Posted on 02/14/2016 12:49:51 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Bernie Sanders is running for president of the United States proclaiming that under his presidency, all Americans will have the opportunity to attend public college for free. There's only one fly in the ointment of this free college proposal: today in Illinois, half of the public college and university tuition goes not toward education, but toward pensions for college professors who no longer work.
So in order for Sanders to make college free, someone, other than students, has to pick up the huge cost of the retired professors' pensions. He has said nothing about eliminating this cost by forcing public university professors to save for their own retirements. Sanders is in an awkward situation. He has to gain the support of young voters by criticizing the high cost of college but can't acknowledge that his party not only depends on this money, but established this quid pro quo setup.
The Illinois Policy Institute has reported that the huge pension plans, which are unfair, economically unjust, and exploitative of the middle class, are responsible for half the tuition cost of a public university education in Illinois. In 2006, just 20% of tuition went to pay pensions. Now pensions are the main driver of tuition increases. It is unfair for students to fund the luxury pension plans of professors who didn't have to save for their own.
And of course, Illinois is not the only state that pays its public college and university professors one-percenter salaries. California's education system actually pays higher salaries to professors. Khalil Tadsch earns $2.3 million a year at the UCLA Medical center, and 40 others earn salaries of between one million and this $2.3 million. Medical school tuition is $95K a year and more.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Bernie the revolutionary, isn’t calling for public pension reform.
That’s business as usual.
All the 25-year-old college graduates with $100,000 college loan debts are going to be taxed up the wazoo so that 15 and 16-year-olds can go to college for free!!
I just don't see this as a winning strategy, unless people are dumber than I think.
It is not a shakedown of the students, it is a shakedown of free market workers. We are just their sheep to be sheared for the government leftists benefit.
Bernie has a much bigger overall problem. He is a communist/socialist and those do not work. And that is what he is trying to sell...of course, under the banner of a “everything free” faux utopian banner.
In general, college has already been dumbed down to accomodate the Affirmative Action crowd and the political correctness that passes for thinking and judgement.
Isn’t that enough?
Imagine what they will be like when every remaining idiot and libtard can just walk into admissions and get their free pass.
In the OLD days, tuition in many state universities was free for in-state students.
No one was crying “socialism” back then, and no actual socialist (like Sanders) was making “free tuition” a centerpiece of his/her program!
Regarding his politicking on free tuition for example, Sanders is unsurprisingly clueless that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes.
In fact, a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified in broad terms that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue that Congress cannot ustify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, intrastate schooling not among those powers.
Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States. - Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Remember in November !
When patriots elect Trump, Cruz, or whatever conservative they elect, they need to also elect a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its Section 8-limited powers to support the new president, but also protect the states from unconstitutional federal government overreach.
Also, consider that such a Congress would probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
“all Americans will have the opportunity to attend public college for free”
Does this ‘opportunity’ for free college mean when you graduate you can freely go forth and prosper or will there be strings attached like being told you have to do some type of community service with your ‘free’ education for a specified time?
someone, other than students, has to pick up the huge cost of the retired professors’ pensions.
Why??
I thought we outlawed Involuntary Servitude, If the government can claim first right to the fruits of labor of the citizenry for the wants of a previous generation, isn’t that in reality a Slave Contract they are trying to uphold??
A ucla law degree costs about $200K. Sound like a lot of money? A first year graduate makes an AVERAGE of $80K. The average salary 20 years out is $190K. Over a lifetime of 40 years of practice, a ucla graduate will earn between $8M and $10M as an average in today’s dollars.
They can pay their own tuition. At $200K, it’s a bargain.
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