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Comment by peterangular | Hacker News Reader

> (I personally don't mind subsidizing my library + local school district... good schools and libraries are good for the community)

Just sharing random coffee break thoughts... it always blows my mind is how many people _don't_ think like this. When base conditions improve for society, the conditions improve for _everyone_ regardless if they directly benefit you.

I'm also in the boat where I don't have kids, but I'd also like to live in a place that has educated people - so schools make perfect sense to me. Heck, even if I didn't benefit from it, providing children education is just the gosh-darn right thing to do.

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> how many people _don't_ think like this

It's just lack of trust. It's not that people want a worse community, it's that they have a hard time believing that taking extra money from their paycheck will create a better community.

Part of it is real; seeing massive amounts of state/local government waste and corruption makes it feel safer to keep your extra dollars instead of giving them away.

Part of it is difficulty evaluating timelines; more tax dollars for a better elementary school to be built in 3 years and to yield higher educated people 18 years from now it a lot to bet on.

IMO it's because there's both benefit and waste/corruption in these kinds of social benefit structures. some people choose to only see one or the other:

"these benefit everyone including those who don't use them directly! how could you be against it?"

"this money that I'm having to pay is either overpaid to corrupt vendors, or just straight wasted, why would we ever want to increase how much we're paying into this system?"

in reality you can't have one without the other. it's up to each person to decide whether they can take the bad with the good

Yes, universal health will start saving money even during the first transition year. We spend almost 1/3 or more of those total health dollars on billing administration. That amount surpasses the uninsured number. And the reality is if we can get medical care during the daytime, eventually emergency rooms might get less hectic. My hope is that more days than not ER personell have to pass the time like at a Firehouse.

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