Is Warren’s college plan progressive?

If you take progressivism to mean “improvement of society by reform”, Warren’s plan is clearly progressive. It reduces the pie going to the rich, greatly improves the lot of students who are less than rich, and doesn’t harm the poor.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The difficulty with the plan as proposed is not whether it is progressive or not but that it targets the wrong behavior – borrowing for education. If the goal is to make education more accessible – subsidize the university directly to either facilitate point of admission grants in the first place or simply bring down tuition cost to all attendees.

Under this proposal (assuming one thinks Warren would win and it could get passed) the maximizing strategy is to borrow as much as one possibly can with the hope/expectation that it would ultimately be forgiven. If that’s the “right” strategy, then it would benefit those with the greatest borrowing capacity which most certainly is not students from low income families but is in fact families which could probably pay most of the cost themselves but would choose not to in order to capture a benefit they couldn’t access directly by virtue of being ‘too rich’ for grants or other direct aid.

I don’t understand the fear, in certain areas of what’s apparently the left, of giving benefits to people in the middle of the income/wealth curve.

The expansion of the term “middle class” doesn’t help with this, nor does the expansion of education. These debates often sound as if some of the participants think of “middle class” as the children of physicians and attorneys, who moreover are compensated the way they were in the 1950s.

The ability to switch between “it’s reasonable to have 100% college attendance within 5 years from now” and “of course college is only for the elite classes” is not reassuring to the average more or less educated observer (who may or may not be satisfied, depending on temperament and so on, with the answer that of course such matters are above her head).

The actual plan is for free tuition at public colleges. So not “the most expensive four-year institutions” that Baum and Turner discuss. [HB: they’re referring to the most expensive 4-year public institutions]

There’s also expanded support for non-tuition expenses, means-tested debt cancellation, and a fund for historically black universities, all of which make the plan more progressive. And beyond that, I could argue that, for lower-income students on the margin of being able to attend and complete school, we should count not only the direct financial aid granted, but also the lifetime benefits of the education the aid enables. But suffice it to say, I think you’re attacking a caricature.

the college plan does not actually offer ‘universal access’

Given that something like one third of Americans gets a college degree, Warren’s plan seems good enough. It’s not obvious to me that universal access to college education is a progressive goal.

I think the point L2P is making is that you shouldn’t assume that people’s behaviour under Warren’s plan will be the same as it is now, only with one particular cost item removed for a lot of people who currently have to pay it. People perceive services that are provided FOC, with no eligibility criteria and no conditions attached, differently from paid-for services – even services with 100% rebates. Even if it doesn’t actually deter people from taking up the service, it has broader effects, “Does he or she deserve that rebate? Would I qualify for it? If I did qualify, can I justify taking the money? I’m paying for this – am I getting value for money?”

Ultimately the question isn’t who benefits from making X or Y free for all, but whether X or Y should be free for all; if it should, then taking the cash nexus out of it is a public service.

Harry,
this is more complicated than you make it sound. Increasing the supply of the well educated should decrease the price of their labor and that should help people with less education. Countries that subsidize the education of doctors and dentists pay less for them.

@reason 05.06.19 at 2:47 pm(13), Harry 05.06.19 at 3:08 pm @14 — I think there is some confusion in the discussion, with the different functions of the education system being treated as a uniform indefinitely partitionable substance, like, say bologna, which they are not. There is, for example, the difference between education as a class filter, as an indoctrination practice, and as vocational training . Education as a class filter, for instance, has zero value (for those who now value it) if 100% go to college, but may still be valuable as vocational training or indoctrination. A clarification of purpose might be useful if the hard work of wresting money from the better-off is to be engaged in heartily.

This is rather blurring “progressive” as a meaning. In US politics it has one meaning. What Progressives like. In terms of economic definitions of tax etc it has another. Meaning that the effect is greater for those on lower incomes, or the costs fall more heavily upon those with higher. The US income tax system is highly progressive for example, as the average tax rate rises strongly with income.

Hey, sure, maybe not as much as many Progressives would like but it’s still a progressive tax system.

The problem with analysing as Sitaraman does is that we want to analyse the raising of tax revenues separately from the spending of them. It we taxed the 1% to provide a benefit exclusively for the 2% then that’s progressive but not particularly Progressive. So it’s not a useful method of analysis.

Warren’s taxation plans are progressive, yes. The benefits only flow to those who attend college. Largely, but not exclusively, those who will be in the upper half of the income distribution during their working lives. Not hugely progressive really, is it?

– but as nearly all the arguments against Warrens plan are the type of arguments which very cleverly twist her very admirable effort to get ”debt relief” for millions of young Americans – and like with ”Health Care” – WE are ”totally unable” to focus on ”the real meaning” of any… ”issue” anymore – it might take a really, REALLY long time until also Americans understand that ”education” -(and Health Care and Living Wages and secure jobs and vacations) are NOT some ”financial instruments” in order to create more ”debt”.

I think this work by Susan Dynarski and others really makes the case that reducing price will change access and populations significantly: https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-U-of-Michigan-Appealed-to/245294

But even apart from that, the argument of the post seems like it would suggest that many things that we currently fund publicly are not progressive in a problematic way. Everything from arts to national parks to math research “benefits” the rich more than the poor. There’s possibly a case that public provision of these goods is problematic when we as a society could spend that money on those who are more disadvantaged. But that’s a very strong claim and implicates far more than free college.

Finally, it’s worth comparing the previous major expansion of education in the US. The point at which high school attendance was as widespread as college attendance is now (about 70% of high school graduates enroll in college of some form right away) was around 1930, well after universal free high school was available. I think moving to universal free college is an important step to raise those rates, just as free high school was.

What is the motivation for this definitional argument? And why the insistence on isolating this plan of Warren’s platform from the rest of her proposals? Her platform also includes a childcare & early childhood education element which is pretty relevant. Is that progressive? If she later rolls out a massively distributive K-12 policy, does that change the equation?

I’d prefer either a direct critique the policy (implied here but not totally stated) or a direct critique of Warren as a candidate in general.

It strikes me that the argument made here against a universal program of tuition free college is not all that different than an argument made against social security — that the benefits go disproportionately to middle class and professional class individuals. Since in the case of Social Security, one has to be in gainfully employed to participate and one’s benefits are, up to a cap, based on one’s contributions, middle class and professional class individuals receive greater benefits. Poor individuals, including those who have not been employed for long periods of time, receive less benefits. (There are quirks in this 10 second summary, such as disability benefits, but not so much as to alter this basic functioning.)

Every now and again, there are proposals to “means test” social security, using this functioning as the reasoning. A couple of points are worth considering.

First, it is the universality of social security that makes it a political ‘third rail,’ such that no matter how it would like to do away with such a ‘socialist’ program, the GOP never acts on proposals to privatize it, even when they have the Presidency and the majorities that would allow it to get through Congress. The universality thus provides a vital security to the benefits that poor and working people receive from the program, since it makes it politically impossible to take it away. Since social security is often the only pension that many poor and working people get (unlike middle class and professional class individuals who have other sources of retirement income), the loss of it would be far more devastating to them. There is an important way, therefore, that they are served by the current configuration of the system, even given its skewing.

Second, and following from the above, it is important to recognize that the great bulk of proposals to “means test” Social Security come from the libertarian right, not the left, and that they are designed to undercut the support for Social Security, in order to make its privatization politically viable.

Most colleges and universities “means test” financial aid for their students, which is one of the reasons why it is generally inadequate and heavily weighted toward loans as opposed to grants. I think it is a fair generalization of American social welfare experience history to say that “means tested” programs are both more vulnerable politically (think of the Reagan ‘welfare queen’ narrative) and more poorly funded than universal programs.

There are additional argument about the skewing of Social Security benefits, such as the fact that they go disproportionately to the elderly, while those currently living in poverty are disproportionately children. This argument mistakes the positive effects of the program — before Social Security and Medicare the elderly were the most impoverished — for an inegalitarian design element.

The solution to the fact that children bear the brunt of poverty in the US is not to undermine the program that has lifted the elderly out of poverty but to institute programs that address the problem of childhood poverty. Universal quality day care, for example, provides the greatest immediate economic benefits to middle class and professional class families who are now paying for such services, but it provides poor and working class kids with an education ‘head start’ that would otherwise go only to the children of those families that could afford to pay for it. And insofar as day care is provided, it makes it easier for poor and working class parents (often in one parent households) to obtain decent employment.

So the failings of universal programs are best addressed, I would argue, by filling in the gaps with more universal programs, not ‘means testing’ them.

To the extent that Warren’s ‘free tuition’ proposal addresses only some of the financial disadvantages of poor and working people obtaining a college education, the response should not be “oh, this is not progressive,” but what do we do to address the other issues, such as living expenses. It is not as if there are no models on how to do this. All we need to do is look at Nordic countries that provide post-secondary students both free tuition and living expenses.

Having grown up and gone to university in Germany it is simply incomprehensible to me that there is tuition supporters on the political left in the U.S. It’s true that free college isn’t universal in the same sense free K-12 education is. But neither are libraries (they exclude those who are functionally illiterate completely, and their services surely go mostly to upper middle class people who have opportunity and education to read regularly), for example. Neither are roads – the poor overwhelmingly live in inner cities, often take public transport – it’s middle class suburbanites that mostly profit. Speaking of public transport, I assume Henry opposes rail; it is very middle class, the poor use buses. (The last argument actually has considerable traction in Los Angeles, it’s not completely far fetched.)

Sorry for the name mix-up. I did live in LA for a long time, I do know why the argument has traction, and I supported the Bus Riders Union my whole time there. Doesn’t mean I agree that the way to improve bus service is to oppose rail, any more than the way to improve K-12 education is to cut university funding. (Do you support privatising the University of Wisconsin? If not why not?)

Final comment with apologies to Harry as I must be more than wearing out my welcome: I think it’s perfectly fair to discuss if a free tuition plan is the best use of the money it will cost. I find the “where does the money go” argument largely a red herring, though. Just like we support public libraries because we consider them a good worthy of support beyond the immediate economic welfare effect (even though we could close them and use the savings for, say, psychological services for the indigent), we should also support higher education and academic research for the same reason – not capitulate to the right-wing argument that a 24% tax take is the maximum possible and we therefore will be forced to choose.

Harry

Neither Baum and Turner nor I are suggesting that we cut university funding. They are not even opposing increasing it. They are just opposing increasing it so unequally, in an already highly unequal system.

Is there a different proposal for increasing university funding which you would prefer to this one?

Christian @ 38

An awful lot of the argument against Warren’s plan seems to rely on the fact that it’s tacked into the existing financial aid program, which is already means-tested but often doesn’t provide sufficient funds for all students.

I’m curious how far the argument might be applied at K12. To what extent should the curriculum offered at an elementary school track the resources the kindergarten students arrive with? At what point are enough poorer kids going to nursery schools where they learn the alphabet that the argument “only richer kids will benefit from this program” doesn’t apply anymore. As the parent of a ten year old I’ve been a little troubled by how easily administrators can use progressive-sounding explanations for what amounts to acquiescence in segregation and racism, and a kind of tracking they’d recoil from if it were called that.

Harry: it doesn’t seem as if you responded to my comment. I’ll try again.

1. A policy is progressive if it is redistributive.
2. Warren’s plan is redistributive.
3. Thus, Warren’s plan is progressive.

Comments about how effective the redistribution is are fine, but to claim a non-ideal distribution framework invalidates the program’s claims to being progressive seems spurious. And I don’t think this definition of progressive is somehow wildly ideosyncratic.

The debate on this subject strikes me as misguided because it says nothing about what students learn. A good high school education should be enough to prepare young people for most kinds of work. In most jobs, even those allegedly requiring college degrees, the way people learn most of what they need to know is through on the job training. Many high school graduates have not received a good education, though, and go to college as, in effect, remedial high school.

Readers who attended an average American high school, as I did long ago, will know that there are certain students, especially boys, who are itching to be done with school. It is far more productive to give them a decent high school education and have them start working than to tell them they need another two to four years of what to them is pointless rigamarole.

Rather than extending the years of education, I would reduce the high school graduation age to 17 and reduce summer vacations by four weeks, so that a 17 year old would graduate with as many weeks of schooling as an 18 year old now. (Teachers would get correspondingly higher pay, which should make them happy.)

Harry Truman never went to college. John Major became a banker and later prime minister of Britain without doing so. Neither performed noticeably worse than their college-educated peers. If a college education is not necessary to rise to the highest office in the land, why is it necessary for lesser employment except in a few specialized areas?

An experiment that I would like to see tried is to bring back the federal civil service exam, allowing applicants without college degrees who score high enough to enter U.S. government jobs currently reserved for those with college degrees.

I think Harry’s larger point is that the public school system in the U.S. is not doing the job we need it to do, that disparities in college admissions and graduation rates have more to do with the deficiency of funding of primary and secondary school education than with the expense of college attendance.

The break in the pipeline comes well before college. Poor neighborhoods have bad schools and rich neighborhoods have good schools, because they’re locally funded. This is not to say that the cost of education from a state college is not a problem, but rather that there is a bigger problem which might be easily solved with a lot of money.

– but on the other hand for everybody who is looking for an argument NOT to fight ”climate change” – I think CT found it?

”The rich will profit from it”!

Right?

Harry@36 “Complaining that the benefits to poor people are too low is the same as complaining that rich people pay too much in tax. Ok.” No, it’s not okay, because you’re playing percentages. Complaining that rich people pay too much because they pay a higher percentage of the total tax revenue (ignoring state and local sales, property and income taxes) is like complaining that poor people are getting ripped off because they don’t receive a higher percentage of the tuition rebates (or whatever they would be called.)
Percentages are tricky. The real benefit to the poor is greater than the weakest link in the OP wants to admit.

– and thinking about it far, faaaar more ”deeply” -(”deep-state-wise) –

WE finally understand – that all of this great… ”stuff” –
(like ”free education” – ”universal health care” – ”living wages” – and especially (still) affordable housing) – the ”Great European Social Democracies” offer –
is nothing else than ”an evil plot to subsidise the rich” – as they profit from all of the social goodies in the most un-progressive way…

-(as probably a Baron von Clownstick would twitter?)

Isn’t this argument ‘whataboutery’ for progressives? As various people have pointed out the middle classes benefit far from most programs (roads, courts, schools, transport, internet subsidies, research spending, airports). There are really very few programs that predominantly benefit the poor.

And yes funding of schools in the US is a disgrace, but it’s also (at a federal level) a huge political problem that makes healthcare reform look trivial. Moving from local to federal funding would be a huge change, and you’d get loads of states (including my own) who’d probably refuse to participate.

At the same time there are a range of very significant problems in the US (including economic ones) caused by the explosion in college debt. One might criticize the solution, but there is a very real problem here and I’m not hugely impressed by people who benefited from free education criticizing any solution to the problem because it fails some moral purity test.

“Opportunity cost” is bearing a huge load in the argument, and it can’t take the weight

Is there an opportunity cost in the sense that the US can’t afford to do Warren’s plan and also spend the same amount on prek-12 ? No.

Is there an opportunity cost politically? Also no. An administration that can create a new wealth tax ex nihilio to free wage slaves from debt bondage – for this what this is – is also an administration that can spend huge sums on prek-12 at the same time

We’re left with an opportunity cost for airing policy ideas during a campaign. Here there *are* actual trade offs involved; attention / time is limited etc.

But, uh, a quarter of that wealth tax which pays the college plan goes toward establishing universal pre-k.

What we’re left with is an argument that “Warren’s proposal for universal prek and writing down college debt / cheap state college is crowding out talk during the campaign for increased k-12 spending”

Which rests on the assumptions 1) “a campaign which talks about universal prek / fixing college debt won’t increase k-12 spending on the same scale once in power unless it’s talked about during the campaign”

and

2) “the best way to get k-12 spending talked about during the campaign is to denigrate the fixing college debt proposal”

Neither of which, at least to me, is obvious or that coherent.

Contrast this with a shrewd political calculation for *not* mentioning massive k-12 funding increases during the campaign. It’s a charged issue which cuts across usual infra-coalition groups, so the effect of bringing it up is complex and the positives are mitigated more than prek / college. And, as explored above, an admin which can do prek / college can also do k-12. (The Arne Duncan example cuts both ways; the 08 campaign wasn’t caught over massive changes in fed education policy, but it still happened.)

Lastly, prek/fixing college debt are *overwhelmingly popular*. It’s *tremendous political terrain to occupy*. It gets people used to spending huge sums of money on education, and it does so in a way that even non-brain-worked Republicans have to nod in agreement makes good fiscal sense.

Muddying those waters based on the dubious assumptions above, and ignoring the other political dynamics, seems unwise.

@
”Why not privatize public higher education? Because I am basically conservative”

Me too – that’s why I wrote already @2 – ”Who cares if Warren’s college plan is progressive – as long as this plan -(and hopefully an even more extended plan) puts an end to a big part of the insanity of the (stupid and greedy) US education system – and as I also agree that I’m my homeland ”in the long term the saved funds would find their way into prek-12” -(or even better into Prekindergarten) – we NOW – perhaps could focus on Warren’s most ”progressive” idea behind her plan?

How do WE (”conservatives”) solve the ”student debt” – which is – as other commenters already have identified ”a big and growing problem”?

Somehow I thought the main topic of the OP was how Warren’s plan would increase inequality, which still strikes me as highly dubious, especially as argued in the link. Apparently the real topic is supposed to be how funding public college tuition for all students increases inequality by diverting funds from primary education (and maybe secondary?)

I’m not convinced the implicit premise that a poor education is the main generator of inequality. I rather think lack of high-paying jobs, unemployment, inordinate rewards to owners of property, a multitude of secondary forms of exploitation such as higher prices for necessities in poor neighborhoods and so on, endlessly, have much more to do with that. Improvements to primary and secondary education like Warren’s improvements to tertiary education, are a reform, of minor effect in the end as regards to reducing inequality.

Insofar as some colleges and universities graduate credentials more acceptable to the bosses, credentialism is not to be reformed by increasing funding to preK12 schooling. The fact that you can’t say “a degree from a comprehensive regional university is worth as much as a degree from a public flagship” also reduces all benefit of education to simple monetary returns. Further, it abstracts from the benefits to social mobility in the lower ranks of society. Personally I think economic anxiety fuels status anxiety, that the prospect of no change or even descent goads people into seeking scapegoats…who will be the historical ones.

In short, I tend to think the primary inequality in other words is in property.

Further the massive funding increases imagined as the alternative excluded by Warren will still have their effects undercut but a multitude of structural deficits. The lesser revenues from the poor districts are bad enough. Any reform that could help that would be desirable. But in the long run the suburbs need to be reintegrated into urban life, the elite need to be reintegrated into common life and those areas where social decay has rotted the fabric of society need to be rebuilt. And by the way, those rotted areas also include rural ones and deindustrialized ones as well as inner cities.

@69
…”I rather think lack of high-paying jobs, unemployment, inordinate rewards to owners of property, a multitude of secondary forms of exploitation such as higher prices for necessities in poor neighborhoods and so on, endlessly, have much more to do with that”. (inequality)

Yes! –
and so – any policies in order to create ”high-paying jobs”, reduce ”unemployment”, reduces ”inordinate rewards to owners of property” and reduce a ”multitude of secondary forms of exploitation such as higher prices for necessities in poor neighborhoods and so on, endlessly, – reduce inequality –

And it is a fact – that ”free education for all” – from the lowest level – up to university – reduces inequality as it creates ”high-paying jobs”, reduce ”unemployment”, reduces ”inordinate rewards to owners of property” and reduce a ”multitude of secondary forms of exploitation such as higher prices for necessities in poor neighborhoods and so on, endlessly…

But WE -(Americans) can’t have that –
BE-cause we are… ”conservative” – and we much rather like to discuss ”how funding public college tuition for all students increases inequality by diverting funds from primary education (and maybe secondary?”)

Which is quite an interesting discussion – for sure –
and I especially enjoyed your point about ”the suburbs need to be reintegrated into urban life – and the elite need to be reintegrated into common life” –
the way it happened -(for me) – when I changed from a (private) US education system to a ”FREE” European system – where the elite couldn’t avoid to be ”integrated” – as there was no (private-payed) education in sight.
-(not even in the suburbs)

Ben2@72 writes of “tools to resist…” This would be one of the nonmonetary benefits to Warren’s college reform excluded from Baum and Turner’s presentation. It’s one reason why I think the benefit of the college education to the lower income families isn’t measured by the extra $7 700 higher (not highest, though,) income families would receive. But even solely in money terms, I still fancy that most under $35 000 families will find $2 300 makes a bigger difference in meeting necessities than the over $120 000 families will get from $11 000.

To quote from the link, again:
““‘Free tuition’ is the opposite of progressive policymaking
It’s presented as leveling the playing field. It would worsen economic inequality.”

Baum and Turner’s essential criticism is about the money payments, discussed in a misleading way. Two working parents, both with an income about $60 000, would get maybe, at most, $11 000 in a year. IN US politics this is supposed to be middle class, but I think real middle class people own property (not a mortgage.) No, I don’t think we’re talking about Warren making the world more unequal.

Most of the other thrown in criticisms, like the different monetary values of credentials from regional comprehensive vs. public flagship, do indeed implicitly assume that educational inequality is a prime cause, if not the cause, of inequality. I still haven’t followed the logic of how Warren’s college reform makes this worse.

Warren’s plan is a school voucher plan for that part of the school system that isn’t free. Extra subsidies to some parents when there is a publicly provided alternative, as in primary and secondary education, does actually have the regressive effects wrongly claimed by Baum and Turner. Doing away with this bug in Warren’s proposed college system could be resolved by price controls to equalize college tuitions, which requires public provision of schools in the long run to keep the system from collapsing, which to be effective would probably require in the long run some sort of industrial policy giving a better idea of labor needs. And that might end up giving students stipends to go into areas where anticipated needs are highest. Etc. Etc.

Z

I’m sure Warren is a decent person, but I’m equally sure that her campaign considers it a top objective to get the votes of the educated professionals in dynamic areas that will constitute the bulk of the Democratic primary voters. If she were to move strongly against educative inequalities, she would weaken one key factor in the social position of this group, and would risk losing their votes (or enough of them to lose). Hence, she doesn’t.

Is there evidence to support the conclusion that a candidate who proposed a major expansion of Federal funding for schools would lose support among educated professionals?

I think one of the reasons this policy proposal isn’t discussed in these terms, and comes across as progressive, is that it is being framed not as higher education funding, but as debt relief.

And I think that the levels of debt that people get themselves into just for wanting an education in line with their interests and talents (even leaving aside the whole aspects of preparing for certain types of jobs) is, to me, a problem. As a first generation higher education graduate (from Europe, now living in the US) with no family money this sort of situation would have put me into even more of a state of permanent anxiety. College graduates of not even very long ago talk of times where you could finance a year of tuition at a solid state school by working through the summer. This time is very far from the realities of today, even in places where in-state tuition is considered “affordable” (as in the institution I consider my home).

As a matter of principle, an egalitarian society of the future that I’d want to help building would in fact contain free or inexpensive access to any level of education, at a high base standard of quality. Like, every school is a good school, there is a mechanism for tackling exceptions, and everyone can access whatever level of basic education or fundamental vocational training without having to pay for it in major financial hardship. (There are of course many ways to implement such a system.)

I’m not really fundamentally feeling much in conflict with Harry’s argument, though, because OF COURSE PreK-12 has the bigger impact for fighting inequality. So we’d disagree about priorities, mostly. (I hope, because I hope that inexpensive access to tertiary and non-tertiary post-secondary education is also something Harry subscribes to.)

A twist, though, is that I’m not sure it’s only money that K-12 is missing. Sure, there are means-starved districts that first and foremost need MONEY. But others have, at least on an international scale, a lot of funding, but it doesn’t lead to good educational outcomes. The reasons for this are myriad: For good outcome, you also need high-quality curricula, teaching being a valued profession, and students who are psychologically and physically in a position to focus on learning. Schools alone can’t heal traumatized communities. So much as I will always join the cries for more funds for education, it would be a mistake to think you can just throw money at the problem, at least not through the channels that money has been used traditionally.

I’m surprised at the number of people on this thread who seem to think the purpose of free university education is to help lift people out of poverty. How many times do you have to be shown that this upward mobility thing is a ponzi scheme? The goal of free education is to ensure that poor people can get access to the same things rich people can, so that everyone is able to live a fulfilling life.

Also I’m surprised at the number of people who, after the last 30 years of vicious anti-poor rhetoric from the right and from “centrists” (i.e. crypto-rightists), still think it’s a good idea to propose programs that target only the very poor through tight means testing. Yes, they are ultimately more “progressive” since they definitely help the poor more than those on middle incomes. They are also extremely vulnerable to political attack because the majority of the population doesn’t benefit from them.

I mean, does anyone on here seriously think that if the UK National Health Service (NHS) were designed only to benefit people on welfare, it would still be around now after Thatcher? The only thing that stopped her from completely killing it was the fact that her own constituency depended on it.

Also, imagine someone in the Labour left in 1944, talking like Harry (and others) about the NHS: saying that this universal health coverage thing is not progressive because middle class people would also benefit. They would be laughed out of the party room. It’s madness to talk this way. If something – education, healthcare, transportation, environmental protection – is a public good you fund it publicly so everyone can afford it and access it, and then no matter how much the rich and their centrist shills may hate it, they’ll never be able to cancel it.

Isn’t it true that the wealthy can get substantial tax reductions by deducting educational expenses, and those deductions are higher the wealthier the parents and the more expenses their education? If I understand correctly, those tax savings need to be counted against the benefits that would accrue to the wealthy.

I studied at University in Germany on a means tested benefit (for living expenses – remember there was and is no tuition) which unfortunately was converted to a repayable grant in the 1980s and later to 50% repayable. Wealthy parents of students could actually get higher benefits from tax deductions than the poor students could get from this program. I wouldn’t have begrudged the affluent kids the same benefit that I enjoyed – in fact I felt it was unfair that they had to depend on their parents while I was entitled to my own money (*). But I think it exceedingly unfair that their parents could get those tax deductions. Best would be to raise the taxes and fund a living wage for all.

(*) Under German law, students can sue their parents if they have the means but refuse to fund an adequate education. But of course you would rather not sue your parents.

Mrmister is wrong, the NHS helped all people in Britain including the very poor.

Harry, I don’t get your response. Are you trying to say that free education only helps the most educated? This is true in the trivial sense that it only helps people who can qualify for university. Similarly free cancer care only helps those with cancer! What of it? Unless you think anyone who wants to go to university should be allowed in, this is irrelevant. Perhaps you’re trying to imply that warrens proposal only helps the wealthy because only the wealthy get good high school? Well yes, and the nhs gave better health outcomes to wealthier people and non-smokers, so what? That’s not an argument against making it universal, it’s an argument for banning smoking. You shouldn’t conflate the problems in high school funding with university funding, because the upshot of that is that the few poor kids (of whom I am one) who manage to fight free of our shit high school education have done it for nothing because we can’t get into uni because it’s too expensive. Yes it’s better to do both! But as people above have observed it’s hard for the federal govt to fix secondary education (fuck, they can’t even stop school shootings!) So fix what you can and come back to the next stages later. America has sooooo many problems that it’s madness to oppose fixing the ones you can because some people who are benefiting from an inequality the federal govt can’t fix will benefit a little more from its efforts to fix the ones it can fix.

Poor children should be able to go to university. That’s a simple statement of what is right. Warrens offering a fix for ONE of the two big barriers to doing that. Her fix also helps middle class kids. Lucky them! Why should a poor kid care?

@
”K-12 should be free, and should be much better and better funded. Higher education (public, or private if that’s what they want) should be free for students from lower income families and, in fact, substantial grants for living expenses”.

What a great start for ending with Warrens plan.
There is hope for the homeland!

@84 TM re Tax deductions

There are some tax breaks available, but these income out for a couple at earned income of around $230,000, with one exception which is 529 savings plans. With a 529 savings plan there isn’t a deduction, but there is avoided tax on investment income.

So to take an example if someone used 100% 529 plan funds to pay for a reasonably expensive 4 year education – say $200k of total cost, their benefit would be how many dollars they had to deposit to get fund the 200k. Say they deposited 50k when a kid was born and another 50k 5 years later (there are max annual limits but you can pre-fund). Its plausible the 100k would have doubled to 200k and that would have avoided around 40k of federal taxes and maybe another 5-10k from state. The net being – roughly 4 years of education for the price of 3.

Naturally actual mileage varies. The data says the average value of a 529 plan is less than $100k so while there is a benefit – it works best for what I would call 2-3% ers (say those making 250k-500k) rather than someone who is a 1% who frankly would just write the checks and not fool around with paperwork associated with all of the above.

– but it’s for sure NOT ”progressive” –

to think that ”Warren or any other President in the near future is going to do more than one big thing altogether, let alone in education” –

That’s very, very much like one of these American ”Conservatives” who thinks – that ”interlocutors talk as if they were living in a country with a large and powerful social-democratic movement that is getting close to power and can do a hundred great things when in office – or Barack Obama thinking – ”A black President”?

That’s NOT where we are…

Harry I think you missed a large reply of mine that is in moderation and hasn’t gone up yet.

Mrmister, I was actually involved in an analysis of NHS data that showed that lower income people are less likely to get referred to essential care (or take longer to get to care) than wealthy people. This is surely a thing! But it is a thing in all health care systems all over the globe, it is a fundamental problem of health care, and it is to do with social determinants of health, not the design of the system per se. You can be sure it would have been worse if the NHS were not there. We have to be careful not to conflate the outcomes we see under a specific end-stage policy (which is what universal health coverage is) with the consequences of all the basic inequalities which drive the entrants to that system.

In the UK women particularly have benefited from the NHS. Maternal mortality rates plummeted after its introduction, and women’s life expectancy gap (between poorest and wealthiest) has remained about 6 years even as life expectancy has increased (i.e. as a proportion it has declined). Men’s has widened but this is likely to do with smoking.

You also need to be careful interpreting recent studies like those by Dixon et al (I used to work with Anna and I know the context of her studies). The NHS has gone backward since the end of the Labour government, and a lot of studies published in the last 10 years are actually showing the consequence of Tory attacks on the system, not the long-term outcomes of the NHS as a whole. Also the NHS was massively underfunded relative to European systems during the Thatcher era, and that has long-term implications for the structure of the system and its effects on inequality, which New Labour was not in power long enough to reverse.

Harry I think this is important:

Warren or any other President in the near future is going to do more than one big thing altogether, let alone in education, and I want people to take seriously the opportunity cost of this being the one big thing in education.

But I think you’re underestimating how transformative the end of student debt will be for a lot of poor people. And given that a lot of the other strategies you identify are not feasible for the federal government (due to the states), I think you overstate this issue in this case.

Hmm, Harry, unless I am misreading you, your analysis seems to go off the track from the moment that you forget that these are loans. Loans – interest and principle – are neither coming out of the pocket of working class people, initially, nor going back into their pockets, with a profit, at the end of the cycle. Take away my copy of Das Kapital if I’m wrong, but any account that leaves out of the picture the players on the other end of the loan deal, i.e. capital (banks, loan agencies, and all the privatized minions of the numerous state and federal programs) is leaving out of the picture the whole class situation.
As for who is on the hook for those loans – it seems pretty clear that the discussion was moved by an erroneous report by the Urban institute that 49 percent of the loans were owed by the children of the highest income quartile. That was a “coding error”, as Jordan Weisman at Slate found out – roll over Rogoff and Reinhart and tell mamma the news! Turns out that 34 percent is owed by the highest quartile, and the rest is owed by the other quartiles. The poorest quartiles, one could also say, owe that money even though their likelihood of making it through 4 years of college is also the lowest.

From the class perspective, it is easy to find ways to incorporate this kind of information into a tuition argument that would distinguish between the debt owed by pseudo-Trump jr. for four years at NYU or Harvard and the debt owed by Sally Counterperson at Cal State Santa Barbara.

Which gets us to a third way in which the class system is not being considered in this argument. Harvard, Yale, etc., are all “non-profits” – in other words, poor working class people are supporting their asses. Which is evident when you go to Ivy League towns and see the disparity between the poor disrupted public space – which a town like New Haven can’t afford to keep up – and the spiffy, grandiose private college space.

So those making the argument that free tuition isn’t progressive better start making the argument that we should tax the shit out of those private schools with the sky high endowments. Otherwise, perhaps this is all cover for preserving education as the reserve for plutocratic pups.

Harry, I didn’t think my last line applied to you at all! I wasn’t insulting you, and I’m rather hurt that you think I was. You are no plutocratic pup, and I don’t really think it is a fair reading to say that I say, and here I have to start panting indignantly and get all red, that you are one. I disagree with your analysis, but I am not making any comment on you personally. I’m making a jokey reference to the upper class that does go to Harvard or Yale or etc, and thinks that it is all off the public nickel, when those tax sheltered places cost us plenty. I’m thinking here of the likes of Pete Buttigieg, who doesn’t seem to have realized that Harvard is not paying its share of taxes at all (although it graciously condescends, now and then, to shoot out a couple million to the community).
However, after you go through 100 comments, I can see that the reading might blut, and you might just pick out my pups line. Sorry.

I’m not sure I understand your reply about loans. Of course, if loans are replaced by free tuition, we are replacing a system in which 1.5 trillion dollars of loaned money is out there. This is fairly relevant to changes to the system of payment. Free tuition, of course, is not something Warren can decree for private universities, but even so, it would certainly diminish if not destroy any future loan amount, which has to do with the gross progressivity of the proposal.

“…trying to highlight Baum’s and Turner’s observation that once you look at the actual details of how financing currently works, and the actual details of each plan, they tend to look a lot less progressive than people who don’t know much about financial aid as it currently works tend to think.”

They didn’t say it was less progressive than it looked, they said it was regressive and would increase inequality. I am still convinced their demonstration is unsound.

Z

Harry wrote:

bad Jim’s exactly right. The really bizarre feature of the proposal, and of this discussion, is that higher ed continues the work of pre-k-12. We all know that investing in education earlier, on average, pays off more than investing later. If you want to improve the educational level of the population, or reduce inequalities, you do it by investing much earlier. As I said upthread, the funds involved would could completely transform prek-12: in particular in urban and rural areas.

Harry also wrote:

I don’t massively admire the overall policy direction of the Obama administration on k-12 (CCSS good, but most places were getting there anyway, promotion of charter schools not so good) but what Arne Duncan proved was that the Federal government can exert very considerable influence over the behavior of States and districts. As things stand, Federal money in k-12 is distributed in an extremely progressive manner, and I don’t see why that would change if were massively increased. There’s a reason why abolishing the DofE is a persistent theme in Republican circles.

These remarks of Harry’s were the context for my earlier comment. Evidently, Harry thinks that (in the US) a major expansion of existing Federal school funding programs is something that would reduce educational inequality.

It’s not clear to me whether you would:
(1) take the view that proposing a major expansion of existing Federal school funding programs is something that (in the US) would result in a loss of support from educated professionals; or
(2) disagree with Harry’s view that (in the US) a major expansion of existing Federal school funding programs is something that would reduce educational inequality; or
(3) acknowledge that there is (in the US) at least one possible major policy initiative which would reduce educational inequality and which would not result in a loss of support from educated professionals; or
(4) feel that you don’t have enough information to commit to any of (1), (2), or (3).

I know you did write—

major expansions of Federal funding for schools can very well increase educative inequalities

—and this does point in the direction of (2), but not conclusively, because your statement about what could very well happen isn’t strictly logically incompatible with Harry’s stated position that there’s no reason to expect it would happen.

The problem with “vouchers” in a K-12 context is that they are used to steal funding from public schools and give it to private and/or religious schools. They’re a scam. If you are doing vouchers for public college, they don’t have that problem. (Leo Casey has this right.)

Also, on means testing. I think that means testing is largely a bad idea. If you are funding things from a progressive income tax, then the very rich are getting much less back than they are putting in, and that’s fine. Also, it’s easy for means testing to be made demeaning to recipients of the aid. If everyone gets and has to use vouchers*, that can’t happen. Also, implementing means testing isn’t free, and a lot of the time, it’ll cost as much as it saves. And finally, if you can force rich folks to declare the benefit as income, you can tame much of it back in taxes (this works great for the sort of childbearing encouragement programs the Japanese ought to be implementing, i.e. direct, generous, flat rate (same amount for any child) child support payments to everyone who has a child.)

*: In my fantasy world here, the vouchers are more of payments to the schools for educating people than benefits to the students. Sort of like how Obamacare only pays insurers if they actually pay for medical care. (Obamacare is way more wonderful than you think.)

TJ 93: “There are some tax breaks available, but these income out for a couple at earned income of around $230,000”

Can you tell us how much in annual college cost an affluent family could at the most deduct? And is it restricted to tuition? Until what age do the parents get a dependent deduction for a child in college and how much does it save them in taxes?

I don’t know the details of the plan discussed here but if it is true that the parents can save taxes by having a child in college/uni (as is the case in Germany) then it would seem fair to me to publicly fund the college expenses for everybody while at the same time denying affluent parents the deduction (as is not the case in Germany).

@112 TM – tax credits for education

The credit is income dependent and not really that much compared to the cost of education. The max amount in a year is $2,500 of the cost of tuition, fees and course materials (no room and board) and this is per eligible student.

A couple with less than $160K of annual income (80k single) can claim the entire credit with a graduated phase-out up to $180k of income. If your income is above that the education tax deduction is ZERO. Everyone has their own view of what is wealthy, but I don’t think of a family with $160k of annual income is not my classic definition of “rich” they are certainly doing better than most but a two-earner middle-management kind of family can easily bring that much income. Its probably top 10% to top 20% of income.

Trump’s new tax law eliminated the dependent deduction so that no loner applies (it used to). A couple can take a standard deduction of up to $24,000 whether they have zero, two or ten kids. If their actual itemized deductions are more than $24,000 (things like mortgage interest, local and property taxes, certain medical and certain other items) then they can deduct more than $24,000. The statistics say that in 2018 about 90% of all tax filers took the standard deduction – one can safely assume that among those that didn’t probably fell at least in the top 20% of income.

This is why the 529 plan I described @93 is the more valuable tax dodge for education. Money in those plans was always eligible for College study but with the Trump tax bill is now also allowed for private schools. So one can set aside money starting when a kid is born and fund a private school education without paying any tax on the income the money earns while it is invested (you don’t get a deduction for what you deposit into the fund, you can just take the money out tax free as long as its used for education).

Also the 529 plan isn’t limited to tuition, fees and books – you can use it for room and board up to a school’s published “cost to attend” amount. For most schools this amount is somewhere in the $8-12K range which isn’t high living, but in most markets its enough to fund a shared apartment and a university meal plan. For families that make more than $180K per year, this is really the only available tax benefit for education – I’m surprised more don’t utilize (some states have additional incentives if the money is used for in-state tuition).

Also, on means testing. I think that means testing is largely a bad idea.

Means testing for education specifically is a problem because basically nobody has “means” when they’re twenty. [and absolutely nobody has means when they’re fifteen]. Practically when people say means-testing here they mean — although they may not recognise it or admit it — parental means testing, and…

Remember: the core of opposition to welfare is that it weakens dependence on rich relatives and other patronage networks, and thus reduces the ability of abusers to find people willing to subject themselves to abuse. Because education and student means-testing effectively means parental means-testing, a means-testing framework basically eliminates the children-of-the-rich — a-fortiori the children-of-rich-abusers — from protection. Of course the abusers are OK with means-tested welfare here, it leaves their targets unprotected. [see slavery: more expensive and lower productivity than free labour, but you can rape people and beat them to death, which some find more attractive than money, enough to fight a war over.]

[which is to say: if you make a model of right-wing thinking that supposes the sole motivation of right-wingers is to emotionally and physically abuse people and to create spaces and situations where that can happen, you get something that’s like 90% accurate to what the actual right actually propose and implement. I mean, slavery! Free workers are more productive and cost about the same or less [lower overheads through savings in chains] but you can’t rape them or beat them to death and that was worth fighting a war over.]

[I did once consider an education voucher that was structured with a taper like some welfare payments: for every extra dollar put in by the parents/holder, the voucher goes down fifty cents… ]

[vouchers rely on individual selection, of course, and there are well-known problems with quality guarantees here with education, given the long timeframes and &c]

[the thought just struck me that the education and professional-development elements of employment — which have to be hugely important if we’re not doing lifetime jobs — are also underserved by market self-regulation…]

“And the one that isn’t isn’t partly because the one that is is dramatically under-supported and mal-distributed.”

I think this says: College isn’t publicly funded because, for one thing, primary and secondary education, which is publicly funded, is dramatically under-supported and mal-distributed.

I don’t think this is true at all, nor was it true historically. Colleges began as religious training, and continued as generalized class training and now are private investment in socialization and sometimes higher skills. As I recall, the role of religious dissenters expanding the curriculum in tertiary education was very much about their position in what was called “trade.” The role of the state in expanding colleges wasn’t about starving primary and secondary but about needs for skills in administration and competition with other nations.

From the other side, primary and secondary education was initially in Christian countries about being able to read the Bible. And the drive to make it a public good had everything to do with the popular element of democracy. The rulers are not so into the popular element of democracy as they used to be. And the primary and secondary schools thus are being run as a business, even if this makes no sense (who is the customer for this business?) Not putting money into things that don’t make money is one of the wonderful things about free market economies according to economics.

And I still think the supposed demonstration of the regressiveness, which increases inequality, of Warren’s program failed.

I’m still not clear on how the funding of colleges as it is leads to dramatically under-supported and mal-distributed public education. Public funding for them came from different places, for different purposes. At this point, the claim seems to be that the GI Bill was massively regressive and dramatically raised inequality, which isn’t clear to me either. The old National Defense Education Grants seem meant to enlarge the population being educated (as in, larger talent pool improving results,) rather than a way to siphon money from the poor to the rich.

Personally, I think it’s bogus to rely on socioeconomic status as defining class. The old middle class were midway between the aristocracy and the commoners. They weren’t nobles because they didn’t own landed property and didn’t have titles with privileges such as reserved ranks and officers. And they weren’t common because they did own income generating property of some sort, instead of relying on the their wage labor, much less the wages of their wives or even children. By this rather basic standard, most people today are not middle class at all, never were and never will be. But my basic standard is very much rejected by everyone here. The thing here is, if college education makes you middle-class, increasing it is decreasing inequality. Again, the argument has always been that Warren is regressive, increasing inequality.

Nor do I see how the argument changes by looking at the public funding college already have. Private endowments might be the best measure for identifying a university as an elite institution. Private investments in policy institutes play a huge role in elite training. And then are universities profit seeking in their sports programs as well as patents. Taxing endowments would do more for increasing equality. Regulating policy institutes as the lobbying groups they are would do more for increasing equality. Reformation of patent laws would do more for increasing equality. Keeping colleges out of professional sports (especially football, where they are basically the minors for the NFL,) would do more increasing equality.

As for the non-college population, here assumed to be largely those who can’t get the credential, i.e., pass, keeping the poorer college students under a debt burden won’t help their inequality one bit. And, again, I’m not seeing the evidence that college tuition is squeezing out equality for them. It seems to me that a full employment economy, jobs, would a lot more for reducing this inequality. Integrated housing at a reasonable price would do more good for reducing this inequality.

Again, the point is that although one may argue (I think correctly) that a jobs guarantee will do more than Warren’s program, the issue has always been the claim that Warren’s program, and it will increase inequality. Again, I don’t think it’s true. I suppose you could revise this to the complaint that Warren’s reform is a tiny reform. But if it’s so tiny, how can it do so much damage?

This is a strange discussion. College affordability and college debt brought out a large number of voters in 2016. It’s possible to doubt those voters’ usefulness and their interest in progressive policies more generally—I do—but they seem right up this blog’s alley (unless I’m missing something big) and it might be true that they can help win some states for 2020 (and on a progressive platform).

But the opposition to calling Warren’s plan progressive only makes sense to me on the lines of Sitaraman’s argument, that it’s more progressive to force the broad middle class, including the better paid members of the working class, to stand on their own two feet. The discomfort with worrying about the problems of people who aren’t extremely marginal isn’t unheard of.

Otherwise, there are a number of possible reasons:

1) Preference for focusing on earlier grades irrespective of arguments for doing otherwise (for whatever reason).

2) Anti-intellectualism (a belief that college is overrated, anti-progressive, or some other reason).

3) A belief that the people behind the free college movement, if they gain power, will oppose other programs that the progressive movement has been supporting. (In particular, that they’ll oppose race and gender related justice programs, or will oppose the rise on the left of political leaders who aren’t white men, or that they’re too middle class, or simply that they aren’t knowledgeable about progressive politics.)

4) A belief that the program includes “free college,” instead of some other variant, for political, rather than practical and well thought out, one’s (i.e. it’s intended to appeal to a specific group of voters who will only accept this variant).

5) Belief that the system already works very well for pretty much everyone: there’s means-tested financial aid, with universities appropriate to each social class/academic ability (and possibly the ancient social practice of occasional free rides for the most talented among the poor, to elite social institutions), and the only problem is that the most marginal populations have children who cannot succeed in this excellent system, due to lack of resources at the preK-12 level.

6) Belief that there’s no progressive case to be made for helping citizens except the most marginal (everybody else is presumably to be asked, in the nicest and most progressive way, to stand on their own two feet).

7) Belief that it’s inappropriate to expect education to be a means of social mobility.

8) Belief that there’s so little interest, among Americans, in even centrist liberalism, that anything short of Tea Party advocacy should doubt it will meet with less than the force of the police state.

It seems difficult to see how all those can be reconciled, especially the first four. They seem random.

On the pro side, there’s the belief that there’s a crisis that should overwhelm those other arguments, a crisis that’s both economic and political. Following the suggestion of an early comment that we should shrug and say “well let the conservatives have free college” arguably in effect takes Sanders voters and tells them to vote for Trump, besides being a little weird in a US context.

@
”I guess the one hope for Warren’s plan (and its “public good” justification) would be some sort of a “Field of Dreams” thing – if you build it, they will come. Maybe if college is free for everyone, then over time K-12 will re-orient itself over the long run to producing enough Pats….”

And we Ex-Pats guess – that this type of… how should we call it? –
”discussion”? – will go on for how many years in our homeland?

10? – 15? – 20? – or even 50? – or just after enough Americans have been bankrupted by US cost of education – that there will be no other conclusion anymore than to cry ”FREE” – and follow the example of ”FREE education – (from Kindergarten to University) of the more ”civilised democracies” –
BE-cause as you guys (obviously) haven’t noticed (yet) – that actually ”the not getting enough funds” -(or ”vouchers”?) – starts in your homeland with childcare?

So we – the EX-Pats would suggest – if anybody is worried about 12-K – he or she might be a little late to the party – and after reading this thread – and having realised that most ”homelands” who are commenting here have not even touched ”the basics” yet – I sadly have to go with 50 years –
(or the same kind of debt-drama for childcare as for College) before the ”Nationwide US Debate Club” might come to it’s senses and starts focusing on ”stuff” – somehow – somebody like Mrs. Warren is already focusing on?

And as this blog obviously loves ”Science Fiction” and in another thread a sister of mine is asking what we are daydreaming about – some of US really would move like to move back to the homeland and even would like to produce children there -(preferable in CA) BUT NOT if you guys slowly start… may I call it? –

”Focusing”?

In my mind I’m making a tactical comparison of two different lines of argument. I’m aware that neither of these things has been said in exactly these words by anybody here, and therefore maybe nobody would agree exactly withe either of them, but this is what I’m comparing in my mind (as a result of trying to follow this discussion):

A. Warren’s proposals for higher education are unlikely to reduce inequality and could easily increase it.
B. The next Democratic Administration is unlikely to be able to achieve more than one major change in education, and that being so should give priority to school education over post-school education: there’s a lot of scope to reduce inequality simply by increasing the levels of funding for Federal programs for schools of the kind that already exist.

When I say I’m comparing them tactically, what I mean is without consideration of their validity or, putting it another way, I’m thinking about somebody (hypothetical) who agrees with both these lines of argument and speculating about which of the two is likely to be more effective in influencing others.

It seems to me that, from the point of view of somebody who agrees with both A and B, B is likely to be more tactically effective, for two reasons:

1. I am somebody with little of the specific knowledge that would be useful to evaluating these arguments. I figure there’s probably a significant number of people (even in the US) who are like me in not having this specific knowledge and therefore having to rely mostly on general considerations in weighing up the arguments: and on general principles, B has more background plausibility than A.
2. A is more likely to come across as a negative argument, likely to provoke the potentially hostile response, ‘Well, what do you suggest, then?’ (that is, if it’s not combined with a specific alternative proposal for post-school education). B automatically comes packaged with an alternative proposal, which makes it seem more positive.

Or if these… who are so displeased with Mrs. Warrens plan can’t we just come up with AOC and repeat after her:

”Our first step is to define the problem and define the scope of the solution and so we’re here to say that small incremental solutions are not enough”!

And could please everybody on-here –
repeat that every morning –
(after getting up) –
and then… stop being really, REALLY… con-
fused?