AFAIK education is a prerequisite to employable citizens and employable citizens is a prerequisite to taxable citizens.

I dont think education is a subsidy, so much as an investment.

You could also say that society subsidised your education and will do the same for other, future citizens.

Also, most families who were eligible, maybe even your own, got the benefits of the tax breaks available to parents.

For some reason many people seem to have a blind spot where they believe that benefits for "parents" or "children" aren't relevant to them if they aren't parents right now. But every adult was a child! ... "like, sure, but what have you done for me lately?".

Why? How old are you? Current forecast is that 80% of benefits are funded, as of 2035. Even if the funding ration continues to decline, as long seniors don't vote themselves out of Social Security, there will still be a pot of revenue from younger working people.

https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html

Assuming I retire at 65, which is pretty much guaranteed not to happen based on economic factors as well as rising retirement age it will be around 2060, 30 years after people are projected to lose 25% of their benefits.

Those kids will be paying taxes the rest of their lives which go to fund education. Either directly (through property taxes on their home), or indirectly (the landlord has to pay property taxes, which comes from rent money).

So in a way everybody pays for their own education after the fact.

As everybody know, kids are a nonstop gravy train /s

But seriously, I’m guessing you don’t have kids?