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The initial proposal from The President costs $60 billion over ten years or $6 billion per year. For some perspective, conservative estimates have put the cost

The initial proposal from The President costs $60 billion over ten years or $6 billion per year. For some perspective, conservative estimates have put the cost of the war in Iraq at $500 million a day. This proposal would cost 72 days of war. It's difficult to comprehend how our politicians could have any issues supporting such an initiative.

danielweber 12y ago
If we just buy everything that is cheaper than the Iraq war, we will very soon be bankrupt.
- caseydurfee 12y ago
  This is an initiative that will lead to higher earning potential for Americans, leading to higher tax revenues over the long term. Will it pay for itself? Probably not, but it's juvenile to act like all government spending is equal when it comes to the country's long term financial health.
  - aaron-lebo 12y ago
    Yes, potential. It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?). It probably makes bachelor's degrees even more of a requirement for decent jobs, making people more likely to take on student loans and spend their 20 and 30s paying them back for a piece of paper, restricting their mobility and options. Throwing more money into a broken system does nothing than embed it further. Just about all of us here value learning, but our education system needs to be benefiting people, teaching people, and it is not doing that.
    - rstupek 12y ago
      Also raising the price of colleges everywhere because of the influx of additional money into the system.
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        Subsidizing community college would artificially increase the demand for CC and thus increase the price. This does not mean it will raise the price of traditional, expensive 4-year colleges and universities. CC does tend to feed into 4-year programs so it could cause some increase in demand (it could also decrease demand by acting as a substitute), but we are not talking about increasing our subsidy of 4-year programs.
    - remarkEon 12y ago
      So your problem is with the paper? Agree that the "system" is "broken", but I think describing college as just a "piece of paper" really over-simplifies the problem. Do we not need some way of certifying skill sets? And I'm unconvinced that what you would see would actually be a devaluing of high school diplomas. Potentially, we'd just view high school how we view elementary school now - something everyone assumes you do. Are we not trying to encourage everyone to do more and become more educated? In what way could we benefit/teach people that doesn't cost anything?
      - danielweber 12y ago
        Do we not need some way of certifying skill sets? College is a HORRIBLE way to "certify skill sets." It's the most anti-liberal certification I can imagine: it measures how long you can afford to go without an income. One big result of giving college educations to a bunch of people that didn't need them is the credentialism race. Why does an office manager need a college degree when it didn't 40 years ago? Because now there are enough job candidates out there with a college degree that it becomes an easy (and legal[1]) way to filter out people who aren't smart enough for college. If you are one of those who are smart enough for college, this sounds great, but it leaves the people who can't cut college material up a creek. [1] Griggs banned degree requirements, but no one pays attention to that
        sjy 12y ago
        "What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification." Saying that the case "banned degree requirements" is putting it too high.
        kefka 12y ago
        The decision is more nuanced than that. If a lawsuit is brought against the company in question, they have to prove that their degree requirement is essential to the job in question. If it's not, then it could be said the degree requirement is to discriminate against a class of people. This is predicated on one very big thing: filing a lawsuit and winning. Well, and they're certainly not going to hire you now. But you open the doors for other people to get in without a degree.
    - lotso 12y ago
      > It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?). I can't imagine anyone actually thinking that. "Who needs good elementary schools? Everyone is going to middle school anyway, right?"
    - acveilleux 12y ago
      Actually, I live in a place (Quebec) that effectively has free Community Colleges (we call them CEGEPs) and has had them for decades now. We have one less year of compulsory public education. I guess that devalued high school. However university degrees here are 3 years (4 for out of province students.) Society hasn't collapsed. For many occupations, the "technical" diplomas (3 years instead of pre-uni 2 years stream) from a CEGEP are the expected level of education. There's an engineering school that specifically serves to convert those technical diploma to B.Ing (http://en.etsmtl.ca http://en.etsmtl.ca).
    - Kalium 12y ago
      > It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?). ...and therefore making higher education more accessible is a bad thing?
  - Mvandenbergh 12y ago
    Whether it makes a net difference to earnings on a large scale depends on the degree to which this education will be a positional good vs leading to actual productivity gains. The positional element just shifts money around, devaluing high school diplomas. Only the productivity improvement element will increase net earnings.
- cgore 12y ago
  We're way past bankrupt already. That's what debt is. Zero was a long time ago.
  - slayed0 12y ago
    debt =/= bankruptcy. Unrecoverable debt is bankruptcy. While the argument could be made that our debt is past a recoverable point, it is not a certainty.
    - 542458 12y ago
      "While the argument could be made that our debt is past a recoverable point..." I'm not sure it could, unless I'm misunderstanding. The US could print up 15 trillion dollar notes tomorrow, and pay off all of it's debt. Of course, this would cripple the economy in a matter of hours, but it would still pay off the debt.
      - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        Right. The usa can't go bankrupt because they have their own currency. Also, a majority of usa debt is held by Americans, the remainder held by foreign governments with no better options to park trade surpluses (the USA playing an imprortant role as the most reliable debtor of last resort).
  - randomnumber53 12y ago
    Being in debt just means one owes money. The US government has assets and various investments. Being bankrupt is when you can't pay back your debt, which the US most likely will be able to do.
    - ctdonath 12y ago
      Going from 50% deficit spending to paying off equivalent of 100% of GDP (which enjoys a 2-5% annual growth) amounts to "won't be able to". We'd have to cut spending by 1/3rd just to stop increasing the debt. We'd have to route all federal revenue to debt for 5 years to pay it off. Ain't happening.
- moskie 12y ago
  Let me know when you hit the bottom of that slippery slope.
  - srandazzo 12y ago
    Agreed, Nearly 40 percent of working-aged Americans now hold a college degree, according to a new report from the Lumina Foundation. In 2012, 39.4 percent of Americans between 25 and 64 had at least a two-year college degree. Looks like we have a lot of room for improvement at which it is going to take a very long time to truly devalue higher eduction where a bachelors degree is looked at like high school diploma.
- RIMR 12y ago
  The Iraq War has cost us ~$6,000,000,000,000 (that's ~$17k per US citizen). Under Obama's plan, that money could be used to pay for two years of community college for every student willing to do the require work for the next 1000 years! Of course we shouldn't "buy everything that's cheaper than the Iraq war", but that's not what is being argued. This was just to show a contrast between two ~10-year projects. It doesn't take a lot of work to figure out which investment has a higher return.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    How do you propose we evaluate the return on the Iraq War?
    - brianbreslin 12y ago
      This could open an entire can of worms. I would be curious to see how any war ROI is calculated when not in a conquer and pillage situation (spoils of war and what not).
      - hdevalence 12y ago
        I would count Iraq as a conquer and pillage situation -- see, for instance, _Pay Any Price_ by James Risen.
      - tomjen3 12y ago
        Just because it cannot be measured does not mean it doesn't have value. As a European I am exceedingly glad the US got involved in WWII, since otherwise the Soviets would have won, but how do you put a prize on my freedom and the freedom of future generations?
  - twoodfin 12y ago
    Where do you get that $6T figure? It's absurdly larger than any budgetary expenditure.
- methehack 12y ago
  The wars in the middle east are not likely to make us more money than the cost. This is. It's an investment, like roads. It grows the economy. This is more or less considered a fact in macroeconomics. There are two very comparable super-relevant historical precedents: public high school education (yes that was someone's idea too) and the GI Bill. Both of these social programs (as they would be called today) have made this country not only a better place but MONEY.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    This is more or less considered a fact in macroeconomics Oh, good. What does economics say about who captures the benefit of education? What's the rate of return on successful graduation from community college? (Hint: check Schenk Matsuyama 2010.) What is the graduation rate from community college? (And isn't that number a lot lower than you expected?) Now, given the fraction of benefits that is privately captured, and the fact that some fraction of students are delaying earnings while pursuing a degree, what return do you expect to the government? Also, do you imagine there being any limit on magically pouring money into "education" and growing an economy? Why is it that no other nation on Earth spends as much money on education as the US does? [1] Why are they all leaving money on the table? In the particular case of post-secondary education, the US is almost 50% ahead of its next closest competitor in terms of spending per student. What is wrong with all those other countries? Have you not told them this is a macroeconomic fact? [1] The US is at the top, maybe tied with Switzerland, in pure dollars spent per student. http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48630868.pdf http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48630868....
    - stolio 12y ago
      Those numbers are dollars per student, if we start sending a lot of new people to community colleges our rank on that list might drop since community college is much cheaper than univeristy where many costs go towards things not directly tied to education: dorms, meal plans, sports equipment, stadiums, etc.
      - 12y ago
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Education is a capital investment. Its ROI should be measured in terms of increased productivity per dollar invested, and we should be investing for maximum marginal productivity increase. Based on what little hard information I've seen and my scant anecdata of first-hand experience, I think community colleges are a fairly high-margin public investment right now.
anExcitedBeast 12y ago
This says less about education than it does about the inefficiency of the Iraq war.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  How much does an efficient war cost?
  - towelguy 12y ago
    How much would peace cost?
  - beeworker 12y ago
    If these numbers are believed, less than the Iraq War: http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-World-War-II-cost http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-World-War-II-cost (Also efficient wars cost less time, and that one was even against a much more formidable enemy.)
jeangenie 12y ago
What this says to me is that we should immediately stop pouring money into conflagrations overseas.
- saraid216 12y ago
  But then our gasoline prices would go up.
  - bmelton 12y ago
    They'll go up when our elected officials succeed in leveraging the low gas prices as an excuse to increase gas taxes either way, really... and then they'll likely go up again on their own for double-up power.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
That's still a non-trivial amount. 3 years of that is the entire SLS/Orion rocket system and NASA lives in fear of losing the budget to finish it. Comments like yours really show how insanely expensive modern war is.
marknutter 12y ago
I'm sure the estimated cost for the Iraq War was significantly less than what it ended up costing. I'm thinking the estimated cost for Obama's community college initiative will far too low as well. In fact, I'm willing to bet community college costs skyrocket over the next few years in response.
crazy1van 12y ago
> It's difficult to comprehend how our politicians could have any issues supporting such an initiative. This just seems like a variant of the sunk cost fallacy. The money blown on the Iraq war is gone. We can't get it back. So why would that have any bearing on the cost benefit analysis of another expense?
ahallock 12y ago
Or maybe both are wasteful spending--did you consider that? The proposal will cost much more than $60 billion. Why believe otherwise? How much was the Iraq war supposed to cost? This is just a feel-good initiative, and it worries me that no one can be bothered to bring up the cons. Do we really believe there's no ulterior motives at play here?

danielweber 12y ago

If we just buy everything that is cheaper than the Iraq war, we will very soon be bankrupt.

caseydurfee 12y ago
This is an initiative that will lead to higher earning potential for Americans, leading to higher tax revenues over the long term. Will it pay for itself? Probably not, but it's juvenile to act like all government spending is equal when it comes to the country's long term financial health.
- aaron-lebo 12y ago
  Yes, potential. It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?). It probably makes bachelor's degrees even more of a requirement for decent jobs, making people more likely to take on student loans and spend their 20 and 30s paying them back for a piece of paper, restricting their mobility and options. Throwing more money into a broken system does nothing than embed it further. Just about all of us here value learning, but our education system needs to be benefiting people, teaching people, and it is not doing that.
  - rstupek 12y ago
    Also raising the price of colleges everywhere because of the influx of additional money into the system.
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      Subsidizing community college would artificially increase the demand for CC and thus increase the price. This does not mean it will raise the price of traditional, expensive 4-year colleges and universities. CC does tend to feed into 4-year programs so it could cause some increase in demand (it could also decrease demand by acting as a substitute), but we are not talking about increasing our subsidy of 4-year programs.
  - remarkEon 12y ago
    So your problem is with the paper? Agree that the "system" is "broken", but I think describing college as just a "piece of paper" really over-simplifies the problem. Do we not need some way of certifying skill sets? And I'm unconvinced that what you would see would actually be a devaluing of high school diplomas. Potentially, we'd just view high school how we view elementary school now - something everyone assumes you do. Are we not trying to encourage everyone to do more and become more educated? In what way could we benefit/teach people that doesn't cost anything?
    - danielweber 12y ago
      Do we not need some way of certifying skill sets? College is a HORRIBLE way to "certify skill sets." It's the most anti-liberal certification I can imagine: it measures how long you can afford to go without an income. One big result of giving college educations to a bunch of people that didn't need them is the credentialism race. Why does an office manager need a college degree when it didn't 40 years ago? Because now there are enough job candidates out there with a college degree that it becomes an easy (and legal[1]) way to filter out people who aren't smart enough for college. If you are one of those who are smart enough for college, this sounds great, but it leaves the people who can't cut college material up a creek. [1] Griggs banned degree requirements, but no one pays attention to that
      - sjy 12y ago
        "What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification." Saying that the case "banned degree requirements" is putting it too high.
        kefka 12y ago
        The decision is more nuanced than that. If a lawsuit is brought against the company in question, they have to prove that their degree requirement is essential to the job in question. If it's not, then it could be said the degree requirement is to discriminate against a class of people. This is predicated on one very big thing: filing a lawsuit and winning. Well, and they're certainly not going to hire you now. But you open the doors for other people to get in without a degree.
  - lotso 12y ago
    > It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?). I can't imagine anyone actually thinking that. "Who needs good elementary schools? Everyone is going to middle school anyway, right?"
  - acveilleux 12y ago
    Actually, I live in a place (Quebec) that effectively has free Community Colleges (we call them CEGEPs) and has had them for decades now. We have one less year of compulsory public education. I guess that devalued high school. However university degrees here are 3 years (4 for out of province students.) Society hasn't collapsed. For many occupations, the "technical" diplomas (3 years instead of pre-uni 2 years stream) from a CEGEP are the expected level of education. There's an engineering school that specifically serves to convert those technical diploma to B.Ing (http://en.etsmtl.ca http://en.etsmtl.ca).
  - Kalium 12y ago
    > It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?). ...and therefore making higher education more accessible is a bad thing?
- Mvandenbergh 12y ago
  Whether it makes a net difference to earnings on a large scale depends on the degree to which this education will be a positional good vs leading to actual productivity gains. The positional element just shifts money around, devaluing high school diplomas. Only the productivity improvement element will increase net earnings.
cgore 12y ago
We're way past bankrupt already. That's what debt is. Zero was a long time ago.
- slayed0 12y ago
  debt =/= bankruptcy. Unrecoverable debt is bankruptcy. While the argument could be made that our debt is past a recoverable point, it is not a certainty.
  - 542458 12y ago
    "While the argument could be made that our debt is past a recoverable point..." I'm not sure it could, unless I'm misunderstanding. The US could print up 15 trillion dollar notes tomorrow, and pay off all of it's debt. Of course, this would cripple the economy in a matter of hours, but it would still pay off the debt.
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      Right. The usa can't go bankrupt because they have their own currency. Also, a majority of usa debt is held by Americans, the remainder held by foreign governments with no better options to park trade surpluses (the USA playing an imprortant role as the most reliable debtor of last resort).
- randomnumber53 12y ago
  Being in debt just means one owes money. The US government has assets and various investments. Being bankrupt is when you can't pay back your debt, which the US most likely will be able to do.
  - ctdonath 12y ago
    Going from 50% deficit spending to paying off equivalent of 100% of GDP (which enjoys a 2-5% annual growth) amounts to "won't be able to". We'd have to cut spending by 1/3rd just to stop increasing the debt. We'd have to route all federal revenue to debt for 5 years to pay it off. Ain't happening.
moskie 12y ago
Let me know when you hit the bottom of that slippery slope.
- srandazzo 12y ago
  Agreed, Nearly 40 percent of working-aged Americans now hold a college degree, according to a new report from the Lumina Foundation. In 2012, 39.4 percent of Americans between 25 and 64 had at least a two-year college degree. Looks like we have a lot of room for improvement at which it is going to take a very long time to truly devalue higher eduction where a bachelors degree is looked at like high school diploma.
RIMR 12y ago
The Iraq War has cost us ~$6,000,000,000,000 (that's ~$17k per US citizen). Under Obama's plan, that money could be used to pay for two years of community college for every student willing to do the require work for the next 1000 years! Of course we shouldn't "buy everything that's cheaper than the Iraq war", but that's not what is being argued. This was just to show a contrast between two ~10-year projects. It doesn't take a lot of work to figure out which investment has a higher return.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  How do you propose we evaluate the return on the Iraq War?
  - brianbreslin 12y ago
    This could open an entire can of worms. I would be curious to see how any war ROI is calculated when not in a conquer and pillage situation (spoils of war and what not).
    - hdevalence 12y ago
      I would count Iraq as a conquer and pillage situation -- see, for instance, _Pay Any Price_ by James Risen.
    - tomjen3 12y ago
      Just because it cannot be measured does not mean it doesn't have value. As a European I am exceedingly glad the US got involved in WWII, since otherwise the Soviets would have won, but how do you put a prize on my freedom and the freedom of future generations?
- twoodfin 12y ago
  Where do you get that $6T figure? It's absurdly larger than any budgetary expenditure.
methehack 12y ago
The wars in the middle east are not likely to make us more money than the cost. This is. It's an investment, like roads. It grows the economy. This is more or less considered a fact in macroeconomics. There are two very comparable super-relevant historical precedents: public high school education (yes that was someone's idea too) and the GI Bill. Both of these social programs (as they would be called today) have made this country not only a better place but MONEY.
- danielweber 12y ago
  This is more or less considered a fact in macroeconomics Oh, good. What does economics say about who captures the benefit of education? What's the rate of return on successful graduation from community college? (Hint: check Schenk Matsuyama 2010.) What is the graduation rate from community college? (And isn't that number a lot lower than you expected?) Now, given the fraction of benefits that is privately captured, and the fact that some fraction of students are delaying earnings while pursuing a degree, what return do you expect to the government? Also, do you imagine there being any limit on magically pouring money into "education" and growing an economy? Why is it that no other nation on Earth spends as much money on education as the US does? [1] Why are they all leaving money on the table? In the particular case of post-secondary education, the US is almost 50% ahead of its next closest competitor in terms of spending per student. What is wrong with all those other countries? Have you not told them this is a macroeconomic fact? [1] The US is at the top, maybe tied with Switzerland, in pure dollars spent per student. http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48630868.pdf http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48630868....
  - stolio 12y ago
    Those numbers are dollars per student, if we start sending a lot of new people to community colleges our rank on that list might drop since community college is much cheaper than univeristy where many costs go towards things not directly tied to education: dorms, meal plans, sports equipment, stadiums, etc.
    - 12y ago
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Education is a capital investment. Its ROI should be measured in terms of increased productivity per dollar invested, and we should be investing for maximum marginal productivity increase. Based on what little hard information I've seen and my scant anecdata of first-hand experience, I think community colleges are a fairly high-margin public investment right now.

anExcitedBeast 12y ago

This says less about education than it does about the inefficiency of the Iraq war.

cpeterso 12y ago
How much does an efficient war cost?
- towelguy 12y ago
  How much would peace cost?
- beeworker 12y ago
  If these numbers are believed, less than the Iraq War: http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-World-War-II-cost http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-World-War-II-cost (Also efficient wars cost less time, and that one was even against a much more formidable enemy.)

jeangenie 12y ago

What this says to me is that we should immediately stop pouring money into conflagrations overseas.

saraid216 12y ago
But then our gasoline prices would go up.
- bmelton 12y ago
  They'll go up when our elected officials succeed in leveraging the low gas prices as an excuse to increase gas taxes either way, really... and then they'll likely go up again on their own for double-up power.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

That's still a non-trivial amount. 3 years of that is the entire SLS/Orion rocket system and NASA lives in fear of losing the budget to finish it. Comments like yours really show how insanely expensive modern war is.

marknutter 12y ago

I'm sure the estimated cost for the Iraq War was significantly less than what it ended up costing. I'm thinking the estimated cost for Obama's community college initiative will far too low as well. In fact, I'm willing to bet community college costs skyrocket over the next few years in response.

crazy1van 12y ago

> It's difficult to comprehend how our politicians could have any issues supporting such an initiative. This just seems like a variant of the sunk cost fallacy. The money blown on the Iraq war is gone. We can't get it back. So why would that have any bearing on the cost benefit analysis of another expense?

ahallock 12y ago

Or maybe both are wasteful spending--did you consider that? The proposal will cost much more than $60 billion. Why believe otherwise? How much was the Iraq war supposed to cost? This is just a feel-good initiative, and it worries me that no one can be bothered to bring up the cons. Do we really believe there's no ulterior motives at play here?