[whimsicalism]

> which is probably true.

Hm, is it? My guess is that government spending on college probably is probably a net positive investment in terms of revenue for the govt due to downstream growth, likely also lowers the cost to do other things in industry.

There is extensive evidence that further public spending on healthcare does not have a size-able impact on outcomes, unfortunately. [0]

> the level of resources devoted to it can be spent to better effect elsewhere

But why the focus on education? Why not increase, say, inheritance taxation and then use it to fund those additional things? Couldn't we make better use of the resources our society devotes towards making sure that the kids of rich parents are also rich?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Health_Insurance_Experime... You really can't beat social science research like this and the followup in 2010.