“Opportunity and inclusion are important for achieving a strong economy ... Policymakers can improve economic mobility by increasing access to high-quality education, helping all households gain access to high speed internet and eliminating systemic inequities in access to credit and financial services” Mester said. StoryDuh.
No disrespect to Mester. Just find it incredible that this needed to be said at all or that it took a Fed Reserve official saying it to make news. It would seem so damned obvious. Relates back to the recent Ray Dalio thread in some ways.
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My home town, the history that places your question into the real world.
https://hechingerreport.org/anonymous-town-model-desegregation-civil-rights-era/
Mester’s Overarching Thesis: “Opportunity and inclusion are important for achieving a strong economy”
How Mester thinks the “policymakers” can assist in meeting the need implicit in her thesis:
1. Increasing access to high-quality education.
2. Helping all households gain access to high speed internet.
3. Eliminating systemic inequities in access to credit and financial services.
Do you disagree with Mester’s thesis or with one of her three recommendations? I’m confused. I did not take her suggestion for “increasing access to high quality education“ as an indictment of our secondary schools. I thought she was referring to some kind of post-secondary assistance (subsidies, grants, scholarships, direct aid to universities, etc.) so kids from less well-off familires could enjoy the same high quality post-secondary education that kids from wealthier families do. Her second recommendation (access to high speed internet), however, is intrinsically linked to quality of education across all levels - including K-12.
In today’s modern economy, without some form of post-secondary education kids are at a severe disadvantage (and Mester sees this impacting American competitiveness globally). Post-secondary education need not be college, but study after study has confirmed that lifetime earnings correspond closely with years of college completed. And college is expensive. “... the average cost of college for the 2017–2018 school year was $20,770 for public schools (in-state) and $46,950 for nonprofit private schools, only including tuition, fees, and room and board.” Source
So, to your point, I saw nothing in Mester’s speech about “bad teachers” or mandatory school attendance laws not being enforced. Seems to me you tossed out some dubious red herrings to distract attention away from what she really said.
Sure, I want even more:
I think that all employees should get better benefits + treatment. CEOs should make much less.
If we're already going there, health care and high education should be cheaper. Please find me these great cheap doctors and universities.
It's funny, the more we try to improve the above the worse it gets under both Dems and GOP.
1) Our school level got worse in the last 20 years.
2) CEOs are making 250-300 times their average employees while they used to make about 30 times in the 80"
3) Healthcare got a lot more expensive since Obama care.
4) The gap got bigger too. Many STEM jobs increase pay more than inflation but lower paying jobs did not + many don't get benefits.
I'm an ex-hippie. It was my generation which espoused an "Anything Goes" attitude. And Bob Dylan said he'd rather be a model for harmonica holders. The over-the-back-of-the-neck sort, rather than study all that less important stuff like history and science... The effects rubbed off on the next generation, which benefitted from the ex-hippie teachers' newfound attitude: "what do grades matter, anyhow? Here, have an A," when a B was deserved. GRADE INFLATION. To go along with dumbed-down standards. And THAT has just grown worse and worse over time. So, kids learn less, and maybe even learn incorrect stuff. That very thing happened to me, so I discovered later. And what my 14 and 19 year-old niece and nephew DON'T know? Scares the hell outa me. And he's already done with high school.
>> 3) Healthcare got a lot more expensive since Obama care.
cites?
Here's one for ya:
https://www.statnews.com/2019/03/22/affordable-care-act-controls-costs/
@msf did a lot of substantiated posting in this area back when.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/opinion/trump-biden-economic-policy.html
"Healthcare". What's that? National expenditures? National expenditures per capita? An analog of risk adjusted returns, e.g. improved health / change in cost?
"A lot more expensive". More expensive than what? Than it was in 2009? Certainly healthcare costs rise faster than inflation. That was true a decade ago, that's true now. So what? Not a single figure proffered, let alone two to show a comparison.
ACA "saved the U.S. $2.3 trillion"? Compared with what? "The bottom line: cumulatively from 2010 to 2017 the ACA reduced health care spending a total of $2.3 trillion."
National health expenditures in 2010 totaled $2.593T; by 2017 they totaled $3.487T. Each of the intervening years also experienced expenditures more than the 2010 baseline. Cumulatively, from 2010 to 2017 health expenditures increased by trillions of dollars.
https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/nhe-summary-including-share-gdp-cy-1960-2018.zip
"In 2017 alone, health expenditures were $650 billion lower than projected." So what's being compared are actual expenditures under the ACA with projected expenditures under the ACA. Actual expenditures being less that projected expenditures is evidence that projections didn't pan out, it's not evidence that the ACA had anything to do with it. Projected expenditures for 2017 may have been just as overstated under the old law as under the ACA.
As the column itself acknowledges, "Why have health care expenditures risen more slowly than projected? No one is entirely sure."
Here's a HealthAffairs piece on the subject: https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200406.93812/full/
Regarding Obama's claim that family's premiums would be lowered by $2500, the opinion piece says that "the ACA has more than delivered on that promise, saving about $4,000 per family."
As I explained above, and the Health Affairs piece details, statnews' calculation of realized "savings" is flawed. Large savings have not been realized, nor, Obama's rosy projections aside, were they expected.
The 2009 CMS projections (pp. 16-18) cited by the statnews column, discusses the sources of savings. It characterizes the Act's expected impact as moderate: "overall moderate effects of the PPACA on NHE [National Health Expenditures]"
FactCheck (2008): Obama’s Inflated Health ‘Savings’, substantiates the CMS writing.
https://www.factcheck.org/2008/06/obamas-inflated-health-savings/