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Free College Wasn't Just A Give Away – It Was A Trial Balloon
Over the past few weeks one could not escape the headline of the latest proposal to give away two years of community college. Everywhere it was debated by pundits whether it was a “good thing,” or a “bad idea”. “Who would, in the end, pay?” “Who would be eligible?” “Who wouldn’t? So on, and so forth. (for as we all know when you receive something for “free” there’s always a catch)
One of the details that was missed early on that finally made its way into the discourse was that “free” actually meant it was going to be paid for via the rescinding of the 529-Plan. A plan used primarily by the middle class as a way to help pay the onerous ever rising costs of college. A college by the way – of choice. i.e., A school they deem as being more noteworthy (or resume enhancing) than the typical community college.
Of course once this detail became apparent there was an outpouring of outrage. So much so that the idea was pulled and shelved nearly as fast as it came on the scene. This doesn’t happen that often. Rarely does a “give-away” initiative that’s designed to have all the right target buttons to be pushed leave the political arena before it’s been thoroughly fear mongered, class envied, and argued to death in the public square.
With at least 6 months if not more to go before any real political campaigns start in earnest for the next cycle, one would think this was just what a political debate vacuum would want. It had all the ingredients adored by political parties to throw barbs from podiums at the other side. (no matter the side) It is a perfect debate vehicle even if there’s no chance of it ever going thru. Because we all know; it really doesn’t matter at the time if an idea has a chance in passing. Rather, it’s more important the argument can be used to bludgeon your opponent. For that’s a far better use for results. Yet, this one was like a flash in the pan idea. Before the debate even started it was squelched and withdrawn. Why?
Many will say it didn’t have a snowball’s chance in you know where once some of the details became apparent. Sure, I can agree to that. However, what if the real reason had nothing to do with funding college: and had everything to do with setting a precedent? A precedent as to soften the masses up on the idea of trading or exchanging a tax deferred program (as in your 529 tax deferred nest egg) for a shiny new government backed program. All for “free.”
So you’re think “Yeah, yeah, yeah, what else is new.” And again I would agree with that . But here’s the issue that one must consider. What struck me was the fact in just how fast this proposal went away. Then it began to dawn on me. This has “trial ballooning 101″ written all over it. We’ve seen it so many times before regardless of party. So may times in fact we’ve drawn oblivious to it.
So, what is the real idea behind this probable balloon? Why even bring this into the public debate at all; especially now? It’s not like they need private institutions to bank roll higher learning any longer. That was basically done away with just a few years ago when the administration took over the entire student loan program. They now currently control it.
Tweaks, changes, special financing and more could all be done with basically “strokes of the pen.” There just has to be something here more than what typically meets the eye. Then it hit me: Replace 529 with 401K – and change college to retirement. Same premise, just the severity of outcomes changed. Which is why I believe it was a trial balloon idea to see the reaction to the underlying argument that was first and foremost the reasons to bring it forward.
If one remembers back in the early days of the financial crisis when it seemed all heck was breaking loose the then House Speaker was appearing on nearly every financial media channel touting the idea that maybe “The government should institute a program where people could turn over their 401K plans for a secured government bond.”
I remember at the time listening slack-jawed not only for the implications of such an idea. Rather, it was the brevity along with just how fast this idea came to light. It wasn’t as if there was a large vibrant ongoing debate. This seemed to come out-of-the-blue as a neatly packaged idea ready for anyone else (politically or via the populace at large) to jump on board and help push, or run with it. However, it too went away seemingly just as fast and was shelved.
I believe “shelved” is a very instructive word. For it implies: Ready to go when or if needed – again. These types of ideas don’t seem to be spontaneously derived, or a serendipitous bubbling out of the political ether. No, usually they are constructed far in advance then shelved waiting for the “right time” to either impose – or float for the future.
Many have written and spoke on the subject that the government in one form or another wants to get access (whether to tax or confiscate) the large pool of money that sits currently beyond their reach within the 401K structure. And nothing burns a hole in a politicians pocket faster than knowing there’s a great big ole pile of money somewhere within the financial system.
The only problem? Currently they can’t get access to it. (Regardless of party affiliation) But one should not think the political class doesn’t lay awake sleepless thinking about ways to garner access to it – just as often as one does the same for the opposite effect.
I believe it would be prudent for anyone to consider with what is currently going on within the financial markets globally, as well as the possible contagion concerns that may raise their ugly heads: trial balloons for the sole purpose of setting precedents for the explicit reasons which have to do with giving up tax sheltering vehicles in turn for “free” government backed or supplied ____________(fill in the blank) should not be lost on those watching these horizons for clues.
Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago people awoke to the change that their “cash” in a money market account no longer needed to be worth what their balance stated. It can now float via market forces along with being gated if necessary. The response? (Insert crickets here)
Currently if it were proposed forthright one could (or should) access “free” (i.e. wont be subject to negative interest rates) government back bonds; and all you needed to do to access this “great benefit” was to turn over your 401K plan? The alarm bells and uproar that would ensue would be fierce one would believe. Yet, the idea of negative interest rates just a few years ago was also considered “unimaginable.” Now? It’s becoming commonplace.
I feel the only way to re-engage in that conversation without a knee-jerk rebuttal of out right refusal would be if you first laid the premise and groundwork of another, yet smaller scale of the same idea gaining (or allowing) the acceptance of such a proposal first. i.e., The tax protected 529-Plan for a government supplied “freebie.”
Move that idea into the public. Find acceptance. (even if it’s small at first) Then: you can move the ladder quickly and propose the same idea or premise, only this time – it’s the 401K for a government bond. Or as I said earlier, ” _______________(fill in the blank.)”
No one knows whether this is the true except for those who float these type of ideas. Yet, one must take heed as to look out at the current financial landscape with all the possible contagion risks rearing their ugly heads within both the Euro Zone and more; and not be on high alert to the possibility things could once again: get very ugly – very fast.
With Greece leading the way to a possible EU breakdown along with hundreds of thousands now filling the public square in Spain to possibly do the same. The Federal Reserve along with most other politicians have to be a little more than concerned that things aren’t quite playing out as the “text books” stated they should.
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With Healthcare and then College education de-privatised, more than 80% of the economy would be under Government. That is much higher than France. Why is it that Americans are so reluctant to use the word "Socialism", because that's exactly what it is. I suppose we have to allow the "Progressives" to apply the "T" word to various ME philanthropic Organisations before we can expect them to use the "S" word?
everything is fabricated, we all live in massive ilusions and everything Obama does is a trial ballon ?
Slept through your physics and materials classes, did you?
The PE converted to KE of taking floors 40-110 of WTC 1 and 2 and lowering that to floor 40, was the equivalent of 100-500 tonnes of TNT, a small tactical nuke.
More than enough energy and friction to heat some steel to the melting point, destroy an adjacent bldg with the blast radius, and pulverise nearly everything.
Paper has unque properties. You can crush it under massive newtons applied in one axis but it stays intact. Twist that force, and it shreds easily.
Go sell that crazy bullshit elsewhere.
Did you sleep through observation 101 - the first step in the scientific process?
The physics showed that in one case the top of the building NEVER HIT THE LOWER SECTION OF THE BUILDING BASED ON NO OBSERVABLE DECERLERATION. That's means the pile driver theory is prima facie false BASED ON PHYSICS.
What a Gravity-Driven Demolition Looks Like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiHeCjZlkr8
This analysis supports the conclusions of both papers referred to above: the North Tower of the World Trade Center was not a natural, gravity-driven collapse.
No such thing as a free lunch - someone has to pay for it.
The promise of ...... is that everything essential will be free.
Free Beer College Tomorrow
Are you telling me my $100K Bachelor of Drinking in Flip Cup degree will be replaced by an Associate of Drinking who got it for free?
We owned a bar back in the day and couldn't not put a "free beer tomorrow" sign in the window. Sure enough, next day two tools came in demanding free beer. Cool as a cucumber, we simply pointed to the sign. As they were pondering the situation, the regulars busted out laughing, some uncontrollably. Never saw those two again. We bring this up because there is a lesson.....
Redistribute from the middle class (529, 4-year college) to the lower class (2-year technical).
How come we don't hear about redistributing from the 1% to everyone else. They own 50% of the wealth, or $40 Trillion in the USA. And they still want MOAR.
Because socialism is for the masses.
Are you kidding, All we hear is tax the rich. All we get is wealth redistributing from the middle-class to poor voters and wealthy campaign donors.
Can anyone explain the advantage of a 529 over just putting the cash in a retirement fund? There doesnt seem to be a real advantage when you can pull retirement funds without penalty to pay for higher education.
Teach yourself how to invest in just about anything and do not participate in 401k's, 529's, reach arounds, getting ass fucked with a sandpaper condom, etc.
Nice thing about phyzz - one boating accident and gov is out of the picture.
All these financial schemes have a single purpose....
More for the elites, less for the rest.
"They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want:
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests." - George Carlin
Whats your secret to not deferring your taxes on your investments?
you can actively invest in a 401k.
Sociopaths want it all and they will continue the grab until the masses realize the power of uniting billions of people into one force against their masters by simply and completely turning their backs on the tilted system, moving ideals and the way of life inward among us, participating in absolutely nothing that benefits the system in any capacity ~ the sociopaths need us far more then we'd ever need them.
Just like "affordable" healthcare..
Free shit is the future. Get back to work suckers!
That is the core of Fabian socialism, which is actually a form of communism.
free goods for all
How is it that this basic politics 101 move is not beheaded and staked through the heart
"I believe “shelved” is a very instructive word. For it implies: Ready to go when or if needed"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfPTC7-wCL8
( oh, that's not taught until sixth grade and only if you really pay attention? Boy am I a dummy.)
One interesting thing I heard about the free tuition is that people in need don't pay for community college anyway. The cost is low, and anyone remotely needy gets it for free through grants. The report I heard went on to explain that it would free up additional funds to support the person financially while attending.
Many fine examples through out history, but no need to look any further than Venezuela for the true outcome of utopia.
The banksters need to repay us.
"If one were to stop and think about it, they'd realize that tapeworms are communists."
Venezuela would probably be not so bad if they weren't being punished by the banksters for not bending over fast enough.
Haiti is being punished for being the one and only example of a successful uprising of slaves in (relatively) recent history.
The banksters need to die.
Tapeworms are parasites, just like the banksters.
Sure, only blame the bankers for the mess in Venezuela. The late corrupt Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his hand picked crony Nicolas Maduro had nothing to do with bankrupting the country.
Meanwhile, Chavez's socialite daughters refused to leave the presidential palace after Chavez died and continued to hold extravagant parties that neighbors complained as being deafening.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2564825/Hugo-Chavezs-daughters-r...
They can't currently access 401ks? Really? They can and do with inflation. That's the beauty of controllling the slaves' currency. You don't have to touch it to steal it. Ask the Japanese.
At this point, they've been reduced to throwing random shit out there, and seeing what sticks.
The problem is, however, that the general public has become so accustomed to the sensationalized 24-hr news cycle, that they all have whiplash, and cannot actually think, digest, and respond to anything anymore.
They've become the victim of their own success.
A robber asks, "Your money or your life?"
Government says, "Your money AND you life."
The banksters need to repay us.
guy walks up to you, puts a gun in your face and says 'give me your money'
government approaches you and says 'tell me how much money you've got so I know how much I can steal.
at least the robber might miss what you keep in your sock.
Yup.
Along those lines, I've never heard of a robber doing a cavity search.
Only the thieves of government express such a right.
damn good idea--push kids away from the debt trap that is 4 year college and into the much more practical community college
Since you have more down votes than ups, there must be a lot of debt slaves on here. Misery loves company.
The best things in life are free, just not from this gvt.
Interesting - you may be right. I feel the same way about the MyRA - no individual wealth held outside government hands allowed in the middle class.
C'mon .... who fuckin cares? Everyone knows the only thing in the world that matters is the superbowl and the PSI of the balls they will use.
There is nothing free about this. Someone else has to pay. The administrators and professors at most of these schools God forbid they have to forgo a huge raise every single year. Here in Massachusetts the taxpayer is heavily subsidizing these uMass party schools anyway. Most of the kids attending are derivatives or offspring of the top 2% it's this group that thinks Are special and entitled to preferential treatment
Wouldn't we be better off if education was free for everyone? As it is in Germany. Do we WANT to indebt our children's future? I agree that O's funding proposal was stupid, but his goal is not. The smarter we are and the healthier we are the more prosperous we will be.
In Germany you can't be a dipshit and get into college.
Would kill off the financial industry. No one would buy stocks. Brokers would have no sales. No way would this happen.
OMG Obama is really robin hood. Or robbin the hood, depending on how you look at it.
The issue of free community college should be apparent. On paper maybe it's a good idea but in reality not so much. First off if it's free it's not going to mean as much to those who attend vs those who worked and paid for it. There is also the concept of the degree being devalued dramatically as a result of the many individuals who would as a result have that degree. It would become even more worthless than it already is. Today most must have at least a bachelor’s degree in order to make a decent living. One must also realize that the tax payers are paying so it's not really "free". To top it all off this was tried in Tennessee and over time the price of the community college leveled back due to fees tacked on. At the end of the day the college got free money for the govt and the cost of the college was the same as when the program started. Anyone who is truly in favor of this should probably give it some more thought.
All so-called 'free' programs spring forth from the 'free' money spigot of the FED. End the FED and the IRS.
In the US if you're not a dipshit when you get in you certainly will be when you get out. Propaganda is an effective tool.
as we have now a negative interest rates on many bonds, how about a negative dividend yield?......I should think Goldman Sachs would love this idea.....no?
They already have that in place, only it's called management fees.
I lost the trial balloon and got sentenced to UCLA. Doin homework while everyone else is watching football bitchez
The "trial balloon" isnt for getting into 529s you dimwit. The trial balloon is a test for absolving iodiocracy (20 somethings) from their $2T of student loans outstanding. After all if we can give away free college credits (I refrail from calling it education) to a new generation we should also forgive past idiots of their debt.
Currently if it were proposed forthright one could (or should) access “free” (i.e. wont be subject to negative interest rates) government back bonds; and all you needed to do to access this “great benefit” was to turn over your 401K plan?
The complete state takeover of the economy progresses on schedule. Back to work debt slaves!
how come nobody has the discussion of whether or not it is appropriate for everybody to go to college?
let's go back and fix K-12 so that they can read & write when they get out of high school first, otherwise we're just sending a lot of them off to re-enact "animal house".
or...perhaps beefing up availability of vocational school? (or is that a dirty word these days?)
Negative interest rates are insane and a sign that the end is near, not a new normal. This was ever only tried once in the 70s and quickly shelved.
If they tax IRAs then there is no point to an IRA. I don't think this was a trial balloon, I think this was just an example of shafting everyone into the lower class. Community college already is an enabler, you don't need to make it free for that, it's not exactly expensive. But rather, it was about shrinking access to higher paying jobs via a quality college education, which does not seem to be affordable in this country anymore. Just more proof this is by design.
This is not a trial balloon. It's just an example of the systematic actions making a quality college education inaccessible to Americans. The 529 'balloon' is clear proof of that. The idea is to shaft everyone into the lower class.
This is the road straight to hell.
"Free" healthcare becomes "any person deemed overweight, or smoking, or owning a firearm is a drain on our free healthcare system and will be fined or jailed". Doctors and nurses become jaded, overworked, slaves. The quality of care plummets, while apathy and patient neglect soar. Pain and suffering becomes common place. Death panels ration care. And End Of Life programs are a death sentence more barbaric than shoving a small floating iceberg laden with elderly Eskimos out to sea.
"Free" or government protected retirement programs become a version of Social Security with stipulations that policies may not be treated as assets. All accounts will be claimed by the state at the time of your death. And the actual time of your death will be determined by that death panel mentioned above. Nice set-up right?
"Free" higher education will be Common Core public education grade 12+. But when the system fails, students will be evaluated, classified and educated accordingly. Alphas, Betas? Without even considering the deeper ramifications of what he was saying, Automatic Choke has already shown us the path. He wrote, "How come nobody has the discussion of whether or not it is appropriate for everybody to go to college?" He's not asking who is willing to work hard and better themselves. He is saying some people will not be "appropriate". And that means a very few lucky people will get to be deciders. (This job of awarding education will pay less than serving on a death panel, but both jobs will of course have endless opportunities for obscenely profitable abuses of power.)
When goals, determination, hard work and accountability are replaced with "free" government handout programs, the country literally becomes the very definition of oppression and hell on earth.
But you already knew that.