[meri_dian]

In general I think education is good for society, but it doesn't really matter. The rat race will emerge in some form or another. The first paragraph of the excerpt you posted misses that point in my view.

Now the second paragraph. It's not clear that government spending cuts lowers general education. For instance, state governments have been lowering their support of public universities for a long time now, while tuition simultaneously has increased. Yet more and more people keep going to college. And taking out tremendous loans to do so! This is evidence that the draw of participating in the rat race is so strong that it can't really be stopped.

Of course most government spending on education consists of K-12 spending. If we eliminate public schools then either a permanent underclass that cannot participate in the rat race will be created, which has been a state of society in the past, or people will take out loans just to participate in k-12 education. That would put the poor at a bigger disadvantage than they are at now though. Is that what we want as a society?

So it's not really about "bettering us all" at the cost of enduring a rat race.

The dilemma is really between lowering government spending and accepting severely limited social mobility vs having a more inclusive rat race with more government spending.