Unbelievable. I have to wonder if you're deliberately trolling.

That whole speech is a critique of the NSA and invasions of privacy. It also includes a defence of Snowdon. You really need to take a moment to think about the role of satire.

He mocked the FBI Director for saying invasions of privacy were an attempt to "enhance liberty" by equating "enhanced liberty" to "enhanced interrogation".
He pointed out the role of elections and the ability of the public to demand their representatives ensure their privacy.
He went to the conference of cryptographers and told them it's their responsibility to think about how their industry impacts critical social values.
He talked about the importance of oversight of the NSA "All these revelations... of NSA survaliance just prove that when you give someone unlimited power and no supervision the results are always fantastic. You know the saying, 'absolute power succeeds absolutely'".
He pointed out the total lack of value the NSA snooping has "We have absolute proof this program has saved... zero lives."
He constantly reminded everyone the NSA is invading your privacy "it shouldn't bother you if you're not hiding anything, and since nothing can be hidden from the NSA nothing is bothering you."

He also mocked the marketing spin of the security industry.

I read your comment a few posts down saying "I previsously was a Colbert fan, and I fully understand his style of humor and method of message. In this case, I tried hard to find a way to extortionate Colbert, but he provides nothing. It is possible to distill the seriousness from the fake-seriousness in what Colbert says, and Colbert is seriously taking an anti-Snowden position.

Colbert also states [slate.com] (by joking on the square) that his opinion is for sale. "...my conscience is clear, as long as the check clears."

I can say with 100% certainty that you do not understand his style of humour at all, nor his method of message. Your entire interpretation is 100% backwards. Maybe when you used to be a fan you still had a sense of humour and have subsequently lost it? I don't know. But your criticism is so incredibly moronic that I'm beginning to wonder if you're actually trying to engage in satire yourself.

My god. Have you ever watched Colbert or did you just read the transcript? Or did you just read an article written by someone else who never watched Colbert?

Almost *everything* he says is satire. If he says "A" it's a good bet he believes "not A". If he says Snowdon is a virtually a war criminal, what he means is "there's a bunch of crazy people who think Snowdon is virtually a war criminal and these people have such distorted sense of perspective that they deserve to mocked and ridiculed by an international celebrity."

Get a grip, seriously.

So you should throw out a good financing policy because it doesn't address costs? What's the problem with accepting that someone solved a relatively easy problem for us, even though we haven't solved the relatively harder problem yet.

(I'm accepting the rest your argument for the sake of the argument, not because I think it's anything other than moronic)

That would be fine if everyone received equal education, but after age 16 education isn't compulsory (at least, that's the situation in Aus). Some people go to college, some to tradeschools, some get apprenticeships, some become entrepreneurs, some go straight into jobs, some form domestic partnerships etc. A person's education choices are up to them, it's only fair that they contribute a higher share of the cost than people who only benefit indirectly.

I'm not making any claims about what that share should be. If the government picked up 80% of the cost and loaned the student 20% I'd be fine with that. Similarly if it were 50-50. Since I'm an economist and not a government official, I get to make vague statements about principle and don't have to worry about specific things like budget impact ;)

Just because two issues are related doesn't mean they're not separate.

The cost of tuition and the means of financing tuition are clearly related but distinct issues that have separate causes, implications and appropriate policy responses. The policy proposed here addresses financing. It's not less good for not being a policy to address cost.

Cost of higher education is naturally high, it isn't possible to bring the cost so low that the issues surrounding financing vanish.

It sounds like you think education should all be paid upfront by the student. If that's what you think is good policy then I don't think there's much to gain from further discussion.

This policy isn't meant to address the cost of tuition, it's meant to address the financing and payment of fees. Those are separate issues that need separate policies.

In Australia, universities are allowed to charge higher fees for courses like engineering, medicine etc that have higher supply costs than courses like law or economics. If you think a different method is better, fine, but that's not related to the financing of student loans.

Also, I'd disagree that "It merely makes those who receive a more valuable education pay for the education of those who receive an education of no or little value". You're conflating value of education with lifetime earnings. It's clearly a false assumption.

Only students who receive the loan would be required to pay it back - even though they're calling it a tax in the summary, it's in fact an income contingent loan.

In Aus, the HELP scheme I think is a postgraduate version of HECS. You qualify if you're admitted into an Australian postgraduate degree and are an Australian citizen.

You've just listed a bunch of differences from the proposal here, so as I said, this isn't the Scandinavian model.

As described in the summary, it's near identical to the Australian model.

I have no doubt that my info on Scandinavian education financing is not complete, I wasn't trying to write a thesis on Scandinavian education financing. I was just making a point that those countries don't share a common financing system and each of them have a system that's different to the one proposed here.

ps. No need to use all caps: I CAN READ WITHOUT THEM

Australia does it too, depending on the tax rate of the country you go to (if it's lower than ours, you pay up to the difference, or something like that). We started doing it a couple of years ago and there are cases of people being fined for screwing up their tax since they didn't realise the change had been made.

As you suggest, only people who graduate through this program would be expected to pay for it. It isn't actually a tax, it's an income contingent loan, paid through the tax system. When you apply to college you would need to create a loan account with the government, just as people do with banks these days. This system has worked excellently in Australia for 25 years and has been implemented in a number of other countries too.

The government itself could borrow the money and include the interest payments in the amount students were required to repay: ~20 million college students in the US, assume loans of $10k for simplicity means the government would need an account of ~$200 billion to roll over each generation (in reality it would be more than that, but it's probably in this ball park if every US college student used this system). That's not outrageous for the US government.

This isn't a tax, it's an income contingent loan.

Every student who created a loan account with the government would have to repay that account through their taxes. There's no reason for student's who don't receive the Income Contingent Loan to have to repay the loan, that doesn't make any sense.

This is one of the best higher education financing systems in the world and has been operating in various places for 25 years. It gives an excellent balance between fairness, efficiency, social utility... basically every measure you'd want an education financing scheme to do well in.

"How about no tution at all? It works great for Germany. ... Just sayin' ..."

That's nice, but you don't benefit from my education as much as I do, so I should pay more for it than you, right? I agree everyone benefits from an educated society, so some of the cost should be socialised, but the portion should be less than 100%.

The government maintains an account for outstanding loans. In 2010, the US had ~20 million students in university. If each are given a $10,000 loan that's ~$200 billion. It's not an outrageous sized account for the US government to maintain given all the benefits this policy has.

It's not actually a tax, it's an "income contingent loan". You're lent the money upfront (gov pays the fees for you) and you repay it when your income is above a threshold. It's worked excellently in Australia for 25 years and a number of other countries have adopted this model (after a lot of lobbying on our part!)