Kevin Drum

I have had my mind blown. Over at National Affairs, Dan Currell says that college tuition hasn't actually gone up over the past few decades:

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, colleges discovered that the appearance of high tuition was good for marketing. Positioning one's school as "almost as expensive as Harvard" created a sense of exclusivity and, somewhat contrary to economic theory, resulted in increased applications.

....Of course, almost nobody was willing to pay Harvard-level tuition for a middling college education. Colleges resolved this problem by canceling out their high sticker prices with "institutional scholarships" that had no money behind them; they were simply the discounts a school had to offer to convince students to enroll....Throughout the 1980s, colleges kept publishing ever-higher tuition numbers. Meanwhile, the tuition students actually paid rose only slightly.

Naturally I was skeptical. But sure enough, every year the College Board publishes a report called "Trends in College Pricing," and right out there in the open it lists both the sticker price as well as the actual tuition that the average student pays. Here it is for public and private schools:¹

Now, some students do pay the full list price, but this is mostly limited to affluent kids going to the very top schools (Harvard, Yale, etc.). The vast majority of students pay far less than the published price thanks to "grants" and "scholarships" that are actually just routine discounts from the list price.

And once you account for that, the real-life price of college has barely changed over the past three decades. Since 1992, private school tuition has increased 13% while public school tuition has decreased 10%.²

This is so contrary to everything I've read and heard my entire life that I'm not sure I believe it. But the numbers are right there. In terms of what the vast majority of families actually pay, college costs no more today than it did in 1992.

¹The 1992-2005 figures are from the 2007 report, adjusted to 2022 dollars. The 2006-2022 figures are from the 2022 report and are also in 2022 dollars.

²Keep in mind that this is solely for tuition and fees. It doesn't count either books or room and board, both of which have increased at a higher rate.

In case you've forgotten, Donald Trump has more than just his four criminal trials to contend with. There's also a continuing civil trial over his sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll, as well as yet another civil case brought by New York's attorney general over years of business fraud by Trump and his two adult sons.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that I failed to say "alleged" business fraud. That's because a judge today issued a summary judgment declaring Trump and his sons so obviously guilty that no trial is required:

The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron is a major victory for Attorney General Letitia James in her lawsuit against Mr. Trump, effectively deciding that no trial was needed to determine that he had fraudulently secured favorable terms on loans and insurance deals.

Ms. James has argued that Mr. Trump inflated the value of his properties by as much as $2.2 billion and is seeking a penalty of about $250 million in a trial scheduled to begin as early as Monday.

....The decision will not dissolve Mr. Trump’s entire company, but it sought to terminate his control over a flagship commercial property at 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan and a family estate in Westchester County. Mr. Trump might also lose control over his other New York properties, including Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, though that will likely be fought over in coming months.

There will still be a trial, but only to determine the size of the penalty against Trump. Worst case, he and his entire family could be stripped of control over The Trump Organization.

There's other stuff going on too, including the fact that Trump is suing the judge, but I assume this will be quickly tossed out and the penalty phase of the trial will commence soon. Buckle up.

Over at National Review, Noah Rothman takes on the question of why so many people don't believe the Biden economy is actually pretty good. His answer is simple: It's because the Biden economy isn't pretty good, and the only ones who don't get that are sheltered elites who obsess over BLS statistics. Ordinary people, for whom Biden's economy "has become a suffocating burden," aren't being bamboozled by the media. "They have every reason to believe the economy is in rough shape."

Maybe. But first let me share the results of a recent poll with you. It asked people what they thought of the economy:

Roughly similar percentages of Democrats and Republicans agree that their personal financial situation is good. However, only 5% of Republicans say the national economy is good.

It's common for people to be more optimistic about their personal situation (crime, schools, finances) than about the national situation. It's also common for polls like this to produce partisan results. But 5%! That's ridiculous.

In other words, when you see polls showing that "Americans" are losing confidence in the economy—and this is indeed the direction of recent polling—it's driven almost entirely by Republicans. And I think even Rothman would probably agree that 5% is too absurd a number to reflect actual reality. It's almost pure partisanship, not a genuine view of how good the economy is.

It's not Americans who think the economy is bad. It's Republicans. And it's not because their personal financial situation is bad. It's because they dislike Joe Biden. They are indeed being bamboozled by the (right-wing) media.

POSTSCRIPT: I should toss out one other thing. Even non-Republicans underrate the economy, and this is for a pretty simple reason. BLS obsessives like me know that inflation is down a lot and that, in any case, wages mostly kept up with inflation back when it was higher. But everyone else—which is just about everyone—merely has a vague idea of what the economy is like, and that idea doesn't turn on a dime. It takes at least a year, and maybe more, before views of big national trends change, and that much time hasn't passed yet. In the meantime, inflation is still around, house prices are high, gas prices are high, and cars are more expensive thanks to the Fed's high interest rates. So plenty of people are still wary of where things are going.

Still, even with that said, weak views of the economy are mostly just the product of Republicans who refuse to admit that anything under Joe Biden could be any good.

Let's make this dome week. Yesterday I featured the observatory dome of the 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar, so today is something completely different: the glass dome of the Galleries Lafayette department store in Paris. This picture was taken from directly below the dome, and it's actually a panorama stitched together in Photoshop. I couldn't quite get the whole thing in a single frame. At the lower right is a walkway that allows you to see the dome closer up.

Via Atrios, I see that Donald Trump will be in Detroit tomorrow to talk to strik—

Wait. I'm getting an update:

• Trump will be in a suburb speaking at Drake Enterprises.
• Which is not an auto plant.
• It's a truck parts supplier.
• A non-union one.
• And the event is being organized by the anti-union Right To Work Foundation.
• Which makes sense, since Trump has said he prefers right-to-work laws because they allow workers not to pay union dues.
• So, basically, Trump will be talking to a crowd peppered with scabs and scab wannabes at a non-union shop sponsored by the RTW Foundation.

But other than that, Trump will be in Detroit to woo striking auto workers.

I'm confused:

So which is it? I'm betting on #2.

The San Francisco Fed has updated its analysis of COVID-era savings based on more recent data, and it now concludes that the money saved from pandemic relief programs is pretty much gone:

The SF Fed estimates that only $190 billion is left in excess savings—and the odds are good that even that is mostly in the hands of the affluent, where it does little good. The average consumer has nothing left aside from what they normally hold.

Generally speaking, this is fine. The whole point of the pandemic relief programs was to sustain spending during the pandemic by giving people money they could gradually spend down. That's been propping up the economy longer than anyone anticipated, but no longer. We now have to make do with what we earn.

Here's the annual growth rate of the largest countries in the world:

Of the top eight countries, all have per capita GDPs under $15,000 except for the US, which clocks in at $60,000. Who's your bet to lead this list 30 years from now?

The Supreme Court has told Alabama to sod off:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused Alabama’s request to reinstate a congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers that had only one majority-Black district, paving the way for a new map to be put in place before the 2024 election.

....The court’s order gave no reasons, which is often the case when the justices decide on emergency applications. The ruling clears the way for a special master and court-appointed cartographer to create a new map.

The Supreme Court might be skeptical of race-based legislating in general, but it's downright unfriendly to being flatly defied. They told Alabama to obey a lower court order to redraw their congressional map and Alabama refused. That was never likely to be taken lightly.

So now Alabama's Republicans have lost control of redistricting entirely. That will mean losing at least one seat, and who knows? Maybe more. Once you let a special master loose there's no telling what he'll do.

The Wall Street Journal reports that consumers are finally feeling the effects of high interest rates. They are buying fewer houses (true), fewer cars (not really true), and loading up their credit cards:

“Consumers are carrying much higher balances than they were two years ago,” said Charlie Wise, head of global research and consulting at TransUnion. “There are always people at the margin where any increase in rates is going to hurt them.”

That's really, really not true:

Even if you cherry pick the low point of credit card balances exactly two years ago, the average credit card balance is only up 4%. If you compare to the pre-pandemic level, balances are down 16%. And delinquencies are stable. I wish reporters would check this kind of stuff instead of just passing along whatever story some expert tells them.