Not all unions are bad. At the same time, not all unions are good. There are pros & cons. Personally I want no part of ever being in a union.
I think that's a bit generalizing. The union holds some benefits for workers, and some places require you to unionize (my dad had to join a union when he unloaded trucks during his twenties).
I wouldn't want to work where I was forced into a union. I also wouldn't unload trucks for a living. Would accept minimum wage to go do at Wal-Mart for a few hours every day though. That job was a lot of fun.
I can answer this one. The Texas legislature has reduced their contribution to higher education institutions every biennium for the last two decades. UH used to get half of its operating budget from the state, now it is less than 25% and continues to drop. As a result, tuition and fees have skyrocketed. Tax cuts for rich people have resulted in higher tuition for the rest of us.
*BANGS HEAD ON WALL* Tuition all over the country has skyrocketed because universities have no intensive to keep tuition down. They can charge whatever they want because the government guarantees the loans. An inelastic and infinite demand + a limited supply + infinite money = sky high prices. That has NOTHING to do with taxes on the rich.
That is the problem when you have a limited perspective and analyze the whole world from the vantaghe point of a kid or an office worker.
You are both wrong and right, it has something to do with tax levels and it also has to do with government guaranteed student loans and it likely has to do with a host of other factors. The picture is way too complex to say it is only due to federal guaranteed loans. The simple answer you are giving has a certain economics 101 appeal, but it fails to hold the requisite levels of actionable truth needed serve as a launch point for public policy.
Tax cuts for the rich have not happened in any way that impacts the Texas Legislature. Texas has no income tax. The taxes collected are property and sales taxes. Raising property taxes impacts the middle class much more negatively than the rich. Raising sales taxes is a very regressive tax as the poor would bear the brunt from a percentage of their income perspective. This analysis also ignores that raising either would require a ballot referendum.
No worries ATW; it's not worth re-explaining things I've already posted on in this thread. I will continue debating the merits on the general ideology of market socialism in this thread, and also to relate that to Chavez when possible (somewhat difficult as this thread has gone to being a debate about tuition, all fun and games though). But if I need you to be all over me, I know how to get that little obsessive part of you running. Until then, bye! Please engage with me the next time you have an actual issue to discuss. If his preposition were true, a country like the UK (with mostly state-provided loans, and comparable schools or some would say even better) would have sky high tuition. Turns out--- Oxford/Cambridge Law---₤12,000 (approx. $18,600) For the 2012-2013 academic year: tuition and fees for a full-time Tulane Law School student are $45,240 ($41,500 tuition and $3,740 in mandatory fees) The 2013 U.S. News & World Report law-school rankings placed Tulane Law as 51st in the nation overall, a drop from 47th in the 2012 rankings. They're not really 100% equivalent degrees, but damn. That has to be a sucker punch and a half.
Bang your head against the facts if you like, but they are concrete, just like walls. I'm sorry to interrupt with the facts, but there have been reductions in state funding to higher education every biennium for the last 20 years. It is a fact that at one time, half of UH funding came from the state and today it is 25% and dropping. There has been plenty of cost cutting and "trimming the fat," but those revenues (which the Texas legislature took out of higher education to give tax cuts) have to be made up for UH to continue its mission, thus the rising tuition. To some extent I agree with you, those dollars should not come to the schools through student loans, they should come from tax dollars so that our students aren't saddled with debt and thus unable to contribute fully to the economy once they graduate and are gainfully employed. Now, I would COMPLETELY agree with funneling most of this funding to STEM programs as those fields are the ones nearest full employment. Keep telling yourself that, I know that Fox (or one of their surrogates) has drilled it into your head, but when juxtaposed against the facts, your claims just don't hold water.
Refman is correct here - the problem in Texas was not cutting taxes for the rich. It was cutting taxes in general, multiple times, which caused shortages for the state. The shortages then led cuts in education which resulted in tuition increases. You can argue the merits of lower taxes vs higher tuition, but the facts are that the state funded less of the state schools which caused tuition to spike.
Excerpt... "Since being elected, many of these cut-cut-cut Repubs may be losing sleep out of concern for re-election. When asked why mobilization is necessary to convince conservative legislators that making cuts to funds for poor children, poor senior citizens, K-12 education, and higher education are ass-backwards to the prosperity of the state, Villarreal told me, “Many of my Republican colleagues ran on a pledge of no tax increases. What they failed to communicate to their constituents is that this would mean severe cuts in education and basic public services like health care for our seniors in nursing homes. So they left the impression with their voters that we could have both — both low taxes and still maintain services like education and health care for seniors. So they sort of backed themselves into a corner."" http://blogs.sacurrent.com/index.ph...loopholes-villarreal-and-saul-alinskys-ghost/
I know you were fortunate and free to choose. The virtue of selfishness ala Ayn Rand. I've got mine, Jack. Ok, but not everyone can be a kid/worker or an office worker. We need laborers and factory workers etc. In America until recently educated folks doing well typically thought of what was good for others in society.
Here's some interesting reading, folks (sorry, glynch, but I'll have to carry on about Chavez later). Texas Education Agency data for the 2011-12 school year show that the number of elementary classes exceeding the 22-student cap has soared to 8,479 from 2,238 last school year. Texas has had the 22-student cap for kindergarten through fourth-grade classes since 1984, and districts can apply for exemptions for financial reasons. But during the 2011 legislative session, to ease the pain of a roughly $5.4 billion reduction in state financing that did not account for the estimated influx of 170,000 new students over the next two years — and after an attempt to do away with the cap failed — lawmakers made those exemptions easier to obtain. Texas schools, which have shed approximately 25,000 employees this school year, including more than 10,000 teachers, have jumped at the chance to trim costs. http://www.texastribune.org/texas-e...schools-cope-as-classes-expand-staffs-shrink/ Why did we see such a drastic cut in state funding for our public schools? When state political leadership refuses to raise revenue, no matter what the cost to our society, this kind of result is not unusual.
Explain something to me, because I do not understand. It is my understanding that the Texas Legislature cannot simply raise taxes. To increase the sales or property tax rates would require voter approval via a referendum. This would not be likely to pass. The reduction in the revenues from property taxes in the last several years is directly tied to the reduction in property values resulting from the mortgage meltdown. Sales tax revenues are down because of less buying happening as a result of the recession and job concerns. Am I missing something? Is there another source of revenue I have not thought about?
When did tax increases change to require voter approval? Bill Clements and the legislature passed a sales tax and franchise tax hike in the late 80s. (which funny enough, Rick Perry voted in favor of when he was in the state legislature as a democrat)
I forgot to add, there is the franchise tax but that is probably the most idiotic tax increase the state could do. (which coincidentally Rick Perry actually did in order to offset a property tax cut) Of course, his math was off and it didn't offset it so he created a nice deficit to go along with that.
