March 8: Bernie or Hillary? (Clinton: mortgage, student loans, houses)
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As a current highschool student, too many of my friends are settling for community college because they can't afford to go to a University, even though they are definitely capable of succeeding there. That, in and of itself, is unacceptable. There are many reasons why I support Bernie, but this one stands out to me the most.
If you're banking on free college tuition from Sanders, it will never happen. The community college and university system is not capable of taking 2 - 3 times more students. That'd be like MSU going from 50,000 students to 100,000 or 150,000 students. Where would they all live and go to class?
Not to mention the cost to the Federal Government (taxpayers) would be ginormous. There's about 30 Million people aged 18 - 24 right now. If just half of them took up the offer for free college of let's say, $10,000/year. That's $150 Billion per year. And it would at least double the population at American universities, which is about 7 Million students right now. So of course, the universities would cry fowl and would want the federal government to help them build capacity for this massive influx of students, so the 1600 or so public colleges in the U.S. would each want at least $1 Billion to expand, which would be $1.6 Trillion.
No way.
There's probably other reasons to vote for Sanders.
I'm someone who is far, far away from being a fan of the GOP, but here's where I'm at right now on the Democrat ballot: walk into voting booth, look at list of candidates, *facepalm*, walk out.
We have a system where socialist handouts go to the very poor as a way to allow them to maintain a basic standard of living such as food and shelter. Over time this causes prices of things to adjust higher, while minimum wage stays the same. Suddenly you can have a higher income by sitting at home and playing video games while you cash your welfare check, get your food stamps and have subsidized rent - than you could if you made $8/hr somewhere in the service industry or as an unskilled laborer, so what's that person's incentive to work? Basically none. Meanwhile the typical American, earning $17/hr. has seen very few wage increases because all the profit is funneled back to the shareholders. We've deregulated Wall Street to the point where they have little incentive to fairly reward the workers. All the profit goes to the investors while they pay just enough to keep people from quitting. But then due to the aforementioned issue of welfare expansion, the cost of living has gone up.
In summary: Welfare up, cost of living up, corporate profits up, wages flat. Good for the poor, great for the rich, horrible for the working middle class and meh for the upper-middle class.
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That's a good point. I was aware of it but never made the connection of welfare vs. minimal wage. Why doesn't government/welfare system use something similar to work-study that college students are granted. I remember when I did work-study, the university/government paid 75% of the salary and my employer (department) paid 25%.
There are lot of business that can use extra help but can't afford the help. If walfare paid 75% or even 50% of someones salary that will allow business to hire 2 people in place on one salary.
Anyways to answer OP,, I will most likely vote for Berni because he is COOL
I agree that there are other reasons to vote for Sanders. Essentially being the only candidate to really take on the issue of wage stagnation and income inequality is what attracts me to him. While layoffs (due to moving work overseas), wage stagnation and massive corporate profits seem to have really harmed Michigan over the last 20 years it seems that he would be a popular guy here, no? I can think of few locations that would benefit more from a candidate who bases half his campaign on returning jobs to the US by fixing bad trade deals, rebuilding the middle class, and creating work by rebuilding infrastructure (Anyone ever heard of this little town called Flint? Maybe driven over this River Rouge thing?)
The college thing needs to be addressed, but "free tuition" just isn't feasible. Even I understand this, and I'm not too far removed from college. Free community college, with merit based university expenses could be somewhere to start. California has toyed with ideas like this. The big issue is predatory loan debt. For-profit schools put unsuspecting kids into student loan debt that they'll never be able to repay. Their business model becomes tricking kids into taking out loans, to pay them, for programs which 90% of the time will never do anything for the individual's professional career. Public universities aren't innocent in this either. $15,000 a semester for an art history degree isn't doing anybody any favors, except a few tenured professors and university board members.
If you're banking on free college tuition from Sanders, it will never happen. The community college and university system is not capable of taking 2 - 3 times more students. That'd be like MSU going from 50,000 students to 100,000 or 150,000 students. Where would they all live and go to class?
Not to mention the cost to the Federal Government (taxpayers) would be ginormous. There's about 30 Million people aged 18 - 24 right now. If just half of them took up the offer for free college of let's say, $10,000/year. That's $150 Billion per year. And it would at least double the population at American universities, which is about 7 Million students right now. So of course, the universities would cry fowl [sic] and would want the federal government to help them build capacity for this massive influx of students, so the 1600 or so public colleges in the U.S. would each want at least $1 Billion to expand, which would be $1.6 Trillion.
No way.
There's probably other reasons to vote for Sanders.
"In fall 2015, some 20.2 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities, constituting an increase of about 4.9 million since fall 2000. . . . About 7.0 million students will attend 2-year institutions and 13.2 million will attend 4-year institutions . . . " Fast Facts
Whether college should be free for those who get in and whether there will be a place for everyone who wants one when they want it are two different issues.
We could pay that $150 billion price tag just by avoiding unnecessary wars and reducing our prison population.
As for the capacity issue, in the near term there might be more competition for spaces, more students would be faced with waiting lists, failing small private colleges would get new leases on life, there would be greater reliance on online education and distance learning, and institutions would have to cooperate with each other and use existing infrastructure more efficiently. But the US successfully faced a massive influx of students in decades after WWII and can do so again. It would meaning building new places as well as expanding old ones, but what's wrong with that? I'd rather see more colleges than more strip malls.
Bill Clinton proposed one more year of publicly supported education for all back in the 90s, i.e., free education for all until age 19; that is the very minimum we should be doing today.
Bernie is just as dangerous as Trump. As magellan pointed out, his asinine "free college" plan would be an absolute disaster. It's no surprise that his wife ran a college into the ground.
Read up on the guy's life. He has basically been a shiftless loser who never held down a job until he successfully ran for mayor in a Vermont town. I don't think he has a grasp on basic economics or geopolitics.
I agree that there are other reasons to vote for Sanders. Essentially being the only candidate to really take on the issue of wage stagnation and income inequality is what attracts me to him. While layoffs (due to moving work overseas), wage stagnation and massive corporate profits seem to have really harmed Michigan over the last 20 years it seems that he would be a popular guy here, no? I can think of few locations that would benefit more from a candidate who bases half his campaign on returning jobs to the US by fixing bad trade deals, rebuilding the middle class, and creating work by rebuilding infrastructure (Anyone ever heard of this little town called Flint? Maybe driven over this River Rouge thing?)
The college thing needs to be addressed, but "free tuition" just isn't feasible. Even I understand this, and I'm not too far removed from college. Free community college, with merit based university expenses could be somewhere to start. California has toyed with ideas like this. The big issue is predatory loan debt. For-profit schools put unsuspecting kids into student loan debt that they'll never be able to repay. Their business model becomes tricking kids into taking out loans, to pay them, for programs which 90% of the time will never do anything for the individual's professional career. Public universities aren't innocent in this either. $15,000 a semester for an art history degree isn't doing anybody any favors, except a few tenured professors and university board members.
I'm 100% for jobs returning to the US. But you reference Flint, which has always been an auto industry town. In order for the auto industry to thrive, people must buy cars. Would you not agree that Mr. Sanders environmental policies would cause gas prices to go up and probably greatly increase ownership costs of cars? In Europe, fewer people are driving for the same reasons and auto plants are laying off workers and cutting shifts. Can Michigan afford that risk?
Wall Street speculation taxes could be risky, too. People won't want to be taxed so they will quit investing altogether, killing the golden goose that the free college plan was relying on.
And again, I'll ask: What happens when countless small businesses, like food and retail establishments, cannot afford the proposed minimum wage hike? I get annoyed when people who have no understanding of how businesses operate try to tell them what to do. "Big Corporations" are looked down upon, but they are the only ones who can afford to pay higher wages and expand.
Many interesting points being made, but I still believe Bernie is a recipe for unprecedented unemployment. I do not believe that you can look at small countries like Denmark or Sweden and assume that their policies can work equally well in a country as large and demographically different than the US. Very different countries require very different approaches and ideas.
Right! Flint is one of the saddest stories of jobs moving overseas (or borders). Environmental policies had nothing to do with this. The cost of gas really doesn't influence the need to own a car, because I still have to get to work, errands and recreation. If my F-250 gets 15 mpg today and gas costs $5.00 a gallon I'm not going to just stop driving, I'm probably going to garage the F-250 and buy a Volt. We saw this during the 00s/10s. Car sales dropped during the recession, but after the recession gas wasn't cheap, people couldn't afford to drive their Expidburban Extended Ultralades and instead opted for modest things like the Escape or Encore. People don't stop driving, they just become more efficient with their fuel. The goal is to produce every single part and assemble those vehicles here. If we do it in Mexico, just to save a buck for Ford or GM, that's not good. End the harmful trade policies and do it here. Hillary won't do that.
If anything enviro policies help workers because it forces us to rethink our power grid (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear) and forces us to create better, more efficient, cars. Imagine if Ford or GM makes the F150 of electric cars and everyone wants one. How huge would that be for jobs in Michigan?
Regarding taxing investment: People will keep investing. You don't get taxed for buying 500 shares of Ford or whatever you do for your personal long-term portfolio. Instead investors who make their income off of using algorithms to run high-speed trades for the sake of creating wealth rather than actually investing in the company are taxed so this artificial and barely understood process of wealth generation is no longer viable. You break apart banks which are "too big to fail" and you cap credit card interest rates based on market conditions (about 15% today).
I do get that minimum wage increases will impact places like GeoAggie's Burgers, but if I own a burger shop - I make a quality burger. If someone is going to pay $6 for my burger, they'll probably pay $7. McDonalds will be replacing their dollar menu (actually I think they already have..?) Now I can pay my employees $11 an hour. Over time (and Sanders has made this quite clear it won't be instantaneous) these things keep increasing. Ideally wages are going up across the board because suddenly keeping every damn cent of profit isn't the ideal situation. Now my $8 burger isn't so bad, because Middle-Class-Moe over here went from making $17/hr to $25/hr over the past few years, while Burger-Line-Larry is being paid $15 ... (ugh, I really struggle with a $15 minimum wage, can we say appropriate for the local COL? in Detroit that's probably $12/hr.) Larry can now afford an apartment with his income, he has healthcare, and I don't have to offer him absurdly expensive health insurance that costs about the same as his salary because I pay a 6% tax on his salary (and he chips in 2%) to the single payer system which covers him and his family.
I'll admit it, Obamacare is a failure. I was all for it, but I was wrong. It's garbage. Single-Payer is the way to go.
Sanders comes across as quite naive and polemic, as most of the '60's and '70's radicals did back then. They talked big, but didn't seem to think things through very well. It didn't much matter because they were LOUD and abrasive, and loved all that attention! Unfortunately, Bernie doesn't seem to have grown up. His grasp of world affairs and economics (and sociology) hasn't matured enough.
I don't trust Clinton, but might have to vote for her.
"In fall 2015, some 20.2 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities, constituting an increase of about 4.9 million since fall 2000. . . . About 7.0 million students will attend 2-year institutions and 13.2 million will attend 4-year institutions . . . " Fast Facts
Whether college should be free for those who get in and whether there will be a place for everyone who wants one when they want it are two different issues.
We could pay that $150 billion price tag just by avoiding unnecessary wars and reducing our prison population.
As for the capacity issue, in the near term there might be more competition for spaces, more students would be faced with waiting lists, failing small private colleges would get new leases on life, there would be greater reliance on online education and distance learning, and institutions would have to cooperate with each other and use existing infrastructure more efficiently. But the US successfully faced a massive influx of students in decades after WWII and can do so again. It would meaning building new places as well as expanding old ones, but what's wrong with that? I'd rather see more colleges than more strip malls.
Bill Clinton proposed one more year of publicly supported education for all back in the 90s, i.e., free education for all until age 19; that is the very minimum we should be doing today.
The more people you "give" a college degree, the more worthless they will become. Plus, you're talking about a 4.9 Million increase over 16 years in your example. If college were free, it would be a 20 Million increase in one year.
In addition, what universities are going to take all of these students? Do you think any of the (good) State universities are going to lower their academic acceptance standards? And bring down their grade point averages? There's already competition for space, and universities are upping their requirements to help stem the flow. Health sciences programs at GVSU are on a 2 or 3 year waiting list. You think they need more applicants? Say another 1 Million Michigan high school grads all of a sudden had college paid for, but couldn't get into any universities because they didn't have the academic standings and the colleges didn't have room. Then what? Class action lawsuits from parents?
It's really a very naive idea on so many fronts. It's not like universal healthcare where all of a sudden 30 million people had health insurance. They didn't ALL decide to go to the doctor on the very next day and overflow doctors offices and hospitals. But that's what would happen with free college tuition. They would all want that right immediately.
I don't think free 2 year college or vocational school is a bad idea, for those interested. That would be a far, far smaller number (of people and money). And community colleges tend to suffer enrollment declines when the economy is good, like now.
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