The Great Debate - Free College For All

[sanantone]

Call me patriotic, but I'd like to keep enough education to keep our innovation going and I don't think that the old school "high school drop out makes it big" ideals will always work in a modern world driven by STEM products.

It doesn't work because most of the Americans who drop out of high school do so because they come from unstable environments. 

I am not sure about that.  New Mexico has the highest drop-out rate and weird Oregon the second highest drop out rate.  I think culture is huge.

New Mexico is one of the poorest states with a high percentage of Native Americans. Native Americans have high rates of suicide, alcoholism, poverty, and domestic violence.

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It is possible to save a million dollars by the time you retire, but that's nothing special. A million dollars doesn't go very far these days, and it will be worth even less a few decades from now. One million dollars gives you $50k per year to live off of for 20 years or $33,333 per year to live off of for 30 years.

Off the original info here, but this is not correct.  The S&P has averaged 10% over the last 100 years (and I've made more than that for the last 20 years on average).  Even if you were only earning 5% and pulling out 5% ($50k), you'll still never touch the principal.   If you have $1M in the stock market making somewhere in the 10-12% range annually, and pulling out 8% ($80k), you'll never run out of money and have a pretty good income.  The only way your scenario happens is if you don't have that money invested in ANYTHING, just sitting in a coffee can buried in your backyard.

That's right if you continue to invest. Of course, one should invest conservatively while in retirement. 
Many retirements were delayed during the last recession because people lost upwards of 40% of their retirement 401ks.