I think that there are two central, basic, extremely important services that any society should offer to all of its citizens for free in order to consider itself civilized: medical care and education. The rest can be debated, discussed and disagreed upon. These two things, however, are two important to deny to people on a monetary basis. The question every civilized society needs to ask itself is: can we offer these two important things to all of us for free? And if not, what do we need to do in order to make it happen? After this goal is reached, we can proceed to concentrate on other issues.
At this point, however, we have been led to believe that we don’t have money for either of these things and that cuts need to be made to one of them to salvage some remnants of the other. And that’s just wrong.
Look at what’s happening in California, for example:
The Regents of the University of California are meeting to discuss a multiyear funding proposal that will increase tuition by a cumulative 81% in the next four years, if the state does not increase funding. As a point of reference, UC tuition has already gone up 330% since the year 2000. And as Bob Samuels points out, if past experience is any guide, it’s much more likely that the state will actually decrease public funding in the next four years, and that tuition will rise even higher and faster than that.
In short, while UC students paid around $4,000 a year in tuition in 2000, their successors will pay over $22,000 a year in 2015.
Just multiply 22,000 by four and you will see who is going to be able to afford higher education in this country.
All these people who don’t believe that healthcare and education should be free for all, who are they and how do they justify this to themselves? They’ve got to be telling themselves something to explain how all of this is right. So what is it? What’s going on in their very very empty heads, I wonder.
Clarissa's Blog 
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