"Community service" doesn't involve just picking up trash. It branches out to a lot of services that are really invaluable for a community. In my hometown, a group of students completely renovated an old police station, and turned it into an entertainment center. Bands go there to practice, kids play games, they hold arts and crafts nights. It didn't take long, maybe 20 hours for three kids, but it made a place that turned the town into a better place.

For my bar mitzvah, I spent a similar amount of time fixing up an old, old path in the woods. It used to be a hiking spot, but it fell into neglect. I walked along it, a group of girl scouts painted trail markers, and over the course of a year we had something new in a boring town.

College is a big problem. I'm in a public school, and tuition is rising rapidly. Something has to be done to fix things. And I like this plan a lot: it means that in exchange for $4,000 students are really expected to do a lot. A hundred hours of service means that a lot can be done. I doubt 10 million students would really take this offer - there are a lot of rich, lazy kids, and a lot of kids with scholarships - but if, hypothetically, 10 million kids each spent 100 hours doing community service, we'd have a billion hours a year being spent trying to fix up things around the country. That's a pretty incredible force.

And Obama hasn't delegated that money yet. He's proposed it, because he thinks it'll work. If you have another plan, one that you think will work better, there's a webform you can fill out to send your ideas. Who knows, it might be worth a shot.

tuition is rising because the colleges can charge more. why can colleges charge more? because a big chunk of the tuition is paid for by the government. price is set by supply and demand. supply in this case is inelastic, and when the government helps people pay for college a larger number attend, hence demand increases.

Right, so year-by-year, it'll be the same order of magnitude of cost as the Iraq war, except the war was always planned to end eventually whereas the "community service" plan is planned to go on forever.

Justifying one enormous waste of money by saying "Oh well, at least it's not as big a waste of money as that other waste of money" isn't a good way to run a budget.

Would you run your personal budget that way? "Aw geez, well I bought a $300,000 boat last month, so I guess it's okay to buy a $100,000 car now."

I think the difference here is that the money would actually have some sort of return, rather than just fill the pockets of defense contractors. Theoretically, it would get more people into college or help them stay there, improve communities everywhere in small ways that add up to a lot, and maybe, just maybe (doubtful), teach people to care about the people around them.

I agree, though, that big spending plans are things we should be very skeptical of. To be honest, I know some people who do run their personal budget like that.