Yes. This would be a great investment in our future.

To me, the most painful aspect of the cost most students experience today is they exit college very risk adverse. This is perfectly understandable, but not desirable. Having what amounts to a mortgage to start off with can limit their ability to take risks, start a business, pursue an idea... We all lose out on this. Those risks can result in jobs, bring us new technology, products and services and grow the economy overall.

A quick look back to the 60's and 70's, when college was very inexpensive, shows us a lot of entrepreneurial activity, some of which grew into massive corporations we see today. Not everyone can or should be taking VC money to do this, though it's a good and productive option.

Some ideas may have merit, but no investor interest. Or they may be humanitarian in nature. Whatever interests the person really. When people are less burdened, they do more, and that is generally a net good.

Besides, competition is good right? Private school is always an option. That wouldn't change. What would change is people having a path to higher education in far more circumstances than they do today. I suspect this would bring down the cost of private schools and or improve overall quality of education.

Count me as a fan.

RANT MODE = 1 (h/t to Paul Ferris)

As for Republicans hating him for it...

I honestly hate those types of headlines. I used to be a Republican and am looking at the party in sheer wonder over how changed it really is! Sometimes, I see the more aggressive and extreme members out there saying and doing things so out of touch they might as well be rubbing shit in their hair. Now that is mean, and I wrote it to emphasize just how out of touch and foul some members of the party have become.

And the national response is equally disturbing. Take that shit in the hair analogy for a moment and imagine someone doing that on TV with no comment from anyone anywhere! It's crazy! There are days when it really is like that. I don't understand. Really. I just don't. We move on as if it's just another day at the office. Unreal. Unproductive too.

Worse, when I do see an indignant spectacle like that, any meaningful comments are usually followed up on or justified by some variation of, "two sides to every story" and or, "but the other guys..." neither of which make any rational sense at all.

But there it is anyway. As if it's the most ordinary thing in the world.

I'm quite sure some Republicans hate Bernie for speaking populist policy to an entrenched establishment. Now, I myself will "both sides this" and say some Democrats do too.

To me, that is the more important observation. Money in politics have rendered things untenable, in that we fail to have rational policy discussions most of the time, preferring to gawk at the spectacle, or cheer on horses in the horse race instead. That's bad, but the idea of doing the work to improve the state of things for people --all of the people has somehow been lost.

The Democratic Party has a division along economic lines. One faction is coin operated, and is more generally aligned with Republicans than anyone else, the two of them sharing the common goal of serving people able to buy policy. The other faction is aligned with ordinary people, and Bernie centers on all of that too.

Democrats are fairly unified on social policy, and that unity is well aligned with the interests of ordinary people.

Republicans are divided too, and in similar ways. Few Republicans are aligned with people on social issues, but some are. Enough to allow for some progress on that front, though at a high cost. They used to have a high degree of economic unity, but that has changed.

Now that divide is causing problems, in that we used to see productive governance on economic matters. This was not always well aligned with people, but it was productive and meaningful. Sometimes a net good as well. We were able to make reasonable trade-offs and advance the nation forward, or at the least manage our problems.

The more extreme faction is who I no longer recognize, and it appears to be growing in it's overall influence and willingness to cause us all great pain in some attempt to dictate it's policy visions be implemented regardless of their actual merit. They may well have merit, but the debate on that is a complete and total mess, resulting in a paralyzed government doing none of us any real good.

Which brings me to the media. Deregulation from Reagan, in the form of repealing the fairness doctrine, and from Clinton in the form of deregulating ownership, both combine to create noise machines that serve to generate revenue. The implication of this is that more revenue means better serving the public interest, but the reality is a lot of meta discussion and gawking at the crazies of the day, while ignoring policy matters that really cost us the longer they are ignored. Perhaps just one of those would have been a good reform, but both combined are just too toxic for a meaningful, productive politics to happen.

I find it all very difficult to watch, and so I don't mostly. There are ways to be informed and some of us take that route, but the vast majority do not. This has left our political dialog a complete mess, and Bernie sticks out like some relic from the past, a painful reminder of where we should be. Kudos to the guy for attempting to bring what is now and sadly, "old school" policy discussion and honorable campaign practices to the freak, clown and curio show we call politics today.

There is a part of me who really wants him to win just for the lesson in all of that. Maybe, just maybe it's not so good for us to do it the way we currently are. I do know a lot of the world does wonder, and rightfully so!

There is the other part of me thinking there is no chance in hell too.

Go Bernie! We may not want a Bernie type in office, but I have come to the realization we might really need and benefit from a Bernie in office too.

If anything, we need it as a reminder of the importance of politics in our lives and as a nation, a lesson seemingly lost to us in most contexts right now.

RANT MODE = 0

TL;DR: Bernie has a good idea for public investment that is likely to do us some real good at a modest cost. I'm in support of this idea too.

Sadly, Bernie has no chance in hell of actually seeing it actualized, and that's due to the clusterfuck our national politics are today.

Move on folks, nothing to see here.