Bernie Sanders: More ‘Pie in the sky’ ideas
During the recent confirmation hearing of Donald Trump’s Education Secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders asked DeVos the following question:
Would you work with me and others to make public colleges and universities tuition free through federal and state efforts?
DeVos, mostly not impressive during the hearing, was spot on with this answer:
Senator, I think that’s a really interesting idea and it’s really great to consider and think about. But I think we also have to consider the fact that there is nothing in life that is truly free. Somebody is going to pay for it.
Sander’s reply, Well yeah, you’re right. Somebody will pay for it.
Sanders claimed on his campaign website: The cost of this $75 billion a year plan is fully paid for by imposing a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago.
This is not exactly true as the states would be on the hook for a third of the bill.
However, economics professors, Robert Archibald and David Feldman at the College of William and Mary in Virginia analyzed his proposal and concluded it’s economically and politically unrealistic.
The Manhattan Institute’s Preston Cooper writes:
Advocates of federally funded “free” or “debt-free” college assert that society, as well as the affected individuals, would benefit from moving more students through higher education. Instead, experience in the U.S. and elsewhere suggests that the opposite would happen: more students would enroll in college; a high percentage (a higher percentage, quite possibly, than now, as more ill-prepared students enrolled) would continue to drop out; wage premiums for graduates would decline; colleges that desperately need to improve outcomes for students would face even fewer incentives to reform; and taxpayers would foot a skyrocketing bill.
Image/Prawny
Maybe Mr Sanders should look at the most likely reason college tuition is so high (Hint: It’s the federal government).
A huge reason the price of college is so high right now is government “help.” The federal government has subsidized students for decades, allowing colleges to raise their prices at rates far in excess of household income and even health care, and encouraging students to demand ever-greater luxuries. Use other peoples’ money and your incentives to demand efficiency wither, Neal McCluskey with the Cato Institute writes.
Mr. Sanders continues to rename things that should be considered, and are, consumer goods, as rights. That is really the crux of the problem.
How long until Sanders puts a bill up for a vote for “universal basic income” like his fellow socialists in France?
Maybe Sanders thinks there is a “money tree” in the back yard. That money tree is achieved by government force.
Related:
- Rand Paul takes socialist Bernie Sanders to the woodshed in Price hearing
- Videos show Bernie Sanders praising bread lines, food rations, communists
- Susan Sarandon ‘I don’t vote with my vagina’ in declaring support for Bernie Sanders
- CNN report finds Bernie Sanders’ fans can’t define socialism as it spreads across America
