How This $#*!ty Jet Could Provide 23 Years of Free College for Everyone

[KamaAina]

Yup, it's the F-35.

http://usuncut.com/politics/how-the-f-35-could-provide-23-years-of-free-college-for-everyone/

$1.45 trillion is a lot of money. That’s the estimated total cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which can’t even fire its own gun until 2019 due to software issues. It’s also the estimated cost of providing tuition-free public higher education for every student in the US until 2039. Which one would you choose?

The F-35 is the epitome of Pentagon waste and cronyism. The US has already spent roughly $400 billion on the jet, made by top defense contractor Lockheed Martin. The Pentagon has already promised to buy 2,443 jets for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines in an effort to “modernize” the current fleet of fighter jets....

On the other hand, the estimated cost of tuition-free college for all US students enrolled in public colleges and universities is approximately $62 billion, when accounting for all tuition dollars paid at those schools. That’s actually $7 billion less than the federal government spent on federal aid programs for college students in 2013. If we were to do away with the F-35 program, completely revamp the way our government funds higher education, and start from scratch, we could allocate $62 billion in funding for tuition-free college every year for the next 23 years.

That education would also pay for itself over time, providing additional financial resources as a new crop of highly-skilled graduates enter the workforce. Those graduates would be free from having to make monthly payments on student debt, allowing them to have more disposable income to spend in local economies. And as economists have consistently shown, more money circulating in local economies means more demand for local businesses, which means more jobs created.

[kwolf68]

1. Good lord

I am sure this is all over the "Liberal" media.

[Thinkingabout]

2. Interesting, the helmets for the F-35 costs $400,000 apiece. The F-35 has not proven its worth yet

But is still voted on by Congress and I wonder if the cost is looked at before the vote is made. Sanders is a repeat voter on the F-35 program.

[gratuitous]

3. The manufacturers are crafty

They've spread out the parts and labor contracts for the F-35 over something like 45 states. Ain't nobody going to vote to end this boondoggle if it means less military money coming into their state.

Although I recall being challenged a couple of weeks ago on a "free college for everyone" thread about how we could ever pay for such a program. I suggested canceling the F-35, which would free up about a trillion dollars. For some reason, that ended the conversation.

[hifiguy]

7. Gee, I wonder why George.

I really wonder. Can you tell me, George?

[Thinkingabout]

8. Plus it is a plus to the corporations to have support of congressional members, Lockheed Martin love

The votes. Corporate welfare.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. Until 1967, California state universitites did not charge tuition to in-state students.

So yes, it is doable.

But in 1967 the incoming governor ruled it wasn't the gubmint's job "to subsidize intellectual curiousity", so that ended.

No prizes for guessing who that governor was !

[lpbk2713]

4. It's the biggest boondoggle the DoD has come up with yet.

And when I say boondoggle, it was a collaborative effort between the Pentagon,
Defense Contractors, greedy politicos and lobbyists. They all get a piece of the pie.

This thing melts the decks of aircraft carriers unless they have undergone millions
of $$ worth of modifications. The F-16 was built decades ago and it will outperform
this POS at a fraction of the cost.

[nitpicker]

5. But would the educated still be pushed aside by the H1B visaists?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VBW3SYQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&tag=viglink125437-20

C-SPAN this morning featured Sold Out and its authors, describing how it's not just the IT industry anymore that's ignoring US applicants in favor of lower-cost imports from overseas.

[hifiguy]

6. The Beast must be fed.

At the rate things are going by the time another generation has passed, each individual airplane will cost a trillion dollars. And it STILL won't work.

[Thinkingabout]

9. This would be a good reason to have an oversight committee on the cost of the F-35 program.