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>Poor people don't even pay for their own benefits, how can you say they fund education for the rich? You're talking about the US and maybe some EU countries,

>Poor people don't even pay for their own benefits, how can you say they fund education for the rich? You're talking about the US and maybe some EU countries, but definitely not all of them. Everyone pays VAT equally regardless whether you're rich or poor. Furthermore, income taxes in most European countries aren't as progressive as in the US.

Jensson 5y ago
Even when taxes aren't progressive the more you earn and spend the more you pay. You need to have an extremely equal society for people below the upper 40% to be net payers, I doubt that applies to any country in EU. And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. At worst you can say that median earners fund the education of median earners who failed to leverage their education to get a better job. But it is mostly a wealth transfer from rich tax payers to poor graduates who didn't get lucrative jobs. Edit: Also at least in Sweden the worker movement lobbied hard to make education as cheap and available as possible. The cheaper and easier it is to get educated the less of a wage premium it becomes to be educated, making for a fairer society. It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. But the poor people paying for it don't get the money back. It's going to some other government program, not necessarily to benefit them. >It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden. Why is it much better for society? Most people don't seem to end up doing jobs that are related to their field of study. Sure, there are studies that show that people with a college education are better off than those without, but you have a self-selection problem there. People who have the capability to do well in college will already do better than the average.

Jensson 5y ago

Even when taxes aren't progressive the more you earn and spend the more you pay. You need to have an extremely equal society for people below the upper 40% to be net payers, I doubt that applies to any country in EU. And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. At worst you can say that median earners fund the education of median earners who failed to leverage their education to get a better job. But it is mostly a wealth transfer from rich tax payers to poor graduates who didn't get lucrative jobs. Edit: Also at least in Sweden the worker movement lobbied hard to make education as cheap and available as possible. The cheaper and easier it is to get educated the less of a wage premium it becomes to be educated, making for a fairer society. It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden.

Aerroon 5y ago
>And even then, net tax payers can all be considered to have paid for their own education, you never see a situation where poor people fund the education of rich people. But the poor people paying for it don't get the money back. It's going to some other government program, not necessarily to benefit them. >It is a problem if poor students gets tempted to take a low wage job instead of studying just to make money sooner, it is much better for everyone if they don't have to think about that choice, which is why students gets paid to study in Sweden. Why is it much better for society? Most people don't seem to end up doing jobs that are related to their field of study. Sure, there are studies that show that people with a college education are better off than those without, but you have a self-selection problem there. People who have the capability to do well in college will already do better than the average.