Let's go next to her.
Call her from the seven one six area code.
Who's calling today from seven one six.
Hello David.
My name is frank.
I am from the Niagara Falls area.
How are you doing today?
Good.
Frank, great to hear from you.
Uh, great to hear.
So I know you touched on this a few weeks ago and I just wanted to elaborate on it.
You touched on the idea that the Bernie Sanders free public college tuition plan is a fantastic
one, and that there are calls from some to also look at the costs around in college,
such as, you know, certain fees, textbook prices, and room, a room and board an area
rent in the area.
I said this or where, who said this?
This is something I said.
Yeah.
Well, you said basically the costs around in college I, you kind of touching upon,
okay, yes, yes.
I knew we were the only part of what we need to figure out with college is not just how
to, uh, you know, the, the idea of, of, uh, making to uh, public universities and colleges
tuition free, but we also need to deal with the skyrocketing cost as well.
That's for sure.
Yes.
See My, my main issue with the current mainstream conversation is that I feel like that's off
being ignored because my fear if we are to completely make a public college tuition free,
and that is, it is that now all of a sudden means markets will see that while students
have more money and we can still exploit that by raising textbook prices and you know, making
it so
I don't know about that.
Here's why.
I don't think that that's the way it would go down.
Because when you talk about making public college and university tuition free, um, that's
only public colleges and universities.
And thus if you're going to start skyrocketing the cost of textbooks and all of these other
things, that's going to make all of the private colleges and universities even more unaffordable
relative to the public ones.
And I just don't think, I'm rarely a person who says no, the market is going to prevent
that from happening.
But I just don't think the market would bear that.
I don't think that that's what would happen at all.
Do you think that the industries that are for profit or the elements of the industry
that are for profit one still try to figure out how to exploit loopholes in the system?
That is always going to be the case?
Yes, absolutely.
And that's why the plan has to be designed thoughtfully and accounting for what the for
profit companies are going to do.
There's no question about that.
I just don't think it's going to happen in the way that you're describing.
Do you think that, hmm.
See, this is the one question I'd love to talk with Bernie Sanders about if I were ever
to be able to, to discuss this with them.
If there was a way to set kind of prices either where they are or make those affordable, uh,
as well.
Well then you're talking about price controls.
You're talking about price controls on private colleges and universities, and that starts
to get a bit, a little bit dicier for a number of different reasons.
I think that the idea would be if you make public colleges and universities tuition free,
it'll put downward pressure on the private schools because even if the private school
is better than the public school, which is not always the case, by the way.
Um, if it's drastically more expensive accounting for the free college tuition or tuition paid
for through taxes, it may force some of those private schools to reconsider what they are
charging.
That would be, that would be wonderful.
And I do think that would be a wonderful side effect of all of this.
Yeah.
And yeah, I just do have my anxieties that, because I'm always pessimistic about a lot
of industries that, you know, they don't want to let go of those margins that they're currently
making.
They're all about growth, constant growth.
I see it everywhere I go with factories and everywhere I've ever worked.
It's just this industry having been just a few years out of college, I know exactly how
they tried to nickel and dime you at every opportunity.
Yeah, you're right to be, say any, any plan is going to have
some, uh, unforeseen consequences and some negative consequences.
But we want to be thinking about these things more macro economically.
Uh, John from net bank from Niagara, really appreciate the call.
Hope to hear from you again.
I'm going to take a quick break.
If you're holding you don't hang up because I will be going directly back to the phone
right after this, the David Pakman show