Wow, Mari, you're really on the warpath today. Most of those things (russotto's kids' college education, medical care, their savings or investments or a retirement plan) do
not fall into the category of "systems which can absorb arbitrary amounts of money without improving."
The only one you listed that
might fit that category is the military, and who the hell's talking about the military here? We're talking about whether "high per capita income and high productivity make it possible for the United States to afford much greater social welfare spending."
Historically, we don't spend as much on welfare spending as other countries because
we don't think it's a good idea. It's far from a documented fact that all our problems would just disappear if we threw more money at the problem. How can the D.C. school district be the lowest-performing and the most highly-funded if that's the case?
And this is just sentimental nonsense:
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In a less complex world, Abe Lincoln could study a book by firelight and rise to become President of the United States. Now, Lincoln would be lucky to have a career as a bus boy with such a background.
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First of all, Abe Lincoln did more than study a book by firelight. He started business after business, failing at most of them, being relatively poor for a lot of those years. Bus boys don't start their own businesses, or they don't stay bus boys for long. Abe Lincoln was successful because he was determined to be, not because social welfare spending was somehow higher back in his day (far, far from it.)
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If the future global economy will favor those with an education from MIT, it will delegate to the human refuse pile those who have a high school diploma from an inner city school in the Bronx or a poor rural area in far western Colorado.
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The
past global economy favored those with an education from MIT, too. Your homilies break down your credibility, mari. (And though you may not think it, you do have credibility with me in many areas.) The human refuse pile? Where, pray tell, is that? I can only guess that you must mean that those with just a high school diploma will have to work a lower-paid job. Well, duh. The man from MIT is designing nanotechnology to cure cancer, the high-school graduate isn't capable of that. He's not going to get paid the same.
Unless! he has studied hard all through high school, despite the fact that his school was crappy, and he is able to get into a college--probably not MIT, but better than a community college--on a scholarship which he will
most certainly qualify for, and he perhaps will have the ability to become a technician for that MIT guy one day... and here's the important part:
his children will be in a better position because of it.
They won't have to go to that crappy school, they'll move to a better neighborhood and go to a better school, and maybe get into MIT. It almost always takes more than a generation to be extremely successful, just like it takes more than a generation to find oneself squarely in poverty.
Here's the thing: I would like to know how many people today who make, say, over $300,000, had grandparents who made an equivalent sum of money in their time. I would guess (though I don't know) that many if not most of them did not.