The debt didn't go away, your country just shifted the cost onto someone else other than the person currently studying.
Think of it with this simplified example, using numbers that are easier to grok. Let's say I've got a school where tuition costs $1,000. Alice cannot afford that on her own. But there are 1,000 people in her country, so if taxes paid for that tuition, each person only needs to pay $1 extra in taxes for Alice to get a quality education. Of course, it's not just Alice going to college, but it's also not every person in the country. In fact, at any given time, most taxpaying people in a country are not attending university, since university is usually only 4-6 years and most people live to age 78 or higher.
So to adjust the example to account for that, let's just assume every member of this society of 1,000 people attended or will attend university (an overestimate for sure). Using the ages as a guideline for proportions, if 60% are above age 18, and at most 8% are currently in college (6 years at college / 78 years of life), then we can easily see how much each taxpayer must pay for everyone to get an education: (80 people * $1,000) / 600 taxpayers = $133-ish.
So you tell me which is a better society: one in which everyone gets a good education for about $130, or one in which some people can't afford a good education because it costs about 7.5x as much money?
>No, ...
I rest my defense.
Or you can read a single word, ignore the rest, and tell yourself you're superior without actually knowing what I said shrug
Also, thank you for reminding me that mathematics is "handwaving". It's good to remember that math is useless and doesn't actually show anything real. We may as well not teach it at all in schools, since it's all just "handwaving".
There are 144.3 million taxpayers in the US, and 329.5 million people. Using the still-accurate numbers of 8% of the population being in college at any given time, and the average college tuition in the US of $8,000/year, we can do the same calculation:
(0.08 * 329,500,000 people * $8,000/yr) / (144,300,000 taxpayers) = $1461.40.
In other words, by subsidizing higher education with taxes, every person in the country could attend college for about 1/5 the cost, as opposed to "only people who can afford at least $8,000/year can attend college, and it costs them 5x as much as it otherwise would."
Those are real numbers. Does that make it feel less "hand-waving" to you?
Then I pay $1461.40 in taxes a year for 40 years (we'll control inflation at 0%, otherwise both my income and tuition rises) while I'm working, assuming I retire at ~62 which is fairly typical. I just paid $58,440 for $32000 of college. This is a good deal why? I was better off when no one was helping me.
Why do you live in a society, where you depend on other people, if you're not willing to help those who depend on you?
No this isn't about making college more affordable for the regular working stiff (it actually does the opposite). It's about enforcing your favored version of charity at the gun point of taxes.
>so I actually only paid $26,440 to help
I don't understand, what's stopping you from doing that now? Just go to some university's school tour as part of a group of potential students and offer somebody $26k for tuition. You'll find a taker. Your dream can become a reality and it doesn't even involve you convincing 51% of the population/reps to vote for it.