From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Sat May 25 2002 - 13:10:02 MDT
Harvey Newstrom [mailto:mail@HarveyNewstrom.com] wrote:
Education of young people is
expensive. But it's cheaper than if they become unemployed
drug addicts
that have welfare children. It's cheaper to educate them
now than to
fight crime increases or support the homeless later. I see
education as
a form of preventative welfare, to try to stave off the more
expensive
problems later. I actually believe that my tax dollars
going to
education are less than the tax dollars that could go to
increased
police and increased welfare later. I am doing this for
selfish
motives, so that my community is safer and nicer with less
problems than
it might have otherwise. There is no altruistic motives
behind my
actions.
### Yes, you are right about the beneficial effects of
education, bad quality of public schooling notwithstanding. Yet, the parents
who avoid fully paying for their children's education by accepting public
assistance are in their great majority *capable* of paying unassisted. They
just don't want to, and prefer obtaining funds from others by the use of
coercion, which allows them to direct more of their private funds for other
ventures (a new car, nicer clothing). Basically, tax-funded education
without means-testing is mostly the transfer of money from non-breeders to
breeders for the breeders' discretionary spending, with a lot being siphoned
off by the educational establishment.
You can prevent the deleterious effects of undereducation
without having much of a tax-based school system, e.g. by giving loans to
children and parents in the form of vouchers for schooling, with a mandatory
requirement that each child has to have a verifiable educational experience,
with performance testing for all children in private, voucher and home
schooling.
Rafal
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