Thursday, November 30, 2017

One tax proposal is not popular with college students

One guy in the Washington Post reported the tax plan could cost him $11,000! Well, how big was his subsidy that it was so high he'd pay that much? I had two graduate assistantships back in the 60s, and I don't recall the tax plan. But if I got the assistantship, someone else didn't, and may have taken a job as a student janitor, or meal server, and had to pay full taxes on that. (There weren't many fast food places then.)  Both my jobs were really cushy--one (translating medical newspapers) I could do at home and not use a baby sitter. The other was in library science and wasn't difficult at all. The student who pushed a broom or washed windows or waited tables didn't have that luxury. The student who went to a college instead of a university didn''t get those jobs, and tech school students didn't get them. I think that still applies today. There's a lot of politics and influence in who gets these subsidies, and to give some students a free ride from the federal government while the university continues to raise the costs on everyone else, is pretty fishy.

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