It may be free but fewer people attend university in European countries (apart from wealthy Luxembourg) than in the US. So essentially, the “free” university is a tax on everyone that mostly benefits the rich. I don’t think Americans want that.
Imagine I bake and give you a cake, it's still a "free cake" even though I've put the work into baking it and other people have put the work into harvesting the ingredients and bringing them to me.
No it isn't, presumably that person will graduate and go on to have a career where they are paid a salary and pay taxes on that salary. How is paying higher taxes for one's entire working life different than making payments on a loan with lower taxes?
Good point. The rich need to pay taxes, else there is civilization only for the rich. Consider Alabama, a lowtax state, thanks to the 1901 constitution that the landowners and industrialists wrote to protect their wealth and look what shape the state is in.