You set rules for society and harshly punish people who break them. Look at Singapore.
That's the opposite direction of where the SF Bay Area is going. The San Francisco District Attorney, for e.g., has been at loggerheads withe police department because the former has been eager to let even violent criminals go scott free.
Of course, you add the rampant social justice warriors in the area and you get accused of racism for arresting 11-time felons (e.g https://stopcrimesf.com/blog/2018/8/10/second-chances-how-ab... vs https://48hills.org/2018/08/judge-soft-on-crime/)
Kind of hard to fine someone that doesn't have the money to pay for it. Kind of hard to put a person in jail when the jail is already full of kids with marijuana sentences.
I don't think this "Singapore Solution" would work in the USA.
Free for who?
Imagine the tax income down the line if every citizen that wanted a high-training-required career could get that career. Imagine the burden reduction on welfare.
and
>Imagine the tax income down the line...
are contradictory.
A better argument would be: "Increased education and welfare spending leads to more productivity and the added cost is offset by the increase in taxes due to the productivity gain". Or more simply: "Education and welfare are good investments".
Now we can have a serious conversation about the economic impacts of this kind of investment. But to market it as free is irresponsible. It it not free. At best we get more out than we put in, but by definition we must put in something.
That was the point of my original comment. Everything has a cost. Even an investment with a nearly guaranteed return comes at a cost and has a certain amount of risk associated with it.
Imagine slashing DoD funding in half. I don't think taxes would have to go up a penny to provide free education then.
Other than that, yes, I agree with you in using investment terminology.
Another assumption that you make is that the problem with the US education system is a lack of funding. I don't think this is the case.
I think we can have that while also auditing and cleaning up whatever ineffective messes money is being spent on by the doe now.
You seem to just assume if we give people free stuff they will all go get PHD's. That's just simply a fantasy.
I didn't say "mandatory higher education," I said "free." It already is free for twelve years so it seems silly to think slapping on another 2-6 would be some massive burden against the expected returns.
For those that don't want it or can't test into it because they literally are too stupid (this is after fixing inequal access to early education), there's no associated cost. They just to to work, same as it was before.
I think you will find the IQ benefits of education itself is not really that large. I could be wrong but it seems like scientists are looking more into diet these days as bigger influencers than quality education.
Which is to say, of course there is contrast between a child who never goes to school and is just left to leisure around the house until they are adults to one that goes to a quality school that are beyond simply a diet but that in western countries, diets could be a bigger reason for poorer socio-economic populations scoring lower on IQ tests.
I think though that you would have to rebalance the culture when it comes to higher education before making it free because in countries like the USA, you already have too many people going to university and then going into non-skilled jobs despite the insane prices.
Lowering the price to free is only going to increase that when many kids see college as an experience more than a critical education for a high end role.
I’m certain most people would not want Singaporean-style justice in the US.
E.g., the most famous case, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, was caught sharing 1700 songs. The RIAA asked for $5000.
She refused, so they sued. They sued over 24 of the songs. Why not sue over all 1700? Probably a couple reasons. First, if they sued over 1700 and won, the minimum damages they would receive would be $1 275 000 (statutory damages of $750 [1] per infringed work x 1700 works). Only suing over 24 cuts the minimum to $18 000. They were willing to settle for $5 000, but having to go to trial adds some expenses and so $18 000 is pretty reasonable.
Second, for each song they do have to file some paperwork proving that they have standing to sue on behalf of the copyright owner. Every bit of paperwork they have to file is time and money, and every bit of paperwork offers the defense something to challenge to further take their time and increase their cost.
Any non-moron looking at the above math would beg to accept that $5 000 settlement as soon as they found out that they were in fact being sued. But not Thomas-Rasset. Worse for her, she was a very unsympathetic defendant. She tried to pin the blame on her kids, she tried to destroy evidence, and she lied about that under oath and was caught at it. The jury gets to pick the damages and instead of going for the low end of statutory damages they went for something higher up, and she got hit with a large fine (around $200k).
And then what did the RIAA do? They offered again to settle for some reasonably low amount. She refused, got another trial, lost again (because of course nothing had changed) and that jury went high, going an order of magnitude higher than the first jury. The RIAA again offered to settle, although now they were asking $25.
Eventually she got an appeals court to lower the damages back down to around the first trial's amount. Again the RIAA offered a much lower settlement, if she would agree to make a video about copyright infringement. She refused.
If you are going to pirate, fine, but be an honest and honorable pirate. If you get caught and are offered a reasonable settlement (and 3x what it would have cost you to buy the works without pirating them is reasonable [2]) take it. Don't waste the court's time with going to a trial you have pretty much no change of winning and that when you lose the minimal damages will be more than the settlement offer.
[1] It can go down to something like $200 or $250 per work if the alleged infringer can prove they were an "innocent infringer", which means that they did not know the works were copyrighted and had no reason to know this. That would be very hard to prove.
[2] It has to be more than the retail cost because if the worst that happens to you when you are caught is that you pay what it would have cost to buy retail, there is no incentive not to pirate.