This was originally in reply to a comment that was deleted before I was able to submit my response. I'm posting it anyway. (I'm hoping it's okay that I quote f

This was originally in reply to a comment that was deleted before I was able to submit my response. I'm posting it anyway. (I'm hoping it's okay that I quote from it. I won't mention the user's name. I'm not making this up, by the way.) The general contractor I used for a house remodeling didn't have, didn't need, and wouldn't benefit from a college education. I, on the other hand, do happen to hold a college education and benefited greatly from it (personal enjoyment, most likely a higher salary, entrance into jobs otherwise inaccessible to me). Should he have to subsidize my education? As a European, I get depressed whenever I see Americans complain about a certain percentage "subsidizing" some other percentage of the population, or talking about "wealth transfer". It's such an simplistic worldview that I don't know where to start. Equality isn't about fairness, it's about equalizing and elevating society as a whole. For contrast, the American people also "subsidizes" weapons used to kill a percentage of the world's population (of innocent bystanders), and a lot of other things that are to the benefit or detriment to a highly asymmetric ratio of the population. A lot of people don't need to go space, a lot of people don't get cancer or other diseases that the government study. Cherry-picking benefits is not on the table when you're talking about society-wide effects.