In a country with so much wealth, we should raise our expectations - TopicsExpress



          

In a country with so much wealth, we should raise our expectations and demand free education for all! We all do better when we all do better. I know thats unAmerican these days. Political junkies, add LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik to your reading lists: the proposal fails to address one glaring flaw in the nations overall system of public higher education: It should all be free. Thats the way it is in Germany, for instance, where there is a long tradition of low-cost university study. Free tuition has since come to be viewed as an anachronism, charming to contemplate in the abstract but simply incompatible with modern life. But the numbers dont support that conclusion. The real obstacle to reinstating it is that it represents a path to social mobility for the working class and the poor--thats the aspect thats anachronistic in our grasping modern world. Consider this: When the corporate plutocrat Meg Whitman was running for California governor in 2010, she had no trouble proposing the elimination of the states capital gains tax, which brought in more than $10 billion in a decent year. Eliminating all in-state tuition, according to a UC report issued around the same time, would have cost only $3 billion. Which option would be an investment yielding a greater, broader return to the state?
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 22:03:08 +0000

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