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Comment by tomswartz07 | Hacker News Reader

What if, hear me out, we make basic education free for everyone, including those in prison?

Its interesting to see this argument come up on HN. How would we control the costs? If tax paid education cannot keep up with the cost of schools should we put a ceiling on professor wages? I believe that would be a horrible idea since the best talent would begin seeking greener pastures. On the other hand, should we just keep increasing taxes instead? The evil of that is a It decreases in competition for universities to be efficient. The market answers both of these issues, whereas free education does not.

Are professor wages really a substantial factor in increasing university costs? I don't know too much about the subject but I've always attributed it to (1.) the wide availability of student loans making it easy for college tuition to rise faster than is affordable and (2.) the crazy amount of expansion/construction/etc. that universities seem to be doing constantly.

And (3.) total college administration wages increasing.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4738584

article makes 0 mention of this (not even one sentence); the only 'proposed delta' is prison education.. critique is fair in this context imho...

which doesn't mean lowering the overall barrier to education is not a good idea and probably would reduce incarceration in the first place...

Agree. How much more taxes do YOU pony up? Let’s say, $10k a year. Yes?

$10k/year? Probably not.

A slightly more amount of taxes than I currently pay? Sure; if it's for the betterment and reformation of the worse-off in our society, I'd gladly pay a bit more money.

How much?

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