Does that mean that after some considerable time away I should return to the council estate of my birth?

No of course not.

However what all socialists want IS lots & lots of people stuck on council estates because then they can raise taxes to pay for government ‘initiatives’ to help said council tenants.

Remember, socialists love government initiatives but hate individual initiative

Hear, hear!

First let me say I love the tone of British English, or should I just say, "English."

Our incoming President has this populist scheme to increase access to higher education through increased grants and student loans. Our Junior colleges are already packed from wall to wall because tuition costs are so low, and the quality of education could be described as little more than High School II.

Even four-year institutions are extraordinarily cheap. The University of California at Berkeley, the number 1 ranked public university in the world, costs under $10,000 per year irrespective of housing (which is considerably high in this area).

With the external benefits of education disappearing around 11th grade, there is no additional social benefit to a college education. Nearly 100% of the benefits are compensated by the market for labor.

Yet our subsidization of college degrees leads to too many resources being allocated for unproductive majors like anthropolgy, sociology, ethnic studies, etc. It's not that these fields have no scientific worth, but the vast majority of those majoring in it do not employ those skills in the workforce nor become researchers in the field.

Even worse, we provide loans and grants for private school education, so that a person can amass $100,000 in student loan debt struggling to find a $35,000 per year job as a teacher.

With the benefits of education so palpable and the costs relatively cheap, there should be little need for government subsidies. Guaranteed loans are not a bad idea, but efficiency would demand that both tuition and the guarantee would be predicated on the expected lifetime earnings of a person with that major.

The whole purpose of increased aid seems to be aimed at supporting entire departments of left-wing philosophers who hijack the minds of impressionable youths with required course during their "liberal" education.

Not everyone is suited to a college education, and if everyone were required to get such an education, the value of the degrees would be diminished or employers would have to find some other method of discriminating quality. Michael Spence suggested that education serves as a signal of quality, irrespective of skills acquired, because the opportunity cost of acquiring an education is too high for the low-skilled.

That which one achieves too cheaply they esteem too lightly, and we should be suspicious of any government scheme to cheapen education, housing, or any other hard-won asset as a common right.

Thank Christ for that...I had visions of ending up like Mr Heston in the omega man.

"I spend a large portion of my disposable income educating my offspring. Having gone to all that trouble, I am mortified at the prospect that Daughter might end up sitting next to a poor person in a University refectory. Those sorts of people all have skin diseases & such lousy table manners. In fact I would go as far to say that unlike your average battery, the poor simply don’t have a positive side."

All joking aside, you've lost my respect with that one.

Rusty Ray

I'm with Mr.FM on this one (as is usually the case).

The only time the poor do have a positive side is when they stop being poor by virtue of their own industry and application.

Otherwise, they're a wretched lot and deserving of nothing.

And I say that as one who once had precisely $12 to his name.

FM and Kim are, of course right, the only thing to add could be "deliberate" before poor. Really there is only one way to be poor in the UK, that is to consume more drink or narcotics that you can afford, this is an epidemic in all socialist countries.

As for education it is shit in the UK, A levels are given out like smarties, so now the top Unis insist on entry exams. This is deliberate policy to stupidfy the masses to keep the parasites in power and now in a stunning display of racism the poor yanks are smitten too. How about dropping all socialists on the palastinians from a couple of thousand feet? that would work well for humans.

Hm...I don't like the idea of government loans, but the sticky part about banks doing student loans? Those days are long gone. The Department of Education in the US now has those, and the interest compounds at a nice percentage rate. What I would like to know is this: Is the DOE going to get jobs for these grads in order to pay it back and reduce the default rate that led to the DOE taking over the loans in the first place?