>Are you willing to go up to 40 middle class families and demand that each of them pay $1000 to have a more refined waiter who vaguely remembers some Proust after partying for 4 years?
Yes, I am. Education is a diversified investment. While you will get a few negative returns (e.g. your waiters with English BAs), you will also get a handful of exceptional returns (e.g. Sergey Brin). As long as the overall ROI is positive, public education is a good thing.
Off-topic, but I'm curious about the phrase "I could care less". Here in Australia, the phrase is "I couldn't care less". Is "I could care less" an American usage?
I use multiple languages in my day job. For the majority of tasks, I use Ada (with some low-level C and Assembly thrown in). For recent support tasks, I have used Python for scripting purposes and Visual Basic for creating macro-based spreadsheets.
Depending on your definition of programming language, I also regularly use LabVIEW to interface with test equipment and MATLAB for simulation and analysis.