Comments by "Posthumanist" (@thornelderfin) on "Why Young Europeans are Further Right than Brits and Americans" video.

@felixsutton My country has had free universities and completely absolutely free healthcare for more than 3 generations and it absolutely does not benefit the wealthy more. It levels the playing field and people from any family can achieve anything they want with same effort. If you are a rich parent there is nothing you can do to give advantage to your kid over others - he or she has to earn it. Result is that absolute majority of my country is middle class (one year we had highest equality index in the world, GINI). But you do you. It's your country.
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@dylanmurphy9389 Also the left-right divide in EU is very very complex compared to clean cut in the USA. In Europe you have parties that are left wing economically and right wing nationalists at the same time, and vice versa and also any variation of cultural conservativism vs liberalism, then environment, immigration. So when someone says they are moving left or right - it is very missleading for someone from the US, becuase all those EU parties would be all over the place partially Republican partially Democrat and centrist. Just my very small country has 36 notable political parties. Our governments are always 3-4 political parties in unstable forced alliances. Most parties don't exist longer than 2 election cycles. It's messy and inefficient, but also 100% democratic (not like having only 2 bad choices) and insured against any politician getting too much power.
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@Argonhubert I understand how it might seem like this from your point of view, so let me explain. The cost of university is transferred to the whole society, but it is much much cheaper to begin with. Our universities don't make any money, they are not supposed to, it's not supposed to be a profit making business, it's a public service. They have maximum job safety (professors) and are respected, because they are on a mission to better our society. Same with our doctors. These professions are not supposed to be a path to get rich, we do not even want professors and teachers who are in it for the money. So then hospitals and universities are not making any profits at all, so the cost of university education or healthcare is low (compared to US it's 20x lower) and so then it can be moved to the society as a whole, because it's not that much. You are doing exactly this in the US, but with the military budget - you transfer it to the society as a whole... and the police, fire department, roads, transportation, energy infrastructure, and many other things. I absolutely believe it is a good idea to pay taxes now to pay for all the education of young people, so they can do whatever profession they actually want to do and then reap the benefits 20 years from now when we have healthy and educated middle class to support my retirement (government funded, from them to me ... see they will pay it back, it's just spread over the whole population).
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@Argonhubert Regarding the lower salaries. It's not just university degrees, you have higher salaries in the US than in the poor and middle parts of EU (there are parts of Europe that are richer than the US, but not majority). Compared to my country, you get much higher salary and pay less taxes. But your cost of living and expenses are also much much higher. Your mortgage is higher (mine is 0.5% interest), rent, groceries, and all services and goods (because you have to pay those high salaries of the workers producing it, of course), so far it makes sense, higher salaries, higher cost of living, it evens out nicely. But then a lot of people have to pay off massive student loans that are the size of mortgage, and then you have to save money for retirement, and most dreaded thing - if you have serious health problems, you can go bankrupt very fast. I've been fighting with cancer for the past 15 years, has been very complicated. In the US, I would be already dead because I couldn't afford it even with my above average salary. What about children that get cancer or some other horrible illness? Are they going to die because they were born to the "wrong" parents? Or will they be saved but start their life with a crippling debt of millions of dollars that most of them will never be able to repay? I have a feeling US system is set up for millionaires and people somehow don't realize that 99.99% of population will never be millionaires, but somehow a lot of poor people in the US tolerate it because they think their situation is just temporary and they will be rich soon. It's like the rich dangle a carrot infront of them so they do not rebel. Do I see it in a wrong way? Is there something I don't understand about the US?
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@dylanmurphy9389 But Dylan, that's exactly what is happening (what you described). People are moving closer to center on economic policy.
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