Value of schooling versus expense

One of the many flawed arguments that people make for increasing school funding is the idea that more money comes from that investment than we put in. Money doesn't come out of thin air, so how exactly are we supposed to be getting more money from these expenses? In short, we don't. We are actually doing more to shift money around than to increase money.

We live in a credentialist society. Instead of judging individuals on their ability to contribute, we judge them based on the pieces of paper acquired. In many cases, you could argue that these pieces of paper were bought. Under such a model, people with a piece of paper typically do better than people without a similar piece of paper.

As we have seen with high school diplomas, the more people acquire credentials, the less they are worth. Some have referred to this issue as credential inflation. A vast majority of those who insist that increased school funding will pay for itself and then some flat out ignore the implications of credential inflation.

This same concept means that people who don't obtain more advanced credentials are having doors slammed shut on them. In some cases, highly capable individuals are being prohibited from making meaningful contributions to society entirely because they did not acquire a piece of paper.

Let me say this clearly. People who are allowed to make more money are more likely to make more money. That's why college degrees are associated with higher paying jobs. That does not mean that bigger investments will increase the wealth of society.

Of course, there's one more complication I wanted to mention. We are living in an increasingly globalized society. As a result, small countries can potentially increase their wealth through increased school spending. This is because our credentialist tendencies could shift jobs to that country that would have otherwise been created elsewhere. Globally, this would not be a gain.

Although I keep hearing about school spending paying for itself, I have yet to see any real evidence to back the claim. Credential inflation is constantly ignored. The associated loss of opportunity is ignored. We look exclusively at the benefits while acting as though negatives don't exist.