this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
489 points (94.7% liked)
Actually Infuriating
91 readers
2157 users here now
Community Rules:
Be Civil
Please treat others with decency. No bigotry (disparaging comments about any race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, nationality, ability, age, ). Personal attacks and bad-faith argumentation are not allowed.
Content should be actually infuriating
Politics and news are allowed, as well as everyday life. However, please consider posting in partner communities below if it is a better fit.
Mark NSFW/NSFL posts
Please mark anything distressing (death, gore, etc.) as NSFW and clearly label it in the title.
Keep it Legal and Moral
No promoting violence, DOXXing, brigading, harassment, misinformation, spam, etc.
Partner Communities
- Mildly Infuriating
- Furiously Infuriating
- Memes
- Political Memes
- Lemmy Shitpost
- Not The Onion
- You Should Know
- Lemmy Be Wholesome
founded 1 day ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don’t understand why that matters ultimately? The point is “free” is not a good word for it, whether it’s college or university. It’s not “free” and we don’t call anything else we pay for with taxes “free.” All it does is create an easy attack vector for detractors and misrepresent it.
I feel like it depends on your translation and how you define “free”.
I like to compare it to the differences between expenses and costs. Which is something people often confuse. Expenses are talking about the outflow of money and costs are talking about the effect of it on the bottom line.
“Free” education is free, because it’s not an expense it can be considered and indirect cost. It might never be something that is paid if you never pay taxes for whatever reason.
People also consider their social security income free because they don’t need to do more for it than filling in a form often online