Education viewed as an economic proposition does not always win the calculation.
What if you pulled Gannon Leblanc’s analysis back 4 years and had everyone enter the workforce at 14? Then you could get four more years of work in the mills, and present value them from an early age.
Society would save all that stupid education expenditure AND get taxes from the teenaged workers who would have a lot of energy.
I guess thankfully for us, unions hate competition from young, energetic workers and teacher's unions are powerful enough to guarantee jobs for gobs of high school teachers.
Energy? Most 14 year old kids I know sleep a lot.