The government needs to determine the cost of educating a child from kindergarten to high school, divide this by 18, and apply it as a yearly tax to parents. Children deserve an education, but children also put an additional strain on society. I should not be forced to pay for someone else’s decision to procreate.

Private expenditures generally create a burden on society. But look at it from the perspective of pensions vs 401ks. The 401k is where you use your money to invest in your retirement, and you’re responsible for managing it so that you have enough. If you don’t, it’s your fault.

A pension is fundamentally different as it effectively spreads the burden of retirement across the entire organization, present and future. Employees are responsible for working for 20-30 years (which isn’t no different from a 401k) but the payout is significantly better for most that aren’t financial managers.

So the argument against pensions was that businesses shouldn’t have to manage the retirement of their employees because it was an extra burden on the business. It reduced innovation, was extremely costly, and otherwise hampered would could be a thriving business. Enter the 401k, the organization will match a percentage, but otherwise, the employee is on their own.

Now young people are like, “How come we don’t have jobs like our grandfathers where we could barely graduate college, work a company for our entire life, raise a family of 10 on a single income, then retire comfortably? What happened?!”

What happened was the proliferation of the idea that we’re not responsible for each other, or rather, that there are other responsibilities more important than caring, like making a higher return for shareholders.

That’s all to say, I disagree (so I upvoted). Parents shouldn’t only be responsible for their kids education, and kids shouldn’t be responsible for paying for their own education as well. If anything should be subsidized, it’s education.