Yes it does. A broadly better-educated citizenry makes for a richer, more robust economy. Reducing or eliminating poverty, the same. "A rising tide lifts all bo

Yes it does. A broadly better-educated citizenry makes for a richer, more robust economy. Reducing or eliminating poverty, the same. "A rising tide lifts all boats," as they say. If you actively think that's not somehow fundamentally helpful to you, or in your best interests, maybe you don't belong in society. If your notion of "freedom" is predicated on other people starving (which I take people to mean when they say it's an infringement upon their freedom to be "forced" to participate in other people's not starving), then I think it's a pretty terrible one. If anyone, anywhere is starving, or enslaved, and you trumpet your own freedom in the face of that, you are necessarily treating freedom as zero-sum, and washing your hands of the costs the people on the other side of that coin are paying — often with their lives. When "freedom" is propped up on someone else's lack of it, I don't personally find it worth celebrating, or being all "Welp, I got mine!" over, myself. EDIT: Phrasing