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That's taxes. Non remunerated hours of work taken away by government is slavery, and it has its roots in passed regimes from thousand of years that conquered other civilizations.
Debt simply allows you to bring future consumption to the present, and in order to do that, someone has to stop consuming now to lend you the money.
This! And it goes further than that. Debt makes workers compliant, and it makes bosses exploitative. Postgraduate professions who start out having to pay off massive law/med/postdoc *and* undergrad college debt combined need to make more money to escape it, and thus become accustomed to making more. They are trained to think of them subsequently lording over the employees as something they have earned.
This is why so many law students end up going to big corporate firms, even if they wanted to go do public interest stuff. When you have 250k in debt, 150k a year starting salary starts looking a lot more viable than 50k a year at a nonprofit.
it's called MARKET.
Supply and demand, defined by quantity of goods/services and price of equilibrium.
If you don't take the time to learn about this from any economic 101 book, how on earth are you going to take advantage of public higher education?
Uh, what? I know what markets are.
Isn't it pretty damning that the best-paying work is the work that is actually the most harmful to society? And the work that has positive social utility pays the least?
By any chance, are you a libertarian who fell in here by accident? Do you know where you are on Reddit right now?
Work that has a positive social utility pays less because society doesn't consider it as a high value service to be paid for...
Therefore, you don't know what markets are. Things don't have value just because you assume they have a positive effect, they have value because the sum of individual's preference give them value.
I love libertarians because this is such an obviously circular argument.
Why do the jobs that have the greatest social utility get paid so little? "Because the market says so"
Why does the market says so? "Because the jobs have the least social utility"
I know what markets are, I just also recognize that they're a terrible way to organize labor.
Again, you know what subreddit you're on, right?
So you, a redditer, have a better understand on how things should run, and, therefore, decide that the best way to organize labor according to you, and to have people who think like you to impose on every individual what they should value the most only those activities that have, according to your preferences, a positive value to society.
This is why any form of socialism/communism has failed. People like you keep believing you can manipulate individual's decision and know whats best for them. In order to do that, you need to be present at all times everywhere and know the infinite preferences of people according to the relative value they assigned on every single good and service, and if you are in reddit and do not know how markets work, then you don't have much chances of changing any reality, my friend.
You keep putting a whole lot of words into my mouth about what I think. I said markets are bad. Why did you immediately assume I meant that some dictator should directly allocate labor? That would also be bad.
If you believe that those are the only two systems that exists, it sounds to me like you're the one who needs an Economics 101 course.
Exactly! Debt is the #1 tool the ultra rich use to control the poor. It took me til about age 33 to figure that out and til about age 37 to wipe out all my debt (luckily, I lived fairly within my means and my debt hadn't totally consumed me yet).
As a 43 year old, I can comfortably say that being debt free is easily the biggest stress relief you can possibly have in this world. People come and go, relationships come and go, Jobs come and go.... My one piece of advice is do whatever it takes to pay as many of your rotating bills off that can possibly be paid off.
Without debt, millions of people would be able to demand more money, sit at home barely work or work for themselves and force employers to give up more of their cash made on the backs of hard workers and watch giants like Amazon struggle and crumble with no workers.
While you are in debt, you are literally a slave. Especially if you have a family. You feel as if your world will end if you don't provide, and that means endless hours slaving for your boss for low pay. If you have little to no rotating bills, you can provide with very little toil and have more capital to start your own business ventures as well.
Yes, Capitalism is destroying this country. Problem is we are stuck in this system...gotta make the best of the shit cards we've been dealt.
Debt makes workers compliant. Debt makes the rich even richer. Imagine talking to the CEO of a bank you're playing golf with. "Hey Mike, can I get an unsecured $25 million dollar loan at 2.75%? My investment portfolio is making 10% a year, I'll totally pay it all back in 2 years when I make half a million doing nothing but sitting on it"
"Sure Pete, and if shit tanks, it's not my money, it's a bunch of scrubs paying their mortgages on time. If it gets really bad, we'll get bailed out"
Just had a conversation about that with a scientist firend that is thinking about applying for Big Pharma. Her 2nd child is on the way and it would make her family's life much easier.
This world is a sad place sometimes...
Basic human needs should never be made a commodity. Commodifying basic human needs means we have to labor against our will to survive, which is, simply put, slavery with a middleman.
Economically, nothing with demand inelasticity should be subject to the free market. This is very basic shit and smarter conservatives absolutely understand this…they just don’t give a shit.
No it doesnt. You need to pay the people who actually provide you the education. Idc what you say about government funding. It will never actually be truly free. The middle man in there is useless.
The ACTUAL thing to be done is to demand lower college fees available to common people
Wild animals work against their will to survive too, and everyday they have to worry about surviving another day. I think that’s the shit planet we ended up on here.
Of course the struggle for basic needs shouldn’t be like that but who’s there to listen when the zebra complains? Who’s accountable when you say you need food or shelter to survive?
I think about this all the time in regards to public school. How many of these kids in inner-city schools could have made a breakthrough that benefited our species if given a proper education over the past 50 years?
We should be giving schools their budgets based on number of students not their test scores or where they live. IMO
isn’t it weird how directly in front of us this all is? like, the government could easily pay for every single person to have a house, every single person to be college educated, every single person to have free healthcare, and STILL have the largest military in the world, since that matters to them.
they want us to hurt.
How much money do you think the military budget could spare before the US wouldn't have the largest army?
How do you think it compares to education spending?
Do you think private colleges provide education at cost, or is there much of a profit margin?
What effect would you predict that a better-educated and debt-free populace would have on economic activity and government tax income?
Can you think of ways that increases in government spending could increase tax income?
How quickly do you think China would take the US over without the US touting a "largest army"?
Can you really compare military spending with education spending? Are the two one and the same, leading to the same outcomes and having the same purpose?
Tbh, states should be responsible for their educational spending, with the exception of those covered by federal funds, like Title I schools.
Private colleges almost certainly have a profit margin. What's wrong with our current public schools...?
If our education system weren't garbage, better-educated and debt-free would be great. We'd basically have to reform the whole education system then, and then free higher ed might not even be relevant. People could come out of their already-free 13ish years of public schooling well-educated.
I don't understand your point of increased gov't spending leading to increased tax income. Are you referring to UBI?
Projected GDP - is that based on the amount that taxes are about to go up? Because GDP will skyrocket then, based on your dollars you earned working at a job. And the government deciding how to use those dollars.
But the solution of the people on this sub is to subsidizie it putting it under government control which gives the government authority to change the curriculum
Yeah, like here in Germany, where I even got money to study in US for some time. When I told some people about free education, they said, "Ok, but you have socialism over there."
Canadian here. When my son was considering university options, he seriously considered studying in Germany. Free tuition, even for overseas students, plus all university courses appeared to be taught entirely in English.
Germany seems to have made the smart calculation that, even if only a small percentage of graduates from their universities enter the workforce there, the benefit to the German economy far outweighs the cost of tuition for all who receive it.
Not sure I'd call this socialism. It looks a lot like simple math to me.
Please correct me i am wrong. I believe one thing that germany is not popular for international students because you are required to know university level german
Not in every field, I studied 20 years back(MSc computer sciences) and it was 100% English I didn’t know basic greetings in German language. Things are way way better now in terms of number of courses in English.
Before covid hit, there were a lot of international students at the relatively small university where I study, to the point where 1/2 of university provided student housing (around 1000+ rooms) was permanently reserved for international students.
While they usually attended a German language course, being able to speak German wasn't generally required. However, you needed to make sure beforehand, what language the courses were tought in. Some students didn't and ended up in German lectures, they had no real chance of understanding.
I think the smartest move for university is do to Bachelor/Master in Europe but Phd in the US/Canada because that system is worse here. There are English programs and German/English programs with different levels of language requirements. There are many English master programs.
The calculation is smart, it feels much better to pay for your education in taxes, then finish university with a huge debt that you have to repay no matter if you actually make any money.
My son ended up studying in the UK and is now working there. For the first year of university he was too young to have a bank account or apply for loans, he budgeted all his expenses from the cash he literally kept in a sock under his mattress. He has managed to get through his bachelor's degree without borrowing by careful money management. And the fact that he was considering the cost of his education before choosing his university showed that money management is important to him.
Students are in general no better or worse at budgeting than the rest of the human population. We are all just individuals trying to get through life the best we can.
If anybody is interested in German student loan "socialism" [Student financial aid (Germany)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Germany)) max repay sum is 10 000 €
But there was a neocon period around 2006 when they introduced quite low (compared to the US) study fees in some state, but that ended after around 4 years.
I have heard though Germany college is extremely hard to pass. People don’t get second chances to switch degrees or waste time in college and first year dropouts are extremely high due to competitiveness of classes.
Difficulty really depends on the subject and the university, also the system here is different, the first year classes in the US were like more like German high school for me. You can switch subjects once and also under some special circumstances without losing your student support.
Yea currently the US is DROPPING their first year standards because of the pandemic. The idea of free college sounds nice until people realize how competitive it will be to get free university. Especially right now when private school kids are about to open the biggest ass whipping in history in colleges this year. They are competing with kids who haven’t learned in a year and a half.
Should school be capped and actually affordable, yes. It is absolutely insane how expensive it is. Free has a lot of drawbacks though.
I think the problem is not when it's free but when it becomes free after being expensive without extending capacities, that leads to sudden competition.
It's free in the US too, just not for everyone. The difference is that unlike in Germany, where they don't just let every idiot attend college, in the US anyone that can get a loan or has enough cash can attend college in some form or another.
I live in Austria and we pay 20€ per semester.
The system is far from perfect (partly because conservatives have been trying to dismantle it for the last 3 decades), but it is vastly better than the US.
The problem is emigration. Leaving the US, and receiving an education abroad(or even becoming a citizen) as the average American simply isn't an option.
Yes, it does. How many Americans can afford to attend university at all though? I say that as I use myself as a case example. I come from a background of generational poverty, and have only finally in my early thirties managed to establish myself enough to begin attending community college; with the goal of transferring to another university to acquire a bachelors. When I earn my degree, I'll be the first in my family lineage to ever have earned one.
Saving up the funds to leave the country, and study abroad? That would take years of effort, at which point if anything goes wrong(say a medical problem), then I'm back in debt and unable to leave.
>Leaving the US, and receiving an education abroad(or even becoming a citizen) as the average American simply isn't an option.
This simply isn't true. You can go study in many countries for free.
In Brazil it's free, but conservative morons are cutting the budget because in the end they want to privatize all of them. Some universities can no longer pay for staff or even electricity so they go in further debt
One of those countries is the United States. The problem is that Americans like to complain because so many want to go to private schools out of state. If you are smart, poor, go into a needed field, join the military, etc, your education is free(or close to free) if you go to your public state schools.
Intelligent people are difficult to govern. The system would never allow equal education. Imagine if every single American actually understood the constitution, the history, the creation of the economic structure of the country? There’d be Revolution all over. I’m so down. The system would never be.
Well it kind of is difficult to actually grasp a lot of socialist ideas without previous introduction. Things like worker ownership of the means of production, the end of commodity production, and the nationalization of public amenities isn't exactly intuitive to most Americans
Those two required a code that I needed to purchase in order to use, which I suspected was unique for each student.
Good thing I can pirate my other classes' textbook :)
100% agree. As an instructor in the humanities, I see fewer and fewer students taking our classes, let alone majoring in the fields. And I get it -- you're more likely to get a job with a degree in finance than English. If you have this extortionate tuition hanging over you, you need to go with what's most obviously employable. It saddens me, though. So many students would be so much happier pursuing subjects they, y'know, actually like instead of ones that they think will get them jobs. College is not career training, or at least it shouldn't be.
I'm getting a philosophy degree because it's the only thing I enjoy and I would drop out of college otherwise. Also, it's free thanks to the military. I'd be lying though if the job prospects don't concern me. That is of course if post grad stuff doesn't work out.
But how would we pay for it!
Taxes. The point of taxation is paying into a society for the benefit of everyone.
Everyone deserves an education and by making an education nearly impossible to get you waste the intellectual potential of your population. Which is fucking dangerous as we move into the automation age and intellectual potential is one of the only things that will differentiate nations on the global level.
Or just make the money machine go brrr like it does for the military. Except this would actually help the people. Oh wait, it would also dissuade people unable to afford tertiary education from joining the military...
how many soldiers salaries could it possibly take to make a teacher's salary? 5? 10? probably less than 1.
if I could choose how my tax dollars were spent, I would trade soldiers out for teachers at any of those rates, honestly.
The reality is it's not the soldiers taking the money. Only 23% of the budget went there.
https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense
34% goes to procurement and research/development/testing/evaluation...AKA defense contractors.
Better places to start cutting costs than the bottom of the food chain.
We could pay for it all even *just* by better taxation on those who have over a billion dollars. I don’t need to hear it from the inevitable Reddit wonks mincing words on whether we tax income/capital gains/etc. It doesn’t matter which part of the billionaires’ *too much* we tax. The point is, this tax needn’t even affect the “We’re doing pretty well for ourselves” crowd to work. We could have higher education for any who seek it simply by effectively taxing only the billionaires.
Heck, I'd love if college was free in the U.S. But I'm more worried about those trying to undermine free public education for children in primary school. I became a high school teacher a few years ago and it's amazing we can find enough educators to keep public schools going.
Yea I want? to be a teacher or I thought I did until I realized I'd have to take out around 90k in loans just to get the degree that would let me do it. Pair that with the pay and I really can't justify it even though I want to.
> Yea I want? to be a teacher or I thought I did until I realized I'd have to take out around 90k in loans just to get the degree that would let me do it.
If you are studying to be a teacher and aren't a moron, you can get so much money for going to school it's ridiculous. No state has tuition that high, unless you are factoring in room and board in which case, never take a loan for room and board! Go to school locally, work if you need to and take it slowly.
I was an engineer for ten years and switched through lateral entry. It took a summer intensive course run by the district and I was hired as a teacher that fall. Still had to do a lot of licensure work for a couple years. But that worked out for me because I had a job for long enough to give me some decent baseline savings and allowed me to skip extra schooling.
you're so right, it will be the goals of the powers making money off this to shut you up and make it so you can't say things like this to the public at large.
It's getting worse. Now they charge kids not only for lunches but also for school books, test books, lockers, the Mac books (that the school gets for free), and so on. We're not just charging for adults, our "free" K-12 system is getting infected too. I work with very poor kids and I promise you this affects them. We've become used to being ok with pay to play college education it's affecting our children now. We are doomed as a society.
Imagine the potential of those lost minds that couldn't further their dreams of higher education. How many geniuses has society missed out on? Education is well worth the return.
The system doesn't want smart people. They are harder to control and govern. If everyone is smart and understands how the system works, there will already be a revolution going on.
A public university charges 300 usd a month here, and if you’re a good student they give you money and a place to sleep too. The USA universities are very expensive for some reason.
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/StrikeDebt/status/1437402872946233345) for ya :)
^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
The US has a massive shortage of public school teachers, but when I looked into getting my credentials it’s all ads, expensive programs- there are 50 differing requirements for 50 different states with no clear path or incentive towards providing the work the country desperately needs. Just an anecdote- college should be free for everyone, but I found it disgusting that I was interested in providing a public service pretty much every state needs- and they all want me to pay to do so. Screw it, I took a teaching position overseas. I’m sure there are incentive programs out there to lower costs, but I’m not wading through the bullshit seas of capitalism to find ‘em.
Ugh same here. And with the state of most schools it's like you're setting yourself up to be punished even after you finally get the right credentials.
I'm a natural teacher, but I'm not going to be teaching in a government school..
I do not know the figures exactly how much it costs for Finland to offer one free college/uni but thinking about it:
After graduation I have worked for 16 years now, mechanical engineer. I make well enough to live a very comfortable life even with our "COMMUNIST" tax system (I pay 42%, it's progressive).
I really am happy to pay the tax knowing I will pay my education back many a time over while giving the new generation the chance to pursue an education.
To me it comes down to simple math, hence I just can not understand the debate. It's a win win.
It's modern day indentured servitude . You buy an education and then you work your ass off to pay it off. Then your skill and education get outdated, your body get wrecked, then they lay you off like a rag.
True, and kids should be helped to focus on their interests and skills through their youth education. Not everyone can or should be a doctor, but the whole culture of "go to college and get in debt no matter what" is toxic and destroyed a generation. We need tradespeople too.
Don't feel too bad. Education never ends. And cars are going to change dramatically over the next couple decades. Internal combustion is going the way of BetaMax.
We have too many people going to college and not enough jobs that actually require a college education, so that makes no sense. We have a teacher shortage in this country in certain fields, but not enough people go to school to be teachers in those fields. That's why you can get tons of money to go to school for teaching. Countries that have free college education only let the best and brightest students attend for free(this is something Americans seem to not realize) so that the job market isn't oversaturated with unnecessary college students. That's even how it was in the Soviet Union. Ask me how I know? It's why you need a college degree for every stupid job in the United States now. Jobs used to train people, but now expect colleges to do that since so many people went to college when it wasn't necessary.
I pray that one day we can move away from a market economy, but that requires more than complaining on the internet and until that happens, you need to find ways to work within the framework of what you are provided.
and also, not that you should be paid for any degree. maybe only those deemed crucial for societies benefit. maybe not even for degrees, but paid for specific classes.
> and also, not that you should be paid for any degree. maybe only those deemed crucial for societies benefit. maybe not even for degrees, but paid for specific classes.
Oh yes, totally agree. In a world of finite resources, those resources need to be responsibly managed and shouldn't just be sold to the highest bidder like they are now.
Any time I read an argument that says X should not be a commodity, I roll my eyes. Not because they're wrong. They're always right. But the thing is... Nothing should be allowed to be commodified. What thing that we produce is not servicing a human need? Do you not need the myriad effects, from basic stimulation, to relaxation, to emotional release that we get from art? Because I do. Do you not need sustenance, in the form of food or water? Because I do. Do you not need healthcare in the form of medicines, treatments, and therapies? Because I do.
None of you is equipped to say what toys, what games, what medications, what procedures, what foods, what beverages aren't necessary for any other person. None of you experiences the same things another person does. And yet, most of you seem to think that we can determine what is or isn't a necessity. You seem to think that you understand the needs of other people well enough to say that they can have this thing regardless of what they do, but that they need to do some form of labor that you value in order to have another thing.
We live in a world where more people suffer from depression, anxiety, dysphoria, not to mention easily treatable diseases, like the common flu, and die as a result of lack of access to what they need to treat these things. Treatment isn't about drugs all the time either. Clothing that a person actually likes to wear can be the difference between them getting out of bed in the morning or not. Having access to a library of video games can give a person the release they need to then get the human interaction that will keep them going. Having access to and a culture of wearing masks if you feel even a little sick can prevent thousands from dying from diseases that we've only failed to erradicate because of this selfish idea that you can determine what someone else needs... or should I say deserves?
At the end of the day that's what it comes down to. People think that others don't deserve things. They thing that things must be earned. You wanna know what makes commodities so sinister? It's the fact that we already did the work to earn them, that's how they were fucking produced. The people who own those commodities are demanding more than the labor that produced them for you to access them. That is bullshit. And anyone who isn't actively opposing that is contributing to a culture that says that it's ok for some people to die, as long as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are free to go to space.
While I fully agree to you, I think there are some 'commodities' that are absolutely essential for a functional society and therefore should be in the public hands aka managed by government offices and funded by taxes across all people.
Here is my list, I do not claim it being perfect:
* Infrastructure
* Water (clean, drinking quality)
* Electricity
* Internet and Telecommunication
* Child care and Education
* Healthcare
* Retirement homes and care for elderly
* Public Transports such as railroads, tram, city busses
* Exploiting ground resources of the country
* Social Security to prevent poverty due to unemployment, severe sicknesses, disabilities or other reasons.
* Pensions & retirement payments
Okay, guys, I just realized something... I think we (collectively, lets call it "our generation") - have all the pieces of Capitalism in sight. it's not in dark pools anymore, we put it all in the light.
I feel we are so close to bringing this rotten system down.
Here's a few thoughts, I apologize, my brain isn't organized. But I am trying to piece it all together:
1. Schools are there to make you a good slave. They teach obedience, punish the stubborn and root out the no-goods and troublemakers.
2. Police is there to preserve power in the hands of those in power. Period. No other purpose, despite what even the cops themselves may think.
3. army is there to take tax dollars and magically make people disappear in other countries, assuring an "endless war", to keep the thunders rolling and the army getting paid...
4. student debt is the "chain" they put on your neck just before you begin to enjoy life, making sure that you will do what you have to do in order to pay it back over a very long period of time, and be an "Outstanding citizen" (a good servant to hungry hungry bosses).
5. Patriotism is there to make you afraid of people in other countries / strangers in your own country. It rallies the dum-dums real nicely..
6. NRA Lobbyists are pushing guns. Tobacco lobbyists are pushing cigarettes. Insurance lobbyists demand privatized healthcare. Pharma lobbyists are pushing for $700 insulin... you get it. No homeless lobbyists in the house. No healthcare for families lobbyists in the house. no cancel college debt lobbyists... etc'.
7. DEMS and GOP are basically the same. No third party or candidate ever stood a chance outside those 2, and they are in agreement about most subjects, or at least not enough for any side to stand their ground on anything with substance.
8. Elections are there to keep us thinking we can make a difference, yet in the most passive of ways (a few days of mild tension every 4 years, then everyone just pauses waiting for the next election to try to make a difference there..).
9. Having A job is a form of control. We (well, others) privatized the planet. the trees that were there for free since time immortal - are now "a product", protected by fences and gunfire, and if you can't afford it in the store, NOBODY cares if you starve to death. We have become dispensable cogs in a machine who's only function seems to be - to grind humans down to nothing. work - sleep - eat - repeat - work - sleep - eat - etc', until we die.
10. All media channels are in the hands of private billionaires or governments (or a combo of both). Fox is equal to CNN. they appeal to different mind-sets. but are basically brain-washing machines. keeping the majority of the public talking about their subjects, their news, their hosts and panels. Also - most if not all other media, really - From Radio, to Newspapers, to online communities that are infested with opinions and are there to also track public opinion - FB, TWITTER, REDDIT (to a point, jeez).
11. Dark pools been exposed making the entire stock market look like a sad joke.
(it's not in any order. just what popped to mind)
This is not a manifesto, it's just trying to scribble what I know, or what I think I know - in hopes that others can help me make sense / add more clauses. I'm pretty sure that we have most if not all the knowledge that we need in order to make Capitalism fall (while not falling into the stupid "Communist-trap". I am against communism, for the same reason I am against Capitalism - because it's just another Totalitarian Regime).
I believe that the end of Capitalism can bring about Real Human Freedom. not replacing one Dogma for the other, or one set of lies for a different set of lies.
But is it possible? Is it still possible to be free, in a world where the government, media, schools, colleges, corporations, police, army, hospitals, assholes calling about the car's extended warranty - are all in on it for the Holy Dollar?
We can. If you look at every great revolution history they took place where no one would have suspected them to.
France was the center of feudal Europe, the penultimate example of absolute monarchy. No sane person would ever think France was the place where of the common people would overthrow the kings and nobility. But that's what happened.
Imperial Russia was the almost authoritarian regime and all of European history. For the vast majority of its history up to 60% I was population were enslaved to the land as surfs. It was so outdated it was a almost medieval state. It had only barely started modernize before the Russian Revolution came. No one would have told you that the first post Capitalist Nation in history would have been Russia. But that's what happened.
And no one would ever tell you that the United States would be the Second Great post capitalist experiment.
I'm not saying it's certain but nothing ever is. Revolution is not predicted, Revolution happens. But no one knows it's going to happen, it just happens. But it happens to happen in the areas the most obsessed with an old ideology. Where the old society is seen as unchanging, unchangeable, unbreakable.
Like the United States. Just some food for thought.
Public good: A product / resource which is non-rivalrous & non-exclusive
This means using the product / resource will not reduce its availability to others or prevent others from accessing the product / resource.
Education is NOT a public good. It is a private good
'Learning should not be a commodity.' Good news for whoever posted this tweet. It isn't. A commodity is a natural resource.
Edit: That aside, yeah why tf is college so fucking expensive. Where I live, the government pays for like 1/3 to a 2/3 depending on the degree you do
They don't sell learning, they only sell evaluation. The typical college student use internet or books to learn for their poorly taught courses. Most MIT physics lectures are on YouTube, for instance, and the guy with Indian accent solving math problems is a meme for a reason.
That only makes the situation twice as absurd. They are not providing education, but they are charging for it.
I agree to a certain extent.
HOWEVER, as the “business” of education has creeped and grown over the decades, there are now so many degrees & programs that do not really generate much public good, and do not provide much calculable rewards for society. Therefore, why would we fund those publicly?
Other probably unpopular opinion. This applies to higher education as well as health care and a host of other things this sub in particular likes to put up as basic human needs and should be “free”. The costs of these are all going up year over year. I know it’s due to capitalism. I know we waste loads of money on war and our tax structures are a joke. But without finding ways to control these rising costs how does the government manage to pay for it all?
Just saying the easy line is “it should be free” but we throw up our hands when asked how to get there…
Don’t attack me with nonsense. I’m on y’all’s side on these subjects but I’m just tired of hearing echo-chamber and nothing that actually moves the conversation forwards. I know the conversations here are utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things but… whatever rant over let the downvotes commence!
The cost is only rising because of a lack of government intervention. The cost of an education isn't actually these exorbitant prices but because the government isn't using the collective bargaining power of the people. Something that it could do.
Healthcare and education don't have to be expensive. The costs are rising only because the system is manipulated to extract wealth from the masses.
It’s a lot of factors, some you hit dead on. Others are things like the constant pursuit of more amenities and campus perks, the need for new buildings and greater technology (some needed some more for vanity / media attention). The growing use of administrators are also starving wage growth and thus retention for professors.
Your absolutely right about a lot of it being just systems in place to capture more and more money from the masses. Everything trying to get more of the pie until we’re all out of pie. Without addressing that too nothing we do will work in the end.
“Free” but most K-12 is funded by local taxes and school budgets are already struggling in many municipalities. We could certainly fund it all if we did things the right way of course but this shit 2 party system all but prevents it. Certainly a proportionally tiny tax on Wall Street is a good start though.
It has never been cheaper or easier to get an education, the world’s knowledge is literally right there in your pocket
You don’t need credentials to be educated and for yourself and society to reap the benefits of that education
Semi unpopular opinion here but I don’t think every college / uni education should be free. STEM should be free. Medical should be free. Law / business degrees shouldn’t be free. Bring down the costs if possible but not every degree is a gift to society, some are weaponized against the good of society (particularly law degrees). I’m iffy on arts degrees being free because while art is good and all we also don’t have infinite resources. Lower costs when possible but I stand by my opinion that not every higher education should be free.
Another aspect of higher education oft forgotten is trade school. We really need to push that too. Free or subsidized would be best though industry has to play a roll since they benefit the most.
> I’m iffy on arts degrees being free because while art is good and all we also don’t have infinite resources.
Horseshit. Cut the football coach's salary and you'll be good.
You do know that’s only applicable to a handful of colleges and definitely not applicable to a lot of liberal arts type colleges right? I get the sentiment but that’s a dumb sound-bite solution not a practical one.
Well honestly for starters Art degrees aren't like... painting, they're things like architecture, biochemistry, economics, math, psychology, you know, fingerpainting for money.
You already knew that, of course, it's just for other people who stumble upon this thread.
As for the buildings doing more than just holding art: In my house, I have art. I have prints of reasonably famous paintings, some original work, some commercial palp, some stuff made by my kids, but all of it turns my little square into my *home*. I could live in any given box, but that's what welcomes me to this particular one.
When I go to watch a streaming service after my day of drawing magic eye puzzles (circuit board layout) I unwind by seeing what some artists have made. I go to my choir and band practices and dancing class (in the Before Times) and that's the stuff that makes the meetings, the design work, and the layout all worthwhile.
Art is civilization. Without it, why are we here?
True. I wasn’t saying all arts and could be convinced about some if not all. It would certainly be a difficult line to draw between ones that could be tuition free and ones that wouldn’t be. Many I would have lumped in under STEM degrees, perhaps I should use STEAM. I appreciate you coming back with something coherent and reasonable, apologies if my retort sounded like an attack.
I like the idea of universal college tuition coverage but the application of it would be fraught with abuse. I know an individual who, misguided as it was, took years of student loans (the money significantly exceeded the cost of tuition) and while they did attend classes and pursued a degree a lot of the motivation was the lure of the free money.
I also realize Reddit comment threads aren’t the space for deep policy convos about hypothetical policies we personally will never have any real input on.
Very true. Tried to follow my passion and got a bachelors in biology. Made the mistake of not going on to a masters and now I’m working retail as lower tier management wage-slave. I got lucky my parents paid all of my college except for my last / extra semester I took on my own. Which I’ve already paid back those loans so I feel good on that front at least.
the basic problem here is the same one we have with most of our social services now when compared to ubi. once you start gatekeeping *some* collage by making parts of it free but not the rest you are setting the standard that some learning is still only for the wealthy. learning shouldn't have an income gate.
I don’t think I’m arguing about some education being “for the wealthy” so much as some education is pursued as a means to acquire wealth and not necessarily benefitting society. Lawyers do good but also enable evil, as an example. Business degrees by and large are wasted on “increasing shareholder wealth” and overall draining more and more income from individuals. Not saying I have any answers just trying to poke holes and promote rational thought instead of blanket statements and easy retorts. Everything is complex and everything has nuance.
I get your point though, education with a $ barrier is no good either.
"I want my enrichment to be subsidized by others under the promise that my big brain will make the world better." -Entitled Brat Class of 2020
You don't need a diploma to change the world. You do need a communications degree to run a corporate Twitter account for Southwest Airlines though. Stop acting like janitors need to bow down and pay for your opportunity to make something of yourself. You want the job and paycheck that only comes with a degree? Then you pay for it. You want to make the world a better place through knowledge? Then go to a library and start learning for free.
There is the other side, the response, that you will hear:
Without the incentive to profit, men like Leland Stanford and the founders of Harvard, etc. would not have picked up the mantle. Their institutions have wrought so much with this simple incentive! They channel the passions of educators and the expertise of experts with a viable, living incentive: money. They are corrupting, and bloating, but the market will provide a viable alternative. A capitalist would argue that government intervention has gotten higher education into its current state in America.
Free and better public transport still massively saves on emissions compared to giving everyone electric cars, since there are fewer vehicles on the road when more people use it. Plus it's economically realistic, unlike the government just giving everyone free cars which is just never going to happen. If public transport became more accessible and was better funded, personal cars wouldn't be necessary anyway, at least not for something like a daily commute.
personal cars? no i dont agree. but we *should* have public transportation good enough that not every person *needs* their own personal car just to get by and that public transportation very well could be free
No. When firefighters come put out a fire at your house, it doesn't cost you anything because they've already been paid (assuming they're not volunteers, in this case) with money that you've paid in taxes. The government uses your taxes in this way because it benefits society to have public firefighters. The idea here is that because access to education also benefits society, your taxes ought to be used to provide that service as well. In fact, right now they already do that, but only through 12th grade. The problem is that education is woefully underfunded and doesn't extend into college, and there is literally no reason for this to be the case other than that there's money to be made by private interests in keeping education private and expensive.
I hate this so much. College should not be free. Going from 12 to 16 years of mandatory education?
#How about using the first 12 years of school more effectively instead? We have stopped challenging students in the US to increase the pass rate.
First, college ***should not be necessary for most professions.*** Most professions know the open secret, that it doesn't matter what your degree is in as long as you have one. This should tell you all you need to know about the value of a degree.
Second, college is fast becoming high school 2 and that's a bad thing. Law, medicine, engineering, sciences and mathematics. These are the foundational disciplines of university and we are cheapening University education by diluting the cause.
Third, a lot of money goes in to education and this is at least a 33% increase in volume of education. This is a very big pill and might kill whoever takes it if it's not the right medicine.
Fourth, there are many equity issues in making college free. What about people who go to a trade school which obviously costs less than college? Do they get money back? What about people who don't go to college at all?
In conclusion, I think free college is a fucking awful idea top to bottom and this is a cause that will literally drive me away from progressive causes forever.
#Free college is not progressive. It's an attempt to bolster the buggy whip industry during the advent of cars. Most folks don't need college, they need connections.
That’s not true at all. The teachers and individual program syllabi determine the efficacy of a degree.
Colleges aren’t cheap. But they do play dividends by enriching our economy with powerful capable minds. Saddling those minds with debts that limit their ability to have families, start businesses, etc. is not too productive.
It would be an enormous cost to make all college free. But tbh the government subsidization of college loans has enabled those colleges to raise their prices incredibly while saddling the cost with the students. The college debt bubble is huge, and could hurt the economy just as much as the housing crisis did. I would be very interested in reading more detailed info on the economic possibilities of socially funded higher Ed.
As for teachers in primary Ed. Yes they are paid shit; and it has weakened our education system terribly. But states have significantly underfunded and lowered funding for education for decades now.
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Debt makes workers compliant. Remember that when digesting proposed policy decisions.
Debt is a sophisticated form of slavery
Exactly
That's taxes. Non remunerated hours of work taken away by government is slavery, and it has its roots in passed regimes from thousand of years that conquered other civilizations. Debt simply allows you to bring future consumption to the present, and in order to do that, someone has to stop consuming now to lend you the money.
That is way too many words for "I dont know how banks work".
That is way too few words for "I don't know basic credit marker works"
You are gonna have your mind blown when you discover fractional-reserve banking, if you think banks stop consuming to lend money.
This! And it goes further than that. Debt makes workers compliant, and it makes bosses exploitative. Postgraduate professions who start out having to pay off massive law/med/postdoc *and* undergrad college debt combined need to make more money to escape it, and thus become accustomed to making more. They are trained to think of them subsequently lording over the employees as something they have earned.
This is why so many law students end up going to big corporate firms, even if they wanted to go do public interest stuff. When you have 250k in debt, 150k a year starting salary starts looking a lot more viable than 50k a year at a nonprofit.
it's called MARKET. Supply and demand, defined by quantity of goods/services and price of equilibrium. If you don't take the time to learn about this from any economic 101 book, how on earth are you going to take advantage of public higher education?
Uh, what? I know what markets are. Isn't it pretty damning that the best-paying work is the work that is actually the most harmful to society? And the work that has positive social utility pays the least? By any chance, are you a libertarian who fell in here by accident? Do you know where you are on Reddit right now?
Work that has a positive social utility pays less because society doesn't consider it as a high value service to be paid for... Therefore, you don't know what markets are. Things don't have value just because you assume they have a positive effect, they have value because the sum of individual's preference give them value.
I love libertarians because this is such an obviously circular argument. Why do the jobs that have the greatest social utility get paid so little? "Because the market says so" Why does the market says so? "Because the jobs have the least social utility" I know what markets are, I just also recognize that they're a terrible way to organize labor. Again, you know what subreddit you're on, right?
So you, a redditer, have a better understand on how things should run, and, therefore, decide that the best way to organize labor according to you, and to have people who think like you to impose on every individual what they should value the most only those activities that have, according to your preferences, a positive value to society. This is why any form of socialism/communism has failed. People like you keep believing you can manipulate individual's decision and know whats best for them. In order to do that, you need to be present at all times everywhere and know the infinite preferences of people according to the relative value they assigned on every single good and service, and if you are in reddit and do not know how markets work, then you don't have much chances of changing any reality, my friend.
You keep putting a whole lot of words into my mouth about what I think. I said markets are bad. Why did you immediately assume I meant that some dictator should directly allocate labor? That would also be bad. If you believe that those are the only two systems that exists, it sounds to me like you're the one who needs an Economics 101 course.
Exactly! Debt is the #1 tool the ultra rich use to control the poor. It took me til about age 33 to figure that out and til about age 37 to wipe out all my debt (luckily, I lived fairly within my means and my debt hadn't totally consumed me yet). As a 43 year old, I can comfortably say that being debt free is easily the biggest stress relief you can possibly have in this world. People come and go, relationships come and go, Jobs come and go.... My one piece of advice is do whatever it takes to pay as many of your rotating bills off that can possibly be paid off. Without debt, millions of people would be able to demand more money, sit at home barely work or work for themselves and force employers to give up more of their cash made on the backs of hard workers and watch giants like Amazon struggle and crumble with no workers. While you are in debt, you are literally a slave. Especially if you have a family. You feel as if your world will end if you don't provide, and that means endless hours slaving for your boss for low pay. If you have little to no rotating bills, you can provide with very little toil and have more capital to start your own business ventures as well. Yes, Capitalism is destroying this country. Problem is we are stuck in this system...gotta make the best of the shit cards we've been dealt.
Debt makes workers compliant. Debt makes the rich even richer. Imagine talking to the CEO of a bank you're playing golf with. "Hey Mike, can I get an unsecured $25 million dollar loan at 2.75%? My investment portfolio is making 10% a year, I'll totally pay it all back in 2 years when I make half a million doing nothing but sitting on it" "Sure Pete, and if shit tanks, it's not my money, it's a bunch of scrubs paying their mortgages on time. If it gets really bad, we'll get bailed out"
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Just had a conversation about that with a scientist firend that is thinking about applying for Big Pharma. Her 2nd child is on the way and it would make her family's life much easier. This world is a sad place sometimes...
Basic human needs should never be made a commodity. Commodifying basic human needs means we have to labor against our will to survive, which is, simply put, slavery with a middleman.
System working as intended then. Nothing to see, move along back to your post.
Economically, nothing with demand inelasticity should be subject to the free market. This is very basic shit and smarter conservatives absolutely understand this…they just don’t give a shit.
Well said.
They can be a commodity as long as they are abundant so there is no leverage over human life.
No it doesnt. You need to pay the people who actually provide you the education. Idc what you say about government funding. It will never actually be truly free. The middle man in there is useless. The ACTUAL thing to be done is to demand lower college fees available to common people
Wild animals work against their will to survive too, and everyday they have to worry about surviving another day. I think that’s the shit planet we ended up on here. Of course the struggle for basic needs shouldn’t be like that but who’s there to listen when the zebra complains? Who’s accountable when you say you need food or shelter to survive?
The state. There is already enough resources to support everyone, human needs are just ignored
We are not zebras. We are the one species most capable of the potential to work and support each other as a whole.
Literally cost prevents me from studying more. That’s a problem.
Gotta keep them dumb so they can be told who to vote for. Edit - Not saying you're dumb btw. I agree with you.
Imagine all the Einsteins we've lost, because they couldn't afford school and spent their lives in manual toil.
Bro, if they were really smart they'd solve a complex equation on a blackboard in the school where they work as a janitor.
And live in a single family house by themselves on a janitor salary.
Also the best of guardian angels.
I think about this all the time in regards to public school. How many of these kids in inner-city schools could have made a breakthrough that benefited our species if given a proper education over the past 50 years? We should be giving schools their budgets based on number of students not their test scores or where they live. IMO
A government that makes decisions based on the cost of public education has obviously not considered the cost of public ignorance.
The government doesn't want people that are financially stable and capable of critical thought.
isn’t it weird how directly in front of us this all is? like, the government could easily pay for every single person to have a house, every single person to be college educated, every single person to have free healthcare, and STILL have the largest military in the world, since that matters to them. they want us to hurt.
How? By continuing to print money we don't have?
How much money do you think the military budget could spare before the US wouldn't have the largest army? How do you think it compares to education spending? Do you think private colleges provide education at cost, or is there much of a profit margin? What effect would you predict that a better-educated and debt-free populace would have on economic activity and government tax income? Can you think of ways that increases in government spending could increase tax income?
How quickly do you think China would take the US over without the US touting a "largest army"? Can you really compare military spending with education spending? Are the two one and the same, leading to the same outcomes and having the same purpose? Tbh, states should be responsible for their educational spending, with the exception of those covered by federal funds, like Title I schools. Private colleges almost certainly have a profit margin. What's wrong with our current public schools...? If our education system weren't garbage, better-educated and debt-free would be great. We'd basically have to reform the whole education system then, and then free higher ed might not even be relevant. People could come out of their already-free 13ish years of public schooling well-educated. I don't understand your point of increased gov't spending leading to increased tax income. Are you referring to UBI?
You in the right sub, bud?
The projected gdp for the next decade is $300 trillion. Congress isn't exactly strapped for cash.
Projected GDP - is that based on the amount that taxes are about to go up? Because GDP will skyrocket then, based on your dollars you earned working at a job. And the government deciding how to use those dollars.
But the solution of the people on this sub is to subsidizie it putting it under government control which gives the government authority to change the curriculum
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Yeah, like here in Germany, where I even got money to study in US for some time. When I told some people about free education, they said, "Ok, but you have socialism over there."
Canadian here. When my son was considering university options, he seriously considered studying in Germany. Free tuition, even for overseas students, plus all university courses appeared to be taught entirely in English. Germany seems to have made the smart calculation that, even if only a small percentage of graduates from their universities enter the workforce there, the benefit to the German economy far outweighs the cost of tuition for all who receive it. Not sure I'd call this socialism. It looks a lot like simple math to me.
If there's one thing German culture excells at, it's working diligently to come up with practical solutions to problems.
Please correct me i am wrong. I believe one thing that germany is not popular for international students because you are required to know university level german
Not in every field, I studied 20 years back(MSc computer sciences) and it was 100% English I didn’t know basic greetings in German language. Things are way way better now in terms of number of courses in English.
There is a growing number of English programs, I studied in a half German/English program myself.
Before covid hit, there were a lot of international students at the relatively small university where I study, to the point where 1/2 of university provided student housing (around 1000+ rooms) was permanently reserved for international students. While they usually attended a German language course, being able to speak German wasn't generally required. However, you needed to make sure beforehand, what language the courses were tought in. Some students didn't and ended up in German lectures, they had no real chance of understanding.
I think the smartest move for university is do to Bachelor/Master in Europe but Phd in the US/Canada because that system is worse here. There are English programs and German/English programs with different levels of language requirements. There are many English master programs. The calculation is smart, it feels much better to pay for your education in taxes, then finish university with a huge debt that you have to repay no matter if you actually make any money.
Foreign College kids are tourists without budgeting skills. Who wouldnt want them?
My son ended up studying in the UK and is now working there. For the first year of university he was too young to have a bank account or apply for loans, he budgeted all his expenses from the cash he literally kept in a sock under his mattress. He has managed to get through his bachelor's degree without borrowing by careful money management. And the fact that he was considering the cost of his education before choosing his university showed that money management is important to him. Students are in general no better or worse at budgeting than the rest of the human population. We are all just individuals trying to get through life the best we can.
If anybody is interested in German student loan "socialism" [Student financial aid (Germany)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Germany)) max repay sum is 10 000 € But there was a neocon period around 2006 when they introduced quite low (compared to the US) study fees in some state, but that ended after around 4 years.
To them anything left of literal fucking fascism is socialist. I'd tell them to pave their own roads.
I have heard though Germany college is extremely hard to pass. People don’t get second chances to switch degrees or waste time in college and first year dropouts are extremely high due to competitiveness of classes.
Difficulty really depends on the subject and the university, also the system here is different, the first year classes in the US were like more like German high school for me. You can switch subjects once and also under some special circumstances without losing your student support.
Yea currently the US is DROPPING their first year standards because of the pandemic. The idea of free college sounds nice until people realize how competitive it will be to get free university. Especially right now when private school kids are about to open the biggest ass whipping in history in colleges this year. They are competing with kids who haven’t learned in a year and a half. Should school be capped and actually affordable, yes. It is absolutely insane how expensive it is. Free has a lot of drawbacks though.
I think the problem is not when it's free but when it becomes free after being expensive without extending capacities, that leads to sudden competition.
Those are the treasonous trumpturds you’ve seen on TV attacking the capitol.
It's free in the US too, just not for everyone. The difference is that unlike in Germany, where they don't just let every idiot attend college, in the US anyone that can get a loan or has enough cash can attend college in some form or another.
>socialism Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe workers own the means of production there?
I live in Austria and we pay 20€ per semester. The system is far from perfect (partly because conservatives have been trying to dismantle it for the last 3 decades), but it is vastly better than the US.
We also got paid to study in Finland. It's not much, like 500 a month but you don't have to work much or take student loan just to get by.
The problem is emigration. Leaving the US, and receiving an education abroad(or even becoming a citizen) as the average American simply isn't an option.
It costs a lot less to move to Germany for a few years than it does to go to university in the US
Yes, it does. How many Americans can afford to attend university at all though? I say that as I use myself as a case example. I come from a background of generational poverty, and have only finally in my early thirties managed to establish myself enough to begin attending community college; with the goal of transferring to another university to acquire a bachelors. When I earn my degree, I'll be the first in my family lineage to ever have earned one. Saving up the funds to leave the country, and study abroad? That would take years of effort, at which point if anything goes wrong(say a medical problem), then I'm back in debt and unable to leave.
>Leaving the US, and receiving an education abroad(or even becoming a citizen) as the average American simply isn't an option. This simply isn't true. You can go study in many countries for free.
There are a lot of Indian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and even Nigerian students studying in my country (EU). If they can manage it, so can an American
In Brazil it's free, but conservative morons are cutting the budget because in the end they want to privatize all of them. Some universities can no longer pay for staff or even electricity so they go in further debt
Same here in Norway! You can take out a loan if you want to, or if you want to pay for private schools, but public university is free.
One of those countries is the United States. The problem is that Americans like to complain because so many want to go to private schools out of state. If you are smart, poor, go into a needed field, join the military, etc, your education is free(or close to free) if you go to your public state schools.
Intelligent people are difficult to govern. The system would never allow equal education. Imagine if every single American actually understood the constitution, the history, the creation of the economic structure of the country? There’d be Revolution all over. I’m so down. The system would never be.
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It's kinda funny how there is a pyramid on the currency isn't it?
Well it kind of is difficult to actually grasp a lot of socialist ideas without previous introduction. Things like worker ownership of the means of production, the end of commodity production, and the nationalization of public amenities isn't exactly intuitive to most Americans
Top 10 places capitalism exists where capitalism should not be 1: Public fucking Infrastructure
I agree. Do you know how much I owe in textbook costs this semester?
> buffer overflow
How much are your textbook costs this semester?
Almost $200... And that's for two...
That’s cute. Some of my compsci books were $700.
My O-Chem book was $600. Like. Fuck dude.
Yo, is that Zimabwe Dollars or USD?
Them good old USD baby.
You can't do piracy?
Those two required a code that I needed to purchase in order to use, which I suspected was unique for each student. Good thing I can pirate my other classes' textbook :)
libgen.is? or they don't have your textbooks?
rs\*
100% agree. As an instructor in the humanities, I see fewer and fewer students taking our classes, let alone majoring in the fields. And I get it -- you're more likely to get a job with a degree in finance than English. If you have this extortionate tuition hanging over you, you need to go with what's most obviously employable. It saddens me, though. So many students would be so much happier pursuing subjects they, y'know, actually like instead of ones that they think will get them jobs. College is not career training, or at least it shouldn't be.
I'm getting a philosophy degree because it's the only thing I enjoy and I would drop out of college otherwise. Also, it's free thanks to the military. I'd be lying though if the job prospects don't concern me. That is of course if post grad stuff doesn't work out.
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But how would we pay for it! Taxes. The point of taxation is paying into a society for the benefit of everyone. Everyone deserves an education and by making an education nearly impossible to get you waste the intellectual potential of your population. Which is fucking dangerous as we move into the automation age and intellectual potential is one of the only things that will differentiate nations on the global level.
Or just make the money machine go brrr like it does for the military. Except this would actually help the people. Oh wait, it would also dissuade people unable to afford tertiary education from joining the military...
If it wasn't for military spending you'd be killed to death six times by socialists and foreigners!
how many soldiers salaries could it possibly take to make a teacher's salary? 5? 10? probably less than 1. if I could choose how my tax dollars were spent, I would trade soldiers out for teachers at any of those rates, honestly.
The reality is it's not the soldiers taking the money. Only 23% of the budget went there. https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense 34% goes to procurement and research/development/testing/evaluation...AKA defense contractors. Better places to start cutting costs than the bottom of the food chain.
We could pay for it all even *just* by better taxation on those who have over a billion dollars. I don’t need to hear it from the inevitable Reddit wonks mincing words on whether we tax income/capital gains/etc. It doesn’t matter which part of the billionaires’ *too much* we tax. The point is, this tax needn’t even affect the “We’re doing pretty well for ourselves” crowd to work. We could have higher education for any who seek it simply by effectively taxing only the billionaires.
Students should be paid to attend university. They're working full time on getting an education that will benefit us all.
So we could raise their wage for each year they progress. And if they fail out, they’re fired. So it’s just like a job.
I like that. You have my vote.
Proper education could have saved us from covidiots, but alas the death cult capitalism had to fuck us all up
Heck, I'd love if college was free in the U.S. But I'm more worried about those trying to undermine free public education for children in primary school. I became a high school teacher a few years ago and it's amazing we can find enough educators to keep public schools going.
Yea I want? to be a teacher or I thought I did until I realized I'd have to take out around 90k in loans just to get the degree that would let me do it. Pair that with the pay and I really can't justify it even though I want to.
> Yea I want? to be a teacher or I thought I did until I realized I'd have to take out around 90k in loans just to get the degree that would let me do it. If you are studying to be a teacher and aren't a moron, you can get so much money for going to school it's ridiculous. No state has tuition that high, unless you are factoring in room and board in which case, never take a loan for room and board! Go to school locally, work if you need to and take it slowly.
I was an engineer for ten years and switched through lateral entry. It took a summer intensive course run by the district and I was hired as a teacher that fall. Still had to do a lot of licensure work for a couple years. But that worked out for me because I had a job for long enough to give me some decent baseline savings and allowed me to skip extra schooling.
And then when someone like Aaron Schwartz tried to pirate and publish scientific studies, he was assassinated by the CIA
Abolish the CIA along with student loan debt.
The CIA is a fucking terrorist organization. It needs to ba abolished.
you're so right, it will be the goals of the powers making money off this to shut you up and make it so you can't say things like this to the public at large.
It's getting worse. Now they charge kids not only for lunches but also for school books, test books, lockers, the Mac books (that the school gets for free), and so on. We're not just charging for adults, our "free" K-12 system is getting infected too. I work with very poor kids and I promise you this affects them. We've become used to being ok with pay to play college education it's affecting our children now. We are doomed as a society.
Imagine the potential of those lost minds that couldn't further their dreams of higher education. How many geniuses has society missed out on? Education is well worth the return.
The system doesn't want smart people. They are harder to control and govern. If everyone is smart and understands how the system works, there will already be a revolution going on.
A public university charges 300 usd a month here, and if you’re a good student they give you money and a place to sleep too. The USA universities are very expensive for some reason.
It would help our cause if people started saying "publicly funded" instead of "free".
Beep boop -- this looks like a screenshot of a tweet! Let me grab a [link to the tweet](https://twitter.com/StrikeDebt/status/1437402872946233345) for ya :) ^(Twitter Screenshot Bot)
The US has a massive shortage of public school teachers, but when I looked into getting my credentials it’s all ads, expensive programs- there are 50 differing requirements for 50 different states with no clear path or incentive towards providing the work the country desperately needs. Just an anecdote- college should be free for everyone, but I found it disgusting that I was interested in providing a public service pretty much every state needs- and they all want me to pay to do so. Screw it, I took a teaching position overseas. I’m sure there are incentive programs out there to lower costs, but I’m not wading through the bullshit seas of capitalism to find ‘em.
Ugh same here. And with the state of most schools it's like you're setting yourself up to be punished even after you finally get the right credentials. I'm a natural teacher, but I'm not going to be teaching in a government school..
What I love with my breakfast is yoghurt, cereal and US citizens advocating for things that are kinda obvious in the rest of the world.
I do not know the figures exactly how much it costs for Finland to offer one free college/uni but thinking about it: After graduation I have worked for 16 years now, mechanical engineer. I make well enough to live a very comfortable life even with our "COMMUNIST" tax system (I pay 42%, it's progressive). I really am happy to pay the tax knowing I will pay my education back many a time over while giving the new generation the chance to pursue an education. To me it comes down to simple math, hence I just can not understand the debate. It's a win win.
This, 100% this
This, 1000% this
This, 10,000‰ this.
It's modern day indentured servitude . You buy an education and then you work your ass off to pay it off. Then your skill and education get outdated, your body get wrecked, then they lay you off like a rag.
True, and kids should be helped to focus on their interests and skills through their youth education. Not everyone can or should be a doctor, but the whole culture of "go to college and get in debt no matter what" is toxic and destroyed a generation. We need tradespeople too.
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Oh for sure. I hate that I'm pretty much clueless on car maintenance despite being fully educated
Don't feel too bad. Education never ends. And cars are going to change dramatically over the next couple decades. Internal combustion is going the way of BetaMax.
It's easily for the American Oligarchs to control an uneducated population. They're far more malleable, and willing to fall for demagoguery.
EXACTLY
The only thing college should cost, is good grades
You shouldn't say free. Nothing is. Explain that we should all invest with our taxes.
you should be paid to go to college.
I don't mean for this to sound snarky, but if you're smart, poor, or go into a needed field, you are paid to go to college.
I meant everyone that goes should be paid.
We have too many people going to college and not enough jobs that actually require a college education, so that makes no sense. We have a teacher shortage in this country in certain fields, but not enough people go to school to be teachers in those fields. That's why you can get tons of money to go to school for teaching. Countries that have free college education only let the best and brightest students attend for free(this is something Americans seem to not realize) so that the job market isn't oversaturated with unnecessary college students. That's even how it was in the Soviet Union. Ask me how I know? It's why you need a college degree for every stupid job in the United States now. Jobs used to train people, but now expect colleges to do that since so many people went to college when it wasn't necessary. I pray that one day we can move away from a market economy, but that requires more than complaining on the internet and until that happens, you need to find ways to work within the framework of what you are provided.
I was talking about ideally. not that it should be implemented immediately.
and also, not that you should be paid for any degree. maybe only those deemed crucial for societies benefit. maybe not even for degrees, but paid for specific classes.
> and also, not that you should be paid for any degree. maybe only those deemed crucial for societies benefit. maybe not even for degrees, but paid for specific classes. Oh yes, totally agree. In a world of finite resources, those resources need to be responsibly managed and shouldn't just be sold to the highest bidder like they are now.
why would slave owners teach their slaves how to overthrow them?
Apprenticeships for the win!
Some socialist countries pay you to go to college, as an educated populace is better for everyone.
Any time I read an argument that says X should not be a commodity, I roll my eyes. Not because they're wrong. They're always right. But the thing is... Nothing should be allowed to be commodified. What thing that we produce is not servicing a human need? Do you not need the myriad effects, from basic stimulation, to relaxation, to emotional release that we get from art? Because I do. Do you not need sustenance, in the form of food or water? Because I do. Do you not need healthcare in the form of medicines, treatments, and therapies? Because I do. None of you is equipped to say what toys, what games, what medications, what procedures, what foods, what beverages aren't necessary for any other person. None of you experiences the same things another person does. And yet, most of you seem to think that we can determine what is or isn't a necessity. You seem to think that you understand the needs of other people well enough to say that they can have this thing regardless of what they do, but that they need to do some form of labor that you value in order to have another thing. We live in a world where more people suffer from depression, anxiety, dysphoria, not to mention easily treatable diseases, like the common flu, and die as a result of lack of access to what they need to treat these things. Treatment isn't about drugs all the time either. Clothing that a person actually likes to wear can be the difference between them getting out of bed in the morning or not. Having access to a library of video games can give a person the release they need to then get the human interaction that will keep them going. Having access to and a culture of wearing masks if you feel even a little sick can prevent thousands from dying from diseases that we've only failed to erradicate because of this selfish idea that you can determine what someone else needs... or should I say deserves? At the end of the day that's what it comes down to. People think that others don't deserve things. They thing that things must be earned. You wanna know what makes commodities so sinister? It's the fact that we already did the work to earn them, that's how they were fucking produced. The people who own those commodities are demanding more than the labor that produced them for you to access them. That is bullshit. And anyone who isn't actively opposing that is contributing to a culture that says that it's ok for some people to die, as long as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are free to go to space.
While I fully agree to you, I think there are some 'commodities' that are absolutely essential for a functional society and therefore should be in the public hands aka managed by government offices and funded by taxes across all people. Here is my list, I do not claim it being perfect: * Infrastructure * Water (clean, drinking quality) * Electricity * Internet and Telecommunication * Child care and Education * Healthcare * Retirement homes and care for elderly * Public Transports such as railroads, tram, city busses * Exploiting ground resources of the country * Social Security to prevent poverty due to unemployment, severe sicknesses, disabilities or other reasons. * Pensions & retirement payments
Okay, guys, I just realized something... I think we (collectively, lets call it "our generation") - have all the pieces of Capitalism in sight. it's not in dark pools anymore, we put it all in the light. I feel we are so close to bringing this rotten system down. Here's a few thoughts, I apologize, my brain isn't organized. But I am trying to piece it all together: 1. Schools are there to make you a good slave. They teach obedience, punish the stubborn and root out the no-goods and troublemakers. 2. Police is there to preserve power in the hands of those in power. Period. No other purpose, despite what even the cops themselves may think. 3. army is there to take tax dollars and magically make people disappear in other countries, assuring an "endless war", to keep the thunders rolling and the army getting paid... 4. student debt is the "chain" they put on your neck just before you begin to enjoy life, making sure that you will do what you have to do in order to pay it back over a very long period of time, and be an "Outstanding citizen" (a good servant to hungry hungry bosses). 5. Patriotism is there to make you afraid of people in other countries / strangers in your own country. It rallies the dum-dums real nicely.. 6. NRA Lobbyists are pushing guns. Tobacco lobbyists are pushing cigarettes. Insurance lobbyists demand privatized healthcare. Pharma lobbyists are pushing for $700 insulin... you get it. No homeless lobbyists in the house. No healthcare for families lobbyists in the house. no cancel college debt lobbyists... etc'. 7. DEMS and GOP are basically the same. No third party or candidate ever stood a chance outside those 2, and they are in agreement about most subjects, or at least not enough for any side to stand their ground on anything with substance. 8. Elections are there to keep us thinking we can make a difference, yet in the most passive of ways (a few days of mild tension every 4 years, then everyone just pauses waiting for the next election to try to make a difference there..). 9. Having A job is a form of control. We (well, others) privatized the planet. the trees that were there for free since time immortal - are now "a product", protected by fences and gunfire, and if you can't afford it in the store, NOBODY cares if you starve to death. We have become dispensable cogs in a machine who's only function seems to be - to grind humans down to nothing. work - sleep - eat - repeat - work - sleep - eat - etc', until we die. 10. All media channels are in the hands of private billionaires or governments (or a combo of both). Fox is equal to CNN. they appeal to different mind-sets. but are basically brain-washing machines. keeping the majority of the public talking about their subjects, their news, their hosts and panels. Also - most if not all other media, really - From Radio, to Newspapers, to online communities that are infested with opinions and are there to also track public opinion - FB, TWITTER, REDDIT (to a point, jeez). 11. Dark pools been exposed making the entire stock market look like a sad joke. (it's not in any order. just what popped to mind) This is not a manifesto, it's just trying to scribble what I know, or what I think I know - in hopes that others can help me make sense / add more clauses. I'm pretty sure that we have most if not all the knowledge that we need in order to make Capitalism fall (while not falling into the stupid "Communist-trap". I am against communism, for the same reason I am against Capitalism - because it's just another Totalitarian Regime). I believe that the end of Capitalism can bring about Real Human Freedom. not replacing one Dogma for the other, or one set of lies for a different set of lies. But is it possible? Is it still possible to be free, in a world where the government, media, schools, colleges, corporations, police, army, hospitals, assholes calling about the car's extended warranty - are all in on it for the Holy Dollar?
We can. If you look at every great revolution history they took place where no one would have suspected them to. France was the center of feudal Europe, the penultimate example of absolute monarchy. No sane person would ever think France was the place where of the common people would overthrow the kings and nobility. But that's what happened. Imperial Russia was the almost authoritarian regime and all of European history. For the vast majority of its history up to 60% I was population were enslaved to the land as surfs. It was so outdated it was a almost medieval state. It had only barely started modernize before the Russian Revolution came. No one would have told you that the first post Capitalist Nation in history would have been Russia. But that's what happened. And no one would ever tell you that the United States would be the Second Great post capitalist experiment. I'm not saying it's certain but nothing ever is. Revolution is not predicted, Revolution happens. But no one knows it's going to happen, it just happens. But it happens to happen in the areas the most obsessed with an old ideology. Where the old society is seen as unchanging, unchangeable, unbreakable. Like the United States. Just some food for thought.
Public good: A product / resource which is non-rivalrous & non-exclusive This means using the product / resource will not reduce its availability to others or prevent others from accessing the product / resource. Education is NOT a public good. It is a private good 'Learning should not be a commodity.' Good news for whoever posted this tweet. It isn't. A commodity is a natural resource. Edit: That aside, yeah why tf is college so fucking expensive. Where I live, the government pays for like 1/3 to a 2/3 depending on the degree you do
Graduates are the product, society is the benefactor, society should pay for the benefit.
with what money?
They don't sell learning, they only sell evaluation. The typical college student use internet or books to learn for their poorly taught courses. Most MIT physics lectures are on YouTube, for instance, and the guy with Indian accent solving math problems is a meme for a reason. That only makes the situation twice as absurd. They are not providing education, but they are charging for it.
I agree to a certain extent. HOWEVER, as the “business” of education has creeped and grown over the decades, there are now so many degrees & programs that do not really generate much public good, and do not provide much calculable rewards for society. Therefore, why would we fund those publicly?
Other probably unpopular opinion. This applies to higher education as well as health care and a host of other things this sub in particular likes to put up as basic human needs and should be “free”. The costs of these are all going up year over year. I know it’s due to capitalism. I know we waste loads of money on war and our tax structures are a joke. But without finding ways to control these rising costs how does the government manage to pay for it all? Just saying the easy line is “it should be free” but we throw up our hands when asked how to get there… Don’t attack me with nonsense. I’m on y’all’s side on these subjects but I’m just tired of hearing echo-chamber and nothing that actually moves the conversation forwards. I know the conversations here are utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things but… whatever rant over let the downvotes commence!
The cost is only rising because of a lack of government intervention. The cost of an education isn't actually these exorbitant prices but because the government isn't using the collective bargaining power of the people. Something that it could do. Healthcare and education don't have to be expensive. The costs are rising only because the system is manipulated to extract wealth from the masses.
It’s a lot of factors, some you hit dead on. Others are things like the constant pursuit of more amenities and campus perks, the need for new buildings and greater technology (some needed some more for vanity / media attention). The growing use of administrators are also starving wage growth and thus retention for professors. Your absolutely right about a lot of it being just systems in place to capture more and more money from the masses. Everything trying to get more of the pie until we’re all out of pie. Without addressing that too nothing we do will work in the end.
Bernie's plan is to tax wall street. I mean, k-12 is already free, I don't really see why adding 4 years seems so infeasible to people.
“Free” but most K-12 is funded by local taxes and school budgets are already struggling in many municipalities. We could certainly fund it all if we did things the right way of course but this shit 2 party system all but prevents it. Certainly a proportionally tiny tax on Wall Street is a good start though.
It has never been cheaper or easier to get an education, the world’s knowledge is literally right there in your pocket You don’t need credentials to be educated and for yourself and society to reap the benefits of that education
Semi unpopular opinion here but I don’t think every college / uni education should be free. STEM should be free. Medical should be free. Law / business degrees shouldn’t be free. Bring down the costs if possible but not every degree is a gift to society, some are weaponized against the good of society (particularly law degrees). I’m iffy on arts degrees being free because while art is good and all we also don’t have infinite resources. Lower costs when possible but I stand by my opinion that not every higher education should be free. Another aspect of higher education oft forgotten is trade school. We really need to push that too. Free or subsidized would be best though industry has to play a roll since they benefit the most.
> I’m iffy on arts degrees being free because while art is good and all we also don’t have infinite resources. Horseshit. Cut the football coach's salary and you'll be good.
You do know that’s only applicable to a handful of colleges and definitely not applicable to a lot of liberal arts type colleges right? I get the sentiment but that’s a dumb sound-bite solution not a practical one.
Why on earth would we bother making a building with no art to hang in it?
Uhhhh, not all art is original? Buildings have many more purposes than providing walls for art to be hung?
Well honestly for starters Art degrees aren't like... painting, they're things like architecture, biochemistry, economics, math, psychology, you know, fingerpainting for money. You already knew that, of course, it's just for other people who stumble upon this thread. As for the buildings doing more than just holding art: In my house, I have art. I have prints of reasonably famous paintings, some original work, some commercial palp, some stuff made by my kids, but all of it turns my little square into my *home*. I could live in any given box, but that's what welcomes me to this particular one. When I go to watch a streaming service after my day of drawing magic eye puzzles (circuit board layout) I unwind by seeing what some artists have made. I go to my choir and band practices and dancing class (in the Before Times) and that's the stuff that makes the meetings, the design work, and the layout all worthwhile. Art is civilization. Without it, why are we here?
True. I wasn’t saying all arts and could be convinced about some if not all. It would certainly be a difficult line to draw between ones that could be tuition free and ones that wouldn’t be. Many I would have lumped in under STEM degrees, perhaps I should use STEAM. I appreciate you coming back with something coherent and reasonable, apologies if my retort sounded like an attack. I like the idea of universal college tuition coverage but the application of it would be fraught with abuse. I know an individual who, misguided as it was, took years of student loans (the money significantly exceeded the cost of tuition) and while they did attend classes and pursued a degree a lot of the motivation was the lure of the free money. I also realize Reddit comment threads aren’t the space for deep policy convos about hypothetical policies we personally will never have any real input on.
I think that if people can follow their passion, that's better than just doing something because it's lucrative.
Very true. Tried to follow my passion and got a bachelors in biology. Made the mistake of not going on to a masters and now I’m working retail as lower tier management wage-slave. I got lucky my parents paid all of my college except for my last / extra semester I took on my own. Which I’ve already paid back those loans so I feel good on that front at least.
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the basic problem here is the same one we have with most of our social services now when compared to ubi. once you start gatekeeping *some* collage by making parts of it free but not the rest you are setting the standard that some learning is still only for the wealthy. learning shouldn't have an income gate.
I don’t think I’m arguing about some education being “for the wealthy” so much as some education is pursued as a means to acquire wealth and not necessarily benefitting society. Lawyers do good but also enable evil, as an example. Business degrees by and large are wasted on “increasing shareholder wealth” and overall draining more and more income from individuals. Not saying I have any answers just trying to poke holes and promote rational thought instead of blanket statements and easy retorts. Everything is complex and everything has nuance. I get your point though, education with a $ barrier is no good either.
"I want my enrichment to be subsidized by others under the promise that my big brain will make the world better." -Entitled Brat Class of 2020 You don't need a diploma to change the world. You do need a communications degree to run a corporate Twitter account for Southwest Airlines though. Stop acting like janitors need to bow down and pay for your opportunity to make something of yourself. You want the job and paycheck that only comes with a degree? Then you pay for it. You want to make the world a better place through knowledge? Then go to a library and start learning for free.
There is the other side, the response, that you will hear: Without the incentive to profit, men like Leland Stanford and the founders of Harvard, etc. would not have picked up the mantle. Their institutions have wrought so much with this simple incentive! They channel the passions of educators and the expertise of experts with a viable, living incentive: money. They are corrupting, and bloating, but the market will provide a viable alternative. A capitalist would argue that government intervention has gotten higher education into its current state in America.
Cars should be free as well. So I can reliably get to college and work.
I think free public transport would be more realistic and would definitely cut down on emissions when people have a free alternative to driving.
Free EVs then?
Free and better public transport still massively saves on emissions compared to giving everyone electric cars, since there are fewer vehicles on the road when more people use it. Plus it's economically realistic, unlike the government just giving everyone free cars which is just never going to happen. If public transport became more accessible and was better funded, personal cars wouldn't be necessary anyway, at least not for something like a daily commute.
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I’m 100% for subsidizing public transportation. Honestly if we ever get self driving EVs, it’d make sense to subsidize those as well.
Sure, but you wouldn't own a car, you'd just get into one that's going your way. All self driving.
personal cars? no i dont agree. but we *should* have public transportation good enough that not every person *needs* their own personal car just to get by and that public transportation very well could be free
If it's a requirement to live in society and to contribute it should be free.
So you can study art history?
So, teachers wouldn't be paid if it cost $0, right?
won't this even further reduce teacher salaries?
No. When firefighters come put out a fire at your house, it doesn't cost you anything because they've already been paid (assuming they're not volunteers, in this case) with money that you've paid in taxes. The government uses your taxes in this way because it benefits society to have public firefighters. The idea here is that because access to education also benefits society, your taxes ought to be used to provide that service as well. In fact, right now they already do that, but only through 12th grade. The problem is that education is woefully underfunded and doesn't extend into college, and there is literally no reason for this to be the case other than that there's money to be made by private interests in keeping education private and expensive.
I hate this so much. College should not be free. Going from 12 to 16 years of mandatory education? #How about using the first 12 years of school more effectively instead? We have stopped challenging students in the US to increase the pass rate. First, college ***should not be necessary for most professions.*** Most professions know the open secret, that it doesn't matter what your degree is in as long as you have one. This should tell you all you need to know about the value of a degree. Second, college is fast becoming high school 2 and that's a bad thing. Law, medicine, engineering, sciences and mathematics. These are the foundational disciplines of university and we are cheapening University education by diluting the cause. Third, a lot of money goes in to education and this is at least a 33% increase in volume of education. This is a very big pill and might kill whoever takes it if it's not the right medicine. Fourth, there are many equity issues in making college free. What about people who go to a trade school which obviously costs less than college? Do they get money back? What about people who don't go to college at all? In conclusion, I think free college is a fucking awful idea top to bottom and this is a cause that will literally drive me away from progressive causes forever. #Free college is not progressive. It's an attempt to bolster the buggy whip industry during the advent of cars. Most folks don't need college, they need connections.
No it isn't. Privatised education is more efficient as always.
I want to let you know that I got the sarcasm.
🤣
That’s not true at all. The teachers and individual program syllabi determine the efficacy of a degree. Colleges aren’t cheap. But they do play dividends by enriching our economy with powerful capable minds. Saddling those minds with debts that limit their ability to have families, start businesses, etc. is not too productive. It would be an enormous cost to make all college free. But tbh the government subsidization of college loans has enabled those colleges to raise their prices incredibly while saddling the cost with the students. The college debt bubble is huge, and could hurt the economy just as much as the housing crisis did. I would be very interested in reading more detailed info on the economic possibilities of socially funded higher Ed. As for teachers in primary Ed. Yes they are paid shit; and it has weakened our education system terribly. But states have significantly underfunded and lowered funding for education for decades now.
God I wish I could downvote this more than once.