Tag Archives: economics

Two Mistakes

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One is by the Department of Education, and one is by “some college presidents.”

Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell said he wants accreditors to “do more to address substandard and underperforming institutions” by focusing their efforts on weak schools while reviewing elite schools less rigorously.

Sure. Because the Harvards and Dartmouths of college-dom are such paragons of free speech, diversity of ideas, and quality teaching. Never mind that elite school elite professors spend more of their time doing government-funded research than they spend in the classroom doing actual teaching.

The “college presidents'” mistake is this:

[S]ome college presidents worry that judging schools by things like graduation rates could mean that high-risk students will have less access to higher education.

If these schools have poor graduation rates, to what education have their students had access? These college presidents are conflating access to higher education institutions with access to higher education. Apparently, they don’t take their own institutions’ Logic 101 courses seriously. Or those courses are poorly taught.

Left unaddressed by both is another matter, described by a college president who’s willing to be named. John Bassett, President of Heritage University, is on the right track.

I think you need a better measuring stick than how many diplomas you hand out. I think you have to be very careful of unintended consequences. If you focus on graduation rates, then you incentivize schools to target wealthy and middle-class kids and not go after anybody else.

Focusing on graduation rates also drives fudging standards in order to prop up graduation rates. There’s no higher education for students there, either.

Here’s a thought; bear with me, apparently I’m on new ground here. How about focusing on rates of employment in their chosen major field for graduating students in a period (say, six months to five years) following graduation?

Graduating students who do well and become employed will identify a number of useful trends for the schools who graduated them and the Federal government that hectors the schools: the schools are teaching well, the schools are teaching marketable skills, and the schools are producing graduates less likely to default on their student loans because they have actual jobs and an income that enables them to pay their debts.

Compromise

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The AP had a piece on FoxNewsOnline that, among other things, expressed hope that in President Barack Obama’s (D) last year sitting in the President’s chair, there can be some compromise between him and Congress’ Republican leadership, that the two can work together.

Searching for potential compromise, President Barack Obama brought the Republicans who run the House and Senate to the White House on Tuesday to try to hash out an agenda for his final year, even as his top legislative priorities appear to be losing steam.

The hope, though, hinges on a question for a man who has spent the last seven years denigrating and insulting the intelligence and patriotism of Republicans—every single one of them.

The question is this: when will Obama start working with Republicans, when will he actually be willing to compromise?

Home Buying Down Payment Requirements

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The PRC is reducing the size of down payment it requires for a Chinese citizen to buy a home from 25% to 20% of the purchase price. For those who already own a home and haven’t yet fully repaid that mortgage, the mandatory down payment on the purchase of a second home is being reduced to 30% from 40%. This is that government’s attempt to stimulate a slowing economy by inducing more consumption and thereby growing jobs. Supposedly.

The moves, though, raise the question: why is the PRC government mandating this sort of thing at all?

Oh, wait….

EU and Taxes, Again

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Brussels on Thursday dusted off a set of proposals aimed at extracting more revenue from multinational companies. Better watch out, because some or all of these measures may become law.

European leaders often complain that multinationals avoid paying a “fair share” of tax. The Anti-Tax-Avoidance Package is supposed to remedy this by changing accounting rules and boosting reporting requirements….

Part of the EU’s beef is that low-tax member nations supposedly are competing unfairly with high-tax members. Another part is that some member nations cut better deals with multinational corporations to influence where these corporations locate their headquarters than other member nations are willing to cut.

Once again, social democracy misses two critical points. One is that if a nation is having trouble competing with another nation on the basis of tax rates or deal cutting, that nation should lower its tax rates and/or cut better deals, and thereby compete.  It shouldn’t whine about the competition.

The other is this: it isn’t Government’s money. Not even in Europe.

More, Please

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A US Navy destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles or within the territorial waters of an island [Triton Island, part of the Paracel Islands] claimed by China in the South China Sea, in a sign of increasing tension in the region days after Secretary of State John Kerry visited Beijing attempting to settle long standing territorial disputes. Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to the island as well.

One small correction: the destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilbur, did not sail within the territorial waters of the PRC, even though it sailed within 12 nm of Triton in the western part of the South China Sea, roughly 250 miles east of Vietnam. The Paracels are not the territory of the PRC; its claim is just part of its overall grab for the entire Sea.

That’s part of the reason such sails-by are necessary: to emphasize the illegitimacy of the PRC’s claim and of its attempts to occupy the islands. We need more of these sailings, and we need frequent flyovers, too. These are things, though, that the Obama administration is too timid to do, or is unable to understand the necessity of the doing, or both.

Captain Jeff Davis, speaking for the Pentagon (and so for President Barack Obama (D)):

This operation was about challenging excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the United States and others, not about territorial claims to land features[.]

And

[Last] week in Beijing, Secretary Kerry refused to criticize his host publicly or accuse the Chinese of wrong doing in the South China Sea over the build-up of artificial islands worrying its neighbors in the region. …the United States “does not take sides on the sovereignty questions underlying the territorial disputes.”

This is what’s wrong. We should be challenging the PRC over its expansionist occupation. If we truly do not “take sides on the sovereignty questions,” then we really do need to challenge, explicitly, the PRC’s seizures; that’s the bare minimum necessary to preserve the balance among the competing claims over those islands, and of the Spratlys, and of the South China Sea as a whole, which the PRC has occupied (and of the East China Sea, which the PRC also has moved to occupy).