Germany has long shown far greater foresight than the United States in the investment into science, infrastructure, and alternative energy — investments that are now giving the country huge returns as a leading economic system. With a decision of Lower Saxony, the German have now shown precisely how serious they are about keeping the country as one of the most educated in the world: they have eliminated all college and university tuition. The Germans view education as not just a right, but an essential component for continued growth.
There are critics to educational subsidies who raise some good-faith issues of how such payments can eliminate pressure to make efficient choices and actually drive up costs. I actually see value to students paying some tuition. However, with tuition sky rocking in the United States and falling enrollment numbers, the United States is heading to a reckoning in the future for our lack of investment in our workforce. While we have spent trillions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and just renewed our commitment to the later to keep forces in the country), we have continued to cut environmental, scientific, educational, and infrastructure investments. The inevitable result is that we will continue to drop in our competitiveness in the world market and the future economy. Every other country is investing heavily in education while the United States continues to be distracted by shiny objects with more immediate political benefits for politicians.
What is striking is that it is not just third world countries that are investing heavily education, but economic leaders like Germany.
Notably, tuition was only introduced in Germany in 2006 after the German Constitutional Court ruled that limited fees do not violate the country’s commitment to universal education. However, the tuition rates proved unpopular and the country is now tuition free. Of course, there is no such thing as free tuition. The taxpayers are footing the bill. Moreover, such government subsidies can have a negative impact on not just the choices of students (who feel less pressure to make efficient choices) but on schools which are dependent on the government.
Nevertheless, the contrast could not be greater with the United States in terms of the commitment to education as not just a right (as it is in Germany) but as a real national security priority.
The article below has an interesting discussion of how England rejected the free tuition approach but has lost more money due to the higher student default rate on tuition. Yet, the English students face a maximum debt load of $14,550 per year where U.S. tuition rates and debt are soaring. Student loan debt in our country now stands at $1.2 trillion.
Of course, that is less than a third of the costs for the wars, but no one is making such comparisons.
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/10/01/3574551/germany-free-college-tuition/
Over the last 100 years, a philosophy of governance has been gobbling up the freedoms we used to have to pursue whatever we could imagine. People have been led to believe equality SHOULD BE in outcome and not opportunity and that everyone’s dream WOULD BE guaranteed if only certain bright minds were to clear the path for success.
The only winners in this sort of system are those in power and those influential enough to put them there. If you want to deal with corporatism then you have to recognize that Big Business needs corruptible politicians; to sustain this system requires the hand of Big Government and an ignorant, apathetic and dependent electorate to put them there.
I mention no names in my 11:20 comment. If there is any similarity to any commenter here that is merely coincidence. I could make the very same charge and ask Darren to delete several comments in which I may suspect I was being referred to. Strange how things work in both directions.
In my opinion, we will not agree on the American Dream issue because of how we have set expectations of the way our system should work for us. The American system was designed to provide an environment where ANY dream we could imagine had the potential for success and it was up to our initiative, ambition, perseverance and self-reliance to take on the challenge. That American Dream is on life-support but it is not yet dead.
Juris asked upstream, why one might mention conservatives and selfishness in the same breath. The answer is clear when one reads this thread. Europeans have moved past this societal selfishness, if we were smart we could learn from them.
annie – conservatives give more to charity than liberals do. Hmmm. What’s that all about?
Darren, I conflated the 11:20am comment w/ the 11:27am. The 11:20 refers to a wife but may past the obtuse enough test. I trust your judgment. But, the 11:20 comment is an attack on 2 commenters and it’s a no brainer for deletion. Thanks.
Annie said: ” Tell minimum wage workers, single working mothers and two spouse working couples with children how their ability to get ahead is equal to that of their parent’s generation”
Ok….here again, I am going to agree with you. The ability is not equal to what it was mainly due to excessive Big Brother and Big Nanny government. Over regulation and taxation.
BUT…..I am going to completely disagree with your toxic negativity in that the American Dream is not dead. Harder. But not dead.
I WAS a single (divorced) working mother for a while. I collected food stamps at one point in my life. I had NOTHING but the clothing on my back and a few toys for my child. I the will to get a better job. Which I did as I related. It wasn’t easy. I had no one to help with child care. Often had to make the choice between buying gasoline to put in the car to get to work or milk and food to put on the table. All of our clothes were bought at yard sales or charity thrift stores. (This is why I donate generously to the Salvation Army). Thankfully, those years didn’t last and was able to get a career and rise above my impoverished condition.
I could have given up. Complained about life being unfair. Chosen to continue to get government hand outs. That would have been easy, very easy…….OR…..I could struggle, sacrifice and work to get a better life for myself and my child. THIS is the American Dream.
Instead of living a life of welfare and poverty, my child is now a graduate of a prestigious private college and has a 6 figure income, living in a beautiful (and rather pricy) area of California with a lovely family: husband and two wonderful grandchildren. My choice to not stay on government assistance and my choice to sacrifice and work hard….alone for quite some time and then with the assistance of my husband who was still struggling to build his business….. THIS.made the difference.
So don’t preach to ME about minimum wage and how hard it is. I KNOW it is hard. I also know it is possible.
Darren, Clean up on personal and tit for tat in aisle Germany Tuition. Thanks for your anticipated help. Again, I will not engage in that Middle School stuff.
I didn’t mention anyone’s wife at 11:27. I was asking a question, not making a statement. It’s interesting that some here personalize their comments directed at other’s all the time, they suspect other’s of doing so too. Projection is what it’s called.
Darren, I hate to bother you. Like I said on the Rome thread. I will do everything possible to make your life easy. Please delete the comment made about myself and MY WIFE @ 11:27am, ASAP. Thanks.
The problem though Annie is that there is a distinction between welfare for poor/disabled people and an entrenched entitlement system that applies based on factors other than lack of wealth/income and/or physical status. In this case here, the college student gets the education for free, meanwhile the average German worker is paying 20% VAT and $8 for gas and ultimately the reason command economies will fail is because they don’t acknowledge human individuality, that when individuals take actions they actually want to better themselves and when the basic equitable pattern goes from “one sows what one reaps” to “one for me, one for you” it causes serious issues. There’s no free lunch in this world.
Po, Thanks. Some here are this thread are personalizing things and bringing in spouses!! I don’t want that to happen between us. As I said the other day, I’m glad you returned here. You came here for good reasons. Some come here for negative reasons and that negativity shows.
Nick said: Those who think the American Dream is false are often the ones too lazy to achieve it. They are malcontents who go to rallies to support Occupy or govt. union employees. They are the takers, not the producers. But, they truly believe what they say because that is indeed their reality. We create the world in which we live.
BRAVO! This is true.
To me the American dream is that you are not stuck in a class system as was the case in Europe in the past and might even still be the case. Anyone with a will and with the skills can try to better themselves or attempt something that they could only imagine in Europe. The American Dream to me is to be FREE to be able to choose your path and the FREEDOM to be able to work towards those goals. FREE to be able to move from one area to another without restrictions and start again if you wish.
You are not stuck in your “class” in life. Only with your OWN work and determination can you change it though.
The dream also is to try to leave your children a better life than what you had in the past. That doesn’t always equate to monetary things either. Just better.
There are NO guarantees in the American Dream. You aren’t assured of success, but you are assured under the inalienable rights of: Life. Liberty. and the Pursuit of Happiness the chance to try. Does it mean you will succeed. No. But you are FREE to try.
Now I WILL find myself agreeing with Annie……the US is becoming more and more like old Europe with stratification and classes becoming stagnant. Making it harder for those who strive to achieve success. To many government regulations are the main reason. Many of those regulations ARE put into place at the urging of big business and the unions who do not want competition. A companies like McDonalds and KFC (whether you like them or not) started as a small idea in a small roadside restaurant. The founder of Home Depot basically said the same thing. They would be prohibited today from even beginning their business or have so many roadblocks that they would just give up in disgust.
THAT is what is killing the American Dream. The ability of people to start a business, hire employees, grow their business and let their employees grow along with them.
Nick, I am actually a half full glass type of person. I am always too optimistic, as my wife is fond of pointing out. I am also quite intuitive, and can sense of things before they appear, though my optimism makes me assume that they will never be.
As I said before, I am also a student of history, and that along with my being a world citizen, makes it so I tend to relate current events with past ones across time and space, and whatever I see know, here, I have seen before, elsewhere, and it did not end well. hence my concern.
Paul, you don’t get to speak for me, so I suggest you stop. Why don’t you work Paul? Why doesn’t Nick work? Lazy?
Annie – retired. And I put in a full day every day. Did I misread you?? Was your American Dream to have a Ph.D.? What have I missed?
Po, We adopted out son from Colombia. I saw a lot of poverty but a lot of successful small businesses. And, like Tony Soprano on steroids, Pablo Escobar didn’t just take his piece of the pie, he took the freakin’ bakery! I won’t ask again, but I think it is very important. I see you as a glass half empty person. Am I incorrect? Because so many of the discussions we have here, it is easy for me to see he glass half empty and glass half full folks. It is critically important in how we see the world and live in it.
Let’s ask commenters like LeeJ if she is living the American Dream. A single woman without a partner to support her when she could no longer work due to serious illness. If Americans haven’t saved millions of dollars to fall back onto when they can no longer work, they most certainly aren’t living the American Dream. There are other commenters here who are my age who spout mean spirited rhetoric about “lazy” people when they themselves are “lazy” and allow their spouses to support them, because they themselves could no longer work due to an illness or or condition. The Ugly American is well represented in such people.
Jim
I did not say guaranteed success. I said that THE AMERICAN DREAM NECESSARILY INCLUDES SOME GUARANTY OF SUCCESS and the maintaining of it IF ONE WORKS HARD. In order to be an achievable dream, it has to offer a reliable structure that takes people from point A to B if and only if they work hard, Otherwise, what it is?
People here have said to have achieved it BY working hard, and those who did not did not work hard enough. That is thus the core requirement for achieving it, which is a measure of a guarantee. I am saying that hard work is no longer the means to achieving success because the structure is not compliant with the dream.
Paul, Nick, why don’t you answer my questions posted earlier?
po wrote: “In order to be an achievable dream, it has to offer a reliable structure that takes people from point A to B if and only if they work hard, Otherwise, what it is?”
Po, it is called a DREAM because it is a DREAM. There is no structure, and there are no guarantees. The idea is that freedom allows you to pursue whatever vision of life you want to pursue, and the idea is that if you work hard and steady at it, you will succeed. Faith, hope, and love are helpful to achieve success.
If you want a guarantee, you will want to embrace a communistic model. Government can place you in a position it thinks you are suited for, and you work for government. Then the government divides up the production profits among everybody. It will not matter if you work hard or not. You earn the same for yourself and your family. You will be guaranteed your necessities for your entire life.
What question am I supposed to be avoiding, Paul. How you love to assume that I am always avoiding answering! I just have decided to ignore the baiting, that is all.
Nick:
“po, I don’t listen to Limbaugh. Your ideological pants are falling down. I engaged your comments w/ thoughtful responses. I expect the same from you. There are some here w/o the ability for thoughtful response, but you are. Step up your game.”
Have you not been reading my comments, Nick? I am hitting you from all sides with thoughtful comments! Did someone bring up Rush or not? am responding to one and all, don’t have time to break it up neatly, I must go to work.
“NO WHERE is there a guarantee. The only guarantee is the opportunity to succeed. That is a ludicrous statement. There are NO GUARUNTEES in life. There is NO GUARUNTEE TO LIFE. You can keel over today. So, enjoy today like it may be your last. There are glass half full and glass half empty people. To a large extent, we are hardwired that way”
You know where else we say that? In Sudan, in Haiti, in Colombia, in EL Salvador. Wherever you go, wherever humanity exists, that is the defining state. There is no guarantee in life.
The American dream promises more guarantees than other “Dreams”, Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
The land of opportunities is simply no longer the land of opportunities. That is the basic fact. Maybe, and I hope, it will get better, but right now, it isn’t.
po, the word is “pursuit” not “guaranteed”. The true beauty of the American dream is the ability to succeed or to fail.