free public college for all Americans would cost $70 billion a year.
I got interested in this number and googled a bit. This appears to be the report that prompts this statement:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2015/2015012.pdfThis report found that student tuitions for 4 year degrees added up to $55 billion in 2013. 2 year degree tuition totaled $10 billion and less then two year degree tuition totaled $400 million. There was also another $22 billion in federal grant money which already defrays tuition expenses. (This disregards private for profit education which overwhelmingly isn't educational, is corrupt and should be completely abolished without hesitation). In addition there is tuition at graduate programs which has been rapidly growing in recent years as masters programs, which typically have tuition unlike PhD programs, have become more common. So 70 billion
on top of existing federal grant money. However...
While tuition was perhaps 70 billion more, total operating expenses were about 183 billion in 2013. And while capital expenses are very justly maligned you do need some infrastructure investments. Colleges could cut back on prestige projects but most of those 120 billion dollars a year aren't going anywhere. So it's actually 70 billion dollars on top of existing grant money and on top of existing capital grants and tax benefits to public colleges and universities. For instance public colleges and universities run very profitable hedge funds which are tax exempt and that tax exemption means more funds for their capital expenses.
And then of course there are the state grants. The reason why these tuition are so low is because state governments still subsidize a hefty chunk of education. If you make tuition free, states are naturally going to want to shift as much of the expense onto the federal government as possible. It's possible to design something like medicare that addresses these cost sharing issues but it's not a trivial matter of just ponying up the tuition money. For instance states subsidize a lot of need based financial aid. Free tuition removes the "need" part of that. So states wouldn't fund those programs and the cost would shift to tuition, i.e. the federal government.
And there is the matter of cost controls. States have some ability to meddle with universities and pressure them to keep costs down. The department of education does not. So now the states are pushing for universities to provide the best education the federal government would pay for.
All in all, I think the much better number to start from is the "Total revenues and other sources" figure. $317 billion a year. Setting aside the matter of cost inflation, let's suppose that the federal government is going to pick of 54% of those costs*. The rest are going to be funded by state matching funds (like medicaid uses), endowment operating profits, alumni donations and the like. That leaves 171 billion dollars in federal costs a year.
This is all before considering that if you make college education free, more people are going to pursue it. And they are going to seek more expensive education. I can say from my personal experience that I couldn't afford the college I was at so I dropped out and then re-enrolled in a much cheaper program. If my tuition was free, I would have stayed at the more expensive program. So costs are going to be higher for that reason. 64% of americans ages 25-29 have some college and 34% have a bachelors degree. 40% of students dropout. That's a lot of people not getting degrees. I'm going to wildly guess that college costs rise 25% as more students go to school and stay in school. So now we are up to $213 billion.
Now let's compare that to "Some three years ago, the Iraq war was estimated to have cost us $2 trillion dollars." 2003-2013 is 10 years so the comparison of free tuition for 10 years is by my educated guess, about 2 trillion dollars in federal expenses and 1.4 trillion dollars in state expenses. So it would in fact have been more expensive then the Iraq war. There is a pretty damn convincing argument that the money would have been better spent. But the notion that free tuition would be only 70 billion a year or 700 billion a decade is just plain wrong.
* I assumed 10% is funded by non-government sources and the same 60-40 cost split that exists in medicaid.
Thanks to mainiac for urging a good 30% of the Democratic Party to find another party, because "The Party DGAF bout your issues, we've got an election to win!"
No, that's what you should do if you can't stand the idea that the democratic party wants to win the election. What I would recommend you do is organize people, get out the vote, seek the most qualified candidates you can and work to convince people of the righteousness of your cause. What I wouldn't suggest you do is bitch that the game is rigged because you lost.
Well, to be honest most of the pro-election reform crows has this as its main argument. Mainiac's just stating it rather bluntly.
That is the argument I presented for the specific issue of bitching about superdelegates existing. Someone said no one has presented a justification of superdelegates. Well now you have my justification of superdelegates.
My argument in favor of Clinton is that I think she would be a better president. Her campaign platform is better IMHO and I think she would do a better job fighting congress that is going to present scorched earth opposition to any democrat.
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