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You have to give her credit. She knows how to sell socialism in a way that few on the left could oppose.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wants to pay off all student debt, make college “free” to most, remove all support for for-profit universities, and pay for it all by imposing a levy on the super-rich 75,000 Americans. It’s a plan that seems to have no apparent downside to the indoctrinated left because it frees them up by taking from the greedy capitalists. It’s a perfect solution.
Sadly, it’s only perfect for those who really don’t care about the future of the nation, and by “future” I’m not referring to many years or decades down the line. If her plan is implemented, we would start seeing negative effects immediately. Then, we’d see major negative effects within a year or two. Before the end of her first and only term if elected, the nation would be in an economic free fall and everything we know about America today will be on the verge of being wiped clean from the history books as we start the process of imploding into a third-world nation.
If you think that sounds dramatic, you haven’t thought this through just like anyone who considers this plan with any level of validity.
For he sake of argument, let’s ignore the unfathomable level of unfairness being proposed in which free-thinking American adults entered into a debt agreement willfully. They are then able to not only force others to pay their debt for them, but they will be allowed to keep what was purchased – a college education – for themselves. Put all of that aside and assume Warren and the radical progressives who support her are too selfish to give a damn about fairness or personal responsibility.
Instead, let’s look at the negatives of the individual components of her plan. Hosing the rich is popular among the left because it doesn’t affect them directly… at least not immediately. But what happens when the rich get tired of paying both taxes and the 2%-3% levy Warren wants to impose on them? Some will leave. Others will divide their money among family members to diffuse the burden. Some will liquidate and hide their wealth. ALL of these actions will have detrimental effects on everyone else. Jobs will be sacrificed because business owners who cannot or will not accept the burdens imposed on them will cut or move on. It will behoove some near the thresholds of a higher levy to actually make less money, so investments will be pulled. Why would they invest and make money that will be taken from them when they can simply protect their funds with offshore investments? I could actually list dozens of other side effects caused by hosing the rich, but hopefully by now you see why Warren’s illogical approach will not yield anything she’s promising.
So, when the hosing doesn’t work, guess how the balance will be paid. If you guessed higher taxes across the board, you’d be correct. As we’ve seen with the financial benefits that lowering taxes has had on the job market, stock markets, and astounding economic growth, we can surmise raising taxes will have the opposite effect. Fewer jobs. Sinking stock markets. Stagnant growth. What the beneficiaries of this “free” education may fail to realize is they’re going to pay the loan one way or another. Whether they’re responsible for their own loan or if they’re forced to pay for everyone else’s loan through taxes raised over their lifetime, the burden of educational costs will hit them one way or the other.
That’s one element of her plan, and as you can see we’d already be in a world of hurt from that single aspect. But it gets worse.
One of the best parts about our higher education system is that it’s valuable. Many businesses are seeking people who are educated in the appropriate field. This makes a college education a valuable asset for the student emerging into the real world and a valuable resource for the business that must be acquired through strong wage and benefit offerings. But what happens if education is free for anyone? Will more people go to college? Of course. They’d be silly not to, especially when enrollments start going up as a result. Today, one can get a good job without education, but as the availability of college-educated applicants rise, the willingness to hire those without a degree fades. But the jobs are still the same jobs they were. The difference is the influx of college-educated applicants fighting for great jobs will force many of them to lower their expectations to good jobs. Eventually, they’ll take any job, especially when we look at the first element in this equation and realize there will be fewer jobs available, period.
More people going to college is generally considered a good thing, but there’s a tipping point in every industry when there are more viable candidates than jobs available. Today, there is a good balance of jobs that require college educations and people who have them. If anything, there aren’t enough great jobs for college educated people, which is why my daughter, who works at Starbucks while going to school, tells me half of her workmates already have degrees. Some are seeking higher degrees. Others are simply stuck at Starbucks because they haven’t found a better job despite having a degree.
If an expensive college education today feeds entry-level positions at Starbucks, what will happen when that education is “free?”
But the worst damage that will be done from Warren’s proposal is the effects it will have on the education system itself. Invariably, when government takes over something, they increase the cost and reduce the quality. Privatized education is so expensive for many reasons, but those reasons do not get eliminated by the tainting of government. Instead, new issues will arise. Since the value of an education will be reduced, so too will the expectations placed on the schools. They’ll have to be. It won’t behoove them to keep high standards if the government gives them incentives to lower their standards for the sake of pumping out more degrees. The dirty little secret in Warren’s plan is that it can only be deemed a success if more people get degrees. Therefore, the government will make sure that happens even if it means reducing the value and quality of the degree.
It’s shocking that a majority of people, even Democrats, are in agreement that the government is bad at running pretty much anything, yet the left is willing to give government even more control. Just as we need to get DC out of healthcare, we also need to reduce DC’s involvement in education, not increase it dramatically.
Suckers will fall for the “free” education ploy because they’re unwilling to think critically about it. There is already too much leftist control in our universities. Handing it over to DC progressives like Warren is a pure demonstration of stupidity.
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