How ya doin'?

A couple of stories in the news this morning:

First, your vacation: We Americans are collectively suffering from "vacation deficit disorder."

And we don't even admit we have a problem. Workers often compete to see who has less of a life than the next guy.

Americans work more than anyone else. In fact, we work 100 hours more per year than the famously nose-to-grindstone Japanese. And we put in up to three months a year more than Europeans. 

America is the only country that does not mandate paid vacation leave. China gets three weeks. Europe averages six. 

Call it the incredible shrinking vacation. The average vacation in America now numbers a pathetic three to four days—a long weekend. And this year, according to a recent survey, one in seven Americans is taking no vacation at all.

Second, maybe the reason is, duh, money, from former President Clinton:

"Median income, after inflation, is lower than it was the day I left office. So those people who would be affected by that, many, many of them have had no income increases in a decade while their costs have gone up. So you really would have a contractionary economic impact. It would be very bad for the economy if those folks in the bottom 98% had to shoulder a tax increase."

That would be a tax increase advocated by your President, what's his name.

So where is your money going? How about the education/political complex:

For the sixth year in a row, tuition at the University of Wisconsin’s four-year campuses will go up by the state’s legal maximum of 5.5 percent. Students at the four-year campuses can plan on budgeting an extra $400 for their tuition during the coming year, with no increase in financial aid.

Obamaman really did not mis-speak when he said "the privae sector is doing fine." He meant it in relation to the public sector, which has been losing unionized workers paid more than average non-union workers and who contribute to the Democratic Party. He meant it.

The belief that the private sector is rich and the public sector is poor, so that transfers of wealth from private sector to public sector are endlessly justified, is embedded deeply in Obama’s ideology. Most everyone knows that times have changed. Government spending consumes an ever-growing share of America’s wealth, and study after study shows that public sector workers are paid vastly better than private sector workers. In today’s world, opulence is far more a feature of the world of government than of private industry. But this is a fact around which leftists like Barack Obama simply cannot wrap their minds. They cling bitterly to the old stereotypes, because to do otherwise would call into question their entire worldview. To them, the private sector is always “doing fine;” if anything, in their hostile eyes, too well.

Follow the money.

Is the college bubble bursting?

As states scramble to pay their obligations, they're taking a hard look at the cost of their colleges and universities. The Wall Street Journal reports:

States spend about 11% of their general-fund budgets subsidizing higher education. That totaled more than $78 billion in fiscal year 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. 

And yet:

Just over half of all freshmen entering four-year public colleges will earn a degree from that institution within six years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.



And among those with diplomas, just 31% could pass the most recent national prose literacy test, given in 2003; that's down from 40% a decade earlier, the department says.

James Joyner describes the growth of this industry in one state.

Many if not most states have too many universities, too many overlapping programs and departments, and are generally run as if it were still the 1940s.   Certainly, this was the case in the state of Alabama, where I earned my three degrees. Fifteen public four-year universities is about ten too many for a relatively small state with only 4.3 million people.

And that actually understates the number, since many of these schools have satellite campuses in other parts of the state.  Troy University, where I used to teach and Steven Taylor still does, has major campuses in Troy, Dothan, and Montgomery.   Which means that Montgomery alone has three four-year campuses funded by the public.  Twenty-six public two-year colleges is likely too many as well. 

Professors are expensive, but they're no longer the biggest personnel expense, Joyner reports. That changed a few years ago.

In the fall of 2004, 50.6 of professional full-time employees in higher education (excluding medical schools) were faculty members. In the fall of 2006, for which data were released Tuesday, 48.6 percent of professional, full-time jobs in higher education were held by faculty members. 

As tuition soars, and unemployed parents find they can't afford it, and as unemployed graduates with huge loans move back home with parents paying taxes for higher education, something will happen.