Tax funded college education at public universities?

[Scuba]

14 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Yes, and a small tax on Wall Street trades is the way to fund it.
	13 (93%)
	No, it'd be a sweet unicorn, but it would plunge the entire globe into a depression of monumental proportions.
	0 (0%)
	No, it'd be a cool rainbow, but some rich guy's kid would get it too.
	0 (0%)
	Other (please explain).
	1 (7%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[rogerashton]

1. It made a big difference in my life.

Thank you, Huey Long, and Go Tigers!

[daleanime]

2. I can't believe that anyone, much less any democrat....

thinks this is a bad idea.

[Scuba]

3. How about a DINO?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-kids-tuition

Clinton Slams Sanders' Free College Idea By Invoking Donald Trump's Kids

"I disagree with free college for everybody. I don’t think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trump’s kids to college."

[daleanime]

4. As she ever explained why she thinks.....

that the tRump's kids will be in a public school?

And yeah, kind of curls my stomach.

[Drahthaardogs]

6. That is really too bad that she thinks that way.

First of all, I doubt Donald's kid went to any state university system, but if they did, why would I care if they got to go for free? Hell, they tell us we don't need a manufacturing base any longer, that we are now a service-oriented country. Fine. Then we damned well better educate as many of our kids as we can. We better make it easy and we better make it cheap.

This should be like Social Security. Everyone is eligible to collect it.

[Scuba]

8. Means testing: Just another way to divide Americans and keep them powerless.

[ryan_cats]

5. Cut

Cut to the chase and just give the entitled class a salary.

I am actually all for this for the first two years but it should also apply to trade schools as well. California had the finest community college schools (probably still do) and they were free except for books. Now the first step up costs almost as much as going to CSUS.

[Scuba]

7. +1,000 for trade schools/tech colleges!

[Throd]

9. I would have done better at trade school than college.

I ended up treating college like a trade school. Never got a degree, but learned enough to get a job in my chosen field.

[Igel]

10. Public universities are state-level.

A Wall Street tax would be federal. In education, federal meddling has sometimes proven good, but usually it proves bad. You get all the strings, but the funding isn't there to cover them. Considering that the federal government, which has helped public education so much in the last 30 years is now interested in spreading their magic to "protect" college kids from "private colleges"--which actually means any college, public or private, 2- or 4-year, once you get past the "sales pitch" and look at the "contract"--just no.


Dependence on Wall Street bit NY State in the ass repeatedly. You tax bonuses, etc., and they provide a lot of income and hurt those we enjoy hurting. But then when times are tight the first thing that happens is you lose a large proportion of your state income because the tax base is effectively quite narrow. Calif. has the same problem. It would hit at precisely the same time that the funding was most necessary.


A small tax would also reduce stock prices or reduce the effective ROI. That's meaningless if you don't own stocks, but if you do that can hurt over the course of years. We think "billionaire playboys" and "wealthy hedge funds." But that also goes for people like my father, who was a steelworker and had an IRA from his lump-sum pension distribution and also for the DCP that I still (nominally) have with a state pension fund. When we hear about how the 1% control so much wealth, there's a caveat: We read it as "they control X% of the (total) wealth," but the source material typically says "they control X% of the privately-held wealth." Pension funds control a lot of $$. Some are state or federal, some are union held, some are held in trust by organizations set up to manage specific pensions.

In other words, just don't focus on those you intend to punish or tax. Focus on all of those you'd tax and punish. Sometimes we think intent is meaningless; sometimes we think that blind intent provides some sort of papal indulgence.


Moreover, given that it's easier and easier to be listed on overseas exchanges ... The stock market is already a corporation and has run the numbers of how much traffic it's lost and what they'd like to do to attract more traffic.

No doom and gloom here. But issues that take the glow off that particular rose.

[Scuba]

11. Taxes are not punishment; that's a right-wing talking point.