Senator Bernie Sanders has big — and unaffordable — plans for America. His most important talking point? Free education, baby! That’s right, under a Sanders Administration, public colleges and universities will no longer be allowed to charge students tuition.
It has long been one of the talking points of the far-left in Europe: making lower education free. Having said that, even the progressive movement in countries like the Netherlands have a limitation. They’re talking about primary schools and high schools, not about universities and colleges. Amazingly, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders takes it one step (or ten) further. By “free education” he actually means… free education, from the cradle to the grave.
“When we talk about free public education, it must include making public colleges and universities tuition-free,” Sanders recently told a crowd of supporters at a rally. “And if we can give massive tax breaks to the one percent and large profitable corporations, we can cancel all student debt in America.”
This is truly radical. Making education free — from the start of a person’s educational career to the very end of it — is extremely costly. “Costly?” I hear millennial readers ask. Yes, costly. You see, making colleges and universities “tuition-free” will actually just shift the costs from those who actually use the service — students — to taxpayers. When socialist radicals like Sanders say “free,” they actually mean “let someone else pay for it.”
That’s troubling enough, but wait, it gets even worse. If people can study whatever they please while someone else gets stuck with the bill, you’ll undoubtedly see a significant increase in the student population. This means that paying for education will cost taxpayers even more than Sanders thinks.
Oh, and another negative effect Sanders would rather not tell you about free education will cause more students to opt for party-studies that won’t actually result in them getting a well-paid job. Enrollment for Gender Studies (OMG) will spike to never-before-seen levels. Guess how much those “students” will start paying in taxes once they’re “graduated”?
Insane.
And that’s putting it mildly.
Lastly, Sanders compares making education tuition-free to tax cuts, which is pretty crazy in itself. After all, tax cuts mean that individuals and businesses can keep more of their own money. Getting rid of tuition, on the other hand, means that someone else is paying for students’ education. Unlike “free education,” cutting taxes doesn’t cost anyone else money. It just means that people keep more of their own profits (and that the government can spend less).
But yeah, try to explain that to Sanders’ millennial fanboys.
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