2,779 research outputs found
The Economics of American Higher Education in the New Gilded Age
Student debt is a function of three factors: the cost of higher education, the extent to which that cost is subsidized through sources other than students and their families, and the percentage of nonsubsidized revenue that is supplied via loans rather than out-of-pocket payments.
The first factor is a product of how much money colleges and universities choose to spend. The second is determined by total value of the many sources of subsidization upon which higher education draws. The third is a function of the relative wealth or poverty of the people who make up the student bodies at American higher education institutions.
This Article will focus on the first two factors, while addressing the increasingly common claim that, in recent years, higher education in America has been “defunded.
The Truman Show: The Fraudulent Origins of the Former Presidents Act
On January 6, 2021, a seditious mob incited by President
Donald Trump invaded and ransacked the Capitol in an attempt to
stop a joint session of Congress from certifying Trump’s defeat in
the previous November’s election.1
In the days immediately following, many people demanded that
President Trump be impeached for a second time for his role in
triggering the attack.2 A number of these people pointed out that,
should Trump be convicted by the Senate, he would lose the many
benefits bestowed on ex-presidents by the Former Presidents Act
(FPA), the federal statute enacted in 1958 that first granted both a
pension and an array of other valuable taxpayer-funded privileges to
former Presidents.3
By 2020, the provisions of the FPA were providing former
presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama more
than one million dollars per year each in government benefits.4
(Former President Carter was receiving $480,000 in annual
benefits).5 For many commenters, the prospect of Donald Trump
receiving a comparable level of taxpayer largesse to help subsidize
his post-presidential lifestyle was an additional compelling reason to
eject Trump from the White House via impeachment and
conviction.6
As this series of events illustrated, the Former Presidents Act is
a statute of considerable symbolic political significance.7 That
significance is also illustrated by the fact that, more than sixty years
after its enactment, the FPA has remained a subject of ongoing
controversy within Congress itself.8 In recent years, several bills
intended to significantly curtail the benefits it provides have been
proposed by members of both parties.9 One of these bills reached
President Obama’s desk, where he vetoed it late in his second term.1
- …