If We House Every Homeless Veteran, We Can Make Education Free

Sorry for the bizarre title, but we live in a bizarre time. In this time of anger, unrest, and partisan politics, it can be hard to stay calm and keep perspective. That being said, it probably won’t hurt if I send you into spiraling rage.

According to last years Why Public Education Should be Free  it would cost as little as $15 billion a year to make college “free” in the United States. For comparison, we will spend just over 1 Trillion dollars on the flying boondoggle known as the F-35 fighter jet, a plane that, despite serving a country fresh out of two decade long wars, has never fired its guns in anger. Of course, the F-35 “Lightning” was made to fight Soviet era MiGs, most of which are grounded and better fought with our huge stable of F-16s anyway. Lockheed-Martin, the company manufacturing the jet, has spread elements of its construction over key congressional districts to maintain support of turkey, proving the  only enemy the F-35 will ever triumph over is congress.

Wanted for theft, if you see this plane, call your congressman. Suspect is not considered dangerous.

But what does this have to do with homeless veterans?  Well, we have about 50,000 of those. That’s a big, sad problem. It is, in fact, a national disgrace. But we have other problems: did you know that we have 50,000 empty homes that the government owns? Those empty homes cost upwards of 20 Billion dollars a year to maintenance. We need to get rid of them! If only there were some way. If only we had a better use for that 20 billion or someone to live in those homes!

But seriously folks, this is not some pipedream. Can’t we solve all this problems at once? Bastion of ultra-liberal views that it is, Utah has already started doing it.  And they are not the only ones.

Why has this idea of giving the homeless homes suddenly gaining traction? Research. Recent studies have show that it is three times as expensive to leave the indigent on the streets.   You know we love despair here at Gainsayer, but these kind of initiatives are local, and in a variety of political environments.

So there is hope. There is something to talk about with relative over the holidays that everyone can agree upon. There are goals with a achievable with no more than a city council and a local news team.

Then again, all that stuff sounds like we’d have to go outside, and the weather out there is frightful. You wouldn’t want to be caught in it. You wouldn’t want to catch cold. What would it hurt to wait until spring?