From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Fri May 24 2002 - 14:54:30 MDT
>From: Dossy <dossy@panoptic.com>
>I recently read a statistic that in the past year, parents from
>low income families paid 25% (!!!) of their income to send their
>kids to college.
>Appalling.
I know large numbers of middle class people paying considerably
larger percentages, and second mortgaging their houses, and because
they are middle class their children are not eligible for many
types of financial assistance.
So pick an appropriate larger adjective.
>I have no idea what all of your opinions of what "small portion"
>is, but 25% of your income isn't "small" no matter how much or
>how little you make.
>If you're talking about the portion paid directly by parents
>compared to the total cost to educate a child ... then you might
>be right.
Education is expensive, no doubt about it.
Earlier I quoted the 1999 number for federal spending for a public
school student at $7,348. Say you have 3 kids in school, that's a
yearly expenditure by the government on your behalf of $22,044.
Since not even middle income families are paying these kinds of
taxes the money is coming from elsewhere. Most people don't even
bother to think about from where, in fact they argue that even more
money should be allocated for education from anyone but themselves.
The time to start saving for your kids college is before they are
born.
If parents had to pay the real world costs amongst other things
they might consider having fewer children.
I think it's appalling to see people who don't have two nickels to
rub together with 5 kids.
What people do is their own business, but they do not have a right
to have me pay for their decisions.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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