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New (sigh)
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

Too many people were interested in yelling about e-mail servers than paying attention to the substance of what she was saying.

Cheers,
Scott.
New I heard her plenty.
Bernie saying we shouldn't be alone in the industrialized world, that we should have a single payer, universal health care system was "pie in the sky." Tuition free college? More pie in the sky (despite the fact that I *actually had that* in the 1970's - note that was pre-Clinton revolution).

This is truly baffling to me. I seriously don't see what's so hard about admitting that a candidate horrible enough to lose to Donald Trump was a horrible candidate? I really don't understand that. What worries me is that if enough Democrats actually believe she would have won if not for Comey and Vlad they'll look to nominate another just like her. If that happens, Trump will win re-election.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New There are plenty of industrial countries that don't have "single payer".
Universal coverage, even "free healthcare" doesn't automatically mean single payer. Take Switzerland, for example.

Bernie (and you) getting stuck on the purity of your jargon causes you to miss real-world constraints.

Similarly with "free college". Martin works for one of the California public college systems:

229
🌷 Martin says:
February 10, 2016 at 5:16 pm
Free college doesn’t give any relief to those who already have large education debts in a repayment status.


That’s a trivial problem. The non-trivial problem is that you have an economics reality that needs to be dealt with which is that the only real mechanism we as a society have for balancing supply and demand is cost. Once you eliminate that mechanism, you need to invent a new mechanism. The Germans have a national university entrance qualification. So do the Chinese. Let’s just substitute the SAT in for that test, since it’s the likely substitute for such a test.

Guess what – the SAT is far more biased against low-income people than the financial aid system is in this country. All you’ve done is taken issues of inequity out of the college loan system and substituted every issue of inequity in the K-12 system, from how tax dollars are distributed to issues like school lunch programs and crime. Right now cost serves as something of an imperfect moderating function for the higher education system, but it’s a better system than structural problems inherent in how we allocate tax dollars for social programs. Free college will take those structural problems and magnify them even more. You’ll take a system where it’s challenging for a kid from inner city Detroit to get admitted to a top university and make it a near impossibility.

You could probably triple the size of the higher education system, but you’ll still need filtering mechanisms. Can every kid getting free tuition study engineering at MIT? Of course not. Can every kid study engineering? Still no. That SAT will also govern what you can study, which the current system only affects at the edges. But China’s system does precisely this – you got this score, you get to study X at universities Y or Z. Guess what – as soon as Chinese households get some money, one of the first things they do is export their kid to the US where students have far more say in where and what they study. Free college would destroy that system in the US, and substitute something a lot more like China’s system, and well-off US families will export their kids to the UK or some other country.

And there is ZERO reason for free tuition. Education is an appreciating asset. It is one of a very few things that are worth borrowing money for – a house and health care being the other two. And that’s pretty much the whole list. Without a college degree you are worth, say $30K per year to the labor market. With a college degree you are worth say $45K. For $15K per year in higher earnings, you can easily afford to borrow $100K. It’s a fantastic return on investment – better than almost anyone would get from any other investment.

One big problem behind the exploding college costs argument is that consumers aren’t being responsible. Borrowing $100K without picking up any marketable skills is sending a lot of students back to minimum wage jobs. I get that you really want to study classics, and don’t want to learn programming, but programming pays off the loan. Fuck, my first programming job 25 years ago was on a project in classics because it was far easier for them to find a programmer that bothered to study classics than to find a classicist that bothered to study programming. Much of it ties back to college loans not discriminating based on what students study – so you have student studying subjects far in excess of what society’s needs are with loans not helping to be a regulating function, and that also drives university decisions to expand programs that are cheap to offer over those that are expensive, but better serve students. If student loans could be higher for students studying in-demand subjects, that would shift everyone toward better outcomes.

Free tuition takes everything that is broken in our educational attainment system and makes it worse. Better would be to start with a few sensible things – how about child care and protections for workers who start families so that women get far better opportunities to work off their college loans? That would help everyone. If you want to let students study whatever, then a national program that takes some percentage of your gross income over 20 years and returns that money to the institutions where you studied (prorated, etc.) That gives universities big incentives to expand programs that lead to better paying jobs, improve skills, and improve placement. It’s not free, but it’s deferred like a loan, guaranteed, and provides positive rather than negative incentives.


I don't agree with everything he says (my dad, too, spent very little for his college education, and got his masters through his company going to school at night). But he's right that there are huge implications in taking financial aid out of the picture by making college "free".

Back in the 1970s (and before), states paid a huge portion of the education spending for things like college. Now, they hardly pay anything in many cases - take Virginia for example.

Clinton's plan ("debt-free college") made sense.

She lead the race the whole time, until Comey stuck his big fat head in it.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New “a candidate horrible enough to lose to Donald Trump”
Yeah, by three million more votes. It wasn’t a candidate problem, it was a structural problem. Here’s hoping that two years from now the Democrats nominate Johnny Unbeatable!

cordially,
     How the Democrats will lose again Part Deux. - (mmoffitt) - (50)
         There's no evidence that he could - (drook) - (48)
             Did he really? - (Another Scott) - (47)
                 Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. - (mmoffitt) - (46)
                     I'll just leave this here... - (Another Scott) - (44)
                         Just a couple things and a question. - (mmoffitt) - (43)
                             Re: Just a couple things and a question. - (Another Scott) - (42)
                                 I would have thought you were close enough to my age to remember Real Democrats. - (mmoffitt) - (41)
                                     Re: I would have thought you were close enough to my age to remember Real Democrats. - (Another Scott) - (40)
                                         Not hallucinating, maybe. But you might want to think about getting your eyes checked. ;0) - (mmoffitt) - (39)
                                             Agreed. In an ideal world, Comey wouldn't have mattered. But he did. - (Another Scott) - (36)
                                                 But she was blown out of the water in rural areas. - (mmoffitt) - (35)
                                                     (sigh) - (Another Scott) - (3)
                                                         I heard her plenty. - (mmoffitt) - (2)
                                                             There are plenty of industrial countries that don't have "single payer". - (Another Scott)
                                                             “a candidate horrible enough to lose to Donald Trump” - (rcareaga)
                                                     In that vein.. - (Ashton)
                                                     Piss gasoline on rural voters and set ’em on fire - (rcareaga) - (9)
                                                         The view from the Bay Area is a lot different than the view from the Mid West. -NT - (mmoffitt) - (8)
                                                             I’m right and you’re wrong. -NT - (rcareaga) - (7)
                                                                 rofl. :-) - (Another Scott)
                                                                 Just like 2016. -NT - (mmoffitt) - (5)
                                                                     Fuck the midwestern voters - (rcareaga) - (4)
                                                                         great idea for a movie there - (boxley)
                                                                         Resigned to never win the White House again are you? - (mmoffitt) - (2)
                                                                             IOW, keep ignoring the people disenfranchised to chase the WWC?? -NT - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                                                                 Not at all. - (mmoffitt)
                                                     I wonder why the GOP is trying to keep people from voting. - (Another Scott) - (19)
                                                         thats called use it or lose it - (boxley) - (17)
                                                             Do you lose your right to free speech if you don't write your governor? - (Another Scott) - (16)
                                                                 right to vote sure, but that ends on death or moving, voting is extremely local -NT - (boxley) - (15)
                                                                     Does that happen? - (drook) - (14)
                                                                         detroit, more votes counted than on the rolls -NT - (boxley) - (13)
                                                                             How many? - (drook) - (8)
                                                                                 how many peope in ohio were took off of the rolls that should not have been? Is there a hard number? -NT - (boxley) - (7)
                                                                                     You can Google as well as me. - (Another Scott) - (6)
                                                                                         so a number of one, as cited by earlier post. -NT - (boxley) - (5)
                                                                                             Eh? - (Another Scott) - (4)
                                                                                                 get me a number of actual living voters that were denied voting rights - (boxley) - (3)
                                                                                                     Read the links. -NT - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                                                                                         Just like you demand for me to prove voter fraud by producing actual cases I am requesting the same - (boxley) - (1)
                                                                                                             ... - (Another Scott)
                                                                             Meh. - (Another Scott) - (3)
                                                                                 He does -NT - (drook)
                                                                                 a circumstance that suggested errors on the part of machines and/or human workers rather than fraud - (boxley) - (1)
                                                                                     Glad you finally agree. -NT - (Another Scott)
                                                         But I am trying to help. - (mmoffitt)
                                             You didn't address the question in the linked article - (drook) - (1)
                                                 He disqualified his reasoning himself. - (mmoffitt)
                     Re: Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. - (drook)
         as long as we get over the retreads and get someone outside of the machine - (boxley)

I bellied up to the sandbar, and he poured me the usual: Rusty Snail, hold the grunion, shaken, not stirred. With a peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich on the side - heavy on the mako.
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