(Freedom.news) Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential contender, has been making the campaign rounds promising lots of freebies and giveaways to voters. But he’s not the only one who wants to rob states and their taxpayers of more of their hard-earned dollars: President Obama is touting some giveaways of his own, namely free community college for all.
Only, these guys never discuss the very real costs involved with new government welfare programs and how they affect real people on the local level. In Obama’s case, his program is estimated to cost $60 billion, $4 billion of which will come from states – cash-strapped states whose governments are already struggling with providing local services.
As noted by the American Action Forum in a study of Obama’s proposal, in order to cover these additional costs states would need to spend an additional 5 percent on average, though some states would see double-digit increases. That, of course, would require hikes in fees, services and even taxes.
And for now, anyway, that will be a hard sell politically. The Washington Examiner noted, “Since the recession began, a majority of states have cut their per-student higher education funding by more than one-fifth.”
Marxist Democrats like Obama argue that as college costs rise, as does student loan debt, free community college would help students avoid going in the hole for an education. But of course, Obama doesn’t say what serious education reformers and economists know – that the federal government’s uber-liberal student loan program is at the heart of unprecedented rate increases by colleges and universities that have gone crazy with building and construction, while offering students degrees that are practically worthless on the open market.
So while it’s obvious the federal student loan program has not kept college costs low, so, too, would free tuition fail to improve or reform our system of higher education.
“The proposals do nothing to actually lower the cost of college, but merely subsidize today’s expensive tuition rates. Free in this context does not attempt to drive down the cost of providing education, but instead shifts the burden of paying for higher education away from students and onto taxpayers,” study authors Carlo Salerno, Chad Miller, and DouDou Zhang wrote.
And there is this: While encouraging more students to attend community colleges may drive up enrollment, there is no evidence to suggest that would improve graduation rates.
Look, it’s no secret why Obama and other Leftists want to drive as many Americans as they can into colleges and universities; they have turned into little more than indoctrination centers for Marxist thought – political ideology that is diametrically opposed to the principles of constitutional liberty and free-market capitalism upon which the nation was founded.
But that’s not good enough. They want all Americans, even those who shun Left-wing political thought, to pay for the indoctrination.
The fact is nothing in this world is “free.” Somebody has to pick up the tab, and when we’re forced to pay for a benefit someone else enjoys, that’s essentially a transfer of our wealth that results in less overall freedom.
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