Almost every child has access to
some education, and then we can pull the arithmetic mean $ per student to dishonestly claim that we are already spending too much on education.
The problem isn't that we spend too little on the average student, it's that we spend too little on some students and far more on others. Finland focused on educational equality and across the board excellence was the result. We can and should learn from their example.
And i don't care about historical norms and numbers for unemployment. Saying "it's the same as it used to be," doesn't mean it's good.
There is an obvious solution to this problem: pull more of the slack out of the bottom end of the labor pool. Wages will rise across the board. It's not like we plan to let the low end starve to death, we may as well get something tangible produced out of public assistance.
The government
can deficit spend such that educational access is increased (my claim), that doesn't mean that every possible expenditure meets that goal (your strawman). However, it is true that even programs like food stamps help young children in poor families leave the nest, get a loan, and go to college without having to worry about how poor mom and dad are going to feed themselves.