Did America ever really have free college? As an outsider, it seems to me there was always the expectation that teens should work; maybe that was for their money to live on while at college? That's an odd idea from my perspective, but it meant an expectation there would be part-time jobs, and that helped out mothers and others who couldn't deal with full-time work, or needed to work at unusual hours, and that in turn meant people with 9-5 jobs didn't need to scurry or use lunch time to buy things. Now I live in a place where almost nothing opens before 10:00, and I've previously lived in places where the sidewalk rolls up at 10:00 pm, and these remind me of the British situation when I grew up, where there were no such jobs and no such opportunities, and where picking up a prescription or replacing a bra when one suddenly snapped an underwire were massive hassles.
Also, the bureaucratic jobs are the biggest opportunities for huge numbers of people to do respectable work (never mind that a lot of them like bossing people around; a lot of people do like that); I've heard that that's particularly true of black people, and a lot of things in the US come down to race.
It's clear that I am not an economist, but pie-in-the-sky, chicken-in-every-pot has disadvantages.
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Also, the bureaucratic jobs are the biggest opportunities for huge numbers of people to do respectable work (never mind that a lot of them like bossing people around; a lot of people do like that); I've heard that that's particularly true of black people, and a lot of things in the US come down to race.
It's clear that I am not an economist, but pie-in-the-sky, chicken-in-every-pot has disadvantages.
M