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What we learn is: Autopilot is a very clear name for the commenters in this thread. These commenters understand that an autopilot does not replace a driver. Apparently, it's not such a clear name for other commenters on the same post, and the company called Tesla, who argue that autopilot is safer than a driver.

It seem like, these days, anyone talking about how something is good is "advertising". You're not allowed to praise or recommend anything, only criticize.

Only up to $10k. I can withdraw $10k from my traditional IRA using that loophole, then a lot more from my roth.

This is info people should be aware of, but it doesn't help me if I only have money in a traditional IRA and want to use $100k for a down payment on a house.

You can take your contributions (the principal, not the growth) out of a Roth account before you reach retirement age. The exact rules are complicated, but that's the big core benefit that has me putting money in a Roth. I can use it to retire at 40, or cash out some of it to make a down payment on a house.

This is true only if your home is running an electric heater. Burning hydrocarbons like natural gas, oil, and wood to heat your home directly is more efficient than using them to run a turbine to generate electricity, then run that electricity many miles to your home, then turn it into heat.

It seems like the high spending per student is a bigger issue than who is paying. If 100% of people go to college, a massive amount of money will be spent on college at current US rates (20 million people aged 20-23 * $20,000/year = $400 billion/year as an estimate). I'm not against income redistribution at all, I'm a big fan of it. I don't mind if the government takes half my Bay Area engineer salary. It would just make rents lower and I will end up with the same quality of life. However, I care about the ROI of that redistribution. If the government takes $100,000 from me I would much rather it pay for college for ten people than five people. But if college only cost $10,000/year total [0], the debt incurred by the student's contributions would be more manageable. And the $100,000 could go toward building a subway or something.

[0] the US spends twice as much per student on average (including all sources of funding, government and tuition). http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

Let's consider the distributional effects of giving college aid to 10% of the population vs. 50%. If the 10% were people who would not have otherwise gone to college, it looks like a good move to create income mobility and increase economic growth which will ultimately create more even tax revenue. If the 10% would have gone to college anyway and taken loans (and easily paid them back with their top 10% earnings), the aid starts to looks regressive instead. But when we are talking about 50% of the population, things seem different.

Universities get a property tax exemption that allows them to do things with land in downtown areas that wouldn't be economically rational for typical real estate investors.