There’ll always be an England, too!

I’m probably going to step in something by bringing this up, but sometimes the logic of people just leaves me speechless. Take this example, in which a student is proposing free college tuition, student loan forgiveness and $15/hour minimum wage on campuses:

CAVUTO: Well, you want all that stuff. Someone has to pick up the tab. Who would that be?

MULLEN: Ummm, the one-percent of people in society that are hoarding the wealth and kind of causing the catastrophe students are facing…

CAVUTO: So where do they go? Let’s say if you tax these folks — they’re smart people, these one-percent hoarders — so if they leave here, who’s going to pay for all this stuff that you want?

MULLEN: If they leave?

CAVUTO: The country.

MULLEN: Oh. Ummm, I mean there’s always going to be a one-percent in the U.S.

She’s irrefutably correct, and yet so apparently clueless at the same time. I realize this is perhaps an example of “gotcha journalism”, but on the other hand, it’s a fair question to ask anyone who is proposing sweeping changes for how our country works: how do we pay for it? It’s just as likely she might have come back with an amazingly lucid, well-conceived answer. Heaven knows if there’s someone out there who really does have an anwer to these sort of problems we should give them a chance to speak.

Now as I said, she’s absolutely correct that there will always be a top one-percent in the U.S. You could throw out everyone who earns above the poverty line and there would still be a top one-percent in the U.S. But even with the current makeup of earners we have now, if we were to raise their income 10-20% does anyone know just how much taxes that would generate? Remember, we’re not taxing their net worth, just their income, so we wouldn’t be getting another $8-16 Billion from Bill Gates, but whatever he currently makes in a year (usual ROI in average years is 10-12%), so Gates’ income would be maybe $8-9 Billion, resulting in taxes of maybe $1 Billion.

That sounds like a lot. But we have 18 Million college students (as of 2012) in the U.S., so that divides out to $55 per student. That’s not even going to buy one book. Most of the 1% don’t make anywhere close to what Bill Gates makes. According to Business Insider, in Utah where I live you need to make only $340,000 a year to be in the 1%. So clearly, good ol’ Bill is the exception even among the 1%. In fact, according to the New York Times, there are about 1.35 million families in the 1%, with an average income of $717,000. That’s $968 Billion dollars of income per year, currently taxed at 39.6%, or about $383.4 Billion. Upping their taxes another 10% would mean around $97 Billion to fund our free college.

That comes to $5389 per year. That won’t even pay for my alma mater, Idaho State University, at $6,784 per year (for residents). If you think you’re going to get free tuition to Harvard, guess again. Salt Lake Community College costs $3568 a year for tuition only. To make things worse, the added influx of students is going to severely tax colleges to keep up with the demand. They would need more teachers, more administrators, more support staff and more buildings. If we’re passing this expense along to the government, and not based simply on how many students the university can realistically expect, do you think that cost is going to hold steady or increase? (Hint: college costs are already increasing rapidly, even without passing the bill along to the government– 79% from 2003 to 2013.) And as we’ve seen with healthcare, even when the government takes control of things to keep costs from rising they are unable to keep costs from rising.

Bear in mind, this is only one third of Mullen’s proposal. Take it from someone who knows how easy it is to stay in college indefinitely, her proposals would make it very easy for “perpetual students” to never leave college and face the real world–the very thing college is intended for. But whether her proposals are right or wrong, it’s certainly not wrong to ask how we would pay for these changes. It hardly bolsters her arguments to not have a well-considered answer, but to fall back on oft-spewed platitudes. We need to expect more of our college students, especially if we’re all going to be picking up their tab.