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<p>They may need to charge more than actual cost to pay for financial aid. MA is upfront on this - they raise fees on students (both in-state and OOS) to increase the amount of need-based aid.</p>
<p>As I said, New Hampshire is a nice little white suburb that leaves other states to do most of the hard work of dealing with problems. It’s like saying move to Lake Forest, Il and life will be fine. True enough but with little use as a model for larger more complex states. Maybe we need to relocate half of Chicago’s west side to NH and see how you do with it. 300,000 black hardcore unemployed should shake things up a bit. Holding it up as a model is just absurd. Most of the industry there was started in Mass. which actually has a higher education system of note–public and private and then moved out to NH to avoid taxes while still being close enough to Boston to attract good people from the colleges there or people just commute to jobs in Mass.</p>
<p>But the really questioanle statement was in the original post that asked how state U’s that promote growth in Austin or Raleigh are really good for the state. Last time I checked Austin and Raleigh were part of their states and if they grow the state grows its total economy. Here’s the original thread</p>
<p>"It also tends to pay off, the Austin area in Texas and the research</p>
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<p>That’s fine for Austin and Raleigh-Durham but what about the rest of
the state? In NH, the state flagship is in Durham while industry is
located to the south."</p>
<p>NH has no real state flagship by most measures and even that small investment with a high payoff is under threat. </p>
<p>[President’s</a> Office](<a href=“Office of the President | Leadership”>Office of the President | Leadership)</p>
<p>Without getting into political philosophies and so forth, it is also hard to compare states. My argument about research institutions is a good one in this case. The UNH system is not known as a great research university. Southern NH, however, has benefitted from the high tech industry that still exists in Massachusetts thanks to the many research institutions, public and private, that exist there, and many of the people who live in NH are people who work at those places. Likewise, the tech industries that exist in NH exist there because they feed off the tech industries in the region. The last company I worked for had offices in a town outside Boston, and a lot of the guys who worked there lived in NH, because of the low taxes and easy commute, and a lot of their friends and neighbors did the same thing. The original poster pointed out that the state flagship was in the north and the industry was in the south, and that is the reason why, they have benefitted from Mass’ investment. </p>
<p>I also have travelled in NH, and when you get away from the southern tier and the quaint touristy areas, there are two NH’s. Drive up into the more rural areas, where things like lumbering and such are still present, or mills, and take a look at the towns, you see a lot of poverty there, run down towns that remind me of so many such towns all over the country, places that look like they have been abandoned. I wonder how good their schools are, I wonder how many of their kids move up. The people I worked with, who lived in the southern tier, lived in expensive towns that had relatively high tax bases that paid for the local schools, they also said there were nearby towns that didn’t have the tax base where the schools stank, and because of lack of state aid, thanks to low taxes and services, there wasn’t much help for them. </p>
<p>I don’t want to drum on NH, simply saying that they are fortunate that they had something like the tech firms in Mass to help drive the local economy. Similar stupidity is seen in my neck of the woods in northern NJ, where many people work in NYC and it helps drive the local economy. When the governor decided to kill a transit project to build new rail tunnels into NYC (which may or may not have been the right decision, I am not sure) a lot of idiot types demeaned those who commute into the city, how the commuters ‘took away’ from the state and so forth…meanwhile, the fact is that NYC helped keep real estate and such stable in the commuting region, and also helps create jobs in that area as well, that has helped keep real the region relatively stable, we haven’t seen the implosion that hit the rest of NJ, where house prices once you get out of commuting range plummeted. </p>
<p>As far as choosing between K12 and college, that is a ridiculous choice. Yes, the law says the state has to provide public education, while college is an option, but the reality these days is a high school degree means a lot less then it did, and colllege or advanced training is required to get what good paying jobs are out there. Even with low taxes, take a look at the cost of private education, who are struggling as well to meet need of their students, how much tuition has gone up, and all those tax savings in NH won’t make up the difference. Given that private college tuition and board in many schools is well over 40k, even if NH taxes were zero unless someone was already well off, for many average wage earners it wouldn’t be enough to pick up the difference between a state school and a private.</p>
<p>Plus quite frankly some of the mania to cut spending on state colleges is ideological, done without thinking the consequences, by people who have this incredible idea that a college education isn’t worth much, that it is ‘elitist intellectualism’ to assume that it does something, and all the crap about the wisdom of the ‘ordinary person’, not to mention the widespread belief among some on the more right wing side of things that colleges are nothing more then indoctrination factories for the left wing, and the like…and it is suicidal, because we are in a day and age where education is critical for a lot of jobs. If we are going to ever have well paying jobs even in things like manufacturing, the days of it being turning a nut and bolt on an assembly line is gone, low wages in the far east will keep that from happening, it is going to take flexible manufacturing and lean production, that requires workers with real education and skills. </p>
<p>I agree with another poster, the real problem with much of this is people want to keep what affects them and want to cut other things, without thinking the results. people who don’t have kids in school want to cut school spending, senior citizens want to cut spending on everything except programs that affect them and in many cases people believe there is this huge pool of ‘waste’ out there (in NJ, lot of people who believe that if we just cut spending to places like Camden and Newark, they could cut spending 50% and still maintain the things they want…and as the government has started cutting spending on local aid, suddenly they find out how much it impacts them, and they howl…). It is very easy to blame the government, to blame spending on ‘them’, but the reality is we need to rationally decide how and what to cut, not believe in myths like the infamous ‘welfare queens’. </p>
<p>I also will add that if you want to see the danger of willy nilly cutting of spending, read up sometime on Andrew Mellon, Hoover’s secretary of the treasury, who in the face of the depression told Hoover to radically slash spending…Hoover and congress did, and it made the economy crash even further…and if people believe that spending on state schools and education doesn’t make a difference, take a look at the states that spend the least on education in this country, who don’t spend on the state schools, and take a look at what kind of industry they have. Some are resource rich, so the lack of education hasn’t hurt them, others if they have industry is either resource based (mining and lumber, farming) or is based in cheap labor (that even with the low rates, can’t compete with China)…then come back and talk to me. NH was a good example, it geographically was able to take advantage of the research in another state; but imagine NH sandwiched between Alabama and Mississippi and it would be a very different tale I suspect.</p>
<p>New Hampshire is not really a low tax state. My retired parents have own a house, which is their primary residence, in northern NH and a cottage on a lake in the middle of the state. While it is true there is no sales and income tax in NH the property taxes are among the highest you will find anywhere and tend to fall the hardest on those least able to pay it such as retirees who own non-income earning property. My parents pay far more in property taxes than my sisters who live in Massachusetts in homes with much higher assessed values than my parents’ house.</p>
<p>It is also true that when you drive through some of the out of the places in northern NH you might think that you are driving through Appalachia. If most of New Hampshire’s population did not have easy access to education and employment opportunities in Massachusetts it would look more like Mississippi than a New England state.</p>
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<p>And as I said before, you’re wrong. You didn’t read the local papers
on the census changes?</p>
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<p>I don’t know anything about Lake Forest so I won’t be a presumptuous
ass and pretend that I do.</p>
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<p>Cool. What would they do once they get here? They would most likely
leave.</p>
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<p>A lot of it was but we have home-grown industries too. MA has been hit
by high-profile defections by Evergreen Solar and Fidelity. Fidelity
is moving a thousand to NH and RI. For real-estate balancing. Sure.</p>
<p>I guess Dartmouth is chump change in your mind.</p>
<p>MA has a similar cost model to NH for higher ed. Is that successful
or unsuccessful?</p>
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<p>That’s an argument for your prior statement? That’s almost a
non-argument. Maybe it is completely a non-argument.</p>
<p>What’s really odd is that you link to the UNH’s Office of the President. His office also states:</p>
<p>“The University of New Hampshire is fighting for a state budget that
will allow UNH to maintain its commitment to the high quality
education, research, and partnerships that support the state’s economy
and define us as the state’s flagship public university”</p>
<p>[President’s</a> Office](<a href=“Office of the President | Leadership”>Office of the President | Leadership)</p>
<p>Your statement is absurd. Anyone familiar with UNH-Manchester could
tell you so firsthand.</p>
<p>Regarding your earlier comment: we hire a lot of engineers in the
southern part of the state which is the business engine for the state.
There are universities in MA which are far closer than is Durham to the
southern part of the state. Guess where we hire engineers from.</p>
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<p>The solution is quite simple: live in an inexpensive home.</p>
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<p>Well, not just northern NH. There was an immigrant wave many years ago
in the south that has changed some of the southern cities.</p>
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<p>I don’t understand why you talk about low taxes and easy commute for
those living in NH and working in MA. They would have to pay
relatively high property taxes because they live in NH and then pay
income taxes to MA. That would seem to be the worst of worlds.</p>
<p>That said, does MA make a big investment in higher ed? I’ve always
heard that MA and NH were both quite stingy with higher ed.
Tuition/fees/room/board at UNH and UMass are similar. The same can be
said about community college costs. I think that MA and NH community
college courses run around $140/hour. In CA, they are under $30/hour.</p>
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<p>I agree that NH isn’t “a nice little white suburb”.</p>
<p>Perhaps you haven’t been here recently but there was a court order
requiring that the state supply an adequate education. The
legislatures, governors and courts have fought on this for many years
(Democrat or Republican, it didn’t matter), and they came up with a
dollar amount and fund that. It gets argued over and over and over
again. I assume that other states argue too. Especially when the pie
is shrinking.</p>
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<p>Wasting money on failed K12 and then trying to remediate in college
is a waste of time and money. That’s the model that we have today
though. Perhaps we could work a little harder on fixing K12 so that
a high-school diploma means what it used to mean.</p>
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<p>Those in NH do have alternatives. Students can go to UNH-Manchester
where they can do their gen-eds and then transfer (with priority) to
UNH. Other options are to take advantage of the New England Regional
Studies Program which gives students tuition/fees in other New England
states at 50% higher than in-state rates for majors that are not
locally offered or where the distance or time is less to the OOS
institution than it is to the in-state institution.</p>
<p>There are private colleges in NH that are far less than $40K too.</p>
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<p>NH has one of the highest percentages of adults with college degrees
in the country. Why would you think that our population hates college?</p>
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<p>I don’t know how you can rationally decide when you have various
interest groups screaming at you about how important their issue
is. Today I read about potential cuts in MA tourism dollars in the
budget of $6 million. Tourism is one-third of the MA economy (I don’t
know if that’s true and I’m not sure how that’s counted - dollars,
jobs). $6 million is a pretty small amount of money for promotion if
it is a third of the state’s business. A tourism person said that the
promotion money is an investment in the economy. He or she certainly
had the right buzzword there.</p>
<p>Our town faces some fairly large hikes in our school budget because
the state is proposing to drop their portion of pension funding from
35% to 30%. Not a lot we can do there - taxes will be going up. My
friend the school board member gave me a quick overview of the state
impacts on us locally - we’ll just have to eat it. Some of the service
cuts may affect us in other ways - we’ll have to deal with them if and
when they arrive. We have to deal with inflation right now - gasoline
prices are up about 30% in the last two years. Food inflation is
running pretty hot. I’ve heard preductions that they could double or
triple over the next five years. We’ll have to deal with that too.</p>
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<p>You are a product of your resources and that includes people. If
Alabama and Mississippi had half their populations with college
degrees, would they look as they do today?</p>
<p>busdriver, an income tax in addition to what you already have would make you the highest-tax state in the country, probably. But I imagine the idea is that the income tax would replace some of the current taxes. The B&O and sales taxes in particular are horribly regressive. What Washington voters don’t realize (and what the tax-cutters are not honest about) is that most of them would be better off with an income tax, and the state as a whole would have a more stable tax base.</p>
<p>Lemaitre1 - I said that NH is “low tax”, not “no tax.”</p>
<p>For those of us in states with high income taxes, high sales taxes, high county taxes, high local taxes, lots of nuisance taxes, and high property taxes, NH qualifies as a low-tax state.</p>
<p>LasMa,
Too many Washingtonians shop in Oregon. Where do you think our Washington son shops for major stuff-at his Mom’s OR house. 
Never will happen.</p>
<p>^^ LongPrime, I remember that too. I knew several people who went to Portland to go car-shopping. I also seem to remember that Oregon issued cards to its residents, or was considering it, which they’d have to present to merchants when they bought something. The idea was that non-residents wouldn’t have a card to present and thus would have to pay sales tax. I guess this idea wasn’t implemented?</p>
<p>And I agree that Washington will never have an income tax. The idea that they’re better off without it is too entrenched.</p>
<p>I’m going to guess that the Oregonian car dealers put the ka-bosh on that idea…LOL. Why would a Washingtonian go to Oregon to buy a car and pay the same price as they could get in Washington? Oregon car dealers would be out a sale…</p>
<p>The people who really lose out are the merchants in Washington who lose a sale and the State of Washington/WA municipalities which otherwise would have collected sales tax. Oregon has no incentive to collect taxes for them.</p>
<p>I think that CA has a use tax to try to tap into these lost sales.</p>
<p>There’s a huge battle over sales taxes being fought between Amazon.com and the big box retailers with the big box retailers lobbying state legislatures to push sales tax collections on online-retailers. Voluntary use taxes don’t work. I’m surprised that state DORs don’t just go after personal credit card records to track down OOS sales.</p>
<p>I was in the mail room last week and I noticed a package that said that it contained alcohol and that it wasn’t to be left with someone under 21 years of age. I picked it up and it was quite heavy. I asked our mail room person about it and she told me that one arrives every week for the same person. I was surprised that you could buy alcohol online and that someone would buy so much of it. I wonder if that’s a way to get around alcohol taxes.</p>
<p>" an income tax in addition to what you already have would make you the highest-tax state in the country, probably. But I imagine the idea is that the income tax would replace some of the current taxes. The B&O and sales taxes in particular are horribly regressive. What Washington voters don’t realize (and what the tax-cutters are not honest about) is that most of them would be better off with an income tax, and the state as a whole would have a more stable tax base."</p>
<p>Yes, I agree. It would be the highest taxed state, but perhaps more stable (though with the unemployment rate so high, it might suffer during these years). But…do you know what tax they proposed to cut if we passed the income tax? They proposed to cut the property taxes by an overall percentage of 4%. And lower the B&O tax for some smaller companies. It was minimal. They don’t want to replace certain taxes with an income tax, they just want more money. I would have no problem if it was guaranteed that sales tax and property tax would drop proportionally, because I don’t like regressive taxes either. But they merely wanted to coerce the income tax into existence, on a “tax the rich” strategy, and then in 2 years they could pass it to everyone, at any rate they chose. </p>
<p>The problem is, these people like to spend, whether we have money or not, and don’t want to save anything in the good times. Had our governor not paid off the people who donated the most money to her campaign and recount, we would have billions more in our coffers. I hate having them taking so much money from worthy causes like education, health care for the poor, and programs for impoverished children, purely because they are terrible planners. But I am afraid if we gave them even more, it really wouldn’t change their way of doing things. Whatever you give them, they will go overboard spending on, and then they seem to be completely paralyzed about trying to go back to the budget they operated on before.</p>
<p>Probably DORs don’t have enough people working for them, thankfully!</p>
<p>Just as Oregon will never have a sales tax.
Since we are at retirement age, Income tax is virtually none existent for us. </p>
<p>Washington has a high personal auto licensing tax vis Oregon.</p>
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<p>select social-security-number, first-name, last-name, total-credit-card-purchases-from-amazon where a.social-security-number = b.social-security-number and a.total-credit-card-purchases-from-amazon > 500 and b.use-tax-reported = 0;</p>
<p>Something like, each state is can levy taxes but cannot collect taxes from another state.</p>
<p>
sunnyholiday, can I borrow this? We are about to go into another brutal campaign and vote on our school budget. I don’t even have any kids in our school system any more, but I know we have cut far beyond fat and are into the bone. We’re going to reinstate study halls and reduce graduation requirements below what the state univ system requires for admittance, because we can’t afford to hire teachers to teach the classes. Its really sad. (And a huge part of the problem is health insurance costs, but that’s an argument for another day… or maybe not?)</p>