Saturday, July 13, 2019

Why Are Professors Exclusively Leftist? My Latest Glazov Gang Moment

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mitchell,

Great post and a few comments

Public universities are largely left wing, decidely so, in some areas.

Education
Literature
Sociology
Political science
Language arts

Just to name a few.

However if one ventures over into disciplines which require concrete thought and measurable outcomes, as well as science to facts and established truths,this will change dramatically.

Engineering (applied science tolerates no fools and even fewer mistakes)
Accountancy
Finance
Hard sciences (mostly)

One of the downfalls of socialist societies is its rigid insistence on having everything, including science with its established facts and truths, be subordinate to political truth. Liberalism and left wing ideology,has become a modern day papal court. Disagreement is not disagreement but is instead, heresy. We've seen a whole lot of academics burned at the stake recent!y, have we not?

Finally I would point out that many smaller Christian colleges, where the doctrine of faith is a central tenet of belief, are quite conservative.

For just one example, there is a terrific school called Olivet Nazarenne University. it is very co derivative without being unfriendly or impolite,but it is unafraid to advance their worldview, and so far has made a deal impact here in the Chicago area. But there are many others and as a side note, most of these smaller Christian schools are stable both in enrollment and in finances.

Lastly, there is terrific irony in our ivy leagues hostility to Christian faith given the reason and cause for their founding in the first place. Harvard was a divinity school, was it not?

I hope you continue your work and podcasts.

Be well

Jim Crum

July 17, 2019 at 9:17 PM
Anonymous said...

Mitchell,

Here are some figures.

Medicare: $100T net present value/unfunded liability
GDP: $20T

That is a 5:1 ratio

GDP $20T
How much can you extract from any economy (outside of emergencies like a war)?
Answer: About 20% or $4T. This is backed by very strong incontrovertible historical data going back generations. And not just in this nation either, others as well. No matter who you tax at what rate, you cap out at around 20% of GDP. It's like playing tic tac toe and finance makes the first three moves. They mark all three corners and then tell you its "your move". What you do doesn't matter.

....so $4T is the practical limit
That is a 25:1 revenue to debt load ratio.

Your assignment: have your students find any business running at a 25:1 ratio

Fact: revenue and tax rates do NOT follow a linear relationship. There is a bend point/inflection/break point somewhere around 20% where the revenue line inverts/rolls over, while the tax rate line just increases. In 1943 we had tax rates go into the 23% range, because we were in the middle of a life or death war, but then we quickly reduced rates because it was shrinking the pie. IE: Rates went up but... revenues went down.

Business fact for the students: you pay bills with money good, not a percentage. High margin items sound good, and are nice to have, but do they generate real revenue stream? Can you go to the bank and pay a bill with 35%?

No. You need actual coin of the realm, buddy.

Another take away:
When people talk about tax rates, they are talking, in essence about how the pie is actually divided... who eats which slice and how big each slice is. If someone comes up with the "this group just needs to pay their 'FAIR SHARE'" it is an attempt to believe that if some group just paid more, the budget issues would go away, or be largely mitigated because someone else would pay the bill.

NOPE:

Welcome back to 20% kids. Here in the US that's currently about $4T. Maybe some people do need to pay more, but in terms of REVENUE stream, you are back at 20%.


MEDICARE:
Medicare is only 25% funded. That's it.

Around 2025-2026 they run out of their slush fund of bonds and suddenly that very material shortfall of funding has to be made up in either taxes, or more debt.
In CY2018, total spending for Part B was $337.2 billion, with US Treasury general revenues financing $253.2 billion of that amount and premiums covering most of the remainder. So premiums only covered about 25% of the costs. By 2028 Medicare costs are expected to go from $740B to 1.6T- more than doubling the costs in 10 years- that is exponential growth!!!!

Mitchell, while dated, read this from John Mauldin:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2017/10/10/your-pension-is-a-lie-theres-210-trillion-of-liabilities-our-government-cant-fulfill/#750be2d865b1

So when the slush fund is gone, say around 2026 or so, that likely $1.2 trillion spend will need an additional $800-$900 billion in borrowed money or reduced expenditure in other places to come from....somewhere.

MEDICARE FOR ALL

Currently
Medicare users
15% of population
Medicare payers
100% of working population
3% payroll deduction
Currently 25% funded/75% unfunded

To make 100% funded?
3% payroll deduction to increase by minimum 4X to 12% payroll deduction

Proposed
Medicare users
100% of population (500% increase)
Medicare payers
100% of population (0% increase)

To make 100% funded?
Make 12% payroll deduction go up 500% to 60% payroll deduction.

Marginal tax rates currently appx 20%

20% + 60% = 80% tax rate without including Social Security 6.2%
With FICA: 86% tax rate without including state taxes.

You want to bankrupt the country and kill the sick who are poor?

This will do it.


JJC.





July 23, 2019 at 8:31 PM
Mitchell Langbert said...

Thanks, Jim. You make good points. I have done some widely reported research on this subject. You're right, except for one point: The bias is most extreme where it is most important. That is, in the social sciences in elite universities and liberal arts colleges, Republicans and Christians are mostly excluded. As a result, there is a bias in the policy advocacy coming from the most important institutions both with respect to impact on public institutions and with respect to education of the most important elites. How many Supreme Court justices attended a Christian college since 1945? My guess is none, whereas all or almost all attended a handful of left-oriented Ivy League law schools. See https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology
and
https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_political_affiliations_of_elite_liberal_arts_college_faculty


August 1, 2019 at 8:24 AM

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