Friday, April 5, 2019

GASP! WHERE DID TRUMP FAIL THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS? - BLUE COLLAR WORKERS SEE WAGE HIKES THANKS TO 'SHORTAGE' OF FOREIGNERS

Danny Newell, an unemployed logger, at his home in Indian Township, Maine, on Oct. 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Fixing America’s Unemployment Crisis

Trump was elected in part on the promise of creating jobs, but how about those who stopped looking for work?
What has been called a “quiet catastrophe” has been unfolding in America: the collapse of work for millions of America’s men, and, more recently, for America’s women as well.
Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute, estimates there are 10 million men who are jobless and no longer looking for work. According to calculations using 2014 data, an estimated 3.6 million women are in the same situation.
President-elect Donald Trump has announced a raft of policies meant to spur economic growth and create jobs, but thought needs to be given to what specific measures might help this urgent situation.
How to address this crisis depends on what one understands the problem to be. A graph showing the prime-age employment rate for men provides a kind of Rorschach test for possible responses.
Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, and author of, most recently, “The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity,” focuses on the cyclical upturns in the jagged line, on those periods of prosperity when workers regain jobs that had been lost.
Eberstadt focuses on the straight trend line, which has been going inexorably and disastrously downward for decades.
Bernstein and Eberstadt represent two typical and contrasting approaches to the unemployment problem.
*
If you look at the employment rate for prime-age workers, they have actually clawed back two-thirds of their losses since the great recession.
— JARED BERNSTEIN
Bernstein published the graph in a chapter he contributed to Eberstadt’s book “Men Without Work,” in which he critiques Eberstadt’s diagnosis of the employment crisis.
For Bernstein, the key is a missing demand for labor.
“If you look at the employment rate for prime-age workers, they have actually clawed back two-thirds of their losses since the Great Recession,” Bernstein said in an interview. “That doesn’t sound to me like a group that has given up. It sounds to me like a group that is not facing ample opportunity.”
For Eberstadt, the problem is a detachment from work.
Using various government databases, Eberstadt gives a composite portrait of those men who are out of the workforce and not looking for work.
They don’t read newspapers, seem to have few familial responsibilities, and tend not to be involved in a church or their communities. They spend most of their time entertaining themselves with TV or hand-held devices; 31 percent admitted to survey takers that they used illegal drugs.
Bernstein counters this portrait by noting that the causal connection may go from a lack of employment opportunities to suffering from depression, which then leads to these men planting themselves on the couch.
As to the individual motives of the non-working, Bernstein said, “We just don’t know.” His advice to Trump is to aggressively pursue full employment, which involves the federal government using a number of different tools.
An officer waits to escort Harvey Lesser, an unemployed software developer, from his apartment after serving him with a court order for eviction in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 11, 2009.

Stimulus and Subsidies

Bernstein believes the key to the downward trend his graph shows is the disappearance of manufacturing jobs. He favors trade policies that will reduce America’s chronic trade imbalances, which will create more demand for domestic manufacturing.
Bernstein also favors an infrastructure program, with the caveat that “you have to do it right,” he said.
He would like to see the federal government get involved in communities that “don’t have enough businesses, child care slots, supermarkets, and stores—these are a classic market failure.”
The federal government could subsidize private employers in these neighborhoods, giving them an incentive to move their businesses there.
Bernstein also favors special efforts to help those with a criminal record, and Eberstadt agrees finding ways to help this population is key to addressing the problem of non-working adults. He estimates that, by the end of 2016, there will be 20 million with a felony conviction in their past.
Source: Jared Bernstein’s analysis of Bureau of Labor statistics in “Men Without Work” by Nicholas Eberstadt
Bernstein supports the Ban the Box initiative, which calls for removing the box on employment applications that must be ticked by anyone with a criminal record.
He also would like to see direct job creation. The federal government would offer a heavily subsidized wage, and at the local level there would be training for specific jobs that would be available in that area.
He would also like to see the federal government fund an apprenticeship program, which would involve recruiting local businesses.
Finally, Bernstein wants to see the federal government get the macro economic policies right to support full employment. This means using monetary policy—primarily interest rates set by the Federal Reserve—and fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. In Bernstein’s view, we took our foot off the pedal of fiscal stimulus too soon—the United States should have carried larger deficits in the years following the Great Recession.
Eric Gilliam, an unemployed coal miner, in his garage at his home in Lynch, Ky., on Oct. 18, 2014. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Small Business

Eberstadt said it is “small not big business that employs most Americans.” Over the last eight years, he said, there has been only marginally more small business births compared to small business deaths. A healthy labor market will be one with “many, many new businesses being formed,” he said. Part of the solution? Undo regulatory strangulation and rationalize the tax code.
While Eberstadt agrees that manufacturing jobs are important, he would urge the Trump administration not to “fetishize” manufacturing jobs. The percentage of manufacturing jobs in developed economies around the world has steadily dropped. “Jobs that employ people are good,” Eberstadt said, “whether they have the word manufacturing in them or not.”
In order to protect the manufacturing jobs we do have, Eberstadt urges that we not get into a trade war with China, Mexico, or other countries, saying that trade wars lose jobs, they don’t create jobs.
*
Clearly there has been a change in the way most people think about what is decent and appropriate for able-bodied, working-age men to do with their lives 
— NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, economist, American Enterprise Institute
Because our entitlement programs are administered locally, they tether people to the states in which they are receiving benefits. Finding a way to cut that tie will give people mobility, which will open up more job opportunities.
Eberstadt’s book is meant to initiate “a broad conversation on our ‘men without work’ problem, a conversation of many voices and differing perspectives.” One important solution is to bring this mostly invisible problem “into the public spotlight.”
Shortcomings in the data we have limit the kinds of conversations we have. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count the 13.6 million people who have stopped looking for work as unemployed. When the American public is given an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent, the crisis of the non-working is hidden from them.
The government surveys that are conducted do not reveal the mindsets of those men who are disconnected from work—vital information for anyone who wants to understand this crisis. The Social Security Disability Insurance program does not have an effective audit that would tell us whether it is being used as a substitute for employment insurance.
Butch Youshaw, an unemployed card dealer, with his girlfriend in Henderson, Nev., in 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Stigma

Eberstadt notes that relevant context for the crisis of the non-working is a change in our society’s “mores, and viewpoints, and motivations.”
“Clearly there has been a change in the way most people think about what is decent and appropriate for able-bodied, working-age men to do with their lives in their prime working ages,” Eberstadt said.
Over half of non-working men in their prime years are getting money from at least one government disability program, according to Eberstadt. These funds, Eberstadt writes, finance the non-working’s decision not to work.
He would like to see these programs have a work requirement, as was done 20 years ago with single mothers on welfare. Requiring work stigmatizes non-work and so provides a moral incentive for individuals to move off the couch and back into the workaday world.
Bernstein writes he sees “no good for making these programs less generous or further conditioning them on work.”

Stigma, Eberstadt said, “is often a kinder and gentler way of achieving social objectives than police power.”

Blue Collar Workers Enjoy Wage Hikes Thanks to ‘Shortage’ of Foreigners


American Construction Workers
Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
677
3:35

Wage hikes for America’s blue collar and working class can be readily suppressed and choked by importing more foreign workers for employers, the New York Times admits.

In a piece titled,”Short of Workers, U.S. Builders and Farmers Crave More Immigrants,” the Times admits that President Trump’s tightened “Hire American” labor market through increased immigration enforcement has delivered historic wage hikes to America’s blue collar and working class.
Specifically, in the U.S. construction industry, American workers enjoy a $25.34 average hourly wage today —  six percent more in wage earnings when compared to the year before.
The Times acknowledges the blue collar wage hike as “close to the steepest annual increase since the government started keeping track almost 30 years ago.”
Despite foreign-born residents accounting for about one-in-four construction workers in the U.S., as the Times noted, employers and business complain that more foreign workers are necessary to ensure that they do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions, and to keep their profit margins wide.
“The recent shortage of immigrant workers is impacting housing and housing affordability,” said Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Phil Crone, who runs the association’s Dallas chapter, said the labor bottleneck was adding about $6,000 to the cost of every home built in the area and delaying completion by two months. [Emphasis added]
The need for labor has set off a scramble for bodies that is spilling across industries and driving up wages. “A lot of our landscape companies are upset because their guys are coming into construction because they can earn more,”said Alan Hoffmann, who builds energy-efficient homes in Dallas. [Emphasis added]
“It is good for wages to go up, but if labor is at a point where employers can’t hire, it is reducing growth,” said Pia Orrenius, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “There’s also considerable wage pressure in small towns and cities that are depopulating, but that is a sign of distress, not of rising productivity.” [Emphasis added]
Blue collar and middle class wages, overall, have jumped four percent over the last 12 months thanks to Trump’s tightened labor market, Goldman Sachs analysis has revealed.
“Wage growth has picked up sharply in the bottom half of the wage distribution … The solid wage growth suggests a relatively optimistic outlook on consumption,” the analysis reported.
White House adviser Ivanka Trump has routinely touted the benefits to the working class of the president’s preferred low-immigration, higher-wage economy rather than the corporate interest and donor class’s preferred low wage economic model with endless illegal and legal immigration.
“[Large and small business employers are now competing for workers] in a tight labor market,” Ivanka Trump previously said. “A tight labor market is good. Wages are finally going up for the American worker.”
While wages continue to rise for America’s blue collar and working class, soaring levels of illegal immigration expected to the U.S. threaten wage gains for U.S. workers,as companies could enjoy a saturated labor market by the end of the year.
This year, between one to 1.5 million illegal aliens are expected to arrive in the country. Up to 500,000 of those nationals will cross the U.S.-Mexico border, undetected by Border Patrol, experts say and more than 400,000 may be released into the interior of the country by the end of the year at current Catch and Release rates.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder




Trump’s DHS Releases More than 17K Illegal Aliens into U.S. in 12 Days



Asylum-seekers wait at a Greyhound bus station in El Paso, Texas, after being dropped off by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on Dec. 23, 2018. (PAUL RATJE/AFP/Getty Images)
PAUL RATJE/AFP/Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
6,977
2:51

President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is continuing its mass release of border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the United States, most recently releasing more than 17,000 migrants in less than two weeks.

According to newly obtained data by Breitbart News, DHS released about 17,065 border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S. between March 21 and April 1, a mere 12-day period. Since December 21, 2018, DHS has released about 125,565 border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the country.
The Catch and Release process often entails federal immigration officials busing border crossers into nearby border cities and dropping them off with the promise that they will show up for their immigration and asylum hearings, sometimes years later. The overwhelming majority of border crossers and illegal aliens are never deported from the country once they are released into the U.S.
Since December 21, 2018, DHS has released:
  • 12,745 border crossers into the San Diego, California area
  • 22,000 border crossers into the Phoenix, Arizona area
  • 37,500 border crossers into the El Paso, Texas area
  • 53,320 border crossers into the San Antonio, Texas area
In the last 12 days, DHS released nearly 6,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the San Antonio area, alone, forcing American communities to absorb the influx of soaring illegal immigration levels at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been tasked with releasing border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S., ICE officials have confirmed, under the direction of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Acting ICE Director Ron Vitiello.
The Catch and Release policy has strained ICE resources, forcing fewer arrests of illegal aliens living in the interior of the country in recent months.
At current rates, DHS is on track to release about 500,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S. by the end of this year. The mass release of border crossers has coincided with a surge of illegal immigration at the southern border, where about one to 1.5 million illegal aliens, in total, could arrive in the U.S. this year at current projections.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

HIS CRAP ON BORDERS AND HIS PRETEND WALL IS ONLY ONE MORE TRUMP HOAX! Only a complete fool would believe that Trump is any more for American Legal workers than the Democrat Party for Billionaires and Banksters!

“Trump Administration Betrays Low-Skilled American Workers.”
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/04/billionaires-for-wider-open-borders.html
The latest ad from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) asks Trump to reject the mass illegal and legal immigration policies supported by Wall Street, corporate executives, and most specifically, the GOP mega-donor Koch brothers.
Efforts by the big business lobby, Chamber of Commerce, Koch brothers, and George W. Bush Center include increasing employment-based legal immigration that would likely crush the historic wage gains that Trump has delivered for America’s blue collar and working class citizens.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Silicon Valley investors are uniting with the Koch network’s consumer and industrial investors to demand a huge DACA amnesty

A handful of Republican and Democrat lawmakers are continuing to tout a plan that gives amnesty to nearly a million illegal aliens in exchange for some amount of funding for President Trump’s proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Does Trump Really Want “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”? What Does That Mean?


In his fiery Grand Rapids MI rally tonight (March 28), President Donald J. Trump dwelt at length on the collapse of the southern border, perhaps in response to repeated chants of “Build The Wall!”—and, hopefully significantly, came up to but did not actually again repeat his recent calls for increased legal immigration because of the economic boom.
Trump should get out and do more rallies. His Washington entourage obviously want him to cave on immigration. But on tonight’s evidence, his base is telling him NO!
Thus, Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow, in multiple interviews this week, said Congress should focus on comprehensive immigration reform in the wake of the Mueller investigation.


Trump attorney Jay Sekulow on @Morning_Joe says instead of investigating the president and those around him, Democrats in Congress should focus on comprehensive immigration reform.

Sekulow, a long-time Beltway immigration enthusiast, claims the president is all for this idea:
“Let’s focus on things for the American people. The president said he is in favor of comprehensive immigration reform—let’s get it,” Sekulow told Fox & Friends
Trump has always been erratic on immigration. He talked about “comprehensive immigration reform” in the past. He considered introducing such a bill in his first months of office. [Trump says again that he's open to an immigration reform bill and may mention it in his speech to Congress, by Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times, February 28, 2017]
But what could he mean by “comprehensive immigration reform” now? Pre-Trump, it meant Amnesty for all illegal immigrants plus a massive increase in legal immigration. Trump became the Republican nominee campaigning against that idea and has always insisted on his opposition to Amnesty. While Trump has occasionally suggested Amnesty for illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as minors—the so-called Dreamers—in exchange for patriotic immigration reform, he has never proposed legalization for the majority of illegals.
According to some Trump World figures, “comprehensive immigration reform” now means increasing legal immigration without Amnesty. That’s the impression left by a recent op-ed from David Bossie, who was (for a while) a top aide on the Trump 2016 campaign.  [An ‘America First’ immigration policy looks like thisFox News, March 24, 2019]
Bossie asserts that an America First policy should “end the flood of illegal immigration”—while handing out more visas to high-skilled workers. Bossie defends his position by claiming mass immigration benefits the economy. But all of the studies Bossie relies on come from long-time immigration boosters, such as Trump’s chief economist Kevin Hassett:
As President Trump’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Kevin Hassett pointed out in a 2013 paper for the American Enterprise Institute, the United States could add half a percentage point to economic growth by doubling the number of immigrants[emphasis added] it lets into the country, especially if they come on employer-sponsored visas. President Trump’s chief economist continues to make the case that "for a country that has long thought of itself as a nation of immigrants, the U.S. falls far behind almost all the other countries in the number of immigrants it admitted relative to its population size.”
Throughout, Bossie argues there are not enough Americans for these high-skilled jobs. It appears he missed the Council of Economic Advisors’ report that said there are still too many American citizens out of work. [White House Economic Staffers Suggest No Need for More Immigrant Workers, by Neil Munro, Breitbart, March 19, 2019]
These comments by Sekulow and Bossie must disturb immigration patriots. But they should not be treated as the final word on Trump immigration plans. Neither of these men work in the administration, much less handle immigration policy. Bossie was an important figure in the Trump campaign in 2016, but sources tell The Watcher that the 2020 campaign has kept him at a distance. But Bossie’s column certainly reflects the President’s recent rhetoric on the issue.
Trump continues to lament the negative effects of illegal immigration and vows to curtail it. On Thursday, he actually tweeted that he may shut down the border due to the migrant surge:


Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action. Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!

Trump repeated this threat in his Grand Rapids speech. But he has made this threat numerous times before without action—making his “all talk and no action” ding at the Central American governments particularly ironic.
Still, it is good Trump shows that he wants to curb illegal immigration and not allow all of Latin America in. Trump’s Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen is now finally set to ask Congress for the authority to deport unaccompanied minors detained at the border, detain illegal alien families, and make those requesting asylum to do so from their home countries in response to the border crisis. [DHS to ask Congress for sweeping authority to deport unaccompanied migrant children, by Julia Ainsley, NBC News, March 28, 2019]
The Trump administration is still fighting in court to enforce immigration law. His executive orders will bring billions of dollars for the wall. And, fortunately, the president appears to have forgotten about the Dreamers and shows no sign of wanting to legalize illegal aliens.
Nevertheless, at the same time, Trump seemed to be making a call to increase skilled immigration a part of his typical stump speech (which is why Grand Rapids was such a relief). His son-in-law Jared Kushner is still in talks with business interests and pro-Amnesty Conservatism Inc. groups to craft immigration legislation. That proposal will reportedly increase guest worker visas. What else it will do is unknown. It is set to be revealed in early summer. [Trump befuddles his allies with ambitious legislative agenda, by Andrew Restuccia, Heather Caygle and Anita Kumar, Politico, March 28, 2019]
While Trump waits to unveil his proposal, two terrible ideas have emerged from the Democrat-controlled House.
  • House Democrats released their new Dream Act earlier this month. It would give a pathway to citizenship to Dreamers and aliens covered by Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure--legalizing millions of foreign nationals.
But while this is expected to pass the House, Senate Republicans show no interest in it and will likely kill it in the upper chamber. [Why once-supportive Senate Republicans may sink House Dreamer bill, by Alan Gomez and Eliza Collins, USA Today, March 13, 2019]
  • Long-time immigration squish GOP New York Rep. Peter King (NumbersUSA rating F) and Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi (NumbersUSA rating F-), have drafted a “compromise” that would permanently legalize the same groups as the Democrats’ Dream Act. as well as relatives of Dreamers. In exchange for this mass Amnesty, Rep. King’s proposal asks for a mere $4.3 billion for wall infrastructure. But this sum would come from fees paid by the Amnestied illegals, which means America wouldn’t get this money for years.[A Grand Compromise on Immigration, by Peter King and Tom Suozzi, The New York Times, March 25, 2019]
It’s unlikely King’s bill will go anywhere, but it does show that some Republicans are still interested in Amnesty.
There is a possibility Trump will include Amnesty for Dreamers in his proposal, but it’s unclear at the moment. If he was considering this move, we would surely see him hint at it in his stump speeches. Trump hasn’t done so this far.
Kushner seems to support Amnesty, which does increase the chances Dreamer legalization would be included in the White House proposal. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has supported Amnesty in the past, but he appears more focused on healthcare right now. [Trump's decision on health care law puts spotlight on Mulvaney, by Peter Sullivan and Jordan Fabian, The Hill, March 28, 2019]
Which brings us to the good news. Trump and his Republican allies are apparently preparing to use the political capital from the Mueller Report to try their hand at healthcare again. Their attempt to repeal Obamacare in 2017 was a disaster and resulted in plummeting poll numbers. [Trump’s biggest midterm blunder: embracing Obamacare repeal, by Dylan Scott, Vox, November 7, 2018] There is no way Republicans can pass their own healthcare plan—a thing they don’t even really have—in a Democratic-controlled House. It’s incredibly stupid for Trump’s 2020 chances and will be a waste of his political capital.
But it may be a paradoxical gift to immigration patriots. If Trump and Republicans bog down in a fruitless fight over healthcare, it means they can’t push an immigration increase. Their political capital will be dissipated, and they will have to settle for gridlock.
It’s not ideal. But it’s better than a massive immigration increase.
Current events could also influence Trump to back off his comprehensive immigration reform and return to immigration patriotism. All it would take is one massive caravan to show up on Fox. Or another terrorist atrocity.
Trump may seem to have lost sight of his America First agenda at the moment. But no-one can say—not VDARE.com, not the immigration enthusiasts—that (especially if he does more rallies like Grand Rapids) he won’t rediscover it again.
Washington Watcher [email him] is an anonymous source Inside The Beltway.

 

 

Ivanka Trump Wants America to Kick Addiction to Four-Year College, Massive Student Debt

 

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2019/03/21/ivanka-trump-wants-america-kick-addiction-four-year-college/

 

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
JOHN CARNEY
21 Mar 20192,911
6:02

America’s ever-deepening college debt problem is really a symptom of a worse malady: our societal addiction to college itself.

Any sober assessment of the facts would indicate that too many Americans are going to college. As a result, college costs—and debt—have skyrocketed while the rewards for college have plunged.
Yet this is something that has escaped the attention of our political elites. And, as it turns out, our financial and cultural elites—as the recent college admissions scandal indicates. Many Democrats want to double-down, promising “free college” to young people—a euphemism for college funded by taxpayers.
Perhaps surprisingly, Ivy-league educated Ivanka Trump has recently come out as a skeptic about America’s love affair with college. The first daughter has taken up a leadership role in the Trump administration’s workforce development efforts—and shown a remarkable candidness when it comes to our college problem.
“I think culturally, for a long time we have created and perpetuated the narrative that there is one pathway to achieving the American dream and its four-year university,” Ms. Trump said in a recent interview.
Trump goes on:
That has been instilled into American students, it’s often American parents that feel that is the only viable path. So you have kids going into school racking up enormous amounts of student debt that they’ll often take decades if there ever able to pay it off without a skill, if they ultimately graduate. So I think opening up the prism and saying there are many different pathways. It depends what you want in your life and taking the stigma away from those who choose alternative pathways who choose technical schools, vocational education. At the end of the day, it’s about connecting workers with their passion, with their jobs. There’s very little opportunity for somebody who wants to the vocational route, the technical route because all the money pushes you into a four-year college system.
Just as her father drew attention to the incredibly bad hand American industrial workers had been dealt by decades of anti-American trade deals, Ms. Trump is drawing attention to the bad hand the U.S. has dealt our young people.
The facts are stark. Over the past 40 years, the U.S. has doubled the share of high school graduates who go on to get college degrees. Forty-six percent of high school graduates receive degrees from four-year colleges, and another 24 percent get degrees from two-year colleges.
This increase in college education, however, has come at a steep cost. The relative benefits of a college degree have been declining for nearly two decades, while costs have been escalating.  College graduates still earn more than high school graduates and are less likely to be unemployed—but the gap has been contracting.
And the income and employment benefits may overstate the lifetime effects of college degrees. The college wealth premium—the amount of extra wealth college graduates have accumulate the course of their lifetime—has declined even more rapidly than the income and employment premium, according to a recent study by the Federal Reserve. And among blacks, Hispanics, Asians—that is, everyone except whites—there is no wealth premium at all, the study found.
After ten years, nearly one-third of college graduates wind up in a job that does not require a college degree, the Wall Street Journal reports.
That should not be surprising. It demonstrates that the supply of college graduates has outpaced demand, which is exactly what you would expect would happen when ample subsidies and societal pressure are applied to increase college attendance. When, as Ms. Trump put it, “all the money pushes you into a four-year college system.”
The average sticker-price of a four-year college, including room and board, is now $50,000 per year. As Barron’s Jack Hough recently pointed out, $200,000 in cash invested in the name of a 22 year old would produce a $3 million retirement nest egg by the age of 68, if the money is invested at about a 6% year return.
This high price is being financed by debt. On average, a college graduate owes twice as much debt as she did twenty years ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Educational loans now amount to more than $1.5 trillion. More than one out of ten student loan borrowers will default on their loans.
Federal Reserve economists recently studied the impact all that debt is having on those aged 24 to 32. They found that while it plays a significant role in keeping young people from buying homes, although other factors—including the high price of homes—were more important.
“In surveys, young adults commonly report that their student loan debts are preventing them from buying a home,” Fed researchers Alvaro Mezza, Daniel Ringo, and Kamila Sommer found. “Our estimates suggest that increases in student loan debt are an important factor in explaining their lowered homeownership rates, but not the central cause of the decline.”
This is having a profound effect on American society. People are getting married later, which reduces the number of children they have. Women, in particular, delay marriage when they bear lots of student debt. And a significant number of people who say they do not want children cited student debt as the reason.
Twenty-two percent of college graduates were delayed by at least two years in moving out of a family member’s home due to their student loans, a survey of millennials by the National Association of Realtors found. More than half of respondents said they were delayed in continuing their education or starting a family due to student loan debt.
Bernie Sanders and others who have endorsed the idea of relieving students of the burden of paying for college address the debt side of the problem only. And it’s not clear that this is really much progress at all since professors will still have to be paid, buildings maintained, textbooks purchased. So while a student might not have to foot the bill, that debt will need to be borne by workers—which is really just a transformation of individual debt into higher taxes. And if history is any experience, the government will not effectively be able to contain the burgeoning costs. If anything, quite the opposite: cost increases will accelerate once individuals no longer see the bills.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, even if in a college cafeteria.
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. We have a problem, as Ms. Trump has indicated. Others in Washington, DC, should take note.

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