No Such Thing as Free: The Problem With Ohio's College Proposal

What does free mean? In the context of how we live, free means not under the control or in the power of someone else. For goods or services, free means that it costs the recipient nothing of value.

Saloon patrons in the 1800s eventually learned that the free food used to attract customers was just a salty ruse to sell booze. Sadly, politicians have never stopped plying voters with the same trick. Our massive debt, tax burdens, and dysfunctional governance are all proof that they never learned the age-old lesson that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

So I read with interest the announcement about Ohio House Bill 854, a proposal to “Provide tuition-free public higher education; levy taxes,” introduced by Columbus Rep. Munira Abdullahi and Lakewood Rep. Tristan Rader.

I’ve long been a supporter of public education funded by taxpayers — all taxpayers. It’s not a new idea. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” 

But the text of the bill itself makes clear that it has less to do with alleviating ignorance to promote freedom and more about being just another “soak the rich” scheme to feed a public university-industrial complex that already consumes more than $3 billion from Ohio taxpayers. That’s because the measure calls for as much as a tripling of state income tax on earnings over $500,000 and another tax on the sale of expensive homes. If public education is a public good, shouldn’t it be funded by all taxpayers? 

Worse yet, the bill lacks academic standards or graduation requirements for students to qualify for taxpayer support. Universities receiving the funds also have no requirements to demonstrate either the effectiveness of their academic programming in terms of post-graduation job placements or to justify their overall budgets. 

What could possibly go wrong. 

Ohio State Professor Vladimir Kogan recently published a scathing review of The Columbus Promise, another taxpayer-supported education program to funnel students from Columbus City Schools to Columbus State Community College. Kogan’s detailed analysis is worth reading because it helps to illuminate the often unintended consequences of even well-intentioned interventions. This quote provides a handy summary: “…the bottom line is that typical Promise participants obtain no measurable educational benefits from the time they enter the program.”

Despite the failure of so many government interventions in education programming and funding, the sponsors of HB 854 now propose a blank check for whoever wants it, for curriculum of questionable value, underwritten by only about 1% of Ohio taxpayers.

What if — since just 1% of taxpayers would be financing these programs, only they would have ultimate authority to make the rules about academic standards, required coursework, and graduation? While that idea appropriately calls out the grotesqueness of this legislative proposal, I would oppose it nonetheless because it’s an affront to our system of republican (small “r”) governance. 

If being directly governed by a tiny minority of rich people offends you — and it should — then using the power of government to force that minority to exclusively fund a general public good should be just as offensive. When taxpayers, broadly defined, pay for public services, they have the ability to vote for or against that spending in the case of specific levies or for representatives in the case of general government expenditures.

That has been the guiding principle of virtually all taxing and spending since our nation’s founding 250 years ago next month. 

Progressive taxation means wealthier people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. They should, and the vast majority already do. But whatever its virtues, it always risks too much reliance on a minority of taxpayers to pay the bills. 

Good government demands that all taxpayers have enough of their own money at risk to hold elected officials accountable for results, not just promises. When nearly half of taxpayers pay barely more than 3% of all income taxes, the incentives skew toward more government services and less accountability. 

And when progressive taxation becomes punitive taxation, high earners can move away. New York, California, and Chicago are already seeing their tax bases move to more tax-friendly places.

Ohio shouldn’t follow their lead, especially since we lack the sunny weather and tourist revenue of states like Florida that have no state income tax. Our elected officials would be foolish to fund any program solely from those most able to live elsewhere. 

But progressive tax foolishness has never been in short supply and this bill is less about helping students go to class than about fomenting class warfare. There really is no such thing as a free lunch and even some of Ohio’s finest craft beer can’t wash down the saltiness of this scheme.