Matthew Yglesias:
“he most decisive reason to like Sanders’s goal of free college, however, didn’t become clear until the campaign itself began. The great thing about free college is that people know what it means and some people are excited about it.
Clinton’s college affordability plan, a much more complicated compact aimed at the goal of allowing students to graduate debt-free, utterly fails on this score. It is true that her plan is more fiscally progressive — delivering more help to poor students and less to non-poor ones. It is also true that I have never met a person who is excited about this plan, even among people who are excited about Clinton in general.”
So this is the problem with the ideas wonks create. They are Rube Goldberg contraptions – like Obamacare. Complicated, and hard to defend.
Single Payer is simple. Free College is simple. The reason people like Clinton don’t like them is for big government, and always try to talk about public-private partnerships and other such crap.
I think the young see through it – they see these complicated ideas are really nothing more than symbolic – designed to avoid the obvious answer.
Designed to be kludge. And that is the kindest interpretation one can put upon them.
Public/private is the worst of both worlds.
Have to give LBJ props for going the “all seniors in” route on Medicare instead of crafting a program with exceptions and special consideration for various interest groups and individuals. Reduced the carping and individual criticisms when it’s one size for all, no exceptions, because then everybody has an equal ownership share in the program.
While our hearts want to assist the most disadvantaged among us, it does lead to resentment when those not far from “most disadvantaged” receive little to no help. Doesn’t help that politicians refrain from stressing all the assistance that white people got from government programs and POC were denied the same assistance when they attempt to correct the prior injustice. I’m thinking of post WWII GI home loans and the original exceptions to Social Security.
I sold my house in Virginia to a black veteran who bought it on a 100% loan to value VA loan. I had to eat 1.5 points as well, because the buyer is forbidden to pay points on a VA loan. I didn’t like finding out about the points at closing. We had already had a deal on the price. If I had known about the points, I would have held out for another $1000 (the cost of the points).
That was when? In the initial years after WWII when most GIs were able to build up some capital through home ownership via VA mortgages, AAs vets were mostly locked out. A mere ten years made made a difference.
You are talking about when we were too young for Kindergarten. Ancient history. Might as well complain about slavery. It’s over. No relevance to today’s policies.
It was 1981.
Please don’t get defensive, but wealth is cumulative.
How much home ownership wealth did white vets accumulate in the thirty years from 1945 to 1975? And with each of those years, the capital cost of housing for those vets (approx 50% of monthly/annual out of pocket cash) was fixed; whereas, those that rented paid the current dollar cost on that 50% portion. That wealth accumulation wasn’t limited to home equity. It provided the financial security that made it more feasible for the children of those homeowners to go to college or get a job without having to contribute to supporting Mom and Pop.
In excluding domestics from the original Social Security, it excluded AA women that proportionally made up the higher percentage of domestics. When granny was too old to work, the family had to support her. Even if it didn’t cost the family much more to support granny, that much more over time adds up. When my grandmother was widowed, she went to work as a domestic; so, she her Social Security checks were meager. However, she owned a large house and took in boarders which allowed her five children to complete high school and send her one son to college and help with a down payment on a house for at least one and maybe two of her children.
LBJ was deeply informed by FDR.
Can you imagine the contraption that the Brookings Institution would come up with today for Medicare?
We know what the Heritage Foundation came up with for health insurance reform and all these “think” tanks have a propensity to construct the most complex solutions possible.
I think you have two orthogonal axes here – the complexity axis (simple to wonky) and the progressive axis (progressive to regressive). Yglesias is confusing them.
If I didn’t have actual work I’m supposed to be doing, I’d be tempted to spend a few days making graphs of candidate proposals now. 🙂
hope you will make some graphs of candidate proposals when you have time
I notice that Bernie’s proposal stresses public colleges.
But of course. Enough with the public subsidies for private schools. Those that want “private” can do so on their own dime.
Absolutely