American Public Schools. Should they continue to be funded?

Not fair at all. Everyone should contribute to education per the rates of the tax code. Everyone benefits from an educated workforce.

 

"Everyone benefits from an educated workforce." Blah, blah, blah... this is the line we've been force-fed for decades. But, again, it's not 'education' that I object to -- it's the blatantly unfair, blatantly unjust way that ALL Americans are taxed that is so obviously wrong. Parents should bear the greatest share of the cost, and those who have no children at all should not be taxed at all, or, at most, only a fraction of what those who actually benefit would pay in taxes.

And property? PRIVATE PROPERTY?! What justification is there for private property to be taxed at all -- no matter who owns it...?! Just more old 20th-century socialist extortion of wealth from the "low-hanging fruit" of property owners who can't get away from this tyranny without selling their property and clearing out.

 

It's absolutely true. Economic growth is dependent on an educated work force which benefits everyone.

 

The traditional family is the enemy of the statists.

 

The state - the judiciary & the executive - uphold the rule of law & make the ownership of real property possible. Taxation long predates Socialism, @ least the formal Socialist systems. Taxes go back @ least to feudal times, as I understand it. Something about the divine rights of kings - although infrastructure in that day & age was much simpler than it is now. Mostly it was the keep, maybe a palisade, maybe in time a moat. Dig a well within the walls, put up towers with crenellations & embrasures & arrow slits. Effective in their day.

The social contract even then (even if unstated - although I think it was explicit in the feudal lord's enfiefment to the monarch) was that the vassals owed obedience & support & taxes (in kind or in coin) to the local lord, who protected them against bandits & the occasional war. & who in turn owed loyalty & support (& men @ arms) to his monarch.

 

They were not always effective on how they protected their people either. That is primarily how the Spanish lost the South west in America. They would not live up to their pledge to protect the people. The United States honored that requirement because the people had a say. Loyalty switched by and large to the American system. We also have a say in how much and for what reason we are to be taxed. When we have a strong middle class once again....wealth redistribution will not be so desirable. Perhaps this is why "socialist minded" administrations, as in the last one, do not favor building a middle class.

 

The Pilgrims tried it and it was an utter failure.

 

You seem to be against our society insuring an educated populice. That if you do not have a direct personal benefit then you as a member of our society have no interest in paying for it. Of course whether one benefits living in a society with and educated poplice derives benefit from that even if they are not the one currently receiving the education is up for debate.

I have never had a peraonal need for the police or the fire departments either.

Ok how aboiut you not having any dealings with the people who were educated only those who were not.

Its your education you are paying for with your property taxes, and I am for vouchers to be used at charter and private schools. Its the added value to your property that you are paying for. Its the quality of life in your community you are paying for. Feel free to mount the campign to end taxpayer funding in your county and watch it dry up as people move out.

 

Fine! Wonderful! Great! By all means, educate YOUR children -- and YOU pay the bill! You may have sweet, nice, intelligent, wonderful children who will become millionaires and share their wealth with you when they reach adulthood. You enjoy all of that, too.

But leave me and my bank account OUT of it. Sorry to have to be so blunt, but YOUR children are YOUR business and should not cause me to be heavily taxed on MY private property....

Hint: Are you willing to pay the bills for me to send my dogs to obedience school...?!

 

On Spain in what's now the Southwest US? That's a very simplified view of the history. Spain was a very centralized state, & power flowed from the crown & the viceregal capital in Mexico City. That's where the powerful wanted to live, to be in the heart of empire. & so the peripheries, & especially the northern marches, were always out of the loop & in low regard. Spain didn't truly colonize in Mexico - there were already vast numbers of Native Peoples there, & Spain picked & chose allies among them. Relatively few women came over from Spain, so the Spanish married (if they married) Native Peoples. Top administrators & their families were imported from Spain - a cause of escalating political tension.

Spain wanted to protect their territory - but they could never devote the resources & attention required for a generations-long project. California efforts were frustrated by the lack of potable water, & the Native Peoples from Florida to Texas to California objected strenuously to the Spanish (& French & British & US) presence. The Spanish Empire was very successful in its time - but they never worked out the power-sharing internally (between Spain & the overseas colonies), nor how to use the gold & silver they extracted to build up the Spanish economy, rather than merely buy manufactured goods from other countries.

 

Oh come on don't make such an inane comparison you're better than that.

Tell me are you denying having a good free for the student education system and an educated populice increases the value of your property?

And again the benefit is to the student not the parent and in fact it is required by law should we also end legal requirements children go to school?

Seems to me you want all the benefits of an educated society but do not want help pay for the cost of that educted populice.

 

Taxation, per se, is not the issue! What IS the issue is the FAIRNESS of a particular taxation! If you don't derive a personal benefit, you shouldn't have to pay the particular personal property tax that produces the benefit.

Think: we all pay taxes for national defense, police and fire department protection, streets and roadways. ALL people can clearly be shown to benefit from these things. Public education is worthwhile -- but only in a personal way to the person being educated, and/or those who share in his forthcoming wealth!

My neighbor has a kid. The kid becomes educated in a public school system. The kid becomes a millionaire success, enriching himself and his parents. Good! Wonderful! Spectacular! But what the hell does any of that wonderfulness actually do that is worth one measurable penny to me? What justification was there in any of this kid's success story that indicated I should have to be taxed on my private property to pay for it?!

Sorry, folks, but this is bullshit! It always has been bullshit, cooked up by people who (like all good socialists) find ways to dig into other peoples' pockets to pay for things that they want....

I'll ask the question again that most of you have conveniently ignored: Should everyone's private property be taxed so that I can send my dog to obedience school? Why not? It's the very same rationale....

 

I appreciate your knowledge of history Hoosier.

 

I am for vouchers also. Any government involvement in education should be at the county level. That way, I as a parent, have much more say in my child's education and some geek from Kalifornia or Taxachussetts.....not so much. I chose where I live.

 

People are the point of a polity. Dogs aren't, however charming they may be.

& for the US, it's far too late to even try to turn back the clock on universal education - it was probably too late in 1898CE, as the US emerged on the World stage. As to the legitimacy of cultural inheritance:

Who invented agriculture?
Who invented language?
Who invented the alphabet?
Who invented mathematics?

No, not everyone needs a neurosurgeon or physicist or rocket scientist. But when the need arises @ the national level - say post-Pearl Harbor in 1941 - There's not enough time to grow a cohort nor even one from scratch. So we estimate the needs of the polity as best we can, & push comes to shove, we go with what we have. Because we don't rigidly assign students to academic specialties nor careers nor life paths in the US (as opposed to lots of Europe & Japan & possibly the Tigers), we get specialists & generalists all over - like the codebreakers who helped win the PTO for us. Or the engineers & scientists who were able to improve RADAR & SONAR & develop the massive theoretical framework & engineering infrastructure & processes to design & test & deploy nuclear weapons.

Is it expensive to run a US-style education system? Yes. Is it worth it? Ask the Nazis & Imperial Japanese Army & Navy flag officers & the Italian Fascists - assuming that you don't need the services of a medium to do that. The US warfighting methodology grinds slowly, but exceedingly fine.

 

Good luck with that. You can refuse to pay your taxes and spend time in jail.

If that could be demonstrated to significantly increase economic growth, sure.

 

Absolutely agree.

 

Yes, tax revenues should fund education. How that education system is implemented however should not be controlled by public sector unions in a corrupt alliance with politicians who determine their salaries and benefits.

 

You're right, and once again the message is clear -- no matter how unfair the taxation is, or no matter how unfairly blanket-taxation is aimed at people who derive no personal benefit from the taxation, EVERYONE MUST PAY OR BE SENT TO PRISON.

I'm still waiting for the punchline where you tell me exactly how having my private property heavily taxed to pay for public schools for somebody else's offspring is of any material, direct benefit to me. That's because THERE ISN'T ANY. It's a wholly unfair tax, based on whimsical, liberal wet-dreams about what an individual citizen "owes" the state -- purely because the state has the power to SEND HIM TO PRISON if he fails to roll over and pay, and pay, and pay, and pay....

. "No kids?! Too bad, you gotta pay anyway, sucker!"

 

But everyone does benefit from the publicly funded education policy.

 

I agree any federal involvement should only be as a clearinghouse of information. State education but counties or cities with primary control.

 

Define a direct benefit? Did you go to a public school system? Do you live in a community with an educated populace? Do you believe there is no benefit to you to live in an educated populace and in fact would be better if you did not? Please explain how living in an educated populace would be a better benefit.

 

Yes, I went to a public school system. And, the reality is that my parents' generation paid for me. Thus, my parents were fairly taxed, because their child was a direct beneficiary of the public school property tax funding system.

The city I live in has a nominally-'educated' society, I suppose. The whole country is, IMHO, pretty dumbed-down from what it was, say, forty years ago, but the 'education' (such as it has been) was provided.

As I've already said numerous times in this thread (plus many others) education is a WONDERFUL thing. I have no qualms with education, per se. Hell, I have a Bachelor of Science degree with honors from a major university that you have surely heard of. Pin a rose on me! BUT -- I paid my own tuition, all by myself, to go to the University of Texas at Austin, and I worked full-time every single day that I went to college. And, sure, I benefited enormously because I did invest in my own education!

That's my point! I have no complaint at all about education. I have a huge complaint about the state taxing everyone's personal, private property to pay for a public school system -- especially if those persons being taxed so heavily don't even have any children at all! Why should we be paid as heavily as those who have children in these schools?! It is completely unfair, and these tax schemes complete sh*t all over the concept of EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW!

Yeah, I wish I had a dollar bill for every time I've heard that phrase casually roll off someone's lips. Got any proof that "EVERYONE", including people like me benefit from these systems? Do we benefit as much as those who have offspring in the schools? If not, why is our property taxed in exactly the same way as it is for those who DO have children in these public schools? Got a snappy phrase to address the blatant inequality of THAT...?!

. "Hey, 'everybody knows' the Earth is flat! Why should we have to prove it...?"

 

Then you had a direct personal benefit, now pay your share for it.

Not they they were taxes because they were property owners, had they not had little bably Pollycy they STILL would have been taxed.

We can all agree with the stipulation that the education in this country needs to be improve. That's not what we're discussing here.

This is not about higher education, this is basic public education.

You prefer to just do it by sales tax?

It doesn't matter if they have children.

You got an education in it, that seems like a pretty good benefit.

 

You haven't really listened to a thing I've said, or even tried to follow the logic of fairness (and the lack of it) I've presented. Not surprising for someone with your viewpoint. BUT, I will tell you that just about any other taxation method -- including an increase in sales taxes -- would be preferable to the way that these public schools are funded now. At least THAT kind of tax would be elective, and not simply stuffed up someone's ass by a tyrannical state, merely because some poor bastard (with no offspring) bought a piece of land or a house somewhere.

But it will never happen. The various teachers' unions would fight like mad dogs to keep the current totally unfair system of taxation of private property!