Heres a paragraph from Will Swaim’s recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times (emphasis added):
If there’s hope for party solidarity over the course of the convention it may rest here: Hillary is now a true believer in Bernie’s “free” college education proposal. She came to this faith reluctantly and then only because it was tactically shrewd: Bernie’s followers want free education. Hillary can offer them the promise that she’ll try.
Why are “Bernie’s followers” – the majority of whom are young people – praised as being idealistic, “progressive,” socially concerned, and caring when one of their signature issues is simply to force strangers to pay their college tuition? (If I marched and chanted and bellowed to press my ‘demand’ that strangers be forced to pay for the car that I drive, would I be celebrated by the media as an idealistic, “progressive, socially concerned, and caring kind of guy?)
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Note that in one odd way Sandersnista policies (or Hillary Clinton’s version of them) will indeed reduce the cost to many young people of attending college, and this result will arise even if government doesn’t increase the amount of dollars that it spends on subsidizing college tuition. The cost for many young people of attending college will fall with increases in the minimum wage and other government intrusions into the economy that make it more difficult for young people to find full-time employment.
A large chunk of the cost of attending college is the forgone incomes that students must endure because they spend time in class and studying rather than working at jobs. In many cases this cost is greater even than the tuition payments. Because higher minimum wages and many of the other policies ‘demanded’ by Sandersnistas will make it next to impossible for many young people to find gainful employment, the cost to those young people of going to college will fall even if the tuition bills that they must pay do not shrink.
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In fact, even Trumpkins’s policies – by weakening the U.S. economy as they surely will – will also have this same effect on the cost of attending college.
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One small note about Swaim’s claim that “Hillary is now a true believer in Bernie’s ‘free’ college education proposal.” “True believer”? Mr. Swaim obviously wrote that line in jest. Identifying Hillary Clinton’s true beliefs about government policy is a much more meaningless and futile exercise than is that of identifying the true color of a chameleon.
