Like the US, in Europe most of the poor don't go to college. While they pay less taxes, they do pay taxes, and that money pays for the upper class to get their education (not free, paid for by everyone else).
The root of the social equality issues in the US are vastly far removed from "free college". It's the exact opposite - we need fewer marginal colleges, fewer for profit colleges, fewer marginal graduates, fewer drop outs, and more job training.
If the US could take one lesson from European education, it would be a good system of tracking students into job training in high school.
Depends on how you define poor but in Europe lower class families with no studies sending their children to become doctors or engineers is commonplace (without grants, students that are not super high achievers). In USA as far as I can see this is not true those families can't afford the cost and debt and even if the student could ends up with a huge debt for a large part of his life with no assistance and a worse social net. This is absolutely not the case in Europe. We are talking about people who want to get into college and can't afford it. Happens a lot more in the US.
The root of the social equality issues in the US are vastly far removed from "free college". It's the exact opposite - we need fewer marginal colleges, fewer for profit colleges, fewer marginal graduates, fewer drop outs, and more job training.
If the US could take one lesson from European education, it would be a good system of tracking students into job training in high school.