I am not talking about loans, loans only make banks and the people who own banks more wealthy, while charging young American students interest. I am talking about the government paying for schools, everything you are saying in your response that is not possible works just fine in Denmark and that is because they have a progressive taxation system https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-01-20/why-danes-happily-pay-high-rates-of-taxes
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I went to college with three Danes and two Norwegians. Not one of them went home they graduated. They all stayed in the US because of the high taxation in their homelands.
Loans were an example. The prices of our schools in the U.S. are rising NOT because it is a loan. They are rising because the government guarantees that it will back those loans. The prices are increasing because there is a guaranteed paycheck. So if somehow your prices for schooling are fixed and do not change that might make sense, but in the U.S. anything the government guarantees simply becomes like a budget situation for businesses. "I must show that we spent all that money or next year they'll decrease my budget" with the net effect being they (Schools, Hospitals, etc) being subsidized by the U.S. government increase their prices ever year.
Prior to the Guaranteed Student Loan program students might qualify for a Pell Grant but it didn't pay for everything and most people don't qualify. Other than that you could apply for PRIVATE scholarships. What remained the student had to find a way to pay.
With Guaranteed Student Loan everyone can go to higher education and the price to go to higher education has gone through the roof since it is guaranteed. The result is tons of people have huge debt when/if they graduate. Furthermore, universities have become organizations that just try to mass educate and the quality is pretty dismal. I have joked that a lot of these degrees might as well have come as a special prize out of Kracker Jacks boxes. Yet, in many cases that is true.
So it is a GUARANTEED LOAN... but it is the GOVERNMENT GUARANTEEING it. The same thing would happen if you remove the word LOAN. The keyword here is GUARANTEE.
As a result, a college degree is almost meaningless. In the past, kids left school, got a job and worked their way up. If they were good workers the company was happy to train them.
Now we have college graduates who have wasted four to six years of their lives getting an education without learning work skills. They whine that there are no good jobs available. We call them Snowflakes.
In Canada, most jobs require job certification before a company will even look at your resume. A prospective worker can borrow money from the government and pay thousands of dollars for privately run certification programs at inflated prices. The companies love this. It's called "externalizing expenses."
Many students today have the equivalent of a house payment but no house. Those student loans are very hard to default on. They are the virtual shackles of modern day slavery.
Yep I'll give someone a test I make up on the spot to check their skills, how good they are at problem solving, etc before I even consider hiring them. This is what I'll do with or without a degree as the degrees are largely worthless. They are more a large sign of debt.
Like I said Denmark (and many other countries) have a functioning system. So I am not sure what your argument is, we already have proof that a more progressive system works.
Oh I thought I should qualify. You won't EVER convince me that taxation of the income is just. I see it as theft. I believe in voluntarism. Guess what? Slavery worked too. That doesn't mean I endorse it that it was right.
I will not endorse stealing from people by the government and then the government choosing how to pay for it.
That doesn't mean I am against all government forms of income. If they put a tax, fee, etc on things that are voluntary and that people can live without then I don't have as much of a problem with that. Then if people object they can avoid those things, and they may lose some services and such, but as long as it doesn't make them unable to survive I don't have a problem with it.
I do have problems with involuntary situations where the person has no choice or they will be doomed in some way.
I thought I'd pass that along so you wouldn't waste too much time trying to make me think progressive taxation is just. I see it as just another form of slavery. Slaves sometimes are content.
I am a supporter of democracy, what you or I think about taxation is irrelevant. If the majority of a society democratically decide they want everyone to contribute 10% of their income so all children in the society can attend school for free I am fine with that decision because thats how democracy works.
The people who dont agree with the decision of the majority, have a choice to either live with it or move to another location into a society that have the same mind set as they do...
There is no QUANTITY of people that should ever magically be able to FORCE action upon others. If there is then where is that magical line. Democracy is put on a pedestal, but then how many people truly think about it.
What is the magical number? If 51% of the people say it is okay to enslave the other 49% of the population then does that make that okay?
I don't have the right to tell my neighbor how to live. My family and I don't have the right to tell my neighbor how to live. My neighborhood and I (except for that neighbor) don't have the right to tell my neighbor how to live. My city, my state, the world.
There is no magical number where it is suddenly okay to FORCE another human to act against their will. This is called slavery. Wrap it up in a fancy suit, but if they have no choice then it is still enslavement.
This goes for stealing from people too. Wrap it up in a big shiny bow named "government" doesn't change the fact it is stealing if it is involuntary.
Also just to save some time... don't bother saying "if you don't like it move" as this is a rather STUPID thing to say that usually comes up about this time in the discussion.
You don't want to be enslaved? Fine, move and leave all your stuff behind... good luck finding somewhere to live... You could maybe homestead the ocean if you are very wealthy... oh, you're not wealthy enough to do that? Too bad, I guess you're just stuck being a slave.
So the "you can leave" is a bullshit statement that usually comes up about now. If you were not thinking that then my apologies, I just wanted to save some back and forth replies that generally occur about this point in this argument.
EDIT: And yeah you did say it. So I guess you didn't really think out how realistic that is. That sounds great until you put a federal government over it all and keep giving that government more and more power so there no longer are allowed places with different mindsets.