Eruantale

Personally I would interpret that as telling parents to start a $5000 growing bank account as soon as the baby is born so that there IS money when the kid grows up, but I’m more optimistic I guess.

If Hillary were suggesting that it would be a good idea for parents to save money, I would support that 100%. Boy do I wish mine had! But that is definitely not the case with this quote. I linked to the wrong article in my source link, but this link has the full story:

Clinton: $5,000 for Every U.S. Baby

A spokesman for her campaign said it is an idea under construction and not a firm policy proposal. However, the fact that Senator Clinton would even consider an idea like that outside of la la land is ridiculous.

Sep. 29th, 2007

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not interested in paying for everyone else’s college. I’m concerned enough with paying for my own.”

I love that phrase. Now, in two or three months you can post another entry talking about how ignorant are young peeps these days, how they aren’t interested in going to college, etc.

Well, I suppose I could, but I won’t.

Being a senior, almost all of my peers are concerned with one major thing this year: going to college. We are all filling out applications, taking tests, visiting campuses, talking to advisers, and desperately trying to figure out how on earth we’re ever going to pay for all of this. We all have this expectation of going to college, because that’s what everyone is supposed to do when they graduate, unless they’re a bum. We also have this idea that our education and intellect must be spelled out on a certificate and stamped with some quality seal of approval, otherwise it’s useless. Both ideas are wrong, but because of them, most young people are desperately concerned with getting into college, even if they don’t really want to go.

Then there is the matter of the cost of going to college. The cost alone will not prevent young people from being interested in going to college; it will merely prevent them from fulfilling that expectation. I understand that situation completely. I get to pay for college myself next year. I have no savings, and I am unlikely to get a lot of government aid. It’s tough, and I have an enormous amount of sympathy for people in my situation. But when the government throws money at the problem it actually gets worse.

It all has to do with capitalism and the idea of competition. Right now, my top choice with regards to colleges knows that their average student is going to get about $20,000 in financial aid. The total cost for the year is $30,000 if you’re staying on campus, so an average student will have to pay $10,000 out of their own pocket. This isn’t particularly affordable to most people, but most people are able to manage with the help of student loans.

Now, imagine if that $20,000 was gone, at least for the average student. The cost to the student would then become unmanageable. They would have to pick another college, or get a job instead. Not only would it be a bad situation for the student, but it would also be a bad situation for the college. Colleges are in the business of making a profit, just like everyone else in America. Colleges need students to survive. If most students were suddenly no longer able to afford college, the colleges would be forced to do one of two things: a.) lower the cost; or b.) shut down. Considering how utterly absurd some college price tags are these days, I believe that the colleges that would be most affected have plenty of room to cut costs.

Such a situation would also create more competition between colleges when trying to entice students to apply and attend. Like any other product, competition between colleges equals a lower price for the consumer.

For a great retail example of this, look at the price of HDDVD players. When they first came out last year they were priced at around $500. My family did not expect to purchase either an HDDVD player or a Blu-ray disc player until the high definition “format wars” were over because of the cost. But at the beginning of November of this year, Walmart dropped its price to under $200 (or something around that general area—I can’t remember a precise number). All of the other retail giants followed suit in order to compete with Walmart’s price and generate sales. This resulted in the player actually being affordable for Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), the biggest sales day of the year. Some people even picked it up for under $100.

Though the government’s purpose in offering financial aid for college is benevolent, I believe it actually does more harm than good. Because colleges know they can get X amount of money out of people, it fixes their prices at a higher rate than they would be otherwise. This is bad for everyone, since we all pay the taxes which allow them to offer this money—it’s our money. And it’s money which is simply being thrown away on things that are very overpriced in many cases. This is a significant problem, because as we all know, money doesn’t grow on trees. Not one cent of our tax dollars should be thrown away. Unfortunately, I think much more of it is wasted than we generally assume.

This is why I have no interest in paying for anyone else’s college costs. The simple fact is that I can’t afford to, because I can’t even afford my own.

Dec. 24th, 2007