Comment by rapatel0
12 days ago
You're describe an age where the government was a wash with surplus dollars. Secondly, most of these research institutions run as non-profits that effectively just cover costs (but run a large hedge fund as a side business)
The escalation in costs have come from: - Incentives around US News College rankings (and the amenities that drive the rankings) - Administrative (non-teaching, non-research) bloat
Research is definitely in need of reform though, but not sure these outcomes are actually causal or even corrilated.
>You're describe an age where the government was a wash with surplus dollars.
Hey, good point. We should really bring back that 90% top tax bracket rate to get the government back to being financially solvent again.
In the 20s-40s (pre-ww2), tax revenue was ~2% of GDP. It is currently >20% of GDP
It's a spending problem. You're anchoring on a talking point with out actually running numbers.
Don't believe me, run the numbers yourself.
I think your 2% number is extremely misleading.
From what I can see, taxation as GDP percentage was never really under 10% since 1950, while big cuts to the top tax rate happened in the 60s and 80s (and the federal budget was continuously in the red since mid 70s basically, with one brief exception before 2000).
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The government has a spending problem, not an income problem.
Every spending problem is also an income problem. Whether you see it as a spending problem or an income problem is really just showing whether you value the things we spend money on or not.
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you're describing this during an age where trillions of dollars are spent for the military industrial complex, which makes it hard to believe that there's not enough money. priorities are just...the way they are.