Author: Matt Bruenig

Today, I was directed to this amusing paper from the American Federation of Teachers regarding something I’ve called universal income-based repayment. I am working on a longer piece to explain my position on this, but here I just want to pick out a handful of the truly strange points made by AFT. Before we start,… Continue reading All aboard the amusing AFT contradiction train

I want to clarify and re-issue the challenge of my prior post. Imagine we have free higher education funded by a 3% income tax imposed upon everyone. This is apparently acceptable to the titans of free higher education on the internet. That is, higher education funded this way would qualify as sufficiently left-wing and decommodified… Continue reading At this point, higher education debate is apparently about tax policy

Time Zero Right now, the universities in my state are funded by tuition payments. Time One I want to fully fund all of the universities in my state from tax revenue. I want it to be that no student will pay any tuition. I figure out that imposing a 3% income surcharge tax on the… Continue reading Tell me where the injustice creeps in

New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: So Oregon is basically toying with implementing a universal income-based repayment (IBR) scheme, something I have been (probably excessively) advocating on behalf of for over a year. The idea is simple: make college free at the point of delivery, but impose what amounts to an income surcharge tax on… Continue reading Policy Shop: Oregon Is Doing Free Higher Education the Right Way