The important figure is net taxes payed. You add all the taxes you pay and subtract all the direct benefits you gain. If someone pays a lot of taxes but gets free high school education for their 4 children and medicare for their sick wife, he is a net winner of the system.
Modern states spend 60-80% of their income for social things. Defense, police, education and infrastructure are only a fraction of the expenses (at least in europe).
Since rich people rarely use social services, every tax cut directly eases their tax-burden. Middle class people end up paying less taxes but also receive less benefits from the goverment.
I am not saying the author is wrong, but you need to compare the net money paid to goverment.
Whenever a recession hits a country everbody doubts their system. They look for other countries which are growing at the moment and try to emulate their success.
I still remember the time when the japanese were strong and everybody (europeans and americans) tried to become japanese, use their culture and work ethic.
In a decade or two, the american will forget the recession and wonder about wierd articles like this one.
I think the Java culture plays a big part in the whole mess.
It would be easily possible in other languages to write 4 implementations of a basic list or public setter/getter for every member or buffered stream interfaces for all kinds of I/O.
Its not done because long solutions are frowned upon.
a) He compares a 300k education over 4 yeards with an average master degree income. I have no idea about prices in the US but i would be very surprised if the decent, but not stellar schools have a 50k/year tuition (using 100k as living expenses).
b) We have the same discussion in germany where universities are free. The general consensus about getting a degree seems to be that it is barely worth it (considering opportunity cost and taxes on higher income).
c) I think we see a shift in the value of college degrees and need to change our mindset. In the old days only a small percentage of the population had a degree, yielding a guaranteed job and good career opportunities. Today nearly everybody has a degree and therefore the value goes down.
I think people have to learn that a degree is not the road to riches and that they actually have to work and learn to get a good job.
Another myth is this: I can have the same job my father had and he didnt need a college degree. That is just plain wrong. To do the same job your father did, you need a much higher education today. Accountant with a short certificate in the old days become B.A. in economics today. Simple configuration which might be done by a clever industrial mechanic in the 60s need a complete engineer degree today.
Auth is terrible, models and forms need to be more flexible. Also a lot of little things like forms myform.as_div are missing.