Feeling the bern for Sanders' Education plan - My column in the April 2016 Sturbridge Times Magazine

He shows some promise

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

The words of H.L. Mencken must resonate with anyone paying attention this election season. Whether it's the open ended promise to “Make America Great Again” or the laundry list of Bernie Sanders.

At least Senator Sanders has also provided the electorate with a method of payment for his promises. His litany of programs each has a tax, tax increase or closed loophole that will do the trick. That is if, as the song goes, “the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.”

Still, one should not get too excited about what is proffered during campaign season. If you've been around a bit, there is the perennial favorite, “middle class tax cut.” If everyone who made that pledge had fulfilled it, we would by now have negative tax rates.

The man from Vermont also wants to give the American worker a $15 an hour minimum wage. On the surface, that sounds like a winner. It does beg the question, why is $15 the magic number? Why not $20 or $50? I'll let the candidate's fans handle that one.

There is one of the Senator's proposals that does almost warm my heart. I say almost as I used to have a dog in the fight, but no longer. Several years ago, the looming tuition that was staring us in the face would have meant an eager embrace of one of the signature features of the man's campaign.

Bernie Sanders has proposed that public colleges and universities be tuition free. His rationale appears reasonable.

This is not a radical idea. Last year, Germany eliminated tuition because they believed that charging students $1,300 per year was discouraging Germans from going to college. Next year, Chile will do the same. Finland, Norway, Sweden and many other countries around the world also offer free college to all of their citizens. If other countries can take this action, so can the United States of America.

Well, if the Europe can do it, why not us? After all, does not public education benefit everyone?

So can it work? To look at the problem, we again turn to our official think tank, the Long Hill Institute of Educational Policy or LHIoEP for short. After their usual dillettantish investigation they were able to forthrightly come to the conclusion, maybe.

The countries that the Senator cites do have free tuition. How do they do it? In the case of Norway, there is a simple answer. Like most Scandinavian nations, there is a belief in equality so everyone can attain a post-secondary degree if they want it. It works maybe because not everyone wants it.

In spite of the near costless education, if your parents didn't attend college, you probably won't either. So why wouldn't people take advantage of it? One reason from an Hechinger Report article of last June notes that blue collar jobs pay well enough that everyone is more or less middle class. Kind of like when this country had no dearth of such work.

So if the whole country does not go, it is affordable. Of course, the Sanders plan claims that his system of paying for it will allow everyone to attend. His plan should appeal to all.

Whether or not the American people were saved by the bailout in 2008 is arguable. There was however one class that was, the bankers. The candidate wants to levy a fraction of a percent tax on “Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago.” Certainly, we all want to see them pay, but if periodically we have to bail them out, we may have to figure something else out.

There is another problem. In theory if you tax something you get less of it and if you subsidize it, you get more. Some young people might have done a cost benefit analysis and decided that the debt made it not worth it. They might not come to that conclusion if it is near free. Some may go through school and come out with a career and a life. Many will major in fields lacking rigor and prospects. It will have been a pleasant four years at winter camp, but for naught.

That this is already happening is evident from the lampooning of grads who can't get jobs in their field as is heard on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. His retinue will occasionally do a sketch about The Professional Organization of English Majors or P.O.E. M. The words, “Do you want fries with that” have been uttered.

Another consequence is the non-public colleges that will go out of business because competing with free is too much of a disadvantage. Places like Harvard, which is a hedge fund with courses, need not worry. Some small yet solid institutions may go to the wall.

Norway like the other Scandinavian countries is not huge. Even with its North Sea oil, it has to adjust means to ends realistically. In this country, reality rarely rears its ugly head in primary season.

the Long Hill Institute of Educational Policy has pinpointed one group that is passionately supporting Bernie 's plan. College administrators are audibly salivating.