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The Great Debate - Free College For All
#44
(07-03-2019, 12:56 PM)eriehiker Wrote: I think that the idea that any party in Washington is fiscally responsible is crazy. Both Democrats and Republicans spend money like drunken fools. I just looked at the U.S. Debt Clock and we are now past one trillion in the budget deficit just for this year. The most popular theory right now is that debts don't matter. This idea is even put forward by prominent Republicans. Of course, they don't matter until they matter.

The reality is that policy drives debt/deficit policy and not the other way around. Each party makes an a priori decision about what it wants to do and then it creates a debt/deficit policy to fit. So Democrats like social programs and Republicans like military spending.

I don't like the idea of free college because I think that there is value in a college student having a job during college. I also think that there are a great many things that can be done to make college pricing less opaque. I search a lot of college web pages looking for tuition rates and it is always three or four links in. There should be a law that places the credit hour price on every piece of mail sent out by a college.

One thing that I do have a problem with is Republicans criticizing Democrats for wanting to spend money on free college. I have watched politics closely since the 1980 election. The craziest thing that I have ever seen is the invasion of Iraq. George W. Bush had everything set up perfectly with Iraq until he invaded. Saddam Hussein was doing pretty much everything Bush wanted him to do. My biggest issue with the invasion at the time was that it would be a colossal waste of lives and money. And we have spent trillions of dollars on the thing. I know that Hillary voted for the authorization, but this was a Republican war. It was going to happen no matter what Democrats in the Senate wanted to do. They voted for authorization to keep themselves relevant politically. If you actually look back at what happened, you will find this to be true.

I thought the war was stupid at the time, but now the country is filled with people who supported the war, went to fight it and now demand generous government programs to honor their service. There is something really wrong with that given that Iraq was a Republican war. Also, many young people join the military now essentially as a jobs program.

The focus on the military and war was an a priori decision that drove policy on debt and deficit. So I see no problem with Democrats who make an a priori decision about free college. The spending/deficit argument is completely empty to me.


I’m very curious about the sequester cuts that should kick in this year. My guess there will still be deficit spending.


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The Great Debate - Free College For All - by videogamesrock - 07-03-2019, 12:58 PM

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