This is not the same as saying it is good, but I surmise that you like the idea and do not merely think it was the least bad proposal. Making someone besides the student pay for community college will not make it cheaper. Increased demand and indirect payment may make it more costly. The government does not make enough money to cover this cost. They have a terrible business model: they give away most of their product, legislation, for free, and only charge a few premium customers for custom jobs. Plus they limit what they will accept in payment and blow most of it on advertising campaigns. So the money will have to come from elsewhere. You can wish for them to cancel the Joint Strike Fighter program and use that money for education. People have been making such wishes for some time and it appears you will not get that wish. Perhaps they will succeed in extracting more funds from the rich than in the past while continuing to kiss their hands. I suspect that most of the money will come from the same place it does now, taxes on regular people, with interest paid to those wealthy enough to provide the up-front cash by buying T-bills. So poorer kids will go to school on credit and pay it back with interest to the wealthier later, rather like today. Except the very poorest, who can't afford to take years off for school, and those who choose not to go to college, who will still pay for the education and enrichment of others. I don't know how the numbers work out to say if the benefits outweigh the costs. If you have made up your mind on this proposal, you must have some evidence. Can you share it?I think the idea of free community college for all was by and far away the best.
I, for one, would much rather see free pre-school than free community college. That said, I don't know what the price per pupil of pre-school vs. CC is, but I do know that there's a preponderance of evidence that pre-school helps to set kids up for a more successful education for years down the road. Hopefully, those students would then be more likely to be college ready and perhaps pay for CC or university on their own. Like I said below, it's not as if CC debt is what is crushing America to begin with. But a general debt of education, one that starts as early as birth, is plaguing a lot of our youngest citizens, especially those from poor backgrounds.
Although I am apt to agree with you where the money will come from in general, my thinking is that the value gained from the increased access to this education will offset the costs, -that the ROI makes it worth it. My wish would be that a progressive marginal tax on annual capital gains that began at something like 1M or more would be put to this use, or yes, that we'd stop building so many damned weapons beyond our needs, and that the money could come from there. As far as evidence, I think it would be hard to come by anything convincing. One might make some sort of hand-waving argument with past GI bills, but there are too many variables in these equations to conclude anything decisively, and your take is largely going to be dependent upon your own politics and value system. My own politics and value system suggests to me that we are spending money in less useful ways, and this would be a good way to repurpose it. In short, I agree with this statement, but believe that the extra cost will be offset by the benefits of a more educated populous.Making someone besides the student pay for community college will not make it cheaper. Increased demand and indirect payment may make it more costly.
mk's comment above was the cause of much private discussion behind his back. I was unable to square what appeared to be purely faith-based advocacy with the objective neuroscientist we know and love. Given an opportunity to see him in person, I printed our exchange along with a helpful summary: “I believe the benefits will outweigh the costs.” Discussion ensued, with Meriadoc contributing. What I find worrisome is that mk concludes that the proposal will be a net benefit without presenting a shred of evidence. Well, surely there is evidence that improving access to education will bring benefits. I don't mean to dispute that. It's just that we have no information on the costs, the negative effects. I find it particularly alarming that mk does not dispute my prediction that the very poorest will likely be harmed by this policy, and the wealthy will benefit (a pattern lamented elsewhere). Meriadoc made an interesting assertion that any politician who is enlightened enough to propose such a program would surely arrange to have it funded in a responsible way. I would like to see evidence for this belief. I don't know if legislators even have to specify where funding will come from, or if approved programs are simply paid out of a general budget. I was not impressed by California's model, in which a family leave program is completely paid for from a mandatory tax on all workers' salaries, while most low-income workers do not apply for the benefit, because they do not even know that it exists. More than once I heard the refrain "We already spend money on far worse programs." That is true, and it should stop. It is not a good reason to support a program that may still be bad on balance, only less bad. If you believe that the new program will be covered by "repurposed" funds, so that it is an improvement even if it does not provide net benefit, you should have evidence for that belief.
mk and I don't think exactly alike on political matters. In my personal correspondence there was some exegesis of his words "your take is largely going to be dependent upon your own politics and value system." I might believe that forcing people to pay for community college under threat of locking them in cages is an act of coercion, and he might have a different perception. Nevertheless, his argument should be "replicable." I should to be able to come to the same conclusion as mk by thinking like mk. Say B is the total benefit that we expect will accrue due to the implementation of the policy: more educated people, better jobs and higher salaries, reduced poverty, more prosperous community college founders and staff, etc. Say C is the total expected cost of the policy: things not purchased because resources were diverted to community college, income and work experience not gained while going to community college, distortions to incentives for community colleges to provide good value, dilution of the perceived value of a community college degree, fraud and waste at rent-seeking institutions that pretend to be community colleges, overhead to run the program, etc. We will ignore any costs that I recognize but mk denies. So if I am mk and don't worry that Sam has a problem, I think I would support the policy if I have reasonable expectation that B > C. But what I actually heard mk arguing was this: B is high enough to justify the risk that B < C. This seems like broken logic. By this rule, we might not support programs that provide small benefits, even if we are fairly sure that they are beneficial overall. We will simply look for the program that promises the most attractive outcome and support it, irrespective of the costs. It seems akin to arguing: I am not arguing that taxpayer-funded community college is good or bad. I am arguing that mk and I do not know (i.e. do not have evidence showing) that implementing a policy of funding community college through taxes would do more good than harm, and we should have reason to believe this before supporting the policy.“We agree that this program would have costs and benefits. We agree that other programs exist that have worse cost/benefit ratios. I don’t know if the benefits of this program would outweigh the costs. Why do you believe the benefits would outweigh the costs?”
(repeat as necessary) The health budget is X.
Health is important!
Therefore, the health budget should be 2X.
I haven't read through all this yet, but: I don't think I'd ever accuse a politician of being responsible. An enlightened person who believes in these things should also believe in another, and could reasonably do something responsible. If a politician is capable of such a feat is a different matter entirely.any politician who is enlightened enough to propose such a program would surely arrange to have it funded in a responsible way.