I love Bernie, but progressive ideology?
Progressives generally want everyone to be prosperous, happy, and secure. The 1980s liberals with whom I identify want much the same thing. The difference is that a comfortable 1980s liberal might say, “I am willing to pay more taxes to achieve this, but everyone making more should chip in as well.” Modern progressives, however, tend to point the finger exclusively at billionaires.
For example, if you look at “Tax Justice For All,” the tax plans labeled as “justice” actually cut taxes for people in the 95th percentile of earners. Perhaps coincidentally, the much-lauded progressive economist who runs that site makes around that much. Sigh. The site itself indicates that all major progressive tax plans follow this pattern—only Pete Buttigieg’s plan asked everyone to pay a little more. Indeed, just a few short years ago under Obama, the expectation was still that we would all contribute.
Let’s consider a few other holy cows for progressives. Treating any policy as an unquestionable “holy cow” is a problem; honest analysis to understand real-world impacts is critical.
Free college tuition is actually regressive.
Charging college tuition is actually a progressive policy in this day and age. At Berkeley, the very rich and the upper-middle class pay tuition, and frankly, they pay a modest amount for the value. Meanwhile, under the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, students whose parents make less than $100,000 pay nothing in tuition, and Pell Grant recipients receive additional funds for living expenses. If anything, tuition could be higher, because currently, it isn’t transferring enough wealth. Simply mandating “free tuition” for the largely wealthy student population at Berkeley would amount to a massive financial handout to people who don’t need it.
For community colleges, voters passed a law to keep costs down. That is a great thing. Community colleges largely serve students on different educational and career paths, and those paths should have as little friction as possible.
While California collects enough revenue to fund its priorities, it is important to understand how the context has changed since 1980, when Berkeley was essentially free. Back then, the marginal federal tax rate for someone making twice the median household income was roughly 42%. Today, it is 23%. Meanwhile, the national debt has soared to nearly $40 trillion. Much of the largesse from this deficit spending now sits in the 401(k) accounts and other investments of people making twice the median income or more. They certainly do not need free tuition on top of that.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, California collects plenty of money on its own, so the federal picture is just for context—but it is vital context for evaluating the true “social justice” of charging tuition.
Rent Control, Affordability, and Justice
The current baseline of rent control is probably fine. But simply demanding more rent control ignores a fundamental inequity: it effectively redistributes wealth by taking exclusively from those who invested in housing, while demanding nothing from those who invested their wealth in Meta, Google, or BP Oil.
If people are struggling to afford housing, we should provide rent support funded by broad-based taxes paid by all of us who can afford it. That is far more equitable than placing the entire financial burden on the specific subset of people who build, invest in, and maintain housing. It is easy to just call them names—slumlords, rent-seekers, etc.—but that doesn’t make the policy fair. (Disclosure: I own a cottage that I rent out, but the economic argument stands on its own.)
In Berkeley, rent control is highly popular with students for obvious reasons. Yet, ironically, when those same students graduate, make their fortunes, and become taxpayers, they often find the idea of paying taxes to support others far less attractive than voting to reduce their rents.
Better social justice is more likely achieved through rental support programs (administered with perhaps fewer safeguards than Section 8). In California, our massive state budget likely has room for this already. If not, we could and should vote to broadly raise taxes on ourselves rather than simply extracting that value from a targeted minority.
That said, the current real estate market has already priced existing rent control laws in. Eliminating rent control entirely now would unfairly enrich those who bought property with those regulations already in place.
Achieving this balance doesn’t make for fun or catchy political slogans. But it is fundamentally more just, and far more effective at actually helping those in the greatest need.
Somewhat relatedly, any change of policy with serious economic effects should be phased in slowly as a general principle.
The SAT, Standardized Testing, and Hashtag Policy
Eliminating the SAT was another progressive (but distinctly not liberal) slogan that was fundamentally flawed a priori. Unsurprisingly, removing standardized testing has had the exact predicted effect: hurting the most disadvantaged students in California.
Because we often admit students geographically, it is crucial to accurately identify the most genuinely successful students coming from the toughest schools. Without an objective metric like the SAT, that becomes incredibly difficult. Now, my colleagues at Berkeley and across the wider UC system are noticing increased failure rates among our most vulnerable student populations—exactly as experts warned. Indeed, at UCSD, professors report that many incoming students are struggling with basic algebra, such as finding the value of x in 7 + 2 = x + 5. UCSD is a fine institution built to teach at a rigorous enough level that enables people who will build our future. Admitting students who are unprepared to meet that level is deeply problematic, and ultimately does them a disservice, and denies more prepared students the benefit of access.
I have seen this same dynamic play out firsthand. In my own department at Berkeley, we removed the GRE as a requirement for graduate admissions. The primary student proponent pushing for this change explicitly noted that the desire largely stemmed from a catchy hashtag: #GRExit, a play on Brexit. So we did it. We eliminated the requirement, despite clear empirical evidence showing that GRE scores have a strong, reliable correlation with a student’s likelihood of failing their preliminary exams.
We made that decision because, in the modern progressive framework, having a good hashtag, and getting social credit for doing something that appears progressive is somehow deemed more important than responsibly running an educational institution.
Conclusion: I Love Bernie
I love Bernie. I saw him years ago when he was still a voice in the wilderness, on a book tour for The Speech: A Filibuster…. I stood in line to get my copy signed, and when we finally got to the front of the line, his handler told him it was time to go back to the hotel. Bernie looked at his handler, then looked at the line of us waiting. And then, projecting as only Bernie can, he waved his arms at us and exclaimed in that oh so familiar voice, “But, there are people!”
My book got signed: “To the Rao kids. Bernie.”
Bernie is a hero. He spoke up for basic human values in an age where raw capitalism could not be questioned, even by the Democrats who actually won elections. Those values are fundamental: we need to take care of each other. But that care doesn’t come for free, and it certainly doesn’t come from empty slogans that merely lead to excellent memes, hashtags, and yard signs.