Bad Idea #7 - Let's charge $1000 a year for all students in public schools.

EDIT 5/7/06 - I forgot to mention that this was the bad idea that spawned the idea for this blog in the first place. After this, I came to the conclusion that most of my roommates ideas were freaking terrible.

While debating some immigration issues in a group of around 5 people, my roommate decided to drop this bombshell:

7. "We wouldn't have an illegal immigration problem if we stopped giving people free schooling."

Well, buddy, you may be onto something - let's make our country suck so bad that nobody wants to come to America anymore. That will definitely solve our problems. He proceeded (in his infinite wisdom) to set the amount of tuition at public schools to be $1000 a year per student, since that was an amount that (in his head) everyone could afford. I must share that my roommate grew up upper-middle class, that social class which spawns the most young people with bad ideas (to be fair, I'm from a similar social background).

He also explained that this would help all of America beyond the issue of illegal immigration because "poor people wouldn't want to have kids anymore." That was it, I had to berate him publicly. My friends and I explained that an additional cost of $12000 over the life of a child was going to discourage approximately zero children, because the cost of raising a child is already ridiculously expensive. To drive the point home, one of our friends at the table explained that he had his first child with his wife due to a birth control failure at a time when they couldn't afford a child.

There would probably be some increase in the number of children whose parents didn't want them - a surefire recipe for children with psychological baggage, which may cause an increase in crime and poverty. Not to mention the fact that by increasing the costs of basic education, you would have a less educated populace, which probably would compound the crime/poverty problem further. So this will increase the number of parasites on the economy - exactly the opposite of what this idea was "designed" (the better word probably would be "pulled-out-of-ass") to achieve.