Long-term benefits not accounted for
The recent article on the government’s cost to the treasury for tuition programs such as GET was one-dimensional and shallow [“GET, other prepaid-tuition plans cost U.S. Treasury big bucks,” NWMonday, Dec. 17].
The long-term treasury benefits to any program that increase the overall education of the population is vastly higher than any short-term loss due to deductions. The return on investment for a college degree is about 15 percent per year, while the treasury loss is the one-time tax of that money, probably on the order of 25 percent once.
This does not even take into account the multiplier effect that the increased income has (probably around four times the income increase) on the economy. Thus, GET and other programs increase treasury’s long-term income.

—Stanislav Fritz, Mercer Island