As long as people are allowed to vote in the US, we have an incentive to ensure they are all well educated.

Surely a large part of this problem that the article doesn't mention is that college is too fucking expensive. And an obvious solution to that is to tax rich people and use that to fund universities so that students don't have to go so far in debt in order to become productive members of society.

It's crazy how many problems today boil down to "a tiny fraction of elites are hoarding all the wealth" and yet we seem to assume the solution of "tax them and use that money to benefit others" is simply impossible.

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thfuran 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

We can always add more funding, but at some point it must be admitted that our system does not efficiently turn funding into education.

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AnimalMuppet 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But if we care about people being educated enough to vote, a high school education is enough. Or at least, what high school was 50 years ago was enough.

If you care about voting, fix primary and secondary education. The universities aren't the main problem.

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Schiendelman 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ironically, improving access to education funding may be what made college more expensive.

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akramachamarei 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US tax system is substantially more progressive than you might think.¹ It seems unwise to make it even moreso. The tough pill to swallow, if we are to follow in e.g. Sweden's footsteps, is that you need to tax the middle class a lot more if you want the government to provide more services.

By the way, this whole discussion completely ignores that the country is BROKE. Why are we contemplating building a new patio and switching to Whole Foods when we're not even on pace to pay off the house??

1: https://manhattan.institute/article/correcting-the-top-10-ta...

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munificent 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> The US tax system is substantially more progressive than you might think.¹ It seems unwise to make it even moreso.

I disagree, and I don't think linking to a conservative think tank a particularly compelling counterargument.

My metric for whether a tax system is progressive enough is pretty simple: is inequality high and getting higher? Then the tax system should be more progressive.

Some amount of inequality is healthy. The top 10% owning 80% of all wealth in the US is not.

> By the way, this whole discussion completely ignores that the country is BROKE.

Good point! It would be really great if the government wasn't funneling billions into the coffers of defense companies by starting nonsense wars.

Cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations and going into greater debt for it is a two-handed gift to the rich: they pay less taxes and they make money directly from the government by being paid interest when they loan money to the government.

	▲	gottorf 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I don't think linking to a conservative think tank a particularly compelling counterargument Do you only ingest ideas from places that you're already inclined to believe? How do you get challenges to your beliefs? > is inequality high and getting higher? Then the tax system should be more progressive. > Some amount of inequality is healthy. What amount of inequality is just right, then? On one hand you suggest that we should redistribute to lower inequality, but on the other you seem to see some kind of beneficial role, or at least a neutral role, of inequality in a society. > The top 10% owning 80% of all wealth in the US is not. Countries as diverse as Sweden, the Philippines, and Nigeria all have worse inequality in wealth than the US[0]. On the other end, countries like Iceland, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan have similarly low wealth inequality. I might posit that wealth inequality doesn't even make the top 10 of what makes a health society that's nice to live in. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
	▲	akramachamarei 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I shouldn't have to tell you that "but it's a conservative think tank" is merely ad hominem. If you think Jessica Riedl is misrepresenting the facts, I and many others would appreciate your elaborating. I'm afraid you haven't even read it. Nonetheless, our ideas about social justice clearly differ. You abhor inequality in itself, I abhor poverty. So perhaps it won't make sense to argue the facts. I do want to point out also that while it would certainly be good to eliminate unnecessary "defense" spend, it won't be close to enough. By far the biggest sources of deficit are entitlements: social security, Medicare, Medicaid. No one seriously proposes cutting taxes on the wealthy. It might be nice for the sake of fairness (you'd disagree) but unfortunately we will need a painful period of increased tax on everyone paired with serious cost-cutting if we intend to balance the budget... without just printing more dollars, which is basically another tax.

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downrightmike 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Debt is 120% GDP

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mcmcmc 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Who's "we"? Parties in power have a huge incentive to keep voters uneducated and gullible.

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blix 4 days ago | parent [-]

You don't want the people to be uneducated, because you have no control over their thought processes, which could be dangerous an unpredictable. And it leaves space for someone else to educate them in way that conflicts with your interests.

Ideally, you would want them to be intentionally educated to a specific type of manipulable gullibility, where they are receptive to your messages, but resistant to messages from other sources.

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czl 4 days ago | parent [-]

> specific type of manipulable gullibility

A congregation trained to say “amen” on cue.

	▲	blix 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		the denouncing of heresy may be even more important.

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ThrowawayR2 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink." Inexpensive tertiary education means that more people go through the motions of being educated, à la high school, for an additional four years because "that's what they're supposed to do" and then emerge none the better for it.

A system of heavily subsidized post-secondary vocational schools, like what Germany has, seems like a better path.

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GS523523 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm sure a lot of people assume it's immoral rather than impossible.

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codersfocus 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

One man's eduction is another man's indoctrination and your comment is a prime example of that.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> One man's eduction is another man's indoctrination This is pretty silly. Any amount of new knowledge tends to make the brain more critical. The only real exception is rote memorization without application.