Bernie Sanders’ plan for free college might be in trouble when even writers at the Daily Beast think it’s a bad idea.

Dmitri Mehlhorn writes.

Why Free College is Really Expensive

When Bernie Sanders pitched himself as the guy who would speak truth about inequality, I believed him. Although everyone knows he is not going to win the presidency, at least as a protest candidate he could highlight how inequality damages our country and will keep getting worse if we do nothing. Sanders promised to inject some honesty, creativity, and toughness into the presidential debates.

Earlier this month, that promise was dashed. Bernie Sanders has made his first spending priority to eliminate tuition at public colleges. Although his proposal has design flaws, the greater outrage is that this handout will go overwhelmingly to the prosperous and politically powerful.

To be clear, the least-bad thing about Sanders’ proposal is how he intends to pay for it. He endorses the so-called “Robin Hood” tax on Wall Street transactions. Certain kinds of transactions, such as high frequency trading and extremely large derivative transactions impose costs on our financial system. In fact, the general idea of a well-designed tax on financial transactions has been endorsed by an all-star list of economists and political leaders.

Even Sanders himself, however, lists the Robin Hood tax as an afterthought; after all, if you raise a Robin Hood tax you can do a long list of things with the money you get from it (including cutting other taxes, or spending on other initiatives). The emphasis from Sanders’ statements is where the money will go: paying for tuition for public colleges.

The first problem with Sanders’ proposal is that a national tuition subsidy will be counterproductive even on its own terms. The proposal will cut the economic legs out from underneath innovations such as open online courses, which may be on the cusp of delivering low-cost, high-quality college education for all. Organizations trying to deliver radical new models will now have to compete against a $70 billion subsidy for the old system.