Chuck, by your logic, it would be an even better idea to enact a law requiring that every Oregonian entitled to receive a kicker instead have the amount of their kicker check automatically debited from their checking account - thus doubling the balance of the kicker fund and allowing not just 50,000 but 100,000 kids to attend college free! Better yet, triple it!

I can tell you from my own personal experience that a large part of the value in earning a degree, is the personal responsibility learned by paying for it. By eliminating that element from the education equation, your plan devalues education for the student and does so on the backs of taxpayers. I call that a lose-lose proposition.

This approach will deliver far more opportunities and end government education as we know it.

http://www.megastudy.com/

Kids are graduating with enormous debt these days. Struggling to pay for college is one thing. Graduating with $100,000 of debt (yes, it happens) is another. The new graduates are having to postpone or forget about such things as home ownership, having kids, etc. because they are saddled with such huge debt.

Megs: Graduating from an Oregon university with $100K in debt that one cannot afford to pay is called irresponsible, especially if the graduate is not able to obtain a return on that investment in the form of a job that pays the bills.

If there is an INADEQUATE return on the education investment, what business does the State of Oregon have mandating that taxpayers throw good money after bad? And if there is an ADEQUATE return on the education investment - why is that investment not the responsibility of the diploma recipient???

This isn't just the land of opportunity - it's the land of opportuntiy and responsibility. Kindly remove your hand from my wallet.

I think the other commenters thus far miss the point: The kicker refund is a massive waste of state resources, one with no discernible benefit to anybody. It is based on an arcane twist of state law that requires the state to accurately estimate how much taxes it will take in during future time periods. That is, it requires the government to predict the future.

I can't even predict next week. Why should I expect my government to predict next year, and to lose operating revenue if it predicts inaccurately?

That's the point of this post, and I agree with it whole-heartedly. Regardless of whether waiving tuition for state residents planning to attend four-year universities is a good policy suggestion or not, the kicker refund is awful policy, and should not be allowed to continue for one year longer. ESPECIALLY with Democrats controlling both houses and the governor's office, there really is no excuse or not repealing the kicker.

er, that last line should read "there really is no excuse for not repealing the kicker." apologies for the typo.

Garlynn writes: The kicker refund is a massive waste of state resources, one with no discernible benefit to anybody...it requires the government to predict the future...Why should I expect my government to predict next year, and to lose operating revenue if it predicts inaccurately? Garlynn - predicting the future and budgeting accordingly is called managing...it's what every successful business is required to do year in year out. When a budget manager within a company is allocated a specific budget for a specific purpose and achieves the goal with money left over, that money goes back to the source allocated from - it doesn't stay with the manager to reallocate for other purposes.

torridjoe sarcastically writes: Yeah, all those people in Europe and Japan who've gotten free educations are just flaunting their devalued educations at us, the suckers. torridjoe - have you checked the unemployment rate in most of the EU recently? Double digits. Have you checked the growth rate of the Japanese economy lately? 10+ years and running with a stagnated no-growth economy. If Europe and Japan are giving away education at taxpayer expense, I'd argue the taxpayers aren't getting their money's worth.

Kari writes: Chuck isn't suggesting that we should use the kicker to pay for college for 50,000 people (not that that would be a terrible idea)... but rather, that it's a useful way to think about how much money we're talking about here. ...can't we agree that the random kicker is a bad policy idea? Shouldn't stability - for both public budgets and individual taxpayers - be a worthwhile policy goal?

Kari - when trying to make the argument about what Chuck ISN'T suggesting, you don't go nearly far enough. Chuck titles his post, "A Ladder to the Moon or a Ladder of Opportunity?" NOT, "A Ladder to the Moon or a Rainy Day Fund?" Chuck ISN'T suggesting using the money in any other way but spending it. How that advances stability for Oregon revenue and Oregon taxpayers you'll need to further explain.

Kevin writes: The problem is, as DJ perhaps unwittingly underscores, is that to a very high degree this is only the "land of opportunity" for those who through zero effort on their own part (i.e., an utter lack of personality responsibility) were born into a good credit rating and the disposible assets that almost always undergird said credit rating. Those fortunate individuals don't have to concern themselves with paying off massive debts accrued at university.

Kevin - Wrong! Opportunity is what you make from life. My parents had no credit card and no credit rating...I made my opportunity through nothing short of hard work. That was twenty years ago. Today, my twenty year old niece is doing the same by attending a top university and paying her way. She currently holds down three jobs, one in a hospital, one as a high school soccer referee and another that she calls her "fun" job taking drink orders at Starbucks. She's a Have-not on her way to being one of the Haves, and she's not asking you for the opportunity to put her there.

The reason we have trouble passing stable tax policy in Oregon is because taxpayers don't trust legislators. And as long as legislators keep making arguments like Chuck's, trust will be hard to come by.

You can't make a credible argument that keeping the kicker will stabilize Oregon revenue if we put it into a rainy day fund lock box for the next recession - and at the same time cite example after example of needs that exist today for which spending the kicker during the current economic expansion would be justified.

torridjoe writes: What does employment rate have to do with the value of the education? And you might notice we're in a stagnating no-growth economy ourselves. torridjoe - I don't even need to respond to that...the readers already see it as nonsense.

torridjoe further writes: ...companies...don't rebate the money to consumers when they make more than they expected...Of course not; they're entitled to it--just as the government is when the people produce more revenue than expected. torridjoe - when a projected business expense comes in under budget the remainder goes back to company coffers for reinvestment or back to shareholders; the CEO isn't motivated to spend it before the next annual report like the gov't is before the next biennium. Entitled? Nice try.

Kevin - I referred to the EU as a whole...you're cherry picking the economies of Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. The economy of the US is as large as that of all of the EU nations combined...your analogy is about as ludicrous as comparing the whole of the US to Rhode Island. While double digits may be an overstatement, the fact remains that EU unemployment today is still 7.1%, and that's a whopping 58% higher than the 4.5% US unemployment rate. Furthermore, the EU had double digit unemployment as recently as 1998...US Bureau of Labor and Statistics data going back to 1948 show no double digit unemployment over that entire period. Nevertheless...if you want to pay the tax rates encountered by the citizens of the nations you cherry picked, I'm sure you're welcome to apply for citizenship.

Chuck says: DJ continues to misread what I write. My higher ed example was merely to use a public program that people can understand and then use that to put the size of the kicker into perspective. I could have used any of the other areas to explain just how big one billion two hundren twenty-three million dollars is. If I could do something other than send the checks this November I would put it in a rainy day fund that can truly help prevent significant cuts in public services during the next recession. Chuck - funny how you were talking rainy day fund all long, but didn't mention it until I did. I repeat, the reason we have trouble passing stable tax policy in Oregon is because taxpayers don't trust legislators. And as long as legislators keep making arguments like yours, trust will be hard to come by.

You are basically suggesting the use of free education as an economic stimulus and concluding that even if you give it to 42,000 students it will pay for itself ("imagine the impact") with a speculative return on investment. I'm not going to touch the kicker issue, just address this.

I do think that a proactive approach in investing in intellectual capital is a good form of economic stimulus, even better than giving corporate tax exemptions to relocate/stay here. However, it needs to be more carefully considered than blanket education. How do you keep that intellectual capital in Oregon once it graduates, instead of run across borders? How do you regulate the people who get it? More subsidized states like Montana and California already struggle with tuition exiles who establish residence just long enough to get in-state tuition. That would be an enormous problem if you offered free tuition to residents and how you make the cut of who qualifies would be highly political.

Most importantly, I think you need to periodically adjust and target such a policy. If the state doesn't need philosophy majors, should the taxpayers be funding that type of education? Yet the nursing shortage in America is a clear problem (and a national security issue), as is the shortage of skilled programmers. Offering free, highly subsidized, or tax-deductible education for needed fields of employment and amortizing the cost of the education in an interest-neutral way that keeps those graduates in Oregon to claim that free education over time would be more effective.

torridjoe writes: Again, you are confusing budget with revenue. There is no expense line in the figuring of the kicker; it is entirely how much money the state took in via taxes. torrid - businesses base the size of their budgets on their revenue/cash flow outlook. A business that disconnects budget from revenue projections soon finds itself out of business. A government that disconnects budget from revenue projections soon finds itself looking for more tax dollars (i.e.: the kicker). Like it or not, the kicker is part of the Oregon constitution; until that changes the government is entitled to none of it.

torridjoe further writes:...kindly explain the correlation between student cost of education, and national employment rates. Go. torrid - I think you've got short term memory issues. In your very first comment above you wrote, "Yeah, all those people in Europe and Japan who've gotten free educations are just flaunting their devalued educations at us, the suckers." If that isn't a suggestion for a link between free education and national economy, what is it? I merely ran with your suggestion and provided a specific measurable. Maybe you'd have preferred that we compare home ownership rates, wages, productivity, the price of a gallon of gasoline, or income taxes? I'd ask you to be more specific next time, but I suspect you'll find it easier to continue spouting rhetoric.

At the individual country level, many European countries include among their "unemployed" persons whom the U.S. defines as "out of the workforce" -- especially persons classified as "discouraged workers" who supposedly have stopped looking for work, although in many cases they may just have run out of unemployment benefits & thus no longer be filing claims.

In other words, either the U.S. underreports its unemployment (that would how I would characterize it) or other countries overreport according to the U.S. system, if you prefer.

<h2>I am not sure if the comparative figures being cited are based the same counting methods -- one would like to suppose that a common source would use a consistent method internally, but it could be that just using the official government stats for each country & ignoring underlying method difference is simpler or less politically charged.</h2>