The Land of the Free Freeloader

It seems that the dictum of “getting good services in good and bad times” being the price for higher taxation, not to mention being the modern-day equivalent of a serf, just doesn’t work:

The education sector in Europe has been hard hit by cuts in budgets, personnel and investment. Some universities, e.g. in the UK, might even have to be closed down. And some leading institutions could soon lose their top international rankings.

Aren’t you comforted that the huge, meddling nanny state is there to cushion the fall?

Students and pensioners to fill vacancies

Even the northern nations have felt the pinch. In the Netherlands, fiscal 2010–2011 will see 20% cuts in several sectors, including higher education, according to a study put out in February by John Aubrey Douglass from the University of California, Berkeley. Among other things, student scholarships are to be transformed into a system of bank loans for young people. The proposal sparked protests in February, in which over a thousand students occupied lecture halls in Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Utrecht and Rotterdam.

That the students themselves are only real beneficiary of those educations continues to allude the sort that occupy lecture halls for free gub’mint stuff of course, and to be sure the “societal benefit” can’t be much better in a part of the world that doesn’t really invest in R&D, not to mention the “national pride” benefit of all that free gub’mint larnin’...

Wipe Europe off world rankings