Faced with limited resources, how do we distribute them?

[Akvod]

HappySqurriel said:

Akvod said:
What will you guys say to people who don't like the idea of human capital, or think that there isn't free/equal opportunity to succeed in a capitalist society?

What resources or services should the government provide for everybody? Should public education be provided and brought up to par? Or should we encourage a private education market? How do we deal with IPs for "necessities" like vaccines.

Who should get what, and why? By merit?

Labour is a very valuable resource, and education is a corner-stone of more efficient use of that resource. High quality affordable (possibly public) education is important for the development of an economy, and the unfortunate problem in many public education systems is that (in spite of being in school for 10 to 12 years) a large portion of the studendts did not receive a high enough quality of education to make them more efficient than an uneducated worker in a third world country.

Education is a very unusual field because it has not seen the kinds of productivity gains over the past century that most other fields have. If it did, the typical teacher today could teach 60 students and they would have finished the 12 years of curriculum in 6 years. Some of this may be physical limitations in how people learn, but physical limitations have been shattered in most sporting fields as unknown 13 year olds are often better athletes than professionals were 40 years ago.

What would you say to unskilled workers who do not have the time or ability to get an education/training for another job (example, factory line workers who get laid off)?