Making Elizabeth Warren's College Bailout Right Wing

James Carville recently criticized Elizabeth Warren’s plan for free college or paying off college loans or whatever- basically that it was unfair to all those who did pay. As an unfair plan, it is unsellable to the American people. Too many people who actually vote are going to look at it like it is incredibly unfair.

But if the premise is fraud, it is much more fair- and it provides us with a simple solution to our over-production of 'elites.'

First, as in most fraud cases, the perpetrators of the fraud are the ones most on the hook. The funds ought to be coming from the colleges that pretended to educate. Secondly, the person who declares he or she was the victim of fraud is declaring his or her own degree to be worthless. It would be seen as much more fair, then, because those actually successful and/or willing to keep their degrees can continue to be in the credentialed class.

At the same time, though, the entire idea of the credentialed class takes a hit. Everyone develops skills- indeed, it often takes a real education scrounged up on-line or due to work experience, to let us come to understand we weren't educated in the first place.

Meanwhile, higher education would quickly return itself to educating approximately 15% of the population, and they'd likely restrict themselves to those smart enough to actually benefit from college rather than continue trying to pretend that college is for everyone. And, from a long term strategic standpoint, we'd be denying our enemies a lot of status and money.

This seems like a niche political issue, only relevant to those who took out loans to pay for college, but it is actually part of a larger problem that seems to still be largely not understood- private debt rapidly becomes an economic problem, as ever larger amounts of money begin to flow away from productive ends, and towards payments for the debts. The economy stagnates, and ends up effecting everyone- not just the people who took out the debt. The government understands this to a certain extent, and applies it to private corporate debt- indeed, they seem to be constantly interfering now in overnight liquidity markets, which is, if you think about it, is vastly more unfair than actions that benefit individual people in relatively objective ways. In order to benefit from a corporate bailout, you kind of have to be in the position of owning a large chunk of a corporation.