Why Obama Should Pay Attention To Occupy Wall Street’s Critique Of Higher Education | The New Republic

Interesting op-ed in The New Republic:

"...for most college students, debt is a legitimate and growing problem. As recently as the early 1990s, most undergraduates didn’t borrow. Now, two-thirds emerge from college with a loan. Over the last three decades, college tuition has grown far faster than inflation, in good economic times and bad. Even health care costs have grown slower by comparison. Colleges like to blame feckless state legislators who won’t financially support higher learning, and in states like California they certainly have a point. But much of the guilt lies with higher education institutions themselves. They have spent billions on vanity building projects, administrative overhead, and money-losing sports programs in order to compete for status and fame. Students and parents have been left with the bill.

At the same time, the economy has increasingly organized itself so that people require a college degree in order to pursue a decent career. Unemployment rates during the great recession have been catastrophic for the uneducated even as graduates have mostly kept their jobs. So students and parents have little choice: pay what colleges choose to charge you, and if you don’t have the money in the bank, take out a loan."

For what it's worth, the White House is trying to get the message out that it's making an effort to Help Americans Manage Student Loan Debt.

Protests And Power: Should Liberals Support Occupy Wall Street? | The New Republic

The New Republic is skeptical about whether liberals should support Occupy Wall Street. However, The Monkey Cage is skeptical about the motivations behind The New Republic's skepticism. Got that?

Gosh, Could Obamacare Be Working? | The New Republic

Now this is interesting. It's hard to argue with this graph.

The Fighting Bipartisan: Has Obama Finally Found A Solution For Republican Obstructionism? | The New Republic

Checkmate? Perhaps:

"Last night Obama found a way out, sort of. It’s not a fiery partisan confrontation; it’s a kind of fighting bipartisanship. He’s now putting forth a substantive agenda that is very likely to boost the economy, create jobs, and improve the basic fairness of the tax system in order to spread the benefits of economic growth more broadly. But he aggressively linked almost all of those things to ideas that Republicans had already supported, or that wealthy people such as Warren Buffet had embraced. He took ownership of some ideas that had traditionally been conservative, and embraced ideas that had had some Republican support."

"Obama’s new approach, though, sets up, in theory, a different hypothetical win-win than the one we’ve been operating under for almost three years. One possibility is that Republicans have some qualms about a wholly obstructionist agenda, Congress passes some or most of the American Jobs Act, the economy improves (likely with some help from the Federal Reserve, international circumstances, and good fortune), and actual conditions get Obama out of the box he’s in. Failing that, if the White House and Democrats can keep their focus on the American Jobs Act (and if the left can avoid getting distracted by Obama’s wise concessions to reality, such as long-term reductions in Medicare spending), then Republican obstruction takes a new form. It’s not just blocking Obama, or his agenda—it’s blocking economic recovery, systematically, including ideas that Republicans have embraced in the past and will embrace again."

Experts Say The Economy Needs A Boost That Is Big, Fast, And Smart. The American Jobs Act Fits That Criteria. | The New Republic

The New Republic breaks down The American Jobs Act by the numbers and finds it comes close to what economists believed the act should be.

Zinging Warren Buffett - The New Republic

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic fires back at all those conservatives that say that Warren Buffett should voluntarily write a check for the taxes he thinks he should owe:

"The Wall Street Journal editorial page:
If he's worried about being undertaxed, we'd suggest he simply write a big check to Uncle Sam and go back to his day job of picking investments.

Obviously this fails to grasp the fundamental collective action problem that's the entire basis for taxation. You obviously can't fund the government on the basis of voluntary donations. Buffett and other wealthy people who favor higher taxes on the rich don't just believe they should pay more taxes. They believe the government needs more revenue. It's amazing how many conservatives continue to think this just-pay-more response constitutes some kind of slam dunk rebuttal. Plus, of course, if a non-rich person proposes raising taxes on the rich, then it's "envy" and "class warfare." So, really, nobody has any business ever arguing that the rich should pay higher taxes."

Amazing that over 90 years later, the Republican Party is still proposing the policy of volunteerism first championed by President Herbert Hoover at the start of the Great Depression.

How Clinton Handled His Debt Ceiling Crisis Better Than Obama | The New Republic

Many people I know would agree with this but The New Republic does add some caveats to its assessment, including this very important point:

"THE MOST CRUCIAL difference between Clinton’s debt limit battle and the current crisis is that, in 1996, the Republicans were bluffing. No Republican seriously considered defaulting on the debt to be a viable option."

My how times have changed...

Did Obama Get Rolled? | The New Republic

Um...yeah, he did.

Social Security's "Mason-Dixon Line"

A great explanation of Paul Ryan's Social Security proposal:

"If there was ever going to be a generational war in this country, that high school class of ’74 would be its Mason-Dixon line. It’s the moment when Bill Clinton’s promise—“if you work hard and play by the rules you’ll get ahead”—began to lose its value."