i want to weigh in a little on the question of targeting benefits v universality, because it's just another example of the skewed spectrum.

if you read marx, he had this idea: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. and, he actually used that to argue for something roughly equivalent to what we might call equity rather than equality, nowadays.

i believe that the exact example he used was housing, as it flips the paradigm over. in capitalism, you get whatever house that you can afford, which may mean that large families at the bottom of the income scale may live in poverty and squalor. the argument marx was making was that housing should be determined by need, rather than status. so, a single doctor may end up living in a room, while a janitor with six kids lives in a mansion - because that would reflect their needs.

and, generally, since then, leftists have argued that we should come together to ensure that we all have access to what we need, not that we should have an equality of outcome so that we can all access what we want through universal benefits. that universality would generally be more readily associated with liberalism, rather than socialism.

so, what would marx and his contemporaries (like bakunin.) think regarding how resources should be distributed on issues like tuition and health care? well, they would abolish the financial component of it in the first place, granted. but, insofar as they accepted the validity of the state at all, they would have seen it as an equalizer, to ensure that those who have less are granted access to what they need. they would not for a second accept the idea that everybody should get the same subsidy, whether they need it or not.

i'm not telling you what you should think.

but, historically speaking, means-testing is actually the more readily socialist and more explicitly left-wing policy, whereas universality is kind of more of a bourgeois liberal kind of thing.