In preparation for my
new book (which is full of super-awesome economic genius goodness), I pulled some stats. I'm getting good enough now that I just know how different statistics are going to pull. This one did not surprise me - how much we spend on education vs the entire oil/gas/fuel/energy industry.
The book is rapidly coming along, by the way, and I STRONGLY recommend all parents, uncles, aunts and relatives of young kids in high school or in college wait to make sure this book is one of the gifts you get them for Christmas.
You shan't be disappointed.
Slated for the second week of December.
9 comments:
I'd like to see Healthcare costs on the same chart.
What does spend on Big Oil mean?
I quickly searched the US uses about 20 million barrels a day, todays price is $99.61, so a year the US spends $727,153,000,000 on just oil.
You have to wonder without the aid of government subsidies given to universities, would online education have taken away the market share of many universities?
Now a days most professors do not even focus on teaching. They spend their time on research projects. Yet we keep packing kids into bigger and bigger lecture halls at universities. Why not take the course online, and save a lot of tuition money?
The university was invented in the medieval time period. Perhaps it is time for a modern technological upgrade.
Lets face it, when government subsidizes an enterprise, there is very little incentive to innovate. In fact, there is an incentive to expand many costs such as administration, because this usually means even more tax subsidies. The constant increase in government subsidies to universities and student loan programs, have created a massive education bubble. Time for an overhaul.
I got the data from the NIPA accounts, which suggest to me there might be somethign wrong with the 20 million per day. Not that I'm questioning your math, but the NIPA accounts are pretty thorough in the methodology.
According to the CIA Factbook, the 20 million figure is accurate. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2174rank.html
Something must be missing then. I double checked the NIPA accounts. The original data I pulled was from the personal consumption expenditures. THis time I looked at GDP and its components, the data is the same. BUt if there is 20 million per day, then that does add up to $730 billion.
Any ideas on how the two don't reconcile?
Regarding the education figures, does that include a) pre-school, b) K through 12, c) public and private d) colleges and universities, e) trade schools and apprenticeships, f) continuing education?
Just looking at the K-12 public schools in my neck of the woods, the school portion of property taxes is approximately the same as my county taxes. Consider that half of my school district's income comes from state aid which we pay as income taxes, it is no wonder that big education is so damn big and that's just the K-12.
BTW, check out Western Governor's University - they may be the harbinger of doom for the university as we now know it.
I'm assuming you pulled your data from here: http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=35&ViewSeries=NO&Java=no&Request3Place=N&3Place=N&FromView=YES&Freq=Year&FirstYear=2004&LastYear=2010&3Place=N&Update=Update&JavaBox=no#Mid.
At first glance, I assume that the line for energy measures only what you pay at the pump and for your utilities. Based on my back of the envelope calculation the number works out to about $1K/person/year, which sounds about right.
Meanwhile, energy is consumed when providing all the other items in the table, but it is not listed separately.
Actually, I think I figured it out.
Since these are the NIPA accounts, it only considers money spent on US based oil. Oil purchased from overseas sources would be accounted for in the Im-Ex portion of GDP.
This also makes sense when you look at "Big Oil" companies. Exxon alone has $350 billion in sales, you add the others, it certianly is more than what the NIPA accounts are listing.
But, not all sales are in the US. So what the NIPA numbers are showing, if I am correct, is money spent on oil from domestic companies.
In short, BP isn't accounted for here, so the $730 billion figure is probably more correct.
Still not $1 trillion.
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