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  • The straw man is the idea that anyone believes that education is free in the sense that no one pays for it.

    Understood, I am making that claim, but as I think that is the case I can't see it as a straw man - that is I am not trying to (wilfully) misrepresent an argument, I could of course be mistaken, but my mistake, if shown to be the case, is genuine.

    By 'free' education I mean one that the state pays for. I don't know, maybe some people believe that education literally costs nothing, so no one has to pay, but I've never met them.

    I agree that most people engaged in this kind of conversation tend to understand the basic concepts involved, but I suspect (and my suspicions are based on their arguments) that there is a section of people who do think such a thing exists.

    And when I say they think this, I don't mean to say they actively engage the idea, they more tend to be people thrust along by emotion who hold the idea unthinkingly, they've not really given it much thought, they just assume education should be 'free' without ever considering what that means.

    As for the rest of it, maybe I have misunderstood your more substantive position. It's just that when people start talking about 'bin men' being taxed to fund HE in my experience they tend to the view that people should pay for their own HE and leave the bin men out of it.

    I was at pains to list a cross section of low and high earners (low - high - low - high - low) - I made the deliberate move to not list careers like bankers and politicians (which might have been seen as an appeal to popular emotions.)

    We have a name for an argument that cherry picks - in this case - 'bin men' and makes it's case based on that alone.

    : P

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