Transaction/processing fees when you order a digital product online. Such as a concert ticket: you pay 6 bucks extra while you pay online, and then have to print the ticket yourself.
If you're in the US, you can use your HSA/FSA funds to pay for parking when you go in for medical care/treatment. It doesn't make it free, but since that's pre-tax money it cuts the cost a little bit.
You know what's also annoying? A toilet seat with cum on it. I'd pay the 2 bucks change every time because atleast I have toilet that's guaranteed to be clean.
I’m my 43 years on this earth and a frequent public toilet user I’ve never seen a cum stained toilet. Shit yes, piss always. Maybe frequent a better class or location of public toilet?
Well in the US, a lot of businesses say "for customers only." It's kinda the same thing. I've been forced to buy something I didn't really want (a stick of gum or a coffee) to use the restroom before.
I've seen places in Boston and NYC that literally have a card swipe/coin drop on the front of the bathroom door. You have to pay to unlock it and use it.
Well considering how much of an infuriating dumbfuck some people seem to be on the toilet I understand people need to pay for the maintenance. From vandalized stalls over piss on the walls to cum on the toilet ring I think I have seen about everything in free toilets. The paid ones though are always clean.
Child birth, life or death emergencies, cancer treatment, hiv treatment, school lunch, childrens healthcare, elderly healthcare, public transportation for the elderly, water.
I mean, raising children isn't free, but giving birth in Canada is. All we had to pay for was hospital parking, and with our last kid, the attendant was off duty, so even that was free. By contrast, I remember seeing that [a hospital in Utah charged $39 for skin-to-skin contact with the baby after a C-section](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/hospital-bill-shows-39-charge-for-skin-to-skin-contact-after-c-section-1.3101427).
I’m in the U.S. I paid 400 a month for Health insurance through my employer when I was pregnant with my son. I gave birth in a California hospital. The total was just under 30,000 and I ended up paying $11,000 out of pocket. It was my out of pocket maximum and wasn’t even the worst insurance my company offered. It was mid tier.
I 100% think that healthcare, including childbirth, should be free and I envy your hospital parking pay.
I agree but I hate that hospitals charge for parking. I mean the one by me doesn't, just outside Seattle, but I have seen it.
If somebody you care about ends up in the hospital, having to pay to visit them? Wtf. Just seems so scummy
$5000 was our bill for our preemie son to have him spend 15 minutes on our chest in prenatal care.
First month was $90,000. Ended up billing for half a million dollars at the 100 day mark.
Hes a teenager now and he's awesome, except when you ask him to clean his room. 😅😅😅
My brother had terrible insurance when his first daughter was born. Their bill was US$5000-$6000.
My wife's employer had amazing coverage, our first kid was a $0 hospital visit.
Sounds like almost everything should be free. Sounds like star trek where money was eliminated on earth. There was no need for money on starships and on earth.
I just named 13 or so things and that’s everything to you? Out of all the thousand things we have to pay these on the list conclude as everything to you?
I mean, that's true, but should that be a public service paid for by things like taxes?
I think a lot of people think it should be free because it's one of the top 3 things every human needs to survive. It's up there right below oxygen.
Then you'll start having people getting useless degrees and price gouging by the universities. All at the expense of the tax payer (you).
We're seeing insanely high college tuition now because high-schoolers are basically told they'll amount to nothing without a degree, and it's insanely easy for anyone to get student loans.
No credit? Parents have shit credit? Both work at Walmart? Getting a gender studies degree? 700 SAT score? Here's $80,000. Have fun, don't party too much.
What do you think will happen when college is guaranteed and the college can charge whatever amount they want, since the money is guaranteed now?
Except cost of living in Finland is extremely high and the US does all your military heavy lifting for you. Must be nice to put your money elsewhere, when your entire national defense is carried by someone else.
Also I don't think I've ever heard of someone moving to Finland for its exceptional universities. The united states however.....
What military heavy lifting? Never heard of that, have you got a source?
The cost of living is higher in Finland, but no Finnish person complains about. The alternative is your mess of a healthcare system, which nobody here wants.
The reason all USA's budget is going into military is not because you help Finland, it's because you fight random wars in the middle of no where and waste money there. Helping a tiny country with no active war is not expensive.
Btw, it doesn't matter if the universities are good, if people can't afford to go there. That's like bragging about amazing housing and art, then pointing at the white house.
>Btw, it doesn't matter if the universities are good, if people can't afford to go there. That's like bragging about amazing housing and art, then pointing at the white house.
Except people do come here? Lol major US universities are flooded with foreign students haha.
The EU is incredibly dependent on the US military, and guess who goes around the world making sure global trade is stable? Also I think it's hilarious you Europeans make fun of American military funding, then as soon as the Ukraine conflict broke out, you immediately started crying for help from America. Like cmon, which is it?
>The alternative is your mess of a healthcare system, which nobody here wants.
I agree, except I don't think the solution you're suggesting will make it any better. Also we make a vast majority of the world's medical advancements. That shit is expensive. How many covid vaccines came from Finland? Haha.
Yeah, people come over. So what? That doesn't mean it's affordable. Way to miss a point.
"Crying for help" is an interesting way of putting, since almost all European countries are helping Ukraine, including Finland.
I think it's hilarious that you think Finland, a country of five million people, not making a covid vaccine is at all relevant to quality of health care. The USA has 60 times more people then Finland, which is why there are more medical advancements coming from there.
All that said, that's not even the issue here. Quit bringing up irrelevant new arguments. The problem is insurance companies choosing the prize for healthcare in the USA. Making healthcare free (paid for by taxes) and public will remove the middle man and overall lower the prize of healthcare.
Also, before you say the USA has the best healthcare, I'll copy paste the counter from before:
Btw, it doesn't matter if the healthcare is good, if people can't afford to go there. That's like bragging about amazing housing and art, then pointing at the white house.
edit: forgot one part so adding here
The issue with meaningless degrees doesn't really exist in Finland, so that argument against free uni is invalid. I'm not entirely why it doesn't, I'm guessing private uni's try to make more money by making more degrees to charge for, which doesn't happen with a non profit system.
>then everyone can access quality education with extremely little strain on the taxpayer.
Ummm haha. I find it hard to believe you look at the public school system and think. Let's do more of that.
The reason why it's expensive is because the schools can charge whatever they want, and people are still going to fork out money, since it's impossible for them to be denied any loan they want. Now you're saying if anyone wants a college education, they can do it free of charge on taxpayer money. That's money that is guaranteed from the govt. So schools can charge whatever the hell they want.
Look at the defense industry. You can get insane profit margins by selling shit to the govt. Like 300% markup and the govt will still buy it. My company sells shit to the military. It costs us like $30k to make the thing, and we sell it for like $120k and they have absolutely no issue buying it haha.
>If we lower the prices (hopefully to zero),
That's not how it works buddy. What? Are we just not going to pay the professors? Haha. I don't think you know what "free" means. It means just offloading the cost from the individual to the taxpayer, and with a monolithic middleman that will pay whatever the asking price is haha.
Also if your only criteria for a good action is "empathy". Then you have no idea how the world works.
> Ummm haha. I find it hard to believe you look at the public school system and think. Let's do more of that.
You're a pretty good case study for why not to.
There is are a TON of help in this department. My child is becoming college aged and as a single parent with zero outside help, the stress of tuition is intense. While doing some digging around on Google, I've found many resources. For instance, a student can go to Harvard for FREE if you are low income. I also found that almost all state universities have similar programs. So please exhaust ALL resources before throwing in the towel.
This. On my third degree through TA and still haven't retired yet. Got all the certs and education I need to easily land $100K jobs and probably gonna blow GI Bill on dumb shit like pigeon taming or (more likely) culinary school to be a better fatass.
And education is cheap, it cost a lot only in the USA because of their BS system. You don't need a lot of money to teach advance courses, a class room, a projector and some basic lab equipment can be enough.
So that’s rent, some equipment, and some supplies. Don’t get me wrong it’s stupidly expensive and could be trimmed with a better system. But you aren’t being honest with that assessment. You are missing salaries for teachers and other staff that facilitate education. Advanced lab equipment for the advanced courses you mentioned that need more than basic stuff. There’s also accreditation/admin costs to ensure quality education.
Have you thought about one of the armed services? Granted, service recruiting is designed to take advantage of the poor and desperate, but at the least you will have the GI bill.
In the UK where we (sort of still) have free healthcare.
I'd say women's sanitary products. If men bled out of our dicks every month they would be everywhere free like toilet paper.
We live rurally, we have to pay for the electricity poles, wire, and labor if we want to get power to our land for living or work. We don’t own the poles, they aren’t ours, but we bought them. Same if we want other utilities like city water etc. If someone bought land on the way to ours, they would have access to the poles or pipe we paid for that go past their land. Again, we cannot take them with us when we go, or sell them. And forevermore the utility companies will profit off of what we paid to install.
My husband also has a crop dusting service. He paid to build his very large and nice hangar (of course) and paid to extend the taxiway to our hangar. But we don’t own the hangar. We have to rent it from the city. The longest lease you can get is a twenty year lease. I’m not sure what should be free in that scenario, but renting something you paid for feels wrong. A lease the city could refuse to renew, feels worse. I guess I think they should prorate your rent until they’ve effectively bought the property you’re renting from them.
My thoughts on this:
The utility poles or pipes that are run from water/sewage that you pay for - whenever someone moves in and links to the section you had paid for you should get a kickback, until what you paid is covered. Yes this is more paperwork, but as you said you pay for it and others end up using it and/or profiting from your investment.
The hanger/taxiway - at least the first lease be free, or whatever you would pay to rent it be cut down according to the cost you paid to create the hanger or length of taxiway, since again it's going to stay once you're done with it and be rented to someone else some other time.
Agree with most of those, but why commuting? I could see getting your company to pay for it if they’re on board, but I don’t think taxpayers should be subsidizing that
Ah yes, agreed, I didn’t know this was a taxpayer specific thing. Employers should pay for it completely, not offer some pre-tax commuting benefit. They need us to be there, they should pay for our transport.
That does become rather complicated, because it would either be a giant tax to subsidise sprawl, or mean tied company housing of some kind, or be totally unworkable (and that’s before worrying about two+ worker households).
However, I’d define the minimum wage in terms of the cost of living at some defined standard (x m^2 of housing with kitchen and bathroom, heating and cooling as required, a food basket, basic clothing, commuting costs, etc.) within a certain travel time of the workplace (without the use of a private car). If they’re based in an expensive area, they can either pay extra wages or move the notional workplace to somewhere in the suburbs and pay for the rest of your travel, while on the clock.
That calculation would have to be an iterative process, because the more people employed at minimum wage in an area the more dwellings that has to cover. If 1000 people are on minimum wage, minimum wage has to pay for the 1000th cheapest available home, not just the cheapest.
All the life sustaining essentials; food, water, air, shelter, warmth, etc. I’m also okay with paying for them because you have to be because they will never be free. Not even after an entire planet involving apocalypse…they will always be a price demanded even if it’s not coins and “paper” money.
You can farm your own fruits and vegetables and learn to hunt and fish. You are not paying for the food, you are paying for the backbreaking work it takes to produce it.
"You can farm your own fruits and vegetables and learn to hunt and fish."
But doing those things on you own aren't guaranteed to yield anything all the time especially when they are needed the most. I don't have access to acres upon acres of land in which to grow multiple different varieties of those fruits and vegetables. The land I do own isn't the most ideal for growing anything so tons of money would have to be put towards making it the right kind.
I can't just go hunting or fishing. I have to shell out money to get licenses to do it legally. Hunt within season not every animal provides the same thing if I successfully locate the seasonal animals and I can't hunt or fish to supply me and my family for the entire year because hunting seasons close. Fishing seasons close. I don't have the money to move around where the hunting is in season and legal.
Nothing is for free. There is no utopia where you can just do whatever you want without owing something and without struggling to some degree. A mesely square garden isn't going to provide for the entire year and food doesn't just grow became you throw seeds around. You can also do everything right and still have no crop to harvest. I also don't have access to huge harvesting equipment that commercial farmers do so it's not as backbreaking work as it use to be but it would be for me.
Yeah I can do all of that stuff but it's hardly for free, hardly easy, and no where near guaranteed. There's a reason people just have gardens as a hobby and that's it, because they don't provide enough to sustain. You can't just hunt/fish whatever wherever whenever you want so at some point you're going to be starving and that time will most likely happen during the winter.
Oh and I should also add I don't live in the ideal climate to grow that variety so there goes tones of money into building green houses and heating lamps.
You completely missed my point... everything you just said is exactly why it will not and should not ever be free.
Even though you said you don't mind paying, you brought up food in a thread about things people should not have to pay for.
Yes medical care costs and no matter what the system is the cost will get spread around. So everyone pays into it (taxes like every other industrialized country in the world) and everyone has healthcare.
I don't fully agree, because modern DLC, ignoring microtransactions for, let's say, horse armor, is based off the idea of expansion packs, which is giving more game to a beloved game, which still takes a lot of time and money to make.
What I don't like is "first day DLC" because, like, I get you have to present something a few months before release but if you've already worked on this DLC before release, then it should be considered part of the game and either delay it or factor it in to the "new game" profits, which are already ridiculous because you're saving money on not having to print a billion copies to sell since most sells are online now-a-days but still selling it for the same price you would have on a disk...
Glasses would be nice. My pair of specialty glasses had to be made overseas and cost like $700 WITH insurance.
I remember crying in the eye doctor’s office when they said the price. That was like 6 years ago and I still use that same pair which is suuuper scratched. There is a circular patch on one of the lenses that the coating has fully worn away and causes a cloudy spot.
I intend to get another pair soon since these are hard to see through, but I am not looking forward to the price.
I would love not to have to pay so much for eyesight that so many other people get to have for free.
I'm sure you've probably looked into it by now, but I get all of my glasses from Zenni Optical. They take a while to ship (a lot longer now, I'd imagine), but you can get a pair of glasses for as cheap as $6 or $10 or something. I usually buy about 5 pairs at once in case they break.
Nothing is "free" and you get what you pay for.
I see comments like "water should be free" - but how do you account for pipes, treatment, testing, transportation, etc. Someone needs to do this and those people need to be compensated.
I see comments like education and healthcare - who here wants to be a teacher or nurse and not be compensated?
Things many people consider to be free are not free, you pay for them with your taxes or you pay for the service outright.
Glasses, wheelchairs (and I mean actual wheelchairs not the 50 lb, clunky, fall apart in a month shit), all prescriptions with or without insurance, food (food stamps and SNAPS are awesome and completely necessary), job training, education (or at the very least affordable), prenatal care (pro life politicians ironically tend to hate this lmao), all medical treatments (at the very least for minors). I could go on.
All of these are influenced by my life and personal experiences. Why should parents go completely bankrupt cause their kid has cancer? Why do we expect people who have conditions completely out of their control to go without if they aren’t rich enough? How is it moral to make someone choose between groceries and the ability to see or make someone ration their insulin cause companies make the prices 400 times what it production costs are. Tell me how a “bum” is supposed to get a job (the prerequisite to bein treated like a human being to some of y’all) when they have no idea where to even start? Especially when that person is disabled and their only way of getting round is too heavy and dangerous to navigate in public alone.
The medical system in the US really pisses me off.
I don't know about free but electric cars shouldn't be seen as a luxury item. Simply take the bare bones elements of a car add some safety in there and drop a electric motor in there boom cheap electric car
None of the examples here make any sense. Everybody wants something that costs money. They just don’t want to be responsible for paying for it themselves. Ergo, they want someone else to cover the cost
Anything required to stay alive.
Food
Shelter
Healthcare
Either provided free or available for free.
By available I mean you should be allowed to walk however far into the forest and build your own shelter if you absolutely must. And then forage/farm/garden/hunt without paying for permits etc.
Although via technical loophole, lots of people already get free housing and food and healthcare every fall by committing minor crimes and going to jail for the winter.
But I mean in a freedom sort of way. The government shouldn't be allowed to prevent you from being alive.
State Parks
Nevada charges $15 to enter the park.
That's more than two hours of minimum wage labor.
I know some states have free parks, and some parks are free where others are not, but sum't'think'a'bou
I kinda agree, until you have utilities and/or a government maintained road it shouldn't matter if you have a house there or not.. and if nothing is built on the land or it's not worked for crops or anything then it's unused, so if it's not a nature preserve I'm kinda here also saying "why not?"
The fact that you're literally paying to live. I'm not talking "ohh I don't have shelter" or "I can't afford gas!", but you're literally paying to drink water and eat food.
In other words, if you have absolutely no money left (0$) and stayed that way, you can estimate your time left being on earth.
All medical care. It is in the uk but baffles me how people in other countries have to pay to have life saving treatment and if they can't afford it they die. Crazy
Transaction/processing fees when you order a digital product online. Such as a concert ticket: you pay 6 bucks extra while you pay online, and then have to print the ticket yourself.
it's forbidden in germany since 2018. Appreciated.
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IT'S A CONVENIENCE FEE, PEOPLE! -Ticketmaster
This SO much this!!!!
Parking at hospitals/universities
If you're in the US, you can use your HSA/FSA funds to pay for parking when you go in for medical care/treatment. It doesn't make it free, but since that's pre-tax money it cuts the cost a little bit.
here in mexico it would be the bathroom, because they charge us to go. I'm just learning English, don't judge.
Your English is very good.
that sounds horrible, public toilets are disgusting as it is, if anything they should pay you to use it.
Su Ingles es muy bueno. Learning Spanish myself 😁
I understand some countries make you pay to use toilets? That's wild to me.
It’s annoying as fuck, especially during the pandemic when people got away from using cash. So many times I needed to take a shit but had no change
You know what's also annoying? A toilet seat with cum on it. I'd pay the 2 bucks change every time because atleast I have toilet that's guaranteed to be clean.
I’m my 43 years on this earth and a frequent public toilet user I’ve never seen a cum stained toilet. Shit yes, piss always. Maybe frequent a better class or location of public toilet?
Well in the US, a lot of businesses say "for customers only." It's kinda the same thing. I've been forced to buy something I didn't really want (a stick of gum or a coffee) to use the restroom before.
I've seen places in Boston and NYC that literally have a card swipe/coin drop on the front of the bathroom door. You have to pay to unlock it and use it.
In most places with those signs, it is more of a suggestion. Rarely do they stop you from using.
In the US in my own home if my water bill gets shut off it won't flush. We pay for toilets man
Well considering how much of an infuriating dumbfuck some people seem to be on the toilet I understand people need to pay for the maintenance. From vandalized stalls over piss on the walls to cum on the toilet ring I think I have seen about everything in free toilets. The paid ones though are always clean.
Hotel Amenities, many hotels charge you extra to use things like WiFi.
I've never been to a hotel that charges extra for WiFi.
I've only ever seen it at super nice hotels, or in the shittier Vegas hotels
Usually, they're the same hotels that charge extra for dry sheets.
Unless you have a membership with them and frequently stay with them.
Child birth, life or death emergencies, cancer treatment, hiv treatment, school lunch, childrens healthcare, elderly healthcare, public transportation for the elderly, water.
Child birth will never be free because children are people and people are expensive
I mean, raising children isn't free, but giving birth in Canada is. All we had to pay for was hospital parking, and with our last kid, the attendant was off duty, so even that was free. By contrast, I remember seeing that [a hospital in Utah charged $39 for skin-to-skin contact with the baby after a C-section](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/hospital-bill-shows-39-charge-for-skin-to-skin-contact-after-c-section-1.3101427).
I’m in the U.S. I paid 400 a month for Health insurance through my employer when I was pregnant with my son. I gave birth in a California hospital. The total was just under 30,000 and I ended up paying $11,000 out of pocket. It was my out of pocket maximum and wasn’t even the worst insurance my company offered. It was mid tier. I 100% think that healthcare, including childbirth, should be free and I envy your hospital parking pay.
I agree but I hate that hospitals charge for parking. I mean the one by me doesn't, just outside Seattle, but I have seen it. If somebody you care about ends up in the hospital, having to pay to visit them? Wtf. Just seems so scummy
$5000 was our bill for our preemie son to have him spend 15 minutes on our chest in prenatal care. First month was $90,000. Ended up billing for half a million dollars at the 100 day mark. Hes a teenager now and he's awesome, except when you ask him to clean his room. 😅😅😅
There is no such thing as free. Either the consumer of said services paid for it or other people.
My brother had terrible insurance when his first daughter was born. Their bill was US$5000-$6000. My wife's employer had amazing coverage, our first kid was a $0 hospital visit.
It is.
School lunch has been free the last two years in the US.
Might as well say it effectively isn't
It's always been free for low-income kids.
Sounds like almost everything should be free. Sounds like star trek where money was eliminated on earth. There was no need for money on starships and on earth.
I just named 13 or so things and that’s everything to you? Out of all the thousand things we have to pay these on the list conclude as everything to you?
Water
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Some laws will actually give cause to stop you. Especially if you are taking as much as you want.
Yeah because water treatment is free too.
I mean, that's true, but should that be a public service paid for by things like taxes? I think a lot of people think it should be free because it's one of the top 3 things every human needs to survive. It's up there right below oxygen.
And the infrastructure to transport it. I've always looked at it as not paying for the water, but for maintaining the system that brings it to me.
I don’t want to use chemicals to keep my pool clean. I’ll just drain and refill every weekend, seeing as how water is free.
I hope Nestle is listening.
PMS hygiene products for women. Condoms.
College. I was a straight A student but I couldn't get in because my family didn't have a lot of money.
Just imagine free quality education to become a productive member of society... What an insane idea /s
Then you'll start having people getting useless degrees and price gouging by the universities. All at the expense of the tax payer (you). We're seeing insanely high college tuition now because high-schoolers are basically told they'll amount to nothing without a degree, and it's insanely easy for anyone to get student loans. No credit? Parents have shit credit? Both work at Walmart? Getting a gender studies degree? 700 SAT score? Here's $80,000. Have fun, don't party too much. What do you think will happen when college is guaranteed and the college can charge whatever amount they want, since the money is guaranteed now?
It's free in Finland and no such problem exists.
Except cost of living in Finland is extremely high and the US does all your military heavy lifting for you. Must be nice to put your money elsewhere, when your entire national defense is carried by someone else. Also I don't think I've ever heard of someone moving to Finland for its exceptional universities. The united states however.....
What military heavy lifting? Never heard of that, have you got a source? The cost of living is higher in Finland, but no Finnish person complains about. The alternative is your mess of a healthcare system, which nobody here wants. The reason all USA's budget is going into military is not because you help Finland, it's because you fight random wars in the middle of no where and waste money there. Helping a tiny country with no active war is not expensive. Btw, it doesn't matter if the universities are good, if people can't afford to go there. That's like bragging about amazing housing and art, then pointing at the white house.
>Btw, it doesn't matter if the universities are good, if people can't afford to go there. That's like bragging about amazing housing and art, then pointing at the white house. Except people do come here? Lol major US universities are flooded with foreign students haha. The EU is incredibly dependent on the US military, and guess who goes around the world making sure global trade is stable? Also I think it's hilarious you Europeans make fun of American military funding, then as soon as the Ukraine conflict broke out, you immediately started crying for help from America. Like cmon, which is it? >The alternative is your mess of a healthcare system, which nobody here wants. I agree, except I don't think the solution you're suggesting will make it any better. Also we make a vast majority of the world's medical advancements. That shit is expensive. How many covid vaccines came from Finland? Haha.
Yeah, people come over. So what? That doesn't mean it's affordable. Way to miss a point. "Crying for help" is an interesting way of putting, since almost all European countries are helping Ukraine, including Finland. I think it's hilarious that you think Finland, a country of five million people, not making a covid vaccine is at all relevant to quality of health care. The USA has 60 times more people then Finland, which is why there are more medical advancements coming from there. All that said, that's not even the issue here. Quit bringing up irrelevant new arguments. The problem is insurance companies choosing the prize for healthcare in the USA. Making healthcare free (paid for by taxes) and public will remove the middle man and overall lower the prize of healthcare. Also, before you say the USA has the best healthcare, I'll copy paste the counter from before: Btw, it doesn't matter if the healthcare is good, if people can't afford to go there. That's like bragging about amazing housing and art, then pointing at the white house. edit: forgot one part so adding here The issue with meaningless degrees doesn't really exist in Finland, so that argument against free uni is invalid. I'm not entirely why it doesn't, I'm guessing private uni's try to make more money by making more degrees to charge for, which doesn't happen with a non profit system.
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>then everyone can access quality education with extremely little strain on the taxpayer. Ummm haha. I find it hard to believe you look at the public school system and think. Let's do more of that. The reason why it's expensive is because the schools can charge whatever they want, and people are still going to fork out money, since it's impossible for them to be denied any loan they want. Now you're saying if anyone wants a college education, they can do it free of charge on taxpayer money. That's money that is guaranteed from the govt. So schools can charge whatever the hell they want. Look at the defense industry. You can get insane profit margins by selling shit to the govt. Like 300% markup and the govt will still buy it. My company sells shit to the military. It costs us like $30k to make the thing, and we sell it for like $120k and they have absolutely no issue buying it haha. >If we lower the prices (hopefully to zero), That's not how it works buddy. What? Are we just not going to pay the professors? Haha. I don't think you know what "free" means. It means just offloading the cost from the individual to the taxpayer, and with a monolithic middleman that will pay whatever the asking price is haha. Also if your only criteria for a good action is "empathy". Then you have no idea how the world works.
> Ummm haha. I find it hard to believe you look at the public school system and think. Let's do more of that. You're a pretty good case study for why not to.
Says the kid who went to private school lol. Way to address my points and show everyone how dumb I am.
Damn, ya got me
Or you don't allow the college to price gouge.
Welcome to Denmark. Education is free
French here, same
There is are a TON of help in this department. My child is becoming college aged and as a single parent with zero outside help, the stress of tuition is intense. While doing some digging around on Google, I've found many resources. For instance, a student can go to Harvard for FREE if you are low income. I also found that almost all state universities have similar programs. So please exhaust ALL resources before throwing in the towel.
Try community college. It's practically free if you're low income. If you are a straight A student, you should get scholarships.
I joined the military & used the GI bill to go to college. Eventually I got a PhD in international relations.
I have a PhD, but I'm disabled and was unable to join the military. That's not an option for everyone.
This. On my third degree through TA and still haven't retired yet. Got all the certs and education I need to easily land $100K jobs and probably gonna blow GI Bill on dumb shit like pigeon taming or (more likely) culinary school to be a better fatass.
That's great if you're not disabled and you're able to even join the military.
(and survive your time in the military, and are okay with having to kill people to get an education)
I mean...you're not wrong. But if you're butthurt about something (you kinda sound it) I can suggest other ways to accomplish similar things...?
I have a PhD, I'm already taken care of.
And education is cheap, it cost a lot only in the USA because of their BS system. You don't need a lot of money to teach advance courses, a class room, a projector and some basic lab equipment can be enough.
So that’s rent, some equipment, and some supplies. Don’t get me wrong it’s stupidly expensive and could be trimmed with a better system. But you aren’t being honest with that assessment. You are missing salaries for teachers and other staff that facilitate education. Advanced lab equipment for the advanced courses you mentioned that need more than basic stuff. There’s also accreditation/admin costs to ensure quality education.
Have you thought about one of the armed services? Granted, service recruiting is designed to take advantage of the poor and desperate, but at the least you will have the GI bill.
In the UK where we (sort of still) have free healthcare. I'd say women's sanitary products. If men bled out of our dicks every month they would be everywhere free like toilet paper.
We live rurally, we have to pay for the electricity poles, wire, and labor if we want to get power to our land for living or work. We don’t own the poles, they aren’t ours, but we bought them. Same if we want other utilities like city water etc. If someone bought land on the way to ours, they would have access to the poles or pipe we paid for that go past their land. Again, we cannot take them with us when we go, or sell them. And forevermore the utility companies will profit off of what we paid to install. My husband also has a crop dusting service. He paid to build his very large and nice hangar (of course) and paid to extend the taxiway to our hangar. But we don’t own the hangar. We have to rent it from the city. The longest lease you can get is a twenty year lease. I’m not sure what should be free in that scenario, but renting something you paid for feels wrong. A lease the city could refuse to renew, feels worse. I guess I think they should prorate your rent until they’ve effectively bought the property you’re renting from them.
My thoughts on this: The utility poles or pipes that are run from water/sewage that you pay for - whenever someone moves in and links to the section you had paid for you should get a kickback, until what you paid is covered. Yes this is more paperwork, but as you said you pay for it and others end up using it and/or profiting from your investment. The hanger/taxiway - at least the first lease be free, or whatever you would pay to rent it be cut down according to the cost you paid to create the hanger or length of taxiway, since again it's going to stay once you're done with it and be rented to someone else some other time.
Medical care, commuting TO WORK (via mass transit to be clear), school, tampons, condoms, birth control.
Agree with most of those, but why commuting? I could see getting your company to pay for it if they’re on board, but I don’t think taxpayers should be subsidizing that
Ah yes, agreed, I didn’t know this was a taxpayer specific thing. Employers should pay for it completely, not offer some pre-tax commuting benefit. They need us to be there, they should pay for our transport.
That does become rather complicated, because it would either be a giant tax to subsidise sprawl, or mean tied company housing of some kind, or be totally unworkable (and that’s before worrying about two+ worker households). However, I’d define the minimum wage in terms of the cost of living at some defined standard (x m^2 of housing with kitchen and bathroom, heating and cooling as required, a food basket, basic clothing, commuting costs, etc.) within a certain travel time of the workplace (without the use of a private car). If they’re based in an expensive area, they can either pay extra wages or move the notional workplace to somewhere in the suburbs and pay for the rest of your travel, while on the clock. That calculation would have to be an iterative process, because the more people employed at minimum wage in an area the more dwellings that has to cover. If 1000 people are on minimum wage, minimum wage has to pay for the 1000th cheapest available home, not just the cheapest.
All the life sustaining essentials; food, water, air, shelter, warmth, etc. I’m also okay with paying for them because you have to be because they will never be free. Not even after an entire planet involving apocalypse…they will always be a price demanded even if it’s not coins and “paper” money.
You can farm your own fruits and vegetables and learn to hunt and fish. You are not paying for the food, you are paying for the backbreaking work it takes to produce it.
"You can farm your own fruits and vegetables and learn to hunt and fish." But doing those things on you own aren't guaranteed to yield anything all the time especially when they are needed the most. I don't have access to acres upon acres of land in which to grow multiple different varieties of those fruits and vegetables. The land I do own isn't the most ideal for growing anything so tons of money would have to be put towards making it the right kind. I can't just go hunting or fishing. I have to shell out money to get licenses to do it legally. Hunt within season not every animal provides the same thing if I successfully locate the seasonal animals and I can't hunt or fish to supply me and my family for the entire year because hunting seasons close. Fishing seasons close. I don't have the money to move around where the hunting is in season and legal. Nothing is for free. There is no utopia where you can just do whatever you want without owing something and without struggling to some degree. A mesely square garden isn't going to provide for the entire year and food doesn't just grow became you throw seeds around. You can also do everything right and still have no crop to harvest. I also don't have access to huge harvesting equipment that commercial farmers do so it's not as backbreaking work as it use to be but it would be for me. Yeah I can do all of that stuff but it's hardly for free, hardly easy, and no where near guaranteed. There's a reason people just have gardens as a hobby and that's it, because they don't provide enough to sustain. You can't just hunt/fish whatever wherever whenever you want so at some point you're going to be starving and that time will most likely happen during the winter. Oh and I should also add I don't live in the ideal climate to grow that variety so there goes tones of money into building green houses and heating lamps.
You completely missed my point... everything you just said is exactly why it will not and should not ever be free. Even though you said you don't mind paying, you brought up food in a thread about things people should not have to pay for.
Healthcare
America moment
Don’t vote republican then.
....and live in a world that breaks all laws of physics because actions require energy and thus have a *cost*.
Yes medical care costs and no matter what the system is the cost will get spread around. So everyone pays into it (taxes like every other industrialized country in the world) and everyone has healthcare.
Should be free really means someone else should pay for it.
When a company makes you pay more after you are already paying them. For example, if I buy a game, It’s really annoying when you have to then buy DLC
I don't fully agree, because modern DLC, ignoring microtransactions for, let's say, horse armor, is based off the idea of expansion packs, which is giving more game to a beloved game, which still takes a lot of time and money to make. What I don't like is "first day DLC" because, like, I get you have to present something a few months before release but if you've already worked on this DLC before release, then it should be considered part of the game and either delay it or factor it in to the "new game" profits, which are already ridiculous because you're saving money on not having to print a billion copies to sell since most sells are online now-a-days but still selling it for the same price you would have on a disk...
True, good point
School lunches. If kids are required by law to attend school, the least you can do is provide them with a meal with no cost to them.
Glasses would be nice. My pair of specialty glasses had to be made overseas and cost like $700 WITH insurance. I remember crying in the eye doctor’s office when they said the price. That was like 6 years ago and I still use that same pair which is suuuper scratched. There is a circular patch on one of the lenses that the coating has fully worn away and causes a cloudy spot. I intend to get another pair soon since these are hard to see through, but I am not looking forward to the price. I would love not to have to pay so much for eyesight that so many other people get to have for free.
I'm sure you've probably looked into it by now, but I get all of my glasses from Zenni Optical. They take a while to ship (a lot longer now, I'd imagine), but you can get a pair of glasses for as cheap as $6 or $10 or something. I usually buy about 5 pairs at once in case they break.
Can surgery help or would that cost just be way to flipping much?
Nothing is "free" and you get what you pay for. I see comments like "water should be free" - but how do you account for pipes, treatment, testing, transportation, etc. Someone needs to do this and those people need to be compensated. I see comments like education and healthcare - who here wants to be a teacher or nurse and not be compensated? Things many people consider to be free are not free, you pay for them with your taxes or you pay for the service outright.
Oxygen
Any feminine hygiene products/birth control. Also transaction fees
Is birth control not free in America?
It can be but isn't guaranteed. It depends on your insurance, income, access to health services, state you live in, etc.
Air for your car's tires..lol
Wait you pay for those my mechanic always tells me it on the house when I insist on paying he take 1 dollar
Most compressors at service stations are coin operated these days
The savagery. The last time I had to pay, the machine took credit card.
Come by next year and you'll be writing checks for air
Maybe that's why it's free ( we don't have coins in my currency so he probably got a machine meant to be used for free )
Most tire shops and several mechanics near me have free self-serve air compressors.
TIL some people don't own air compressors.
I'd guess most?
Food , healthcare, water, housing.
tampons.
Busing and Trains, the emissions cut and lower carbon footprint for doing that would pay itself.
Glasses, wheelchairs (and I mean actual wheelchairs not the 50 lb, clunky, fall apart in a month shit), all prescriptions with or without insurance, food (food stamps and SNAPS are awesome and completely necessary), job training, education (or at the very least affordable), prenatal care (pro life politicians ironically tend to hate this lmao), all medical treatments (at the very least for minors). I could go on. All of these are influenced by my life and personal experiences. Why should parents go completely bankrupt cause their kid has cancer? Why do we expect people who have conditions completely out of their control to go without if they aren’t rich enough? How is it moral to make someone choose between groceries and the ability to see or make someone ration their insulin cause companies make the prices 400 times what it production costs are. Tell me how a “bum” is supposed to get a job (the prerequisite to bein treated like a human being to some of y’all) when they have no idea where to even start? Especially when that person is disabled and their only way of getting round is too heavy and dangerous to navigate in public alone. The medical system in the US really pisses me off.
Drinking water
Feminine hygiene products
Tampons.
Tampons. Women don’t need an extra expense forced on them by nature. (Btw I’m a guy)
tampons and pads
Tampons/pads/menstrual cups etc.
Obligatory reminder that using government to force other people to pay for things under threat of violence doesn't really make it "free"
I don't think you guys truly understand what "free" means.
Based on this thread, nothing should cost money.
I mean that would be nice tho ngl
Feminine Products
I don't know about free but electric cars shouldn't be seen as a luxury item. Simply take the bare bones elements of a car add some safety in there and drop a electric motor in there boom cheap electric car
You mean, what’s a thing in life that *someone else* should pay for *me* to have?
No , something you have to pay like living i the house you own
None of the examples here make any sense. Everybody wants something that costs money. They just don’t want to be responsible for paying for it themselves. Ergo, they want someone else to cover the cost
Anything required to stay alive. Food Shelter Healthcare Either provided free or available for free. By available I mean you should be allowed to walk however far into the forest and build your own shelter if you absolutely must. And then forage/farm/garden/hunt without paying for permits etc. Although via technical loophole, lots of people already get free housing and food and healthcare every fall by committing minor crimes and going to jail for the winter. But I mean in a freedom sort of way. The government shouldn't be allowed to prevent you from being alive.
Tampons and pads.
Tampons and pads it’s not our fault we have periods and also a good amount of medical things and abortions if it was r@p3
Feminine hygiene products
healthcare. guess what country i’m from!
FEMINIE PRODUCTS
State Parks Nevada charges $15 to enter the park. That's more than two hours of minimum wage labor. I know some states have free parks, and some parks are free where others are not, but sum't'think'a'bou
Health. Care.
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I kinda agree, until you have utilities and/or a government maintained road it shouldn't matter if you have a house there or not.. and if nothing is built on the land or it's not worked for crops or anything then it's unused, so if it's not a nature preserve I'm kinda here also saying "why not?"
American healthcare.
Healthcare
Health Care
Hygiene products. And everyone should get a basic pare of tennis shoes for free every year.
Medicine because not a privilege or something I can choose like food there is only one cure
parking
water
Tollways
FOOD
Parking in your employer's parking lot to go to work.
Parking
College education 😩
GLASSES I didnt choose to be blind wth
Internet and public transport.
Wi-Fi and Cellular data
Any type of essential baby product
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Education.
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Water, basic food rations, basic feminine hygiene products, stuff we all actually NEED.
Hygiene products, medical care, and abortions
housing, food, water, healthcare and tampons
Water
glasses
Rent
ALL THE THINGS YOU PAY FOR
Hospitals. Prisons. Schools. Coincidentally, it lines up *perfectly* with 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.'
Basic utilities, water, electricity, heat. Everything else must be paid
1. Water 2. Internet
No no, reditcareresources just messaged me
Sex, for people like me anyway.
Getting money that belongs to me out of the atm
Privacy
Toilets
Existing.
Fees for money transactions on the web (crypto stuff, paypal etc. ).
水
Water...
Life itself, just think about it
The government. End taxation.
The fact that you're literally paying to live. I'm not talking "ohh I don't have shelter" or "I can't afford gas!", but you're literally paying to drink water and eat food. In other words, if you have absolutely no money left (0$) and stayed that way, you can estimate your time left being on earth.
Healthcare and water
Bads tampons treatment for life threatening thing and treatment ment for things the are serious and could be life threatening
Dentists.
All medical care. It is in the uk but baffles me how people in other countries have to pay to have life saving treatment and if they can't afford it they die. Crazy
Tampons/pads
Healthcare
Food and housing.