Call them the top 4 percent: elite private colleges and universities that together sit atop three-quarters of the higher education terrain’s endowment wealth.
.. Among that group of 138 of the nation’s wealthiest colleges and universities, four in five charge poor students so much that they’d need to surrender 60 percent or more of their household incomes just to attend, even after financial aid is considered.
.. Unlike other nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities aren’t obligated to spend at least 5 percent of their endowments on mission-related expenses.
.. A Congressional Research Service report from last December estimated that if returns from private college endowments were taxed at 35 percent, the government would collect $11 billion in revenue, based on 2014 figures—money that could be spent helping low-income students.
.. Amherst College reported that if it spent 8 percent of its endowment annually rather than 5 percent, it would lose 60 percent of its wealth in 25 years. But the Education Trust report’s authors said a little bit of extra spending can go a long way. In the 67 schools they reviewed, just increasing the endowment-spending rate from around 4.5 percent to 5 percent could free up resources to cover the tuition for nearly 2,400 new students, the report found.
Twitter: Ramesh on the Treatment of Rich People
theory: Rich people–left, right, center–think what they have to say is interesting because they get used to people treating them that way
After ‘Brexit,’ Finding a New London for the Financial World to Call Home
Here are the criteria most frequently mentioned: English-language facility, which is essential for attracting a global work force; a favorable regulatory environment, especially regarding employment; excellent transportation and communications infrastructure; availability of prime office space and luxury housing; good schools; good restaurants and cultural offerings; and finally, an intangible quality that includes a certain energy level and openness to an influx of highly paid, competitive City of London-Wall Street types.
I scored numerous cities in the European Union on a 60-point scale: five points for office space and housing, five points for restaurants and cultural offerings — because it’s easier for any city to build new offices and housing, and import talented chefs and entertainers — and 10 points for each of the others.
.. Every financial services executive I interviewed mentioned an intangible factor: French hostility to the wealthy. President François Hollande tried to impose a 75 percent “wealth tax,” which prompted an exodus of rich French citizens before Mr. Hollande dropped the proposal.
“All the noise coming out of the Élysée Palace the last few years has been that France wants to tax or regulate financial service companies out of business,” Mr. Yeandle said. “Financial services people are furious.”
.. Even as most people I spoke with said Frankfurt would most likely emerge as the next London, they didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it. Some already think there’s too much power in Germany — and that London has acted as a financial counterbalance.
.. The problem? Badly hurt by the financial crisis, the Dutch have capped bankers’ bonuses at just 20 percent of their annual salaries — a far more drastic curb than was imposed by the European Union. Several bankers told me that unless the Dutch repealed the cap, they wouldn’t consider moving to Amsterdam. “I’d love to relocate to Amsterdam,” one top executive told me. “But I don’t think we’re wanted there.”
How Brexit Will Change the World
17 top economists, foreign policy gurus and historians look five years into the future.
.. Some of them think the Brexit vote is a sign of the sun setting on Europe. “Brexit could be a wake-up call, or it could be 1933 all over again,” says Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, is more optimistic, saying that Brexit would set Europe “back on a path of high employment and healthy growth.”
.. Some of them think the Brexit vote is a sign of the sun setting on Europe. “Brexit could be a wake-up call, or it could be 1933 all over again,” says Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, is more optimistic, saying that Brexit would set Europe “back on a path of high employment and healthy growth.”
.. In Europe, countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and possibly the Netherlands, will be watching to see if the Brits can pull this off; if the damage seems manageable, pressures to take a similar path are likely to build in at least these countries.
.. Russia has been in recession for two years, in part because its biggest market, Europe, has been buying less of its biggest export, energy. Is it going to do better if that market slows further? Almost surely not. Same for China. Losers all around.
.. The vote fortifies him and his supporters in their deepest belief: that hyper-pluralist, overly rule-bound, post-sovereign policymaking is doomed, prone to interest-group capture and stalemate, and unlikely to sustain popular loyalty over the long term. For China, the lesson is roughly the same.
.. If you want to say that the losers from Brexit are the world’s pluralist political orders, you can make a pretty good case.
.. Scotland will probably secede from the UK, which will have major consequences for British defense policy, given the basing there of the nuclear deterrent. Advocates of Trident modernization may get a boost from the isolation that Britain will feel in departing the EU, but they will need to find other basing arrangements (perhaps co-locating on U.S. bases).
.. I expect limited impact outside of the United Kingdom in the next five months. The initial market hysteria will soon be completely reversed, outside of the United Kingdom, and there will likely be a strong rally following Trump’s defeat in November. Within Britain, there could be a substantial impact. It is quite possible that the real estate bubble in London will burst
.. the UK will no longer be viewed as a safe haven for the world’s rich.
.. In five years I expect that the EU will have turned away from austerity and will again be back on a path of high employment and healthy growth. The Brexit vote, along with the growth of populist parties across the continent, both left and right, will have finally convinced enough of the EU elites outside of Britain that they had to take a course other than austerity in order to save the EU.
.. The main difference is that the UK will have a much smaller financial sector, with more of its wealthy being generated from productive sectors of the economy. (Okay, this is some wishful thinking—but it’s not impossible.)
.. The main difference is that the UK will have a much smaller financial sector, with more of its wealthy being generated from productive sectors of the economy. (Okay, this is some wishful thinking—but it’s not impossible.)
.. we may see British young people working on the Continent being sent home because they no longer have a valid work permit
.. In five years’ time, the consequences will be less far-reaching than many are predicting today. Every corporation that does business in the UK and the EU will have an incentive to lobby Brussels to make the “divorce” as amicable as possible.
.. And thus, a major casualty of Brexit will be the U.S. rebalance of its foreign policy toward Asia, a policy that depends on a stronger Europe to take on more responsibility in its neighborhood.