I’d be interested a concrete example of how you believe the 1980s was somehow different as far as government services today - and our course what country.
It was USA. It's hard to explain how the national debt eroded the government's ability to provide public education and other government services like it used to, but here's an attempt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_policy_of_the_Ronald_...
The irony is that we're still debating this after 40+ years with new calls to eliminate the Department of Education, so in a way, things haven't changed. That's not to say they didn't change, just that any progress made has been eroded back to square one. That's the tragedy I was trying to convey.
I'd like to touch on how your tactic of undermining my point by asking me to do your legwork, then waiting for me or someone else to jump in and defend it, and then claiming victory when no one shows up, creates a climate of fear and ignorance.
I can't find a logical fallacy for it:
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
On the one hand, it's up to me to defend my point. But on the other, widespread criticism of the experiences of people who were there promotes division. Allowing the divide and conquer strategy to sway people into voting against their own self-interest, undermining democracy and the rule of law.
The way these debates used to play out was that the academic position was held in high regard. Because it covers a broad context. Asking for specific answers that were already generally known was considered a distraction, or a rhetorical question used to distract from the speaker's main point.
Ask yourself what common knowledge is known about education, where it receives its funding, who teaches and who attends. How that's changed in recent decades due to socioeconomic forces. Who might benefit from such changes, and who suffers due to them. And would I state something that can't be backed up by overwhelming evidence in the public record?
Those critical thinking skills used to be prerequisites to winning debates. Now it's easier to just dismiss arguments because others don't have time to get involved, or just want to keep their heads down.
I'd like to see a term for your tactic get added to the logical fallacies list. I just don't know what to call it. It's analogous to argumentum ad logicam, where you're implying that what I said was false, not because my argument was invalid, but because I omitted evidence that anyone could add or fact-check.
> I'd like to touch on how your tactic of undermining my point by asking me to do your legwork, then waiting for me or someone else to jump in and defend it, and then claiming victory when no one shows up, creates a climate of fear and ignorance.
It’s called sealioning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
> Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate", and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings. The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki, which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".
The original comic:
The Department of Education did not exist in the US until 1980. It was created by Carter and signed into law in late 1979. Reagan took office in 1981.
It of course had a predecessor going far back. At any rate, in 1980, the Department of Education had a budget of 14 billion. Today, it gets about ~80 billion. A quick Google claims that 14 billion in 1980 dollars is equal to 53 billion today. So the federal government seems to be funding education at much higher levels. Of course, most education funding is at the state and local level, not federal.
This generally goes along with expectations, since the USA spends more per capita on education than almost any other country in the world at #5.
I agree that there are major problems with education in the US, but more money is not going to solve them. It simply gets redirected into unproductive outlets and education "science" quackery like three-cueing. We could probably go back to 1980 levels of spending with the right reforms, and then look at doing things like 2xing teacher salaries and reducing classroom sizes.
Beyond K12 stats are harder to track down, but "continuing education" and government-funded classes for adults are easy to find. And of course, we have the Internet.