Comment by alwaysAttending | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alwaysAttending | Hacker News Reader

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alwaysAttending

It's funny because that's a general sentiment among Sanders supporters. They like the way he sounds but don't really follow politics. The reality is his policy isn't all that good. It's just very utopian sounding so people love it. Take his Free College For all Bill. It sounds nice doesn't it? Free College for all! I can support that! But in reality it's quite flawed. Beyond the fact that it's just a new 50 billion dollar tax (and the expectation that States will cover the other 20 billion) applied wholesale over the current 70 billion dollars in tuition paid by public college school students, it's got some really questionable clauses that would undoubtedly raise prices.

Here are some choice requirements put on the schools: (6) provide an assurance that not later than 5 years after the date of enactment of this Act, not less than 75 percent of instruction at public institutions of higher education in the State is provided by 10 tenured or tenure-track faculty;

(B) Increasing the number and percentage of full-time instructional faculty.

(C) Providing all faculty with professional supports to help students succeed, such as pro- 9 fessional development opportunities, office 10 space, and shared governance in the institution.

(D) Compensating part-time faculty for work done outside of the classroom relating to instruction, such as holding office hours.

(E) Strengthening and ensuring all students have access to student support services such as academic advising, counseling, and tutoring.

On top of that it actually states states must:

ensure that public institutions of higher education in the State maintain per-pupil expenditures on instruction at levels that meet or exceed the expenditures for the previous fiscal year;

Even if the 70 billion dollars in taxes comes, how are states supposed to support all of this 10+ years down the line? There are absolutely no cose saving measures in his plan. It is all just utopian fluff.

Source (worth the read): http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/collegeforall/?inline...

I'm wondering how this compares to countries who actually has his "utopia" implemented, to a certain degree at least. I mean, in Denmark, the government pays you $1000 a month to study college/university.

In the implementation stage they must've had similar problems to the ones you're describing. Is it a hockey-stick graph and are these obstacles just necessary for future prosperity?

The European model is somewhat different than the American one even at public universities. It would require some compromise even from the left. I'm not sure exactly but I think there are more Lecturers and fewer Profs in Europe, for instance. In Denmark, the avg Prof only makes $70,000. Adjuncts make around $50,000. I imagine professors (actual tenured Professors) are paid much better in the US.

Positions corresponding to "Lecturer" do exist in the American university system. Tenure is more about job-security than about high pay, so actually "real" professors aren't that expensive[1]: $65k/year for a starting assistant professor, and $95k/year for a full professor (and most tenured professors only make Full Professor towards the end of their career, if at all).

[1] -- https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?Survey...

Here's what I can find. Doesn't really look much better. Full professors are making 94k, but associate and assistant professors are making around or below 70k. Keep in mind that there are usually only a small handful of full professors per department.

https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?Survey...

Why does it have to come from taxes?

Here's the thing: we generally seem to work on the assumption that paying for college is an investment sufficiently worthwhile that people should be willing to consider borrowing money, against their future income potential, to pay for it. Right now, we expect individuals to take on that debt themselves, personally.

That has pretty terrible consequences for the individuals for whom the investment doesn't pay off.

But if, in general it's a good bet that paying to get someone educated will increase the value of their aggregate lifetime economic output, why shouldn't the state be putting some money towards it? The government could borrow money at bond rates and use that to pay for a whole bunch of people to get degrees, and assume that the overall future increase in GDP (and consequent tax take) will be enough to pay back the additional borrowing. An the bonus? Even if there are some people who don't realize the potential economic advantage of their education, on aggregate the bet wins (if you frame it right and make sure the funding went to real degrees with real value, of course).

This is the problem with most rhetoric around government debt. Not all government spending is a write-off - some of it (infrastructure spending, spending on education, R&D funding, international development funding) is an investment in future potential. If an investment is worth making, it's even more worthwhile making it with borrowed money. If the government is borrowing money to pay for medical care for seniors, maybe we have a problem. But to fund educating 20 year olds? That seems likely to be something that could pay off.

> The reality is his policy isn't all that good. It's just very utopian sounding so people love it. Take his Free College For all Bill. It sounds nice doesn't it? Free College for all!

This is what you get when people think with their emotions instead of logic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, on logic, his plan simply won't work. This isn't my logical analysis, though I agree, but the considered opinion of many economists.

The plan, as put forth, is proposed to levy a .025%–.5% tax on stocks, .025%–.1% tax on bonds and .005%–.02% on derivatives with the funds going to health, public services, debt reduction, infrastructure and job creation.

Ignoring the claim that it's a "Robin Hood" tax, and that Robin Hood is being misunderstood here, the idea that it will capture wealth from the rich, or Wall Street, is not really supported in reality. What will likely happen is the same thing that happened when Sweden implemented their own financial transaction tax; the hard-core traders will simply start putting most of their transactions to foreign exchanges, and the bulk of those remaining will be the ones that can't easily switch, which are our pension funds, our 401Ks, etc.

The consensus amongst economic circles is that it will fail to attain even a significant fraction of the revenues it expects to, and that those taxes it does raise revenue from will impact the poor and middle class much more so than the rich it is targeting.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/20/the-stupi...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45583134

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/kamal-ahmed/88722...

>What will likely happen is the same thing that happened when Sweden implemented their own financial transaction tax

I'm not going to argue for the efficacy of the tax your talking about, but the differences in Sweden and the US are too large to make a valid comparison.

The US is the largest economy in the world, a small tax that pushes people out of Swedish markets may not do the same here--US markets may be relatively more attractive.

They are currently very attractive. Once you implement a transaction tax on them though, they become less so.

When transaction volume begins shifting to an untaxed foreign exchange, the companies will begin the process of relisting to be on the foreign exchanges. The process (obviously) isn't easy or fast, but it's preferable to unallocated shares.

Beyond that though, as transaction volume dwindles, and it simply must do so, there are less transactions being taxed. The tax might work as advertised in the near term, but will fail through attrition in out years. Of course, by then, it will have been claimed a success and Bernie will likely be out of office, so it'll be blamed on the next guy.

And, of course, let's not forget the idea that for every $1.00 we increase college subsidies, colleges raise prices by $0.65.

That's not my argument. My argument is that your point about Sweden isn't valid because it's relatively much easier to avoid Swedish markets.

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