I too live in country with free university, and yet I'm also paying off student loans. Tuition may have been free, but rent and food wasn't.

1.5% interest is well under the rate of return I got in the market over that period. I was making minimum payments the whole time.

The payments were tiered somehow. I think I was paying around $50 a month when I graduated and that ended up at like $140 by the time I paid it off.

Now do wages and taxes.

and healthcare and safety

US is outrageously safe. People are just terrible at assessing actual risk vs. perceived risk. What specifically do you think is unsafe about the US?

Healthcare, yah that kinda sucks. We’ve got a really high ceiling and a really low floor. Other countries have a lower ceiling and a much higher floor. A significant problem in the US is that people don’t know how to navigate the health care system. That raises the floor quite a bit for the average person.

Heh, I paid off all my student debt, about that much, with the starting bonus from my first job after school. America educations are basically free if you don't do some goofy shit like go into debt to study literature.