College is now “free” in New York. But if you take the “free” money, you can’t leave the state until you pay it back. Pay it back to the State, not the people the money was stolen from to pay for the “free” college.

Let’s suppose you want to send your child to college but you don’t have the money. So, you decide to burglarize the homes in your neighborhood to raise the needed cash. This would be immoral and criminal. If you got caught, you most likely would receive jail time and be forced to make restitution. Moreover, your neighbors would most likely hate you.

Then you hit on a better idea. You recruit other parents with college-bound kids and decide to go into other neighborhoods to burglarize their homes. Once again, this action, all for a good purpose, would be considered immoral and criminal. If you don’t believe me, try it some time.

But there’s one more way to reap the benefits of using other people’s money to pay for “free” college.

These same neighbors organize and decide to elect people to political office who will do their bidding. If they want free college tuition, all they need to do is create a political system where it’s constitutional to steal money from their neighbors to pay for their children’s college education.

As long as they vote to make it legal to take money from some people so it can be given to other people, it automatically becomes not only legal but moral. It’s for the children. Actually, it’s only for some children since not every person goes to college. Consider that the money taken from taxpayers is often taken by force from people who (1) don’t have children or (2) don’t have children who go to college. Even so, they will be made to pay for the college education of children that are not their own.

In any other situation, such an action would be considered slavery, forced labor to work for someone else for that person’s benefit without compensation.

The folks at BigThink.com disagree:

“It’s not slavery. While the government does force us to pay our taxes, portraying taxes simply as a form of government coercion is a bit strange. It’s a little like comparing having to pay your share of the rent to slavery.”

The analogy is false. A person who pays his share of the rent is receiving a share of the rental property. That is, he or she receives the benefit of living in rented quarters. A person who is forced to pay for the college education of someone else is not getting a portion of that college education. If everyone was getting a benefit, then why tax anyone? Why not let people pay for whatever education they want or no college education at all?

The fact that people are forcibly taxed to pay for a stranger’s college education is proof that not everyone is getting a benefit. Some will claim that there’s an indirect benefit because an educated people helps everyone. What about people who never go to college but offer great benefits, like plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, and every other profession that does not require a college degree?

Approximately 34 percent of graduating high school seniors do not attend college. Of the 66 percent that do, many of them never graduate. That’s why approximately only 35% of Americans 18 years of age and older hold college degrees. So, in the final analysis, 65% of American wage earners are paying for the college education of 35% of Americans.

Young people today decry the slavery that was a part of our nation’s heritage, and yet these same young people (not all of them) have no problem making me their slave as I am forced to pay for their college education through forced taxation.

It’s easy being magnanimous with other people’s money.