As soon as anyone challenges the status quo in thinking among the left, their views are dismissed as "Right wing talking points"-- I am anything but Conservative. I am a liberal through and through.
1) College Opportunities -
I haven't argued that college opportunities should be restricted, but the irony in the "Free College For ALL' argument is that fewer spaces will become available but let's look at it closely-
To deal with the problem we have to first correctly asses why College Tuition Rates continued to skyrocket over the last couple decades - Why has college tuition risen beyond the rate of inflation? The New York Federal reserve did a study https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr733.html in 2015 which may provide the answer - It showed a connection between subsidization through federal loans and tuition inflation, and this is from their abstract : higher education institutions were "more exposed to changes in the subsidized federal loan program increased their tuition disproportionately around these policy changes, with a sizable pass-through effect on tuition of about 65 percent." As honorably conceived Pell Grants and other fed aid programs may be, the result, paradoxically, ends up being a rise in tuition costs. In other words, for education institutions that depend on students who utilize federal aid assistance, every increase on the dollar in the federal aid cap resulted in tuition and fees rising by 65 cents (on the dollar). In turn, with tuition inflation you end up with higher student debt. And Free College won't really deal with the problem which is why I shared the link from Vox which is hardly a Conservative outfit wouldn't you agree?
Bernie looked to Germany for inspiration for his free College idea - the only problem is Germany couldn't be more different than the U.S. . In Germany, there are jobs you can get without a college degree , jobs that require a college degree in America. Where Bernie is correct is how he assessed a symptom of our problem - in America we treat College Degrees like high school diplomas, cheapening the value and leverage of a degree. We have a greater number of college graduates than Germany, partly due to students pursuing degrees that aren't exactly viable in the market . On the other hand, Germany circumvents the college degree race by providing alternative paths to prosperity for those without a degree by using a vocational pathway through apprenticeships. But these vocational programs in Germany are tightly controlled , as Tamar Jacoby noted in the Atlantic
"What makes dual training work, every manager told us, are the standardized occupational profiles, or curricula, developed by the federal government in collaboration with employers, educators, and union representatives. Every young machinist training anywhere in Germany learns the same skills in the same order on the same timetable as every other machinist. This is good for apprentices: It guarantees high-quality programs where trainees learn more than one company's methods, making it possible for those who wish to switch jobs later on. But it's hard to imagine this level of state control or business-labor cooperation in the U.S."
So there are no easy solutions, we can't lazily adopt ideas from other countries because it sounds good without properly understanding why our problems exist in the first place. We run the risk of misdiagnosing our problems, thus coming up with the wrong solutions thus creating new problems!
2) TPP - there are compelling reasons to support the TPP. .don't just look at the worst case scenarios. No trade deal is perfect, especially a trade deal the size of the TPP. I personally like it because 1) I'm pro trade and I believe trade lifts people out of poverty when done right 2) the TPP has provisions helping small businesses , it also 3) insists that countries in the TPP region comply with international labor standards - this means Vietnam will be forced to unionise 4) It also raises the floor on environment laws, and 5) tackles human trafficking and slavery . If Jason at the Daily Kos can see it, I'll leave it up to you to decide http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/28/1480964/-Defending-the-TPP
3) Trade Deals and Jobs - NAFTA's harshest critics claim that the deal cost us approximately 750,000 jobs. Ignoring for a minute the new jobs created by freer trade between US, Canada and Mexico, that may sound like a lot but the jobs made redundant due to Technology dwarfs this number. In fact, jobs started disappearing since the 1970's but let's look at this century: Between 2000-2010 , Technology made 5.6 million American jobs redundant, see here http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-griswold-globalization-and-trade-help-manufacturing-20160801-snap-story.html
Even Salon is coming round to this: http://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/technology_fcked_us_all_the_anxiety_driving_donald_trump_and_bernie_sanders_is_really_about_machines_taking_our_jobs/
. And it continues to eat away at jobs - As manufacturing becomes "smarter", the job market will shrink. We've seen huge spikes in Productivity gains since the turn of this century, and fewer manufacturing jobs- that is the problem which not a single candidate addressed adequately because everyone was high hating on trade deals when THIS should have been the major issue of 2016. it is also why no renegotiation of trade deals or Sanders-like protectionism will stop this trend - in fact the approach of Trump and Sanders will make things worse for us globally, killing our competitiveness and locking off markets to small to medium size business owners leaving only conglomerates with the capital to offset the drawbacks- not to mention the effects of higher tariffs like price inflation.
4) "Giving away the treasury to private interests" - Wall St is the epicentre of our prosperity. Instead of demonizing successful business people and industry leaders, lets come up with creative solutions to address a culture obsessed with growth at any cost. And this will require some form of self regulation, but bring this up and you get called a shill. Self regulation is ideal and the best away to change the culture at Wall St, but self regulation is next to impossible in huge companies- so again the problem isn't lack of regulation and neither should we believe that there isn't the will to change the status quo. The problem is consolidation of companies and occasionally monetary policies which exacerbate and facilitate abuses and underhanded behavior. If we actually address these issues we may get somewhere..
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