Ruthlessly debunk the idea that wanting free healthcare, schooling, housing, etc. means you're just entitled and lazy

You need human capital for a society to function. All of these necessities for someone to live a dignified life amount to investments in human capital. The economy cannot function without a workforce that is healthy, educated and housed. It's like saying people who suffered under chattel slavery demanding to be fed made them entitled and lazy. To have a shortage of these necessities is tantamount to abandoning some subset of the population.

Health-care: No human should have the power to say to another, I have the cure to your life threatening illness, and if you do not go into life destroying debt to receive it, you will die.

Schooling: Most if not all of the knowledge being presented at schools is the combined wisdom and work of all humans up to this point. No one owns that knowledge, and those that claim to are exploiting the work of our entire species for personal gain.

Housing: No human should have the right to tell another that they can have a place to live, but only if you pay them an unreasonable sum to live there. Buying multiple properties in hope that the price of housing will always increase as a strategy to retire is selfish. Adding demand to the housing market kills the chances of future generations ever owning thier own property/dwelling.

"Greed is good. We should all be as self-interested as possible."

"Okay, I greedily want Single Payer Healthcare. I selfishly want Public Housing."

"... "

Society doesn't exist without society. Healthcare, education, housing, and many more goods and services are the basic things that a society needs to function. It's the same with drinking water, food, sanitation, waste management, and in modern society, roads, telecommunications, ports, shipping lanes, outdoor spaces, recreation facilities. I won't go on because it's a bloody long list.

Without these things there is no society, no public, no individual. It is an aberration that any of these things are treated as private goods and services to be bought and sold at all. They should all be public, cared for collectively, and free-at-the-point-of-use. That's not lazy. It's just an acknowledgment of what human survival involves. And humans are entitled to all this because if they don't get it they fucking die. Healthcare, education, and housing are just the start. Societies that don't provide the essentials and a little bit more cannot survive. Ask the Tsar or FDR what happens when enough people can't access the basics.

Ask any society that tried to concentrate labour without water treatment. What's that, they died off soon after because the people needed to do the work died of dyssentry and there were no engineers to build sewers, no doctors and nurses to heal the sick, and the grave digger died of pneumonia in the night because they'd been evicted in -40°?

There's an argument, and we're in the right place for it, for the common ownership of all the means of production. Anything else is unsustainable. It doesn't even need a moral argument that denying healthcare, education, and housing is cruel af. It is but it's beside the point. In private hands, as a matter of logic, these goods and services will undoubtedly fail as they have always failed.

Additionally, we are now at a stage of history where almost all production is socialised. As we saw through the pandemic, if someone doesn't do their little bit in the logistics chain, the chain breaks and the goods don't arrive. Private ownership creates unnecessary risks in these chains. And the thing with risks is that they materialise, given enough time.

Putting all this power into collective hands is a longer term goal. Putting the absolute essentials, such as housing, healthcare, and education, into public hands is how to ensure that we survive the middle term to make it to the long term where we can achieve our other goals. As it makes little sense for the public to charge itself (although believe be, the libs will find a way if anyone can), this means making these provisions free for users.

Ask your interlocutor of they want a doctor when they're sick, a plumber to install their sink and toilet, an architect to design their house, a new Tesla, a serviceable road between home and work, a movie to watch on a Friday night, a truck to be driven to their supermarket with boxes of cereal and frozen meals, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc basically anything considered necessary for them to survive. Ask them if they want employees to concentrate on the job rather than trying to wait tables and carry a tray of food with a gangrenous leg, or trying to enter data while worrying about the eviction notice that came in.

Ask them if they want the valedictorian with the brain power to invent a technology that makes flight transport carbon neutral (and so sustainable) to give up their dreams because of the cost and instead spend their life putting tickets on cars parked in the wrong bay for too long. It's not my annual holidays to the Bahamas under threat from climate change, bozo, because I can't afford them anyway.

We need all those people: to receive an appropriate education; to have somewhere to sleep, wash, and unwind so they can rest to be able to do their job without having a breakdown; to have access to a doctor to manage their disease do they don't give it to your kids at school; etc; etc; etc.

Hey! I’m very far from the political views most people have in this community/instance.

However, please keep in mind that what you mention is not a very supported premise in Europe (where I’m from). I’m somewhat conservative (which here has absolutely nothing to do with the term conservative in US or the sh1t bag that is the republicans party)

In my EU countries people are happy to pay way bigger taxes in order to have health, schools etc owned and managed by the government.

It’s not about being lazy etc. this provides a safety net for people financially belonging to all the spectrum .

Free school is one of the things with bigger impact in birth rates / desire to have children. Colleges are very expansive and takes away a big chunk of the wages. If it weren’t for that, women would have less children, would essentially be burnt out as well.

A new policy that is also having a lot of impact is free access to kindergartens. Otherwise, how would you do with the babies? Not have them? Not everyone lives near their parents potentially retired to take care of the child. No access to the kindergarten would be a huge blunt to a couple (especially working class working in industrial places, plants, logistics etc).

All in all, it brings a huge impact in the country. I’m writing on my phone (which sucks for long texts) but I can add more stuff later

Oh small detail, here, if you spend a month in intensive care unit (say, with legionella for instance) you will have a small bill to pay. If I would that amount of time in a private hospital I’d have to sell my house, literally. This happened with someone I know (eventually managed to negotiate the payment to avoid losing house)