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Comment by swimfar | Hacker News Reader

I think his point was that he went to a college he could afford. It's true that not everyone can get scholarships to pay for their entire education. But no one has to pay $40k+/year in tuition to get a good education.

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In Denmark everyone can get scholarships to pay for their entire education. That and they get a stipend for living expenses. Everyone gets this, young or old, rich or poor.

How do taxes work out in Denmark? I tried to work out how it would compare to the UK, but it seems significantly more complex to work out. I _think_ an average programmer on £50-60k would end up paying about 35-40% of their income in tax? Or have I completely miscalculated? Compared to about 30% in the UK

Its somewhat complicated, but you pay 8% off the bat as "Arbejdsmarkedsbidrag", then you have a lot of deductions and pay about 40% on the rest. All in all I would wager that my effective tax rate comes to just under 40%, but your milleage will vary.

It's muddied slightly in the UK because of Employer NI, if you include that it gets a little higher.

Yeah but I bet your sports facilities are nowhere near as good, and the admin departments are way understaffed /s

I never understood why universities need competitive sports facilities in the first place (except when it's required for the curriculum, e.g. where sports medicine is offered). I suppose it's something to do either with tradition ("our sports team has been the best for over a century") or income from sponsorship and merch sales, but not sure.

This is just one example, but my university recently revamped their football stadium due to a huge donation from an either an alumni or coach (I can't remember exactly) who donated specifically for this cause. If money comes from a donation, sometimes it's not the school's decision how money should be spent.

It gets more complicated in a non homogenous country with 56 times the population. But for sure, Denmark is a nice, well run country.

> It gets more complicated in a non homogenous country with 56 times the population.

It's also divided into 51 smaller, more localized governments.

If it was all delegated to them, it might work. But what you have instead is 50 secondary layers of bureaucracy, while the Federal govt holds firm control of the student loan market, and imposes control and regulation on colleges, using both carrot (R&D money) and stick (loans).

> It gets more complicated in a non homogenous country

Can you please give me a simple, non-racist explanation why this matters? Please explicitly spell-out what is/is not homogeneous (I always assume race), and explain why that complicates things.

Well I can: it's a lot easier to get things done when everybody agrees on doing it. People with a shared culture are more likely to agree on things.

Here is an argument for your consideration:

Consider the concept of a business cluster, note that the city as a cluster is a reasonable idea [1].

Note that the population of Denmark does not break top 30 in a list of global cities [2].

Conclude that the country of Denmark, with its small geographic and demographic attributes, could specialise entirely in one high-margin economic area and further specialise their laws and social systems to that.

Basically, 5 million people can be sustained by the excess wealth of a strong local cluster. 50 million people cannot be sustained by one strong cluster, and the different clusters may have different needs.

I have no idea about Denmark, but if they /are/ clustered as a country around some high-tech industry, maybe the economically rational equilibrium to give out scholarships to support the local cluster? Maybe they are just nice people? A country with many clusters needs a one-size-fits-all legal and social system that works with all the clusters. The economic equilibriums may be different to a single cluster.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cluster#By_type_of_co... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities

Why should we pay for "these" people.

I've tried to ask this before. It's basically semi-conscious racism by people who are careful with their words. You'll not get a satisfactory response, because there is none.

You're begging the question. People are racist, that exactly what he's saying.

Not all of them but enough that it affects government at the highest levels. It definitely complicates any topic dealing with poverty becuase race usually gets tied to status in various nonsensical ways.

He's right. There's nothing wrong with being brutally honest.

In a lot of other countries education is a lot cheaper

US has become a country where profit runs everything. What happens when a large percentage of youth don't get education and make enough to buy a house?

What happens is that housing prices fall until enough people can afford them.

thats partly because education consumers (students) keep demanding education to cost so much. If everyone applied to and went to the cheapest colleges they could find, universities would be clamoring to reduce their costs, not increase them.

of course, a big part of the problem is employers. Employers place a large value on Ivy league schools and expensive universities, thus creating the consumer demand in the first place.

Yea, my point was both college selection and major selection should be guided by ROI. This was pretty thoroughly drilled into me by my parents and my high school advisors / guidance counselors. We couldn't afford much so I went to a low cost state school, took advantage of as many scholarships as I possibly could, and picked an engineering major. At no point in the process did anyone ever advise me to "follow my dreams" or "pursue my passions".

I did this as well, spent my first 3 semesters at a private school that cost 40k a year had a pretty decent scholarship but the kicker was that I was in a major that had a minimum starting salary around 100k. So I felt that going to this particular school was worth the debt I'd accumulate because of 1 the major, and 2 the socioeconomic status most of the students came from.

Anyways after 3 semesters I realized that I really didn't like the major I was in so I dropped outta that school and moved home and went to community college until I got myself together and motivated. When that happened I moved into a local state school that is known for being extremely good for its cost.

I don't regret going to the expensive school even if most of the credits didn't transfer, I met some great people there who will be valuable friends to have made. I also don't regret not going there anymore because it would have been way too expensive.

The right way to put it is, "no one should have to pay $40k+/year in tuition". This is a failure of the system, period. And when the bubble explodes it will be a decade or more too late.

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