
You go to university and get in massive debt and most people don’t end up in the jobs they trained for. Then if you get a job they ship it off to another country, or import third worlders to undercut your pay. Its very risky and not worth it any more. If I was starting out now, I would try and a trade that can’t be shipped overseas.
that’s get a trade
Very true.
All these issues – taxes, trade, immigration, education, foreign policy – are closely related.
See all the women going to nursing school which is a non-tradeable career.
A college education today is just a continued indoctrination of the jewish world view. I’m not surprise Bernie wants to make it free. Learn a trade and the cream will rise.
No job is safe any longer. H1B visa’s will see to that.
Why do you think the average cuckservative like Ted Cruz wants to increase them by 500%?
Like Fiorina said when she was at HP: “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore.”
Helvina, this simply isn’t true.
At college you get to see and hear about your own culture’s history artifacts and great men. Teachers actually welcome discussion.
It’s not that far gone. Certainly the nog studies and Feministing studies are shit but there is a lot that a maturing mind can use. Even in contemporary humanities.
Thank you for posting this hunter.
Indeed this is something that Trump ought to address. Working class whites who take pride in their work and families are well aware of the economics of this Neo-liberal Neo-con debt enslavement. But the kids still need licences and time and space to fully develop as adults. And to do it affordably. If the top 20% of scorers had a free ride we would have a eugenic instead of dysgenic situation and a higher native white birthrate.
So instead of maiming our best physical specimens in Neo-con wars and marginalizing our better intellectual cohorts via affirmative action we could have been breeding an enviably large and powerful elite of our own.
What we get instead is a demographic implosion.
HUNTER & JACK:
I repeat the following regarding posts made on (Captain John) 10:47 pm 10/16; on 10/17 by John 2:01 AM;
Sam 9:07 PM:
______________________
I do have to make one request. A serious one.
As offensive as the Holocaust denial drivel, the classification of all Blacks as criminals, branding East Asian women money chasing harlots, implying all Hispanics are illegal immigrants, etc., etc., may be, they are all relatively harmless kookism. The posting about “inevitable killing” was beyond inappropriate. So inappropriate and potentially dangerous it needs to be addressed.
My wife discovered I posted here and figured out enough to be concerned. It is hard to argue with her when one of you posts about “inevitable killings” and only Jack says something. And while I appreciate his writing to disown the posting, it’s not really strong enough. Or at least not strong enough when not a single person other than Jack writes about such a stupid and disturbing rant.
If you want an echo chamber it’s your call. I’ve learned enough here to make it a worthwhile stop. And I’m not calling for a vote, since this is hardly a democracy. But if only Jack & Celestial are responsible and American enough to tell off someone who speaks of and looks forward to the “inevitable killing” of Jews I don’t want to be here.
It would say very little for any of you to support or look the other way regarding such rhetoric. I now understand how ideas such as Holocaust denial is a gateway to an anti-Christian belief system, but I can’t believe there are enough people here that have lapsed from Grace that only two individuals still have an understanding of right and wrong consistent with post-Enlightenment, Western ethics.
—————————————————–
There are things to be learned on this Blog by persons such as myself. I’m not going to repeat prior postings, and I hope I have been specific in identifying the matters for which some deserve kudos. Even in the case of the horribly embarrassing article referenced by Denise there was something of interest. However, as noted above there were posts that crossed any line of courtesy, respect and basic decency. Referencing impending murders, writing “F**k you, yid” and a small number of similar offenses do not reflect an acceptable range of exchanging ideas.
When Denise writes her over the top stuff it’s harmless (except to your movement & Blog). I cannot believe there has been nothing said to date by Hunter about the above request. That is extremely disappointing.
I’d like sincere apologies from the individuals in question. I can understand they simply became too emotional and exercised poor judgment. If they decline to apologize I respectfully request they receive a 1 week suspension.
I hope this request is not unreasonable. Please note my strong preference is for the sincere apologies.
It’s not that complex.
Have you thought about getting your own blog? Bonacoursi rightly pointed out that you are writing thesis length comments.
You are boor.
At the risk of crying over spilt milk…if… University enrollment were strictly about getting the top 20% of scorers (SAT ACT etc) into a free ride situation we would have always had a largely white university population and would hard been breeding the eugenic elite.
This garbage about Fed rules is just that, the result of not structuring education to suit the society that existed already. nogs would have been very much outside the charmed circle and bred into oblivion.
What is a “Nog”?
I don’t totally discount the concept of affirmative action. I am deeply aware of what went on during the pre-Civil Rights era & into the 1960’s. It was a matter of fundamental fairness. The problem is affirmative action has become a corrupt joke and has no termination point. It’s been 50 yrs, and is at the point where children of wealthy blacks benefit only because of their race- not because of any disadvantages in life.
The costs of college tuition are ridiculous.
What percent of the students who are now attending all the colleges you mentioned above – Mizzou, UVA, South Carolina, Michigan, Cal, etc. – are currently there on federal student loans which they will spend decades repaying? Assuming they even get a job?
I don’t think the problem is qualified kids who get into their state’s flagship university and take loans to pay low in-state tuition. I’m more concerned about qualified Caucasian and Asian kids who get squeezed out of their state’s flagship university in favor of an unqualified minority. Then the Caucasian and Asian kids have the choice of huge loans for a private college or attending a lower tiered in state university.
What’s so bad about a meritocracy?!? You know, like the NBA.
Warspite,
It’s hard to take your complaints about Denise seriously when you spend hours upon hours engaging her. I noticed this morning that there are hundreds of comments about the Holocaust. I don’t have the time or interest to read through all of that.
Your choice Hunter, but I am not & did not complain about Denise. Not at all.
It is your choice, but at least get the facts right and then decide. And I offered the specific citations, so your response was a bit lacking. I do not think my request was unreasonable.
Balkanization inevitably leads to killings.
Proximity + diversity = violence.
Last time I checked, the Supreme Court punted on striking down affirmative action in the University of Texas case and has another affirmative action case coming up in the current term. All these public universities are already using various schemes to promote “diversity” on campus. Right now. That’s what has been litigated for decades now going back to the Bakke decision.
Meanwhile, millions of kids are taking out student loans to pay for insane levels of college tuition, and will spend decades paying back those loans and structuring their lives – including limiting the size of their families – to pay back banks with interest. In many cases, they go to college to get degrees in engineering or IT only to find out later the job market sucks due to our trade and immigration policies.
Of course there are also plenty of people who want to go to college who end up joining the military to pay for it – hence, the $100 billion more we spend on wounded warriors thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan – or those who defer going to college altogether because it is so unaffordable. It would be much cheaper to let everyone go to college for free than to pay the medical bills for life of a handful of veterans.
If it were purely a matter of merit, money would have nothing to do with the decision to go to college. Also, I don’t believe in meritocracy which has produced the worst, most hostile elite in American history. Even the old system where the Ivy League was dominated by Yankee patrician families is infinitely better to what we have now.
There is a really fantastic story in holland about the Syrian refugee influx. The Dutch government is setting up camps and hostels for the Arabs fleeing the turmoil (mostly generated by the re-foundation). Guess what? The Amsterdam community are moaning about placing Syrians next to the Jews there.
The rationalization is rather funny. The spokesman for the community say: “While we wholeheartedly welcome the Refugees to Holland, don’t move them into our neighborhood.”
It’s a matter of fundamental fairness, like with the blacks in the Deep South.
What’s so bad about meritocracy? Well, for starters, US foreign policy. Starting with the geniuses who led us into Vietnam and Iraq.
Hunter, I don’t think that a public Uni system that had always been designed to serve the top 20% as a bedrock principle could have actually been hijacked by any hostile minority. Blacks? No. Jews? Not enough of them. It would have generated a powerful native white elite had it been used and had it been stuck with.
Warspite is practically shitting bricks at the very idea. He’s sweating blood too.
Hahahahahahahaha!!! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Back to the topic at hand:
1) Bernie’s LYING. Don’t ever forget that. He did what he did in Lily White Vermont – but have you noticed the rather odd (typical SK) things he’s done on Campaign Trail?
2)If you really wand sound fiscal/social policies – get RID of the Bernies. Which has happened 109 times before.
NIMBY community in Holland.
http://www.nltimes.nl/2015/10/13/jewish-leaders-say-no-to-syrian-refugees-on-anti-semitism-concern/
It’s not even the hypocrisy. It’s not even the double standards.
It’s the pattern. The genius of absolute ethnocentric moral authority!
Meritocracy is one of the leading causes of America’s decline. It is probably the main reason the Ivy League went to shit after the 1940s.
Was the US at that moment designed to encourage the merits and the virtues? The US deployment of troops in Vietnam almost looks like a twofer with Civil Rights. One covering for the other and vice verse, a recursive equation of Freedom!
There are far too many poison pills to swallow to even consider voting for Bernie Sanders.
Meritocracy was gradually adopted in the Ivy League between the 1920s and 1950s. It has been an unmitigated disaster. It changed the composition of the American elite and set us on the path to national decline at warp speed.
I am afraid I must again implore the two gentlemen in question to apologize for their horribly inappropriate postings. Hunter & Jack will not permit those comments to stand. I would far prefer the apologies for poor judgment than to see the other ramifications.
Hunter, I do not at all understand your comments on the Ivy League and meritocracy. First of all, did you attend an Ivy League school? Second, what is your objection to success based on merit? What is the system you advocate instead?
In the “if only we were in charge” pile of suggestions is also getting rid of disparate impact. that would immediately remove the monopoly on signalling that universities currently enjoy, and both the price of education(as well as its necessity) would plummet.
That’s actually an interesting debate.
My suspicion is that you are talking about one Old Boys Network being replaced by another Tribal network. What would this have had to have done with public university systems?
I’m no fan of the Yankee old boys network, but what we have now is far worse. The present meritocratic elite has succeded in running the country into the ground.
That’s an issue for the institutions in question. They are private entities.
The effect of university placement in Europe hasn’t been anywhere near as extreme as it has in the US. The Private v Public Uni system in virtually unique. The elite changed radically in the private university structure and I suspect that what happened is the Old Boys were muscled by the Tribe. Had the Harvards etc been nationalized the Anglo-elite might have been able to put up a fight. Just a thought.
I had a friend and a colleague who taught genetics and embryology and other important pre-med courses at a major university. This friend once confided to me that he felt compelled by the evidence to photocopy the exams of certain students (wanna guess?) when they were turned in. Once the exams were graded and returned some students allegedly would complain about their grades and brought to him altered exams. Since he possessed copies of what was actually written and turned in he was able to thwart them. He was convinced that this was absolutely necessary. At the time I was shocked.
Getting rid of a formal aristocratic elite, replacing it with a pseudo blue blood legacy almost certainly predates the shift in admissions to uni’s.
That’s what the civil war was about surely?
I really hate it when some parasite wants to help himself to other peoples’ money to buy votes. Today it’s .1 of one percent to give every body free college. We know where this leads. Tomorrow we’re back to 90% tax rates. There’s no limit to the amount of new programs they can sell this way.
Kick out 20 million illegal aliens and you open up jobs for 20 million unemployed Americans. You save billions in free healthcare, food stamps and free education not to mention the billions of dollars these parasites send back to Mexico and God knows where.
Of course you’re right about the costs of Zionist Neo-Con foreign policy, but one issue has nothing to do with the others. More free things just means more parasites coming here from all over the world to cash in. Here in California they want to give free health care to Illegal Aliens.
Free college sounds nice, but it’s a trap for the unwary. Universal college is just a way to keep people out of the work force until they’re 30. It reduces pressure on the unemployment rate, which is a lie anyway. The universal free college argument is just a scam to divert attention from the lack of viable jobs. We need fewer people in college, not more.
Bernie Sanders honeymooned in the USSR. His heroes are the torturers and murderers who ran it. Everything he says must be evaluated in light of that fact.
A meritocracy can only work so long as it is universally accepted or at minimum accepted as the basis of justice to the same extent by every group. But that acceptance will depend on equal participation which cannot exist in a diverse society. A population with an average IQ of 85 simply will not participate in those endeavors that are more intellectually demanding to the same degree as a population whose average IQ is 100 or higher. That simply isn’t how the math works.
Is it possible that the lower performing population will accept its lower status as determined in a meritocracy? Yes, it’s possible but it is highly improbable when there is absolutely no incentive to accept it and every incentive to dispute the existence of the meritocracy. If all populations do not accept the meritocracy to the same extent then the population which sets aside its own interest in favor of merit places its members at a disadvantage to those groups which reject meritocracy and pursue group interest instead. The group which pursues self interest instead of meritocracy benefits when its members who do merit advance and when those members who do not merit advancement but advance anyway because of the group’s advancement of group interest. We see this in such institutions and practices as Affirmative Action, “Equal Opportunity”, and quotas. Meanwhile the group that does practice meritocracy is not advancing justice as it believes but is instead putting in place a system of its own oppression.
Essentially it is a tragedy of the commons problem. There is a commons. Whether we want to call this justice, jobs, or educational opportunities. Once any population wants more than its “fair” share as determined in this case by a meritocracy then the other populations are being cheated. The more homogeneous the population the less likely there will be antagonistic groups seeking to exploit the others.
Meritocracy requires people to set aside their own interest and an individual level and at a population level. That is simply against human nature. And the larger the society you’re dealing with the more it will be governed by human nature.
Did he expell the offending students? Exam tampering is a cardinal sin. They will have cheated like this for years and will continue to cheat for decades as professionals.
Warspite,
1.) No, I didn’t.
2.) Take a look at Harvard, Yale or Princeton in 2015. Is that what we want our education system to look like? That’s what a half century of meritocracy has produced in the Ivy League.
3.) Are you a fan of the current US cultural and political establishment? I’m not.
4.) Meritocracy has produced a hostile and incompetent elite that has guided our national decline for two generations now. The best and the brightest haven’t lived up to their advertising and that is an understatement.
5.) The US reached the pinnacle of world power and influence as meritocracy was adopted. It has been all downhill from there.
Captain’s comments on the Netherlands are rather poorly reasoned. I believe the gentleman’s errors include a presumption that whatever concerns/positions he believes Jews monolithically represent in the US are identical to the same religious group in the Netherlands. This is not the case. That religious minority in Holland has a distinctively different history and concerns than the same group in America. This is really no different than any other similarly situated group. Whatever insight the gentleman believes he possesses on the religious minority in the US simply do not transfer in full to another nation.
I also find the young man’s comments on Blacks in the antebellum South disappointing. One hardly need be an intellectual or moral giant to acknowledge the great wrong done to sub-Saharan Africans transported to the New World to be held in involuntary servitude. The Jim Crow era presents another easy analysis.
My sense of the situation in the US in the 1920s regards the Ivy’s is that they should have been nationalized. Then the group practicing a sort of parasitic exploitation of the greater population would have been snuffed. The blacks would have also been limited yet, if actually bright allowed in. The Uni might then have also served as a loci of national consciousness. German university students were a primary bulwark against communism and foreign elements. Private education between 5-18 would have developed the required racial consciousness and the Uni would have been the finishing school for it.
I do not find the comments about Ivy League & Ivy level universities entirely convincing. I’m very familiar with three very different Ivies, and they are substantially different in many respects. Ditto schools like Stanford and Chicago. You paint with far too broad a brush.
Nevertheless, you are correct about some of the sickening political correctness found at those schools. There are too many things that go on at most universities that are offensive in the “Black Lives Matter” or “Israel Divestment” way. I have a friend from grad school that is a professor as a Pac-12 school. It is just as politically correct, it just gets less attention than Harvard or Penn. Most all good universities are maddening ivory towers.
The fact you waive off the high level of scholarship that comes out of top 10 or 20 schools is disturbing. Did you study in the Humanities or Social Sciences? I don’t see how anyone who is knowledgeable in those areas can merely dismiss the value of our best universities. I have to ask where and what you studied, in order to get some idea of why you are taking your positions.
What are you proposing in lieu of a meritocracy model?
What is happening at Harvard today isn’t meritocracy. It’s a broken border and a system designed to oppress the locals. The horse has already run on this anyway. It’s a racial question now. Directly so.
I’m not exactly advocating a meritocratic system either. Read carefully.
Europeans came up with the idea that slavery was a moral wrong.
From the Nile Delta to the Cape, slavery was perfectly legal in Africa. It was an African custom and was only finally (and likely temporarily) abolished there as a result of European imperialism.
Warspite,
Captain John Charity Spring MA is a fictional Slaver captain. He’s not from Massachusetts. He was also booted out of Balliol. There was never any Charity in the man except by name.