Why are conservatives against publicly funded higher education?
Conservatives see higher education as a personal, private good rather than a public one. Hence, “user pays.”There are clear personal benefits to someone who attends university. These are not airy fairy soft benefits like “education” or “personal growth,” but cold hard cash dollar benefits in lifetime career earnings. This has been documented over and over again in the US. The argument is that because higher education is a personal financial investment, the person attending should pay for it, not taxpayers.This also feeds into notions of “limited government” and “tax cuts” that are typical planks of American conservative platforms.While certainly debatable, the “user pays” point of view is a consistent, logical, and intellectually honest argument.There are no doubt other factors at play here that are less logical. Conservatives have a long history of distrusting academia."Never forget," he tells national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig in a conversation on December 14 1972, "the press is the enemy, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy, the professors are the enemy, the professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times." - Richard Nixon recordings confirm popular viewConservatives are often accused of treating poverty as a moral failing of people who lacked personal responsibility. That is, “It’s your own fault if you can’t pay for university.”
Isn’t privatization of health care the best option to reduce costs?
Not in the light of experience. One thing about private companies: they must not only produce a profit, profits must also grow year to year. If you look at countries with government (and thus non-profit) healthcare, such as the Scandanavian countries, Canada, UK, France, and so on, you’ll note that their healthcare costs are substantially lower and their healthcare outcomes are substantially better than those of the US.Privatizing government services leads to degradation of the service (because one way to increase profits is to cut costs, which generally means cutting corners—fewer nurses per patient, for example—and after costs have been cut to the bone, then prices must be raised each year so that profits will grow.Similarly, private prisons have fewer guards, and private-prison corporations (to maintain revenue and profits) lobby state legislatures to put more people in prisons and keep them there longer: mandatory minimum sentences, 3 strikes laws, more felonies that require imprisonment, etc. Example: Inside a Private Prison: Blood, Suicide and Poorly Paid Guards
Why do government cut public spending?
Just like a normal human being, a goverment earns mney (taxation, fees...) and spends it (civil servants salaries, street lighting, school teachers salaries...). A (government budget) deficit occurs when the government spends more than it earns. Not to reduce the deficit, the government can earn more or spend less. In your case, the government tries to spend less. What ou need to understand is that the money governemnt spends, say by paying school teachers, gets into the pockets of people (here school teachers) who will spend it (say buy bread at the bakery) and the businesses bakery) make money and so on... Every dollar the government spends is psent many times over (that's called the multiplier effect). Now when government spends less, the multiplier works in reverse, the school teacher makes less, so does the baker... So in effect by spending less, the governemnt is making the country poorer (the GDP falls). This is especially bad in cases lik enow when the private sector is not spending as much to make up for the decrease in government spending. However, as the government spends less, and the GDP falls, the value of the currency also falls as people basically do not need so much currency so the demand falls and value falls. This makes the country more attractive to foreigners, so tourists might some and spend more since to then it is cheaper now. The economy has an autmatic adjusment mechanism, so in the short run while the country suffers as GDP falls, as the currency loses value, tourists come in , foerigners buy local products, and GDP goes back up in the long run. Now, if all governments start to cut spending at all time, in all countries there will be less to spend, fewer foreigners will buy local products, there will be fewer tourists and it will take much much longer for the automatic mechanism to increase GDP again.