> Where is "here"? For reference, in America, the best private schools can cost almost as much as the salary of a minimum-wage worker. That's part of how they maintain such high staff-to-student ratio and such individualized curricula.

"Here" is Sweden in this case, but there are similar examples.

> You said "publicly funded", not "run by the government".

That's a detail of implementation for both schools and healthcare. Interestingly, Sweden has a lot of private schools in 1-12 but few private higher educations. In both cases the funds are coming from public money, so the 1-12 schools are voucher based.

> That's part of how they maintain such high staff-to-student ratio and such individualized curricula.

My kid's school (6y atm) is private. But I can't pay any more to get higher staff-to-student ratio in another school. The school gets the voucher for my kid so they have the same funds as every other school, public or private. If I want to spend money on my kids primary school I could buy an evening tutor of course (no one stops me) - but I basically you can't start a school where you accept money from parents to provide a more expensive education. The law says no fees can be charged for the education, nor for applications. Further it says that donations to schools are allowed but cannot influence education nor applications.

> That kind of thing isn't justifiable from a "societal investment" point-of-view

It's a fine balance. I want to spend tax money on having a varied group of people educated in arts etc.
I think it's fine to pay tax money for someone else to study arts with absolutely no possibility of ever "repaying" society economically.
The alternative is that those who can afford to study stuff that doesn't pay (i.e. those with family money) are those that can study those subjects. I don't think that's an objectively better situation to be in.

> You're looking at people who attend college and enter the upper half of society, and attempting to say, "If everyone goes to college, everyone can enter the upper half of society!" Unfortunately, it's just that - a half. There are only so many jobs of that sort; college makes people more competitive applicants. You won't necessarily create more by creating more people who go to college.

Sure, but this is a political and ideological choice, such as "kids to low income parents should be as likely to end up with MD's as kids to high income parents". This isn't a practical choice. When I argue that publicly funded higher education is good, I'm arguing ideologically, not "practically". It won't be a more efficient society. It might improve our Gini but it won't necessarily improve our GDP, and so on.

Also: it's not like half the population has to du menial jobs and half can do white collar jobs. We used to have effectively 100% farmers just a century ago. Then an industrial society just 50 years ago. Not everyone can have a high tech job, but the variation of jobs in society is fluent and very much depends on the education level of the population.

It's not a zero sum game where the number of qualified jobs is fixed.

> And you are somewhat looking to establish "freedom from want"

Because the drive to provide healthcare and education for myself and my family is somehow a positive "force" that drives society and the economy (perhaps I misunderstood)?
Shouldn't that be evident in statistics, e.g. that happiness/quality of life indicators are somehow higher the more "want" there is?
All I can see is that they seem...lower