this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
862 points (95.6% liked)
Actually Infuriating
339 readers
31 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 5 days ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We need to stop calling it “free” college. It’s not free. It’s a worthwhile investment we all pay for and reap the benefits of.
We don’t call it a “free military.”
College is free, uni isn't
Not our fault just one country uses the word incorrectly
Uni is free if you live in a sane part of the UK
Scotland: the only part of the UK that consistently votes left of centre.
You're missing the point. They're saying it's not free, it's funded by the government/tax dollars.
Also languages develop regionally and sometimes use different words. It's so 2010 to assert regional differences are "wrong." Gag me with a spoon.
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
I think free is a great word for something you can rock up to and collect without paying, and you don't have to remortgage your house because your parent got cancer.
You do pay for it. You don’t get free roads. You don’t get free hospitals. You don’t get a free military. They are funded by tax dollars, that’s the entire point. Yet we say “free college.”
Yes I do get free hospitals. I live in the UK. Hospital visits are free and I don't pay for them. I pay for parking if I park on site, but I absolutely do not pay for the healthcare. The healthcare is free. My daughter gets it free, I get it free, unemployed people get it free, billionaires get out free, everyone gets it free, no one is charged for it. The government pays the whole bill. Unlimited healthcare based on need, no cost.
It's earning a salary that isn't free. That costs me 20% above a certain threshold. But, no, the hospitals are completely free.
They’re not free. You pay taxes to fund them. Your countrymen pay taxes to fund them. You are all paying for it collectively all the time, which is a great thing to do and is a worthwhile investment. It is a sane and sustainable way of running healthcare. But it is not free.
You say the government pays for it: where do you think the government gets its money? For the UK it’s not entirely from exploiting former colonial vassals anymore, y'all pay taxes. Same as the rest of us.
It also isn't free for people here, it's paid. They pay you (not a very large amount but still) to go to any education above the mandatory education.
Yes that’s what I’m saying.
I think I understand your concern, but how do you very briefly describe what's happening a better way?
Schools in the US are "free", although they are generally funded by taxes. I think if you said to most people that society benefits from a good basic education for everyone, they would agree.
If you said that should apply to higher education, it doesn't sound like too much of a stretch.
If you then said "we should have the same standard of education and funding for the entire nation", many people would say "No way", because America, and that would mean centralized funding and standards and stuff. It's always that last part.
National education. Funded degrees. Paid-for education. Universal education. Lots of options.
We don’t call it free healthcare do we?
yes we do
We do in the UK. Because it's free.
It’s called the National Health System and it’s paid for with taxes, yes?
Earning a salary isn't free. You get charged all the time for that.
Going to hospital is free. You get unlimited visits and any procedure you need at zero cost to you, taxpayer or not, no charge. Free.
I am not having the exact same conversation in 2 places.
It looks to me like you are, because you said the same nonsense lots of places, but that's up to you, I guess.
Because I didn’t realize it was the same person in both. What a weird thing to get hostile about.
I'm hostile about your repeated and fallacious claim that healthcare isn't free, when the truth is that the healthcare is free, but earning a salary isn't. You're charged for the earnings about certain thresholds, and you're not charged for the healthcare. I contradicted you in only two of the many places you posted the same nonsense right wing talking points, and then you start complaining about my two versus your many.
Username checks out.
You have a lot of misguided anger.
You have a lot of entitlement and nonsense. Healthcare is free on the UK.
Your country has publicly funded healthcare that is free at point of service.
Yes. It's free.
At point of service, yes. But not entirely. It's still paid for lol. Which is the entire point that the person you've been replying to was trying to make.
This is a silly distinction. Do you insist that the supermarket relabels its "buy one get one free" offer as "buy one get one free at the point of purchase"? Do you call free refills "free at the point of dispensing"? When the theme park says that after you've paid admission, the rides are "free at the point of embarkation"?
They're making a right wing talking point to try and make free healthcare sound expensive, when in fact free healthcare is free for the patient and less expensive for everybody than private healthcare, because the profit motive doesn't drive efficiency, it drives profiteering.
Healthcare is free for everyone in the UK. Taxpayer or not, rich or poor, you can have a much healthcare as you need at zero cost to you. Free. That's what free means. It doesn't mean no one is paying. It means the patient isn't paying. Did you think I thought that hospitals grow on trees? Of course I know that the government is paying for it, that's WHY the healthcare is free. No charge. Unlimited. Free.
Taxation isn't a change on healthcare AT ALL. It's a charge on earnings, and claiming that free healthcare isn't free is entitled nonsense from higher rate taxpayers. They pay tax. They don't pay healthcare. No one does, unless they go private, because the healthcare is what's free.
I think you're assuming their intent is to make it sound expensive and that it's a right wing talking point, but they've already said in their comments that they agree with a publicly funded healthcare system and are actively for it. They've also said their reason for wanting to use another word besides "free" to describe it is to explicitly deflate the right wing talking point that it's being called "free" when it's really not. If you call it publicly funded or something else besides free that gets more at the essence of what the thing is, then the right wingers can't use the point that it "isn't free" against you and the public discourse around it will then have to shift.
Relentlessly parroting right wing talking points to stop right wingers making them is an implausible absurd and counterproductive strategy. I don't buy it at all, sorry.
Do you think that because the supermarket is paying for my buy one get one free box of cereal, it isn't free, or do you think for one minute that people who call it free don't realise that they're still making a profit?
We're not all morons, and we don't need anyone to say that taxpayers fund the government every time we like something they do, we're not five and we do understand, but the one thing we do know is that you don't pay for your healthcare, no matter how much you need or how often, no matter how little tax you've ever paid or ever will pay in your life. Healthcare is free in the UK. Free. No charge.
Entitlement…?
And nonsense. Healthcare is free in the UK. Roads are free in the UK, apart from a handful of toll roads and bridges.
Electricity is not free. I pay for that. Earning a salary is not free. I pay for that. Internet access is not free, I pay for that. But the healthcare is free. I can visit the doctor as many times as I like, I can have the most insanely expensive operation and I won't get charged a penny.
At the theme park, the rides are free after you've paid admission. You can go on as many as you like until you decide to go home or the park closes. The food isn't free, you have to pay for that. At the hospital, you don't have to even pay admission, and you absolutely don't have to be a taxpayer, all the healthcare is free. But the car parking and the food aren't free (unless you're an inpatient), you have to pay for those.
Please see the sources I dropped in the other comment. The primary source of funding is general taxation. Which again I am in favor of.
The theme park is not free. You would say “we paid to go there.” You paid to go to the hospital Even if you aren’t charged for every individual thing you did while you were there. Your healthcare is not free.
You are doing a lot of maneuvering to bend the meaning of these words. But when you went to the hospital, you paid for it already.
No I didn't pay already - I've paid far less in tax than I've had spent on me in hospitals. I didn't pay. Children don't pay. Pensioners don't pay. People on universal don't pay. Not even billionaires pay for healthcare unless they go private. No one pays for healthcare in the UK apart from the government. It's free.
Yes, absolutely the government is funded by taxation. But taxation is paid according to income, it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you use healthcare. The healthcare is free. Earned income is not.
It doesn’t matter if you paid less than you cost! You spent money on it! What are you not getting here? A good deal doesn’t mean you didn’t pay for something that’s insane.
I never said it has anything to do with whether or not you use healthcare or to what extent. You are paying into the pot and you are extracting from it (as is your right!) when you go to the hospital. You are paying for your nation’s healthcare every day, every year. It is not free. By definition. And it is a GOOD system!
Dude this is speaking to a brick wall. How many sources do I need to show you? You are paying taxes, those taxes fund the hospitals. You are paying for healthcare. I’m out lmao I can’t believe I let you drag out this conversation this long - you’re either a troll or just too obstinate to function
No, free healthcare has NOTHING to do with being a taxpayer or not - everyone gets it - no one checks your taxpaying credentials when you enter the hospital, that would be monstrous. The healthcare is free. Taxes are charges on income, not charges on healthcare. The healthcare is free, the income isn't.
👍
Define "worthwhile investment "
the health of your people is absolutely a worthwhile investment by all definitions. It’s the right thing to do/ethical, it makes them happy/support their government if you’re thinking politically, and a healthy populace does more for society/the country/economy/whatever you care about.
What’s with the bait nonsense say what you want to say.
There is an obsessed with going to university - yes education is excellent but to end up in so much debt at such a young age is awful.
Especially the stoopid requirement for so many "entry" level corporate roles that demand a degree, despite the role never using any skills from that degree. Recruitment seems to think having a degree automatically means a person with a degree will be the best hire.
And trades - they are overshadowed because having a degree seems to be a better route career wise.
I am not obsessed with going to university. I think everybody should have access to university. That does not mean everybody should go.
We have somewhat started to fund trade schools and community colleges and such here in the US so the assumption would be that if we had a universal education of some kind it would include community colleges and trade school and conservatories.
Agreed that there must be greater access to education. Its just sucks for the less well off to be saddled with so much debt to do so.
An educated electorate.
Having a bunch of uneducated dumbasses fucks up your country.