Arff! Yet another Democrat. But this time it's one who is also a bold-faced blatant lair! I have always placed a very high value on education. Much more than you, as I was taught to appreciate the increased value and significance of personal responsibility and having a little real-time skin in the game, rather, as in this case, paying for it later anyway, maybe tenfold, through taxes. (And yes, Sig, 10% is only a small amount for something this important and potentially life-changing.)
Wow. You still can't answer my direct question that I asked you 3 separate times throughout this thread. I'll copy/paste it again and put it in a special quote box for you: Now you're claiming that I'm getting off topic and my very concrete and simple example about the truck driver in the US being able to pay back all his debts to society over his career (as millions of truck drivers have done) is just irrelevant while going off on some unconnected tangent about Chad and trying to claim that I'm anti-education. I never said that poor children should be uneducated. I simply showed that even someone from a bad background (but admittedly still lucky enough to be born in the US) can still earn a good living and pull their own weight even without the benefit of good parents or education. That's a really hard argument for you to defend especially on a place like this. The vast majority of people don't simply inherit enough money to get to the 1%...that's mathematically impossible. It's not just choices, it's sacrifice. The amount of time we have is a finite resource. A lot of people sacrifice a lot of time and opportunity cost to reach their goals. In some cases, like pursuing medical school, it's also a huge financial risk. It goes way beyond a choice my friend. Of course not, I'd be a very different person. I don't deny that environment has an influence. It unquestionably does. But it's not just infrastructure and other things that come from taxes that make the difference. I'll submit to you that it's almost entirely due to culture. Even though Chad is a tough place to live, would you agree that they still have more technology and education (even if imported from the rest of the world through aid) than the US had back in 1776? But how come the US was not as violent back then (excluding the Revolutionary War of course) as Chad is today? I don't think it's a matter of genetics or race. Even Australia was formed from a prison colony. People there did not start out educated or had any substantial wealth. How did they succeed? The only variable is culture. It's kind of like asking, "What would happen if I put you on an island full of tigers...how do you think you would turn out?" Congrats on the EE degree. We have that in common.
Ultimately, I don't see any way to cover the demographic issue (and Japan is far worse off than the US in that regard) other than by extending the amount of time people spend working. Typical person only spends, what 1/3 or under 1/2 of their lives working? The rest is spent consuming. I think the problem will be naturally cured. As lifespan increases, it won't be as much of a burden to spend more time working. http://discoverysedge.mayo.edu/2016/01/29/experts-explain-the-longevity-dividend/
Because you really don't want a bunch of uneducated kids with nothing to do in the daytime roaming around your house while you're at work. Don't think of it as a tax on you to educate someone elses kids. Think of it as a tax to keep those kids in a confined area during the day while you're out earning a living.
Listen to me young man, you either go out and get a job or we will send you to school! And school is no picnic!!!
What about medical/healthcare/eldercare costs? They can eat away at, or even wipe out retirement savings in a surprisingly short amount of time, they're not easy to anticipate in terms of scale, and we're living longer. Roughly 40% of us will get cancer at some point in our lives. By age 65, the risk of having Alzheimer’s is one in six (17 percent) for women and one in 11 (9 percent) for men. Beginning at age 60, your chance of getting dementia doubles every five years... and if you survive into your nineties, then there is roughly a one in four chance that you will have dementia. Yada, yada, OK... but many people underestimate both the costs involved for fairly common healthcare/eldercare issues, and overestimate the extent to which insurance will cover those costs. As for "poor life choices" -- aside from the obvious cases (e.g., drug addict, morbidly obese person), how can you really determine or differentiate what those are, and/or to what extent they contributed to any given person's situation?
Once the elderly exhaust their life savings they simply go on medicaid. So we have all the elderly people and all the poor people taken care of. What more do you need comrade?