One of the animating arguments from the Democratic side of this year’s election debates is what to do about college and debt. The cost of a four year or more college education has skyrocketed, and today’s graduates often leave college with the debt equivalent to a home’s mortgage but without the asset of a home. In my view there are two reason why this is not good.

First, these very long-term debts transform high-velocity money into low-velocity. High-velocity money is money that is spent on goods and services while low-velocity is money that primary is used to create more money such as bonds and other financial devices. An economy is comprised of both kinds of money, but it is the high-velocity funds that act as the engine driving economic growth. College graduates at the start of their adult lives are the sort of consumer who buy things that others have made, spending their funds on goods and services that puts money directly into the hands of other who are likely to do the same. However, loaded down with debt their funds get diverted to banks and financial instructions that do use the money but also sock a good deal of it away in interest bearing devices sapping the economic engine of fuel. Making college free rediverts this flow back into the high-velocity economy encouraging growth.

Second, as a nation, as a culture, and as a species we are facing a number of massive challenges. We need better power generation and storage system, we need better access to orbit and beyond, we need better health care treatments and understanding of biology and ecology. We need legions of scientists, technicians, and engineers. Somewhere out there may be the person who has the creativity and the intellect to deal with cancer or other terrible diseases but what if that person or persons is trapped in a segment of society without access to a high-quality education? Not just that person but all of society suffers from their loss. We can’t know ahead of time who may be the brilliant person that with the right education transforms our lives. Our best option for making sure that happens is to increase the number of people who can have those opportunities. Free college, aside from the economic argument I made above, is gambling pennies to win a fortune. I want those breakthroughs; I want those scientists and engineers and artists that inspire because all our lives are made better by them.

Some have argued we should not be subsidizing the college of millionaires by making college free. Well, if giving millionaires kids free college gets me the benefits I outline above well that is worth it in my book but there’s a solution to that as well. Make the free college applicable to state owned universities only. Private schools, all them, this should not apply too. The principal benefits of a school such as Harvard or USC or Yale is the one that greatly favors the individual attending, that is the network of people they become a part of, but the sciences and the knowledge is basically the same. There’s no need to subsidize those school and millionaires can pay full freight to those institutions.