Great idea, Bernie:

Bernie Sanders put it clearly: “We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and open that to the undocumented.” In other words, if are a citizen of another country and you want a free college education, all you have to do is show up in the United States and get accepted at any one of the 1,626 public colleges in the United States.

Needless to say, if enacted, this would bring a flood of people from all around the world, eager to enjoy the benefits of a college degree, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. (In case you’re wondering, there are a handful of other countries in Europe that offer very low or nominal tuition rates to American students, but at most of those schools, competition for the limited slots is high.)

To Bernie and the Democrats of 2020, that influx would be a feature, not a bug. Another feature is that the enactment of such a proposal would give the federal government even more control over state public institutions than it already has.

And how would the money be raised? Do most of the people who plan to vote for Sanders consider that question? If they do, they can see what he says about that here:

Fully Paid for by Imposing a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street. This [proposed] legislation [would be] offset by imposing a Wall Street speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators of 0.5% on stock trades (50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives.It has been estimated that this provision could raise hundreds of billions a year which could be used not only to make tuition free at public colleges and universities in this country, it could also be used to create millions of jobs and rebuild the middle class of this country.

Evil Wall Street can take it, right? No problem.

If you would like to read a discussion of the possible consequences, go here. An excerpt:

Proponents claim the tax would collect tens of billions of dollars, discourage speculative and high-frequency trading, and make markets safer and less volatile. Its opponents say the revenue estimates are overstated and the tax will actually make markets more volatile…

Similar taxes have been advocated by many prominent economists over the years, including John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Summers. At least 40 countries currently or previously have had financial-transaction taxes of one sort or another…

The majority of the academic research into transaction taxes has reached similar findings: Taxes either have no effect on volatility or they increase volatility.

Why would markets become more volatile when financial transactions are taxed? When an activity is taxed, people tend to do less of it. So trading volumes decline–sometimes sharply. An IMF study found that trading volume invariably fell when transaction taxes were imposed…

When Sweden put in place a 1% tax on equity trades in 1983, the result was a 5.3% decline on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.

According to the IMF study, the impact on prices would depend on the average holding period for a particular asset class. So stocks that trade frequently would likely decline the most. Less frequently traded securities, like corporate bonds, would be expected to hold up better.

The economy, too, could suffer. When the European Commission looked at the issue, it found that a tax of 0.1% would reduce gross domestic product by 1.76% in the long run. That’s mainly because the tax raises the cost of capital, resulting in less investment and diminished economic output.

There are also questions about how much revenue the tax would raise. For starters, anything that makes stock prices drop sharply reduces how much the government collects in capital-gains taxes.

The issue of free tuition at public institutions—and how it would be paid for—is a separate one, of course, from whether to offer it to illegal immigrants (or, as they used to quaintly be called, illegal aliens).

For Sanders and his supporters, it’s a win-win situation. They would get to stick it to mean old Wall Street. They would get more illegal immigrants (and ultimately, voters). They are wooing anyone who wants the free stuff of a paid-for college education. The liberals and leftists who completely dominate colleges and universities would get guaranteed federal support for their further indoctrination of entire generations to come. And the feds would get more and more control over state institutions.

What could possibly go wrong?

I’m picking on Sanders here, but one could look at any of the candidates and see that their proposals for this election are far more to the left than anything we’ve previously seen from candidates running for the nomination of a major party. They believe their time has come.