Dear Mr or Madame President

For people getting out of highschool they are dirt poor and then have to pay for a huge service which is often gotten with loans that haunt people for the rest of their lives unless their parents hunk the bill. According to CNBC, “The annual cost of attending the prestigious school (Harvard) in the fall of 1971 by $200- to $2600...Harvard’s annual tuition and fees will set you back $45,278”. Now that might seem extreme and it is even if the article didn’t adjust for inflation that is still a $30000 difference from 1971 to now. Newsela also states that “Over the past 3 decades, average tuition at a public four-year college has soared more than 250 percent, according to government figures”. Basically Newsela is saying that not only is there a huge increase in costs but it shows not signs of stopping soon.

This is not an easily fixable problem, but in the long term it can mean growth for the economy with more people with higher end jobs. Yes in the short term this will mean higher taxes but in 15 years when enough of the working population that would have been working at McDonalds start working at NASA we will see a higher income per capita meaning people can sustain higher taxes, and if some sect of the economy becomes obsolete due to new technology ,like for example transportation, the entire economy won’t all of a suddenly keel over when companies start using self-driving cars. In The New York Times complicates the matter further when they say that a push for free college would lead to shortages and that middle and high income students could take slots that lower income students also need. Admittedly that is true but what if we were to have people of higher income families pay and subsidize people who can’t pay. It is not a perfect plan but it would slightly compensate for high income students taking lower income students slots and decrease the deficit that free college would create.

In summary having free college is not an easy challenge to face but in the long term it will lead to greater paychecks for everyone and might prepare us for upcoming economic crisis that hopefully something like 2008 won’t happen again. With new technologies being developed that could replace huge swaths of the economy we need the next generation to be able to get jobs that aren’t white or blue collar work. My point is that whatever the short term costs it will be worth it eventually and in the end have the american economy be better than it is now.

Sincerely, B.D.