I can still remember the warning my mother, in her thick Irish brogue, constantly repeated in my tin ear as a young boy: “You get nothing for nothing in this world.” It was her way of expressing the simple idea that we pay for everything we get, and if we don’t pay, someone else does.

Now President Barack Obama has proposed the idea of free community college education. That’s just like motherhood and apple pie. The junior college community must be thrilled. The fact is, we are all seduced by the notion of “something for nothing,” and like a budding teenage romance, the attraction is irresistible.

It’s true that free tuition benefits all community college students. The question is what happens to costs at four-year colleges? They go through the roof, said Dan Henninger, Deputy Editorial Page Director at the Wall Street Journal. Students don’t care who else picks up the tab for “free” community college. However, the day of reckoning dawns when they realize that we all pay the piper when we attend university, and later become productive earners.

Henninger said that perverse economic government incentives in the education market have caused university tuition to rise well beyond the rate of inflation, with no end in sight. Just ask parents and students struggling to pay for high university costs, or graduating students entering the workforce strapped with crippling student loans. If things are bad now, imagine what will happen when the real costs for community college education are passed on to future generations.

It’s hard to believe that in California less than 50 years ago, when the economy was driven by the boom in the hi-tech and defense sectors, this was the only state nationwide where tuition at community colleges and four year state colleges was free. In those days, Henninger said, a thriving economy created thousands of high-paying, high value-added jobs, growing the economic pie, which left large surpluses to fund the needs of the higher education establishment.

Today, the nation is buried under a mountain of unsustainable debt, exacerbated by the policies of the Obama Administration. According to the National Priorities Project, the National Debt today is at $18.1trillion, and growing exponentially, compared to a $10.6 trillion debt in 2009, on the day President George W. Bush left office.

Market economist Milton Friedman, said that market-oriented, pro-growth policies are the only solution. They’re what once made California the envy of the nation and the world. Not anymore. Onerous government tax, spend and regulatory policies deplete the vitality of the economic engine, he said, and drive businesses away, either overseas or to low tax, work-friendly states.

I think my mother would have said it best: “They killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”

Update: The Student Voice previously ran this story under the byline of Jon Suarez, when in fact it was Brian King who originally wrote the article. We have corrected the problem and apologize for any confusion.