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How does the meltdown of the middle class drive up college tuition fees? Wouldn't they have less money to spare for education, not more? Or is it that they thro

How does the meltdown of the middle class drive up college tuition fees? Wouldn't they have less money to spare for education, not more? Or is it that they throws everything they have into education as a last desperate attempt to avoid the decline into poverty?

lmm 12y ago
Partly the latter. Also there's a lot more competition for top universities, because the decline of middle-class trades means that's no longer an acceptable option. Thirty years ago you'd want your kids to go to Harvard, sure, but you'd have been happy if they took an apprenticeship as an electrician or metalworker or what-have-you. Today it's college or bust.
- VLM 12y ago
  "but you'd have been happy if they took an apprenticeship as an electrician or metalworker or what-have-you. Today it's college or bust." And that's the social political aspect, in that unionized skilled trades will be (or, are) the last middle class group left standing. You see the crab pot effect of trying to pull down anyone trying to get out, whenever the union question comes up. Edited to add commentary on other grandparent post topics: The process of financialization is like squeezing blood out of rocks. It says a lot about our centrally controlled economy, that the leadership have decided to squeeze a moderate amount of blood out of young rocks, rather then the alternatives. For example, if you build a large and expensive medical industrial complex, you can squeeze the entire net worth out of old people before they die. But before that, there's people trying to squeeze 1/3 or more of lifetime income by boosting house prices. Ideally, the FIRE sector would extract the last $ from a victim before the victim even entered the medical sector at the end of their lives. Before even them, there's an exploding business in school loans. Ideally, the educational sector would extract every $ from the lifetime income of victims before the victim even enters the clutches of the FIRE sector. Not just the student mortgaging their future, but get them to take all the money from their parents and grandparents if possible. So what happens to an economic system built on a financialization business plan where you find ever earlier spans of life to extract all familial net worth (and when you run out of familial net worth to extract)? What happens to the historically earlier, later in life pyramid schemes when the base of the pyramid drops out because someone already ate "their" lunch at an earlier stage? Sorry hospital, you can't take my $1M estate as you budgeted because the bank already took all the money for the foreclosed house... not a good day to be in the medical sector. Sorry subdivision developer my generation won't be buying your $1M housing product because the banks already took all past and future familial wealth for school loans so I'll never afford your $1M house, I could buy it for $50K but that'll implode your financials. There does not appear to be any further way to innovate the pyramid scheme, so like all cancerous growths it'll kill the host and die itself and something else entirely new will live in that niche. One interesting commentary on financialization as a business model, is all three models I list above only are alive on life support anyway because the .gov backstops each loan with a "heads you win, tails I lose" or "privatize the gains socialize the losses" purchased legal system. A hiccup there might also be a problem, and/or if its ever widely recognized by the public that the second great depression is pretty much due to .gov intervention, thats the kind of stuff revolution is made out of, at least in other more civilized countries. Maybe here we'll just get gulags and secret police, or really good bread and circuses, donno. The next couple decades are going to be super exciting.
michaelochurch 12y ago
People are panic-buying connections to the elite as the middle melts down. The elite itself is fighting to hold together. School tuitions reflect this, but so does the price of housing in cities with robust job markets. There's a lot of language that sounds superficially positive ("innovation", "fast-paced") especially in the corporate theater, but what's really happening is that the rapacious elite is eating society, like a cancer, while the middle class falls apart.

lmm 12y ago

Partly the latter. Also there's a lot more competition for top universities, because the decline of middle-class trades means that's no longer an acceptable option. Thirty years ago you'd want your kids to go to Harvard, sure, but you'd have been happy if they took an apprenticeship as an electrician or metalworker or what-have-you. Today it's college or bust.

VLM 12y ago
"but you'd have been happy if they took an apprenticeship as an electrician or metalworker or what-have-you. Today it's college or bust." And that's the social political aspect, in that unionized skilled trades will be (or, are) the last middle class group left standing. You see the crab pot effect of trying to pull down anyone trying to get out, whenever the union question comes up. Edited to add commentary on other grandparent post topics: The process of financialization is like squeezing blood out of rocks. It says a lot about our centrally controlled economy, that the leadership have decided to squeeze a moderate amount of blood out of young rocks, rather then the alternatives. For example, if you build a large and expensive medical industrial complex, you can squeeze the entire net worth out of old people before they die. But before that, there's people trying to squeeze 1/3 or more of lifetime income by boosting house prices. Ideally, the FIRE sector would extract the last $ from a victim before the victim even entered the medical sector at the end of their lives. Before even them, there's an exploding business in school loans. Ideally, the educational sector would extract every $ from the lifetime income of victims before the victim even enters the clutches of the FIRE sector. Not just the student mortgaging their future, but get them to take all the money from their parents and grandparents if possible. So what happens to an economic system built on a financialization business plan where you find ever earlier spans of life to extract all familial net worth (and when you run out of familial net worth to extract)? What happens to the historically earlier, later in life pyramid schemes when the base of the pyramid drops out because someone already ate "their" lunch at an earlier stage? Sorry hospital, you can't take my $1M estate as you budgeted because the bank already took all the money for the foreclosed house... not a good day to be in the medical sector. Sorry subdivision developer my generation won't be buying your $1M housing product because the banks already took all past and future familial wealth for school loans so I'll never afford your $1M house, I could buy it for $50K but that'll implode your financials. There does not appear to be any further way to innovate the pyramid scheme, so like all cancerous growths it'll kill the host and die itself and something else entirely new will live in that niche. One interesting commentary on financialization as a business model, is all three models I list above only are alive on life support anyway because the .gov backstops each loan with a "heads you win, tails I lose" or "privatize the gains socialize the losses" purchased legal system. A hiccup there might also be a problem, and/or if its ever widely recognized by the public that the second great depression is pretty much due to .gov intervention, thats the kind of stuff revolution is made out of, at least in other more civilized countries. Maybe here we'll just get gulags and secret police, or really good bread and circuses, donno. The next couple decades are going to be super exciting.

michaelochurch 12y ago

People are panic-buying connections to the elite as the middle melts down. The elite itself is fighting to hold together. School tuitions reflect this, but so does the price of housing in cities with robust job markets. There's a lot of language that sounds superficially positive ("innovation", "fast-paced") especially in the corporate theater, but what's really happening is that the rapacious elite is eating society, like a cancer, while the middle class falls apart.