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by arenaninja 17 days ago
Why not gather up with other like-minded individuals and fund scholarships and grants if you feel strongly about this? I disagree that taxing the rich is our way out of this. There's a reason the starving artist is a cultural trope.

Not only that but the higher ed industry has abused the hell out of this program. I'm close to people who were studying degrees they will never come close to paying and now they're $100k+ in the hole. The reality is that degree shouldn't have been available to them.

2 comments

> Why not gather up with other like-minded individuals and fund scholarships and grants if you feel strongly about this?

Because I live in a country where University is nearly free (like 200-300 bucks per semester). If the third strongest economy in the world can do it, I don't think it's necessary for the other top economies to pull it off without activism or private funds.

The reality is the degree should have been entirely funded by the government’s coffers. Funding arts and humanities education is so cheap and provides so much relative societal benefit that it’s a no brainer.
OK but how many? There has to be some upper limit. It's hardly fair to ask citizens who went to work or joined the military out of high school to pay taxes to fund free education for an unlimited number of liberal arts scholars.
How is that unfair? They still have to work, you know? Free education doesn't mean that you get free money to play with, it means your college or uni is paid for. You still have to work to live, and that's not something anyone can change easily.

> joined the military out of high school to pay taxes to fund free education

If you think that's fair, and that changing it would be unfair, I'm not sure there's a basis for discussion. I think it isn't fair to make people go to the military so they can afford an education, in fact that sounds like something from a backwater 3rd world dictatorship that is struggling to get their military staffed, not a first world country.

The military industrial complex is a massive socialist jobs, housing, education, and healthcare program. For some reason it’s one of the only ones people on the right support.