From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.amateur-comp,soc.culture.usa,alt.activism
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Date: 9 Jan 1993 01:02:29 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <SLAGLE.93Jan7184944@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com> slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
>In article <1iab94INNsdv@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>
>> If your family could have afforded to send you to an unsubsidized, top-notch
>> college on the perhaps 20 to 30 percent of their income that is paid in taxes
>> (never mind that some of that money would be needed to buy services that you
>> currently receive from the government), then you clearly place yourself into
>> the "frustrated children of the elite" class so clearly described.
>
>Don't be obtuse.  If your family had put away 20 to 30 percent of their
>income from the time of your birth they would have enough to send you
>and several brothers and sisters to Harvard.  That's if they had made
>even very conservative investments.

Let's do some math.  Let's consider family income to be a unit, a savings
rate of .2 family incomes, and return on investment over inflation of about
2 percent annually.  Over 21 years, that is a little over roughly 5 family
incomes.  For 5 percent, a little over 7.  That means that the cutoff point
for college for two kids is college costs of less than a family income per
year.  Wow, does that sound easy, until you start looking at real life
expenses.

Give back the 20-30%, and suddenly you have to pay for grade school also.
Ooops: can't save as much.  Not to mention all those economical state and
community colleges disappear.  Oh, and that's assuming that there's no more
than 2 kids, and that your family income is comparable to college expenses,
and that your parents are responsible, and that they would really get back
20% (considering that at least 20% of children in the US are living in
poverty, I don't think it that likely.)

>The concept... is known as sacrificing in the present for future rewards.

That sounds very well and good, until you realize that you are asking the
parents to sacrifice in the present for the future of someone else (their
children.)  That is not better than the current system (by your moral standard),
because the children still are not sacrificing for their own future, and the
parents have no guarantee that they are sacrificing for their future.

A social contract insures the investment of adults in the education of the
young and retirement of the aged.  It reduces the harmful effects of accidents
of birth.

>> My parents were impoverished immigrants.  They, my sisters, and I could
>> never have afforded our educations which propelled us into the middle class
>> without substantial government loans and subsidies.
>
>Lemme get my violin.

I'd prefer that you engaged your brain.

Mike Huben

Strephon: "Have you the heart to apply the prosaic rules of evidence to a
	   case brimming with such poetical emotion?"
Chancellor: "Distinctly."
	From "Iolanthe", by Gilbert and Sullivan.