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Run schools off "user fees"

GreyArea said:
Do you know what he does (or used to do) for a living? Ask him if he has ever had a competent, educated, hard-working employee work for him. And if he has, ask him if he screened out any job applicants who had attended public school.

Because if he did hire such a person, he benefits from their public education. And if they were a generation or two younger than him, he even helped pay for it.

You can also ask him the same thing about the nurses and doctors in his hospital and his nursing home, and about a million other things he benefits from but is too cheap to willingly pay for.
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He claims to work in the aviation industry. Not as a pilot though.

His big stink over education seems to stem from the fact that a teachers union in Buffalo has a contract stipulation that allows them to get reconstructive cosmetic surgery after a disfiguring incident. He, of course, calls this "bigger boobs for teachers" and thinks it is the defining example of public service unions run amok.

I think this is the thread where he starts to go off on this.
 
Travis said:
His big stink over education seems to stem from the fact that a teachers union in Buffalo has a contract stipulation that allows them to get reconstructive cosmetic surgery after a disfiguring incident.
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Actually it allows plastic surgery for any reason, even purely cosmetic/vanity.
 
I've had lengthy arguments, even here, with people that hold the point of view in the OP. What it ultimately came down to is that they seemed to think there was something unique about spending decisions (as opposed to other kinds of legislation) that made representative democracy insufficient to serve their interests. For spending on things they don't want or don't use, they felt they should not be forced to pay taxes for it if they did not volunteer to contribute to that particular expenditure.
 
GreyArea said:
Hold on there, pardner. I am child-free, and I like the term. But I understand the great things that taxation makes possible and I strongly support public education. It is better to live among well-educated, well-informed people regardless of whether or not one bore any of them oneself.
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I don't care for the term. It sounds too much like something that work to be free of, like a roach-free kitchen or a pesticide-free garden.

I'm sort of in the same boat, being childless, more due to my inability to find a wife during my more fertile years than any intention to avoid children, but I don't really have too many regrets. And like you, I fully support taxation that supports schools, even though I will never have a child that benefits from that.

But really, we are only arguing semantics here. Whether I am clueless or clue-free is probably not important. They just sound different.
 
The truth of the matter is that a large pool of uneducated people allows the haves to control the have-nots more or less completely.

Hence the cuts in education we see from the Republicans, among other things.
 
That seems awfully shortsighted since, if you want a successful business, you need a large pool of educated people to choose your employees from.
 
Travis said:
That seems awfully shortsighted since, if you want a successful business, you need a large pool of educated people to choose your employees from.
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Only in a modern first world economy. The goal here is to become the ruling class in a third world economy.
 
Heres what bothers me. Why do people with children get tax breaks for having kids??

IS the US dangerously underpopulated?? Why should you be rewarded for having adding another lil tax dollar sucking leech into the country. Schools alone eat up all sorts of money!
 
Tmy said:
Heres what bothers me. Why do people with children get tax breaks for having kids??

IS the US dangerously underpopulated?? Why should you be rewarded for having adding another lil tax dollar sucking leech into the country. Schools alone eat up all sorts of money!
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Because along with the little house, picket fence, & lovable mutt that steals the apple pie mom just made offa the windowsill, the kids are a part of the American Dream (not Dusty) that people who see the 50s as the greatest time ever in the history of Earth are trying to sell.
 
Travis said:
I was arguing with a high speed rail opponent (so a typical Monday night for me) when all of sudden he pulls out something I found rather appalling: he stated he was sick and tired of paying taxes for schools when he has no children. Then he went into a plan where schools would be done purely by user fees with the idea that the poor don't really need education anyways to do the basic jobs suited for them.

Seriously.

And this guy goes by the handle "Sobering Reality" too. :rolleyes:

Anyways this argument sounded a bit too much like it was lifted from some libertarian blog. Has anyone heard of a plan to do away with public education making the rounds lately?
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Uh, yes, the Teabaggers and some related have been pushing for that as a minimum with preference for no public schools.
 
Border Reiver said:
So, we can hypothesize about Clayton Moore's user name on other forums - he's big on the home school, non-government run school thing.
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No problem if he wasn't trashing the memory of the REAL Lone Ranger.
 
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ponderingturtle said:
Only in a modern first world economy. The goal here is to become the ruling class in a third world economy.
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Maybe I'm weird but I'd rather be part of a productive upper\middle class in a prosperous city then a small island of decadence in a sea of misery.
 
Markets and federalism institutionalize humility on the part of State (government, generally) actors. If a policy dispute turns on a matter of taste, numerous local policy regimes and competitive markets in goods and services allow for the expression of varied tastes while the contest for control of a State-monopoly supplier of goods and services must inevitably create unhappy losers (who may comprise the vast majority; imagine the outcome of a nationwide vote on the one size and style of shoes we all must wear). If a policy dispute turns on a matter of fact, where "What works?" is an empirical question, numerous local policy regimes and competitive markets in goods and services will generate more information than will a State-monopoly enterprise. A State-monopoly enterprise is an experiment with one treatment and no controls, a retarded experimental design.

The welfare-economic case for subsidization of pre-college education is weak and the case for direct State (government, generally) operation of schools is weaker still. The education industry is not a natural monopoly. Natural monopoly is the usual argument for State operation of an industry. The "public goods" argument implies subsidy and regulation of an industry, at most, not State operation of an industry. Markets in education services put the choice of school in the hands of people who know individual children best and are most reliably concerned for their welfare, their parents. Vouchers woud be a big step up from the current policy, which restricts parents' optiond for the use of the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel. The argument for subsidization (e.g., vouchers) contains a defect: the State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". Still, vouchers, tuition tax credits, subsidized homeschooling and other forms of parent control would be a big step up from the current State-monopoly system.

I recommend the introductory background material in E.G. West, "School Vouchers in Principle and Practice: A Survey", (World Bank Research Observer, Feb. 1997).
 
Travis: "...schools would be done purely by user fees with the idea that the poor don't really need education anyways to do the basic jobs suited for them...Has anyone heard of a plan to do away with public education making the rounds lately?"

Google "Separation of School and State".

Why suppose that the elimination of tax subsidies and compulsory school attendance statutes would "do away with public education"? NOT("school"="education"). NOT("government-operated schooling"="public education"). Homeschoolers and students in independent and parochial schools are as much "the public" as are students in government schools. Teachers in independent and parochial schools are as much "the public" as are teachers in government schools.

Richard Arkwright, Cyrus McCormick, and Thomas Edison were homeschooled. Einstein and Gandhi opposed compulsory attendance at school.

Are we naked because the State does not operate textile mills and clothing stores? Are we starving because the State does not operate farms, grocery stores, and restaurants?

The institution that people in the US call "the public school system" originated in Congregationalist indoctrination and, later, anti-Catholic bigotry. It has become an employment program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel. If this last point is not so, why cannot any student take, at any age, an exit exam (the GED will do) and apply the taxpayers' $12,000 per pupil-year education subsidy toward post-secondary tuition or toward a wage subsidy at any qualified private sector employer. That is, why not include on-the-job training in the definition of "education"?

If it is fraud for a mechanic to charge for the repair of a functional motor and if it is fraud for a physician to charge for the treatment of a healthy patient, then it is fraud for a teacher, school, school district, or government to charge taxpayers for the instruction of a child who does not need our help.
 
I've seen the product of "home schools."

We can do with fewer kids who think Jesus hunted dinosaurs with Ronald Reagan.
 
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