Obvious Reasoning on “Free Tuition”
George Leef reviews the economics of adding strings to “free tuition” for the Martin Center for Academic Renewal and summarizes the matter very well on National Review Online:
It shifts costs where they don’t belong and interferes with labor market mobility. It also interferes with the market for education by “privileging” (to use a favorite word of the progressives) certain kinds of governmentally-run colleges over all other types of education and training.
States can’t pull themselves up by the bootstraps with “free” education any more than they can with any other socialistic measure. Adam Smith had it right when he wrote, “Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about in the natural course of things.” Sadly, that’s a message that most politicians just don’t care to hear.
There’s no shortcut to prosperity. Or rather, if there is a shortcut, people interacting voluntarily in their own interests and by their own priorities are exponentially more likely to find it than is the government. Why is this so difficult for people to accept?