At the same time, being a net importer is not in itself a bad thing. The reason the US doesn't have free college for everyone is not because it is a net importer. The US could afford Germany-style benefits; that's not the problem. Canada probably could too.

i think of countries export to import ratios like personal finance income vs expenditures. if you spend more than you make, where we you get the money to reinvest in yourself. you'll borrow it until you can't make the minimum payments and then default.

There are many reasons why the US does not have free college (taxes too low, universities are run like business now, etc.) but running huge deficits and not having any savings to invest in society is one of the reasons.

No. If everyone strives to be a net exporter, you quickly end up with a race to the bottom.

> i think of countries export to import ratios like personal finance income vs expenditures. if you spend more than you make, where we you get the money to reinvest in yourself. you'll borrow it until you can't make the minimum payments and then default.

This is the wrong way to think about it. The trade deficit is nothing like personal finances/expenditures; this is a common meme in Germany, though, so I understand where you might have gotten the idea from. (Germany is presently dragging down the entire Eurozone with these beliefs.) You are not "borrowing" by having a trade deficit (nor do you have to borrow to have one.) It's just an outflow of currency, which is not particularly harmful to countries printing their own currency.

> There are many reasons why the US does not have free college (taxes too low, universities are run like business now, etc.) but running huge deficits and not having any savings to invest in society is one of the reasons.

This is not a reason at all. The trade deficit has nothing to do with US budget deficits, and the US still has plenty of money to invest back into society. It's a matter of political will and the way the government and education is organized. A lot has changed over the past decade for the worse and the better. Before the recession, there were actually enormous state subsidies to public universities that reduced their cost. During the recession, states began cutting back, which has been a contributor to rising college costs. At the same time, the government has modified the student loan program to be much better: indeed under the program as it now exists it's not really so much a loan as it is a tax on your post-college earnings. At the same time, universities are plagued with large, overpaid bureaucratic administrations, an increasing focus on new amenities, and perhaps even worse, a sense that the more money it costs to attend, the better the college must be. Students are in part rewarding colleges for raising prices - conservatives blame this on the ease of finding loans to pay for school, but I think the situation is more complex. If you had a dramatic restructuring of the US system, say, for example, you slashed public university administration budgets and froze spending on anything non-academic, instituted price controls, and consolidated all the various local, state, and federal programs to fund schools or scholarships, you could probably make college a lot cheaper or even free right now with minimal tax increases. The wealth and resources are already there. There was actually an Obama proposal to make community college free (a small step toward this), which the media estimated would cost 15 billion - chump change in the US budget.

As an aside, college costs are more complicated than people think. In many (most?) states, sufficient academic performance (as measured by an ACT or SAT score) automatically guarantees a full scholarship (or less, depending on your score.)

You also have community colleges, which are much cheaper and allow you to obtain a two year degree and transfer to a four-year university.

Once you get outside of private colleges and the big-name schools (usually on the coasts), public university costs are much reduced. And you can get in even if you're academically terrible, a situation you don't necessarily have in the European systems.

For example: I attended community college for free because of my ACT score. I could have gone directly to university for free, but I chose not to because of my age. I transferred to a four year school, paid for 3 (2.5 undergrad, .5 grad) years with money I earned at a minimum wage job, and then finished out grad school with an assistantship that paid my tuition plus a stipend. I graduated four years ago. This is still easily doable in most of the country. In fact it's still exactly doable if you just go directly to university and don't have to pay anything.

I've heard the German educational system steers students in these directions early in high school. When I was in high school, we used to have vocational and college prep paths, but they've since ditched that in an effort to "leave no child behind." Now we have a glut of students graduating from community college in a market with low demand for their degrees.

Let's admit that except for being able to transfer those credits to a college of higher prestige, and being granted the same degree from there, community college is of little value. In my area, I can tell you for a fact that the same science and math courses vary greatly in difficulty between the private engineering school I attended, and the local state school. Full-time students knew of this loophole, and took some of these harder classes down the road at the state school.

We have de facto tracking by parental income and social capital. Look at the other thread about high school kids taking AP computer science: AP CS is basically a class that is only offered if the parents agitate for it and the district has the money. Somehow in Mississippi this just doesn't happen, and we are fine with that as a nation. Keeps us wringing our hands about who says what words in the workplace instead of having to make a substantive change in what we offer students.

There are swaths of the US (with power) that benefit from this socioeconomic/cultural capital tracking of students. Keep the poor relatively poor with shitty schools for all, keep the rich rich with private tutoring so their SAT scores get 'em into a decent college, get the immigrant parents to put out good workers by running their kids through prescribed hoops so they can rise a little and be good middle managers and developers. Then we don't have to deal with poor kids with ability or rich kids who are dumb as dirt -- we can say everyone has equal opportunity with clean hands and conscience!

* The US is obsessed with race, and tracking makes it too obvious black kids aren't doing as well as white kids.

* Parents all believe their own child is above average regardless of the mathematical implications, and they get very upset if you hint the possibility little Johnny might not be the most intelligent child in his class. Clearly he just doesn't do well on tests.

* Children tend to live up or down to expectations. Obviously you can't make a dumb kid smart by expecting him to be smart, but you can influence the amount of effort he puts into school.

* People have looked at income statistics and decided if we send every child to college they can all be doctors and lawyers, and the toilets will magically clean themselves.

I think you'll find that the people "wringing hands about who says what words in the workplace" (at least, if by that, you are referring to public concern with things like race, gender, and sexual orientation-based harassment) are, in no small part, the same group of people actively concerned about and things like math and science education. They just aren't particularly influential in Mississippi.

The parent comment to my previous one implied that we in the US have equality of opportunity, unlike Germany with its tracking. I am experimenting with the argument that we in the US say all the right things and yet insidiously do worse. Our rhetoric and our reality in the United States don't really line up. My high school had International Baccalaureate classes open to all, but only some kids signed up. How have we built this self-perpetuating organism of inequality that plods along even though we say all sorts of "correct" things? Even in Mississippi people are publicly concerned with race, gender, and sexual-orientation-based harassment. And yet.

It's not that fascist.

For one, the parents decide which schools their kids go to, the states can only give recommendations (which are regularly ignored by Special Snowflake Parents).

Additionally, the decision is not final. Students can (and do) switch to a higher school form if their grades are good enough, and work their way from the lowest school form to university.

And after a recent reform, they don't even need to, as vocational schools (for which all students are eligible to after 9 years) are now able to grant bachelor degree equivalents.

It happens after the four-year primary school, yes. But as said, the school merely gives recommendations, and the parents can put their children in every (public or private) school they want, only home schooling is heavily restricted (and basically only possible if it's medically necessary).

> and that moves between tracks were infrequent.

From my (limited) personal experience, yes. But there's little bureaucratic obstacles to such a move, as far as I can tell, most don't move because there's little need – even the lowest secondary degree allows you to attain a bachelor of arts (although it's a rather long route and you're looking at a total of 20 or more years via vocational school time versus 15/16 years via university).

However, Germany - and other € countries - are not printing their own currency.

i think striving for net exporter is only a race to the bottom if you use one tool to get there. but if a country innovates their way there, is it not a race to the top?

germany finally bent a bit letting the eurozone printing money. i like to see it as germany trying to steer the eurozone into real economic growth rather than fake growth (unleashing new money at a low interest rate(. everyone is applauding the us econmic recovery, but it is not real growth, and they will have to pay the debt piper some day.

i generally agree universities are bloated and to expensive, gravy trains for some, huge financial burdens to most.

i was a community college kid who transferred to a 4 year.

This money is needed to sustain Germany's export as much as it is needed to sustain Greece's and Spain's and Italy's import… because guess where Germany's exports go?

The Eurozone can only function if there's (internally) a trade equilibrium.

In comparison, Singapore does really well on a much lower tax base per capita. Excellent public infrastructure.