[sbenj]

I have nothing but admiration for the writers hard work, and I (as a Bernie fan) want to strongly object to it. I think my objections and his mirror the political divide in this country - the left wants a more compassionate world, the right sees the desire for redistribution as lazy people wanting to take from the people who've actually earned. While there's a bit of truth in both viewpoints, I'd ask him to consider :

- because he had to go through this experience, should everybody? would it be better if we had, say, government-paid college? more opportunity? maybe he could have studied something he wanted?

- do we really want a society where you pretty much have to choose between entrepreneurship or starvation? No poets? physicist? Teachers?

- college is far less affordable now then when he or I went to school (didn't read the cite at the end, sorry, but the fact is there regardless of who's responsible)

- Our society has unquestionably become more economically savage in the last few decades. Out of work? good luck on your health care, sucker. Do we really want a society where everybody has to give up everything to strive to be wealthy because that's the only safe harbor?

[nonanako]

College is probably a lot more expensive than it needs to be -- do we really want to pick up that inflated bill? There has to be a better solution. I only went to college to get away from my parents (and party) for four years. I probably didn't need the excessive campus and amenities.

[jjn2009]

College costs are decided by the market, and right now there is no shortage of those who can get their hands on loans, and there is not much limit to the size of loans they can get, so prices have to go up until supply and demand hit equilibrium.

So it absolutely does need to be expensive, because scarce resources such as an education have an inverse relationship between degree value and number of degree holders. Otherwise it will be soon enough that our advanced engineering degrees are worth much less than before. Software Engineering average salary doesn't even keep up with inflation any more so in my opinion we are already seeing these effects.

Also I would argue a lot of the worthless degrees we see today are worthless due to both the volume of the holders of those degrees as well as the fact that they are premised on a field which doesn't have much practical value but if they were scarce they would be worth much more in the job market.

[strlen]

Multiple things here. I don't think such statements are terribly helpful, as they'll won't persuade Bernie's fans: some believe in fairness as "just desserts" while others believe in fairness as equality (usually a mix of equality of opportunity and equality of outcome).

Note, however, that's why Bernie is careful to use multiple messages: a more equalitarian message for some, "we aren't getting just desserts, because the system is rigged" for others -- a statement that happens to resonate with Charles Koch (often a negative focal point of Bernie's campaign), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-koch-this-is...

It does seem to work, as Sanders captures some voters that consider liberty as an important moral consideration (perhaps he's the straw that broke the back of Rand Paul's campaign?): http://righteousmind.com/presidentialprimaries/, surprisingly (or not so surprisingly, as most agree that his legislative program will fail, yet his views on other issues are more liberty-friendly than HRC's).

It's not clear if the author directly addresses Bernie's (and Charles Koch's point): corporate welfare does exist and not everyone amongst the wealthiest is technical entrepreneur; individual hard work won't end subsidies for energy-extraction and farming industries, nor will it improve the criminal justice system. The author focuses on how the "rigging" affected by existing wealth is something one can outcome (yet, a male protestant could overcome a non-noble birth in 18th century England: it doesn't automatically follow that there was no merit in newly formed US abolishing titles of nobility at independence.) A more fruitful approach would be to make the case that Bernie's policies would A) significantly increase regulatory capture B) relative to other candidates, fail to improve ability of the audience (and who is the audience for the article?) to get ahead by virtue of hard work, thrift, and through existing products thereof.

On the other hand, there's something to be said about T.S. Elliot's observation that if were indeed to have [what most believed to be] a meritocracy, the the well off would have much less "noblesse privilege", attributing others misfortunes to personal moral failure. Yet people aren't blank slates: presently the markets tend to reward personality traits such as intelligence, conscientiousness, empathy, and (at least outside of our own field!) extraversion; while none of those traits are wholly innate and immutable, one usually isn't at liberty to make themselves as arbitrarily smart/personable/hard-working (yet, I suspect this knowledge wouldn't alter people's existing views in regards to whether or not a theoretical meritocracy would be fair or desirable..)

(For the record, I am not a fan of many of Sander's policy proposals -- despite being less repelled by him than by other candidates likely to make it to the general election -- for reasons that are pointless to go in to here, but if I didn't already hold that opinion, the article wouldn't change change my mind.)