Downlo

cognitivedissonance:

Rebloggable by request:

did cutting pell grant funding REALLY save money? isn’t education like. the Very Best Investment?

 sosungalittleclodofclay

Meg at Cognitive Dissonance:

You’d think that. Let’s get a little perspective. From FY2001 to the end of FY2012, taxpayers spent $1.4 trillion on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. That’s $1,400,000,000,000. If you were to pile all those dollar bills and stick it on a scale, it would be about 1,543,235 tons. Or about 289 Chevy Silverado pickup trucks.

That’s pretty heavy.

You know what else is pretty heavy? Thinking about what we could have gotten for that money instead. Check it out:

• 634.6 million Annual Energy Costs for a Household for One Year OR
• 706.5 million Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
• 20.3 million Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
• 133.4 million Fair Market Rent for One Bedroom Apartment for One Year OR
• 181.3 million Head Start Slots for Children for One Year OR
• 594.5 million Households Converted to All Solar Energy for One Year OR
• 1.2 billion Households Converted to All Wind Energy for One Year OR
• 176.7 million Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year OR
• 658.5 million One Year Worth of Groceries for an Individual OR
• 283.5 million People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
• 19.8 million Police or Sheriff’s Patrol Officers for One Year OR
• 174.8 million Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR
• 248.3 million Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550

You might say, “But that’s all the war spending! That’s not fair!” Here’s a few other comparisons. First, U.S. Defense spending for FY2012. That’s $544.3 billion. Here’s what we could get instead:

• 279.0 million Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
• 8.0 million Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
• 71.6 million Head Start Slots for Children for One Year OR
• 234.8 million Households with Renewable Electricity - Solar Photovoltaic for One Year OR
• 493.0 million Households with Renewable Electricity-Wind Power for One Year OR
• 69.8 million Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year OR
• 111.9 million People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
• 7.8 million Police or Sheriff’s Patrol Officers for One Year OR
• 69.0 million Scholarships for University Students for One Year
• OR 98.1 million Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550

Oh, but we need defense spending, right? Let’s examine weaponry. From 2001-2011, the U.S. fired over 11,000 Hellfire missiles in combat operations — keep in mind, this doesn’t count non-combat operations or testing. Each Hellfire costs roughly $68,000. That’s $748 million, or one year of full, $5,500 Pell Grants for 136,000 students.

Each F-16 Falcon Fighter costs $47 million. Or, 8,545 students could have Pell Grants of $5,550 for one year.

Each soldier in Afghanistan costs roughly $1.2 million per year. For that, we could give 218 students a full Pell Grant.

It’s not a question of cost. It’s a question of priorities. In FY2012, we spent $33.4 billion on Pell Grants — or six percent of the Department of Defense’s FY2012 budget.

But there’s always money for war, right? 

Cheers,

Meg

And let’s not forget that a lot of people sign up for military service because they have no other way to fund a college education.

A good tip from Lifehacker—always have the following coins with you:

• 3 quarters
• 1 dime
• 2 nickels
• 4 pennies

This is supposedly the least amount of coins you can carry that will enable you to give exact change in most situations. A good way to start spending that pile of change that might be sitting in a jar at home (especially if you’re lazy like me and keep forgetting to bring it to the bank or a CoinStar machine).

To break down the payroll tax cut and the repercussions of the stalemate into simpler terms, the White House took to Twitter and asked the masses what $40 meant to them and came away with sad snapshots of American life in 2011. $40 is “what officials estimate the average American would lose from his or her paycheck every two weeks, starting in January without an agreement on an extension of the tax cut. The $40 is based on someone earning about $50,000 a year and paying about $1,000 more in taxes annually,” writes Jennifer Preston of The New York Times. The White House sent a tweet two days ago asking America about that $40 (right), and have posted, what seems to be the most heart-breaking collection stories on its blog.

A reminder that the debate over the payroll tax cut has real, serious consequences for many people in this country:

$40.00 a week will provide gas to get to work for the week, or, it will pay our electric bill, or, it will pay a third of our prescription drug bill, or, one third of our grocery bill for the week.

C.W., Glen Alen, Virginia

After everything that comes out, including my mortgage my take home pay is $150.00 every two weeks. So minus forty would be $110.00. I can barely get by now, that forty bucks is my gas for my car to get to work. Taking forty away from my pay would, just about put me under.

R.T., Charleston, West Virginia

$40 less a paycheck means I will have to pick between my insulin and the water bill. It means never being able to see my doctor - even though I have insurance.

B.T., Roswell, New Mexico

(Source: theatlanticwire.com)

The old Calvinist idea about money…was that hard work, discipline, and prudence were moral virtues….that are more likely than not to lead to personal prosperity. So prosperity shouldn’t be stigmatized as ignoble, it should be rather seen as something likely to flow from virtuous behavior. But this equation assumes that morally speaking what matters is the hard work, the discipline, and the prudence. Cutting corners, lying, cheating, or stealing to make a quick buck doesn’t fit the bill. Earning a multi-million dollar salary to deliver below-average performance as the CEO of a firm and then take a multi-million dollar golden parachute when you get sacked doesn’t fit the bill. Spending your days and nights dreaming up smart regulatory arbitrage schemes doesn’t fit the bill.

…[T]the idea is aloft that business executives actually have a moral obligation to spend their days finding ways to engage in profit-maximizing rent-seeking and loophole exploiting. This kind of “you should make as much money as possible through any legal means necessary” spirit is toxic to the kind of ethos that’s made the various forms of modern industrial capitalism successful….to have a culture that valorizes hard work you need to actually valorize hard work not just money-making.

My emphasis

(Source: thinkprogress.org)