>But if I had lived in the US, I might've never gone to college just to avoid such staggering debts. I think it would be hard to avoid college if you had lived

>But if I had lived in the US, I might've never gone to college just to avoid such staggering debts. I think it would be hard to avoid college if you had lived here. We are told from a very early age that to be successful a person should go to college. Stats like a college graduate makes $1m-2m more over their lifetime than a person who didn't go to college. If DARE (Drug resistance program here in the states) ever taught me anything, it's that peer pressure works. If everyone else is doing it, you probably will too. Asch's experiment is a good example of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments I've known people from European countries that don't have to anything for college education, but their taxes are about 60% (they probably also have universal health care too). I think as long as we see the impact our tax money has, to provide for our basic needs, people are willing to pay these rates. But how governments spends money these days it's no wonder why no one wants to pay taxes.