Education

California, for instance, spends very little money on ME wars or even wars in Latin America, and most of the immigration that does cost money is from Mexico (not a hotbed of civil war, at least not for a century).

Kansas, even less.

What states spend money on instead of post-secondary is K-12 education (much of which goes to SpEd); on Medicaid in its various avatars; on other entitlement programs. When times are good, they increase such programs, when times are tight they cut those and other programs. The result has been, for example, that UC has been squeezed roughly in bad times and seldom "made whole" in good times.

We can blame anti-government Prop 13, but the overall trend is in spite of that and far greater than that.

For a lot of the education funding increases we look to SCOTUS decisions. For others, we look at federal government priorities and local priorities.

We can argue about whether the nearly 1/5 of the federal budget that goes for the DOD is worth it. Nearly 1/2 of federal spending is for health or social security (with an additional amount for the various welfare programs).

For states, we have about a quarter going to K-12 education, over 15% going to Medicaid and similar programs, almost 15% for higher ed. But what we hear about is the 4% or so that goes to corrections, and how it's increased from nearly nothing to 4% (while K-12 spending has more than doubled from an already doughty figure ... remember 1% to 4% of a budget is a 300% increase, while 50% to 95% isn't even double and therefore must involve less actual money!).

As for student debt, much of what's owed is necessary. But I've seen more than one senior, upon receiving notice of monetary awards for their frosh year, discuss their apt., their new clothes, vehicle, etc., etc. ... very little of which has to do with education. Or they pass up in-state tuition at a solid school for out-of-state tuition at a school that's no better. They may bargain for Ivy League or Tier I in their "home" state because they're transplants from Louisiana or Alabama or California, but they pay for that without considering that the degree they want has a trivial Tier I or Ivy League bump in post-college income. I hear "I have $120k in debt" and fail to hear anything else: "I went to Yale and majored in basketweaving, dumb choice" or "I went to Yale and now my starting salary is $100k/year." None of the "I went to grad school to major in archeology, now I have a $30k/year job and am saddled not just with my tuition and living expenses, but also the cost of my two years in Greece." We hear partial info and assume we know it all.

Meanwhile, I did years of grad school and had far less debt than many with just a 4-year degree--heck, less than many with a 2-year degree. But I was in-state after the first year (which accounted for most of my debt), worked, lived very, very cheaply, dispensed with the car, and basically recognized that every dollar I borrowed would have to be repaid, over many years, at 3-4% interest. Every meal out I forewent had a return of 3%. Every dollar I earned had a rate of return of 3%, and given the amount I could have borrowed I'm still reaping that ghostlike interest to this day, after 7 years of nearly 0% interest. What a deal. Even somebody living on cheese and beans in a 250 sq ft apt. 3 miles from campus could appreciate it. Not a friend who ate out regularly, lived close to campus, had a car, and had an active night life ... and after dropping out of the grad program had many 10s of thousands of dollars in debt to whine about.