After listening to Bernie Sanders tout his pie-in-the-sky socialist ambitions during the Democrat Townhall yesterday, this made me laugh –
Socialism works great in theory. Not so much in practice.
Speaking of which, did anyone watch the Democrat Townhall yesterday on Fox News? I had no clue there even was one until it was about ten minutes into it and I happened to check the Fox News website and saw the livestream going on (boy, the DNC certainly wants people to know about primary election events, don’t they?) I managed to sit through the first half hour with Bernie Sanders. Everything he said was a thousand different kinds of wrong (“health care is a human yooman right.” So… highly-skilled doctors who spent so many years and so much money training and learning their profession should work for free? Oh yeah – THAT makes sense). But he was so earnest and honest about it. I can see why he has so many followers. And that scares the ever-living crap out of me.
The second half with Hillary was so painful – I couldn’t stand listening to her lie through her teeth when Bret Baier asked her about her emails and being investigated by the FBI (and kudos to Bret for standing his ground and asking her those tough questions). I would listen to a few minutes of Grandma McCackles and then her voice would grate on me so much that I would have to mute the volume and listen to something more pleasant. Like nails being run through the blender.
Anyway – back to Bernie and “RAH RAH – SOCIALISM IS SOOOO AWESOME!” I could have probably taken every point Bernie made about free health care and free college and made separate posts saying why all of his ideas are simply not going to work.
Take his point about making college free – his thought process is “Well, a bachelor’s degree now is the same value as a high school diploma 40-50 years ago, so everyone needs free college tuition.” No – that just means education has become dumbed-down and devalued over time that a high school diploma doesn’t mean diddly squat. Education isn’t about learning and gaining new skills – it’s about pushing students through the system so the next batch can some through on schedule. Consequently, kids don’t learn the things in high school that they learned decades ago. They don’t learn the skills necessary to go out and get a job straight out of high school. The system assumes that these students are going to go to college and get life training there – which is pretty much a complete and total waste of time and taxpayer-funded public education.
The answer isn’t to make college free. If you’re going to do that, just tack on another two years of high school and forget about college entirely. The answer is to make the free public education we already have work better for students so that college becomes an option, rather than a necessity (and then you don’t have to pay out the nose for college if you choose to get a job right out of high school). Teach wood and metal shop classes. Teach advanced computer classes. Teach cooking classes. Teach classes that prepare students for something other than taking yet another standardized test.
That’ll give students the training and confidence necessary to find decent jobs after high school (of course, that’s predicated on the idea that such jobs are available – but a socialist’s economic policies sure as heck aren’t going to make THAT happen). Yes, there will still be career paths that require more advanced degrees – but those degrees should mean something more than “I’m ENTITLED to the college experience because I graduated from high school and I’m converting oxygen to carbon dioxide.”
Hey look! I just solved a serious problem without getting socialism involved. Bernie go home to Vermont now, okay?
But, you know – colleges drive up tuition costs and the government keeps shelling out student loans and tuition goes up even more. How much worse do you think it’s going to be if Bernie Sanders gets his way and college is “free”?