[lbo-talk] US consumption (was barbaric?)

[Miles Jackson]

James Heartfield wrote:
>
> Andie says that his dad could afford to send three children to college. I am 
> glad to hear that, but US college enrollments  have been climbing again, 
> after a big dip in the mid 80s, so that now they stand at 27.8 million as 
> opposed to 20 million in 1967.
>
>   
James provides a nice lesson in how to lie with statistics: ignore the 
denominator.  The U. S. population in 1967 was 194 million; currently 
the U. S. population is 301 million.  Doing some trivial math, we 
discover that a /smaller/ proportion of the population is enrolled in 
college today than in 1967 (9.2% today; 10.3% in 1967).  This is clearly 
the best of all possible worlds!

Miles