[boppo1]

Believe it or not, I mostly agree! But we are not culturally proactive about our health. There are entire industries dedicated to making unhealthy people feel good about their obviously bad choices.If it were just 5% of the population, it would be no big deal, but it's not. 39.6% of americans are obese. If free healthcare came along with a cultural push that everyone who is able ought to get fit, I'd be excited about it. But as it stands I think it's simply not affordable, like our overzealous military spending.

As for degrees, college has a similar cultural issue. There are tons of degree programs that are frankly frivolous. I'm not even against humanities, but when I was in college I knew kids in $50k of debt making Picasso-esque garbage and writing conceptual poetry as the zenith of their studies. I still know them. They work in food service and are extremely unhappy and demoralised. In the same way we shouldn't be letting young people make these kinds of mistakes, we shouldn't subsidize them as a society. If we make STEM degrees free for anyone who can pass exams on the prerequisites, I'm all in. I'd like some support for humanities as well but it's incredibly hard to draw that line, especially now when people will sincerely argue that Jackson Pollock was as talented and important as Frederick Edwin Church.