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Re: [Phys-L] Private schools



At 1:35 AM +0000 7/11/12, Ken Caviness wrote:

I agree the Abington Hospital example highlights an unfair and undesirable situation, but don't agree that it is a valid analogy for the school voucher discussion.

You ignore the injustice of the current subsidizing of U.S. public education by taxes paid by a group of citizens who aren't using the system and who are paying for alternatives, and seem to feel that if you can't continue to pick the pockets of these other people, your rights are being infringed upon.

I think your argument has been superceded by the SCOTUS. They have clearly decided that one cannot decide to pay taxes only for those government functions that one approves of. Hence it is quite legal and justifiable to insist that everyone pay their school taxes, whether they have a child in the system or not. The argument is that the entire society benefits if the schools provide a well educated population, so everyone needs to be sure that they pay for the education of all the children. Those who choose to send their children to private schools are economically equivalent to those who pay but choose not to have children. Those who put lots of children through the public schools will obviously get a bargain, compared tot he cost of educating them all in private schools. Taxes are not equal for all, but presumably the benefits are.

It would appear that the SDA parents that you spoke of have gotten it exactly right--everyone has the right to an education, and everyone should be obligated to pay for it, whether they take advantage of it or not.

Hugh

--
Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net

I have been wondering for a long time why some of our own defense officials do not
put more emphasis on finding a good substitute for oil and worry less about where
more oil is to come from. Our people are ingenious. New discoveries are all around
us, and when we have to make them, we nearly always do.

Eleanor Roosevelt
February 13, 1948