‘Free college’ is the gateway drug to socialism
http://nypost.com/2016/02/17/free-college-is-the-gateway-drug-to-socialism/
Many people of mature years are amazed at how many young people have voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders and are enthusiastic about the socialism he preaches.
Many of those older people have lived long enough to have seen socialism fail, time and again, in countries around the world. Venezuela, with all its rich oil resources, is currently on the verge of economic collapse, after its heady fling with socialism.
But most of the young have missed all that, and their dumbed-down education is far more likely to present the inspiring rhetoric of socialism than to present its dismal track record.
Socialism is in fact a wonderful vision — a world of the imagination far better than any place anywhere in the real world, at any time over the thousands of years of recorded history. Even many conservatives would probably prefer to live in such a world, if they thought it were possible.
Who would not want to live in a world where college was free, along with many other things, and where government protected us from the shocks of life and guaranteed our happiness? It would be Disneyland for adults!
Free college of course has an appeal to the young, especially those who have never studied economics. But college cannot possibly be free. It wouldn’t be free even if there were no such thing as money.
Consider the costs of just one professor teaching just one course. He or she has probably spent more than 20 years being educated, from kindergarten to the Ph.D., before ending up standing in front of a class and trying to convey some of the knowledge picked up in all those years. That means being fed, clothed and housed all those years, along with other expenses.
All the people who grew the food, manufactured the clothing and built the housing used by this one professor, for at least two decades, had to be compensated for their efforts, or those efforts would not continue. And of course someone has to produce food, clothing and shelter for all the students in this one course, as well as books, computers and other requirements or amenities.
Add up all these costs — and multiply by a hundred or so — and you have a rough idea of what going to college costs. Whether these costs are paid by using money in a capitalist economy or by some other mechanism in a feudal economy, a socialist economy or whatever, there are heavy costs to pay.
Moreover, under any economic system, those costs are either going to be paid or there are not going to be any colleges. Money is just an artificial device for getting real things done.
Those young people who understand this, whether clearly or vaguely, are not likely to be deterred from wanting socialism. Because what they really want is for somebody else to pay for their decision to go to college.
A market economy is one in which whoever makes a decision is the one who pays for that decision. It forces people to be sure that what they want to do is really worth what it is going to cost.
Even the existing subsidies of college have led many people to go to college who have very little interest in, or benefit from, going to college, except for enjoying the social scene while postponing adult responsibilities for a few years.
Whether judging by test results, by number of hours per week devoted to studying or by on-campus interviews, it is clear that today’s college students learn a lot less than college students once did. If college becomes “free,” even more people can attend college without bothering to become educated and without acquiring any economically meaningful skills.
More fundamentally, making all sorts of other things “free” means more of those things being wasted as well. Even worse, it means putting more and more of the decisions that shape our lives into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats who control the purse strings.
ObamaCare has given us a foretaste of what that means in reality, despite how wonderful it may sound in political rhetoric.
Worst of all, government giveaways polarize society into segments, each trying to get what it wants at somebody else’s expense, creating mutual bitterness that can tear a society apart. Some seem to blithely assume that “the rich” can be taxed to pay for what they want — as if “the rich” don’t see what is coming and take their wealth elsewhere.
We must fight these disastrous socialist theft and redistribution programs tooth and nail.
So Dean, I understand what you're saying. What I would be afraid of is it would work out like every other government program, cost more and deliver less.
The more I think about it, I realize it's just a another socialist seed being planted. It's not like planting a whole field or forest, but a seed that can be planted in the dark when no one is paying attention. In a few years it will become much more than a seed.
Oh yes, a lot of us have seen they have been planting these seeds for quite some time and Bernie Sander's performance in the Democrat Primary is the fruit that has come of it up to this point. How do you stop the seeds from being planted when the fruits of the seeds are now producing more seeds?
Will our time come and go? Will we be remembered as the last resistance before the Great Utopia overcomes us all? Will we be criticized when we saw what others were unable to see then and thought of as fools by the fallen fruits from which the seeds of tomorrow will be produced.
How far from the tree will the seeds fall? Will all of the land be covered with the seeds of the fallen fruit or will there still be those who nip the seed in the bud before the fruit has time to ripen?
We'll be gone. Is this the circle of life? Must we, as a people, continue to return to the beginning of the race and start again in order to remember what we had once learned?
Free College??? Who is going to pay for it???? Why should I pay for someone to go to college, no one paid for my education, but me. Higher education is not a right, it is a privilege.
A nation whose citizens are educated does far better economically and socially than those that aren't (educated). I'll get you links for that if you want.
I agree and a High School education is not enough for America to compete in the world. That's why a 2 year degree for some and a 4 year degree for others is for the good of America's future and a great long term investment for the country. The Republican Party likes to consider itself as the business party, but seems to have forgotten the concept of long term investments.
I personally think these colleges need some competition. I think quite a few of them are overrated and some sort of competition for most academic courses could accomplish as much as the overpriced education students are being forced to pay now.
Of course some curriculums require an education that can only be accomplished at a university that has to have the latest technology readily available, but there are many that don't fit that category.
I think I've read where the student debt was close to a trillion dollars or more and quite a few were behind on their payments. If the people elect politicians who vote for this option, then it's not my business to tell them what to do.
I'm all for the states to make their own decisions in how they handle this situation, but if they lose their butts, don't come running to the rest of us through the Federal Government to bail you out.
I just believe these types of ideas are paved with good intentions and they may work, but competition for those students should be an option as well in my opinion.
I don't know enough about it to say it is good or bad. Those who will be affected should be the people who need to have the responsibility put on them to either go for it or protest against it. It seems it's a done deal. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I do notice, it seems, quite a few of the supporters won't have to reach in their pockets to pay for it.
These are two conflicated subjects wrapped up in one. Socialism and free college don't go hand in hand.
NYS had free college until the mid 70's for instaters. And even after then, it was only $900 a year. The idea was a well educated populace, was better for business. Even with NYS new proposal, you would have to remain in the state after graduation for 4 years as for the state to benefit from the college educated, or you have to pay your full tuition back to the state.
I know a lot of 20 somethings and I never hear them talk about getting things for free. The attraction to Bernie wasn't getting stuff for free, but rather he was bucking the system. It was more about shaking things up. A young person's version of why older people voted for Trump.
If I had known that I would have moved to NY and waited out until I was there long enough to become a resident. I wanted to go to pre-med at Eastern Michigan and then hopefully Med school at U of M. But the GI Bill for Vietnam era vets was $307 a month. Out of that you were expected to pay your tuition, books, fees AND rent, food, utilities, etc. So the only option would have been student loans that would have put me (conservatively) $70,000 in debt by the time I was out of Med school in the late 1980's and that was just too daunting. I mean I didn't want to be a high paid heart or brain surgeon. I wanted to be a Dermatologist for Pete's sake! Paying it off would have taken most of the life of my entire practice to do. I gave up. However, if the undergraduate school as paid for. If those first four years were tuition free, then I think I would have been able to go for it with part time work and some smaller loans. Med school would have been within reach for me.
Hey, Dean! Here is some good news for you. You can move to one of the following countries and ease your angst about helping those less fortunate than you. An uneducated population is actually one of the barometers in determining Third World status.
Third World Countries in Terms of their Human Development
It measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development:
1. Life Expectancy Index (LEI): Life expectancy at birth (in years); 2. Education Index (EI) Mean years of schooling (in years), and Expected years of schooling (in years), and 3. Income Index (II): Per capita income (PPP $).
Below is the list of countries with a "Low Human Development".
Definitions:
Human Development Index (HDI): A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development-a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living.
Life expectancy at birth : Number of years a newborn infant could expect to live if prevailing patterns of age-specific mortality rates at the time of birth stay the same throughout the infant's life.
Mean years of schooling: Average number of years of education received by people ages 25 and older, converted from education attainment levels using official durations of each level.
Expected years of schooling: Number of years of schooling that a child of school entrance age can expect to receive if prevailing patterns of age-specific enrolment rates persist throughout the child's life.
Gross national income (GNI) per capita: Aggregate income of an economy generated by its production and its ownership of factors of production, less the incomes paid for the use of factors of production owned by the rest of the world, converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity (PPP) rates, divided by midyear population.
GNI per capita rank minus HDI rank: Difference in rankings by GNI per capita and by the HDI. A negative value means that the country is better ranked by GNI than by the HDI.
Nonincome HDI: Value of the HDI computed from the life expectancy and education indicators only.
Human Development Index - Countries with Low Human Development 2011
Source: UN Human Development Report 2011
I would recommend Bangladesh, Dean. You could get a job sewing shirts! And never worry about any programs that want to take money out of your pockets! Paradise! Though Ethiopia or even the Congo would be a good fit for you too!
Or, he could stay here and stop supporting a bunch of lazy proles.