Germany Is Now Tuition Free

<p>I have. Yes, there has been a spike in capital investment due to low borrowing costs. A good thing, but much of it has been making up for many years of decline. </p>

<p>I guess if Americans wanted to spend more taxpayer dollars on higher education they could do that pretty easily, but they don’t, so there’s that.</p>

<p>We don’t want to spend money on anything it seems. We have this absurd idea taxes are bad so we are letting our nation fall apart.</p>

<p>We tax the middle class as much as they can bear, and unless we change capital gains taxes, we can’t tax labor any further. The wealthy don’t take their money as income but as cap gains.</p>

<p>That said, we tax plenty. We spend as much as any country. It’s not that. It’s what we spend on, not how much we spend. Social programs are unmanagable in the US because we are so massive compared to the countries we compare ourselves to. Something as big as education in the US is an entirely different monster than it is in a place like Germany or France.</p>

<p>It’s just a different situation.</p>

<p>But we don’t need to raise taxes. If anything, we need to raise wages.</p>

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<p>One part of it was the City’s fiscal crisis. </p>

<p>However, another key part you left out was due to thousands of un/underprepared students flooding CCNY/CUNY campuses due to the effects of open admission policies implemented in 1969. This combination factored into the collapse of and erosion of further financial support. </p>

<p>Unless there’s something I’m not aware of, I have not heard of any German academic university which practiced open admission policies to the point of admitting students who cannot add/subtract fractions* or compose a coherent paragraph/sentence*. </p>

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<li>Accounts I’ve heard from several who were CCNY/CUNY Profs or students during the early-late '70s when the negative effects of open admission policies became increasingly apparent.<br></li>
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<p>Germany is a federal republic with 16 states and over 80 million people, so it is not tiny. As much of US education is organized at the state level, the size of the country as whole should not be the main problem.</p>

<p>How much is Germany spending on unemployment, welfare, disability, food stamps, WIC, section 8 housing, social security, subsidies, medicaid, and medicare?</p>

<p>Total public social expenditure as a percentage of GDP, Germany 26%, USA 20%.</p>

<p><a href=“Aggregated data | OECD Social and Welfare Statistics | OECD iLibrary”>http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/data/social-expenditure/aggregated-data_data-00166-en&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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Likely spoken by someone who is happy to let the other guy pay more taxes.</p>

<p>According to this source, Americans have $17,000 per year more in disposable income than do Germans, on average: <a href=“List of countries by average wage - Wikipedia”>http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I suppose one way to look at it is, that you pay the tax for higher ed when your kids go to college. It probably comes out about the same because the poor get FA and the rich pay full price. </p>

<p>I could be entirely wrong but my guess is that while an average American may have 17-thousand dollars more disposable income per year than an average German, in real-life reality terms we have a much bigger group at the bottom and at the top depending on where you draw that line. The worker bee middle class (not the CC middle class) is shrinking and half the country is living paycheck to paycheck. This is the problem with averages. It’s the old head in the freezer and butt in the oven but on average the temperature is fine, thing. But, that’s a guess based on nothing. So, I am curious.</p>

<p>No, I think the facts bear out your observation @Flossy The income disparity in this country had never been so large. Taxes won’t fixt that. Income will.</p>

<p><a href=“American Inequality in Six Charts | The New Yorker”>American Inequality in Six Charts | The New Yorker;

<p>In Germany there are laws limiting the amount of money the executive class can earn as a multiple of employees. There is a wider income distribution. It is a more effective way to achieve prosperity. </p>

<p>Here is median income information, which places the US $6,000 to $13,000 higher than Germany, and either 4th or number 1 in the world (see asterisk): <a href=“Median income - Wikipedia”>http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>But you typically dispose of that extra 17K income by paying for things that Germans don’t need to pay for, such as child care, health care and education (including university).</p>

<p>I don’t know if that is true. The entry says: “The average wage is adjusted to living expenses.” I don’t know what that includes and don’t want to research the methodology but I assume they used consistent expenses otherwise the info is worthless </p>

<p>“the info is worthless” </p>

<p>yup</p>

<p>Ok so what info would be informative? I googled countries with highest educational attainment and the US is #4 on the top 10 list and Germany is not on the list. </p>

<p>Germany is one of the world’s great economic powerhouses, but of course, they also have issues and that includes issues with education.</p>

<p>US Poverty Rate: 14.5%
Germany’s Rate: 15.5%</p>

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<p>If you read this article, think about how many times you could replace the words “German” and “Germany” with “US”.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.thelocal.de/20140530/poverty-youth-germany-study”>http://www.thelocal.de/20140530/poverty-youth-germany-study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I agree with poetgrl, that we need to increase (stagnant) incomes and that taxes wouldn’t fix the issue. However, I don’t think income disparity is the problem. Income disparity (in the US) is being driven by a booming stock market, where the upper income class has much of it’s assets, while the stagnant economy has kept salaries flat. Artificially pumping up the stock market does little for jobs and wages (but it does wonders for the executive with lots of stock options!). We need the economy to start heating up (which would cause inflation to increase, oh well…) so jobs can be created and salaries/incomes can increase.</p>

<p>I really don’t think you can compare poverty in Germany to poverty in the US. welfare in Germany means getting an apartment including electricity, water, heating. You get money for clothes, you get furniture etc. You don’t have health care expenses. Pretty much all you have to pay for is food, cleaning supplies and peronal hygiene products. If you are low on money for food, you can go to certain places were you pay 1 Euro and you get bags full of groceries. If you know how to work the system you can live decent - probably way better than a lot of low income families in the US. </p>