Evening Must-Read: Mike Konczal: The UNC Coup and the Second Limit of Economic Liberalism

…higher education system in August, one that shows an important limit of current liberal thought…. The UNC System Board of Governors voted unanimously to cap the amount of tuition that may be used for financial aid for need-based students at no more than 15 percent…. As a board member told the local press, the burden of providing need-based aid ‘has become unfairly apportioned to working North Carolinians,’ and this new policy helps prevent that…. The problem for liberals isn’t just that there’s no way for them to win this argument with middle-class wages stagnating…. The far bigger issue for liberals is that this is a false choice, a real class antagonism that has been created entirely by the process of state disinvestment, privatization, cost-shifting of tuitions away from general revenues to individual, and the subsequent explosion in student debt. As long as liberals continue to play this game, they’ll be undermining their chances…