Prior to my vacation this summer I was getting into a very necessary aspect of this topic- how much the government takes in in taxes, how much it spends, and broadly, in which areas- military, social aid, national debt, etc. Before proceeding further I am going to take a step back and tie the extent of one’s education to one’s expected financial earnings. Hopefully this is a task that will be more delicately done than accepting the, ahem- crappy job of narrator of a documentary about how effectively hippos release previously stored deposits of dung from the river bottom in order to discourage wildebeasts from crossing the said body of water in their territory. I could make an analogy between that endeavor and following the herd to the voting booth to choose between one pathetic democratic or republican candidate or another- but I'll abstain.
Don’t sound the alarm: In a June 17, 2007 Star Tribune editorial concerning Minnesota’s higher education needs, it was revealed that Minnesotans spent $7.31 in tax dollars per every $1000 of personal income, which ranked Minnesota 25th in the nation. Well, one state has to be in the middle of the road, a couple states have to be the best at something, and some have to be the worst- you can’t be the best in the nation at everything. And if we’re in the middle of the pack on education spending, then we may be the best-ranked state in terms of livability, and maybe trending toward the worst in terms of the number of gangs per 1000 people. I’m just trying to be reasonable. If you are alarmed by everything you read, you are dismissed, even if you bring plenty of alleged facts into the discussion that others do not want to hear. I am officially on guard anytime I read something from the Star-Tribune because they are not very objective politically, to say the least. They’d support an illegal alien, homosexual tree-frog who spear-heads a lobbyist group called the Bowel Movement, whose major desire is to be allowed to evacuate on city walkways because a limited study indicated that feces on sidewalks could environmentally improve the earth beneath the cement. Not wanting to be proven wrong is many people’s greatest fear, which is not quite as strange as a puppet’s strange attraction for a certain bird species, but it is close. Gonzo’s (from The Muppet Show) romantic proclivity for chickens is just slightly more disturbing than Bert’s (from Sesame Street) unhealthy co-dependence on pigeons- (poor Ernie). Inexplicable- for death awaits no matter how encouraged you might be about the voracity of your beliefs. Being wrong is alarming, but some are more concerned about that than the death that awaits after a voting career where they've done nothing but continue to justify the political good-old-boys.
Taxing Education: I happen to think that just because you throw a lot of money at a problem, it doesn’t mean that the situation improves, in short, you can (and I wouldn’t have this knowledge firsthand mind you), but shouldn’t, put a lot of dresses on a pig, or even one. It is how the money is spent that counts, which is what I was getting at last time with how the government allocates the money it collects from personal and corporate income taxes, among other sources. According to the editorial, the U of M and Minnesota’s State Colleges and Universities had a good legislative session in gaining increases of “17 and 13 percent, respectively, over the coming two years.” The reason that this is good news is that giving them tax dollars, which might be spent elsewhere, but goes instead to education, will hopefully slow the meteoric rise of college tuition.
Taxed coming or going: Sure, one way or the other, we’re paying for our education- and as the editorial reveals, and it is hard to disagree- “the rising tuition has been the result of the state’s tightfistedness toward its colleges and universities.” We either pay for it coming, by how our tax money is directed (I cite the increases from links to articles I've already referenced in previous installments on this topic) to Minnesota colleges and universities, or going, with a tuition hike if money is not directed to colleges and universities. Again, I think this true in moderation, that it depends on how those responsible for directing higher education money are spending it. If I’m making no sense so far, providing you are still reading this blog series, then prove me wrong. Otherwise, in terms of social importance, I might just barely rank ahead of the guy making balloon animals at the TGI Fridays.
Middle class exemption: The article also states things I reasonably believe to be true with a couple of caveats:
1- needy students can obtain a significant discount on tuition costs through the State Grant Program- (unfortunately, I don’t necessarily find this to be true, I didn’t receive any assistance and could have used it. If you live at home and the Grant people survey your financially struggling, divorced mother’s bank account, whose fairly limited savings is earmarked for her retirement, and find the amount of money to be “substantial,” it will get counted against you. I put myself through college- an option that won’t be possible for middle class kids in generations to come because of the rising tuition costs);
2. “the higher the share of college graduates in a state’s population, the larger the state’s median personal and household income. The higher the share of high-school graduates in a state’s population, the lower the unemployment and poverty rates.” (I have a graph in my word document but it won't paste here so I'll have to summarize what they found to be true in 2003 in regard to what level of education equates to what annual salary):
Advanced degree $72,000
Bachelor's degree $51,000
Some college $38,000
High school grad. $30,000
High school dropout $20,000
The editorial ranks the U of M, state colleges, and community colleges undergraduate programs against all other states nationally, and the average tuition in each case is higher in Minnesota than the national average; (Problem here is that costs are going up nationally. I’m not overly concerned with how specific states are doing, as the continued strain on the middle class economically is a national issue and not a regional one);
Much of the information comes from Tom Mortenson, whose report titled “Minnesota Coasting” documents the trend of rising higher education costs- the entirety of which can be found at: www.postsecondary.org including the missing graph, and the sentence: “States with better educated workforces are stronger on all measures of economic welfare.” Sure, this may be one person’s opinion or one website’s findings, but how many websites, studies, articles, percentages and dollar amounts would convince you of something that is nearly innately true? If you want to see if this site is reliable, head there in order to find the almighty percentages, the fractions, and the number of high school graduates matriculating to college;
Work it out: Republicans, who often make the point of stating that corporations won’t want to settle into a state’s economic system if corporate taxes are unfavorable, miss that the truth contained in #2 above is just as important an indicator of a state’s economic well-being. If you don’t have intelligent, skilled laborers comprising the workforce in a given state, how exactly is that corporation going to thrive? If the average republican can’t see this- then they’re probably interested in using leeches for all of their blood transfusion needs- just not the leeches and immigrants abusing the system. I thought this to be true prior to having read it elsewhere, and I just discovered it in my research for next time- in the 2000 press release link I will provide. The truth is fairly self-evident, given enough thought, and if a guy who bought into the theory that removing warts from your feet using strips of duct tape has surmised this likelihood, I must not be as dim-witted as I thought . . . or something;
If you can still deny these proofs you probably haven’t noticed the third-rate singers lip-synching terrible pop songs on The Tribute to Underdog Float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade, run out of gas often, and forget the names of your own children. In short, go to the clinic and get tested- something is wrong with your mind.
Next time: More on how "necessary costs" from the private market will continue to tax (put a strain on) the middle class.
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