Thread by @biblioracle

Arguing that well-resourced private universities should give money to less-resourced public ones is a clever frame for an argument, but of course, the real solution is to end the favorable tax structures for wealthy privates and put the money in publics. chronicle.com/article/what-w…

Collecting taxes from the wealthy and distributing it to the schools that actually educate most students is what I call for in my book. Look at these disparities. beltpublishing.com/collections/pr…

I get that tax the wealthy and give the money to the public goods that people actually need and use isn't a sexy argument that gets attention or allows me to display my perfect straddling of progressive and centrist takes at my well-paid Substack, but it would, you know, work.

We have a structure that makes it easy for wealthy institutions to get wealthier and impossible for public institutions to do anything but manage austerity. Change the structure. Stanford coughing up some cash to CalState would be performative and ultimately pointless.

Matty Y. knows that taxing the wealthy and giving it to the less resourced would work also, but something so straightforward doesn't allow someone to become the most interesting man on the internet, so instead, let's twist this thing into a pretzel.

The point isn't to provide funding so publics can be more like Stanford. Public higher education is infrastructure, not a luxury good like an elite education.

Here's where I say it in my book in the big chapter font so no one misses it. beltpublishing.com/products/susta…