Barack Obama is on a roll. Yesterday, he announced that he’s proposing two years of free community college. It’s a great start for a Democratic agenda that directly impacts the lives of blue collar families.
Job training and education are keys to upward mobility and financial stability in the global economy. Offering free tuition lessens the burden of student debt on the next generation of workers and older workers who’ve been displaced in the changing economy. It’s the beginning of the “we’re on your side” argument that Democrats need to make.
Elizabeth Warren has articulated what Democrats need to oppose. She’s railed against the excesses of Wall Street, a system rigged in favor of the rich and a recovery that’s left the working class behind. Her rhetoric is enough to provide the emotional punch to fire up the base, but Democrats also need to show they have solutions that positively affect families.
In addition to free community college tuition, Democrats should to talk more about raising the minimum wage. Today’s job report shows that we have healthy job growth but that November’s wage increase was just a blip. In December, wages actually dropped. Working Americans aren’t going to feel too optimistic until they see their personal situations improve.
We also need a tax code that allows workers to benefit from their productivity. For thirty years, workers have gotten more productive but the benefit has gone to share holders, not wages. It’s time for a financial transaction tax that would provide revenue for college tuition and other measures to help the working class.
There are a certainly other measures that Democrats can propose, but they need an overarching message with the policies to support it. That message should be something like, “We stand up for people who make their living from wages, not stock dividends. We’ll work to provide the tools for success in the modern economy and fight for a system that benefits everyone, not just the few.” Free community college tuition is a great start in providing those tools and leveling the playing field.
Thanks, Obama.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Ladies and gents let’s get real. We have spent too much money on the wrong kinds of education. How many history majors do we need, and how much debt can those history majors bear (especially when they’re unemployed or unemployable)?
We do a good job at certain kinds of education, but where we fall flat is vocational education. Not everyone wants or needs a university degree. But just consider, if in our public schools we instituted an apprentice program for some technologies and trades we could save a heckuva lot of money and have a better, more productive workforce. Consider, a kid living in Durham, one parent family no money, said kid goes to school and drops out at sixteen then gangs up almost immediately. OR, the same kid goes to school, does work study with a local business or industry, gets a few bucks in his pocket while he’s training and as a result by age 18 or 19 he’s a fully qualified electrician or plumber WITH A JOB!
What I just described is the European system of primary education…and it works. The community colleges could and should play a role in a system like this but our problem is not access or money, our problem is priorities and structure.
As I said earlier, see below from today’s N&O. The GOP won’t go near it because of (a) who proposed it, and (b) because they’ve never seen a new investment in education they’ve liked:
“If all states participated, an estimated 9 million students would be eligible, according to the White House. A full-time community college student could save an average of $3,800 annually.
But there are plenty of hurdles. The Republican-controlled Congress would have to approve the spending. North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature, which declined the federal government’s Medicaid expansion, would have to allocate its share of the costs for North Carolina students.
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from Winston-Salem, said federal dollars would be better spent on existing programs.
U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican and former president of Mayland Community College in Spruce Pine, said Obama had a ‘bad habit’ of creating new programs without identifying a way to pay for them. ‘Increasing the number of students who have access to higher education must be a priority, but this is the wrong approach for the federal government to take,” she said in a statement.'”
Since his inauguration, McCrory has complained about the lack of job-ready work skills in NC’s workforce to answer needs expressed directly to him by NC companies. The community college system in NC has been ready, willing and able to respond to that, but McCrory and the NCGA has done nothing to increase its funding to harness that resource.
Now the POTUS suggests a plan to advance job training via the community colleges, and urges federal funding that will make it affordable for prospective workers. But because it’s Obama floating the notion, I’ll guess that McCrory and the NCGA will do nothing to voice support for it. More likely, like they did with Medicaid expansion, they’ll find a trumped-up rationale to oppose it, choosing opposition to anything Obama-esque over the needs of NC workers (and even NC companies). And of course, libertarians and arch-conservatives will rant on about how the government can’t afford it.
Mick I’m trying to understand what’s going on in that leftist head of yours but brother-man you got me stumped, You are just on a different wavelength. It’s all about pointing fingers and assigning blame for you. You are the most negative, embittered, malcontented human being I have ever seen. Take a pill dude and chill the heck out. We all want the same thing, to make education accessible and affordable and of the highest quality for the citizens of this state. Your default position is to politicize every last thing, and assign nefarious motives!
Just step back and consider most people act in good faith, they may be wrong but they’re not bad people. Hating on Republicans or Tea Party types with which you have political disagreements is pathological. But then again you have demonstrated time and again you are the hardest of the hard left, which in my view is by definition bat-crap insane.
Dear…Mick is not the one with the problem here. You really must do better. Your premise for most of YOUR tirade is the much closer to the definition of bat crap. I will leave the insane part to the professionals to determine.
I was glad to see President Obama’s remark. It’s a serious idea that could actually have a systemic and positive effect on wage stagnation. While Warren is wonderful at criticizing modern cronyism I was distressed to see that her recent remarks contained no innovative or plausible policy solutions. Democrats have got to recognize that Unions are not going to be a serious part of the American economy moving forward.
Agreed, Thomas, this is a good initiative.
Q: What is inflation?
A: Too much money chasing too few goods.
When I was attending NCSU (admittedly a good while ago) the cost per semester was less than $500.00 for a full time student (in state rate). Today it’s 6k +. What happened I wonder?
Just last week, it was announced that for the first time in our history, public universities derived more money from student tuition than from state financial support. Tuitions are rising much faster than inflation, so student loans to cover the difference are saddling millions with unsustainable debt.
UNC , the nation’s oldest public university and regularly touted as an education bargain, charges in-state undergrads higher tuition than New York State public universities charge its residents. Thank you, Tillis, McCrory et al!
And you are blaming “Tillis, McCrory et al”?
What does one say to this kind of ignorance? Bradley do you think that just maybe the federal government throwing money by way of “loans” thereby creating #1 a huge debt for students and #2 incredible inflation, just maybe that had an impact?
I can assure that neither the quality of education or students have not improved to 6k.
I agree with Mick. If only the establishment and rank and file Democrats will heed this message.
“We stand up for people who make their living from wages, not stock dividends. We’ll work to provide the tools for success in the modern economy and fight for a system that benefits everyone, not just the few.”
The Obama haters and conservatives will soon weigh in here, but I for one am liking the above main and to-the-point message!
Mick, with a quote like that you must hate guys like George Soros and President Obama. Zero percent interest rates with regulations like we have now can only help speculators, not wage earners. But you know that, you’re “The Mick”.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/17-things-we-learned-about-income-inequality-in-2014/383917/
Soros….hard to believe right wingers have not come up with a new boogie man. Still beatin the 90s drumbeat. I think this decade its the Kochs who are the new boogie man so your snark falls flat. Better luck next time.
What? The Kochs rank 56th on Open Secrets “Heavy Hitter” list, Act Blue (one of Soros’ MANY front organizations) is #2.
But hey, keep on keeping on Larry, it’s your delusion I’m just passing through.