From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Mon May 27 2002 - 03:19:54 MDT
Samantha Atkins [mailto:samantha@objectent.com] wrote:
Smigrodzki, Rafal wrote:
> ### 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
Data please. The great majority of parents of college age kids
are in debt up to their eyeballs and have almost no savings
except maybe 401K.
### First, let me point out that my statement refers to grade and high
school education (which is the primary target of public assistance).
85 % of parents of high-school-age children have incomes exceeding $25, 000
(see 216.110.169.143/Books/Challenges%20for%20New%20Century/ Gifs/Tab_07.htm
for details). Since the 2002 poverty level is 15,020 for a family of 3 and
18,100 for a family of four, it is obvious that almost 85% of US families
provably have the means to pay for private tuition which at present is about
$3200 per year per pupil, even using the inflated and politically charged
federal definition of poverty line.
Insistence that coercive transfer of funds to all parents is needed to allow
their children to attend school is in view of the above numbers patently
indefensible. It is *their* duty to pay, if they can.
Of course, educational loan vouchers might need to be supplied to the
remaining 15%, to be repaid by parents later.
Poor state of many (but by no means the great majority) a family's finances
you allude to is caused by rampant consumerism, lack of prudence and
laziness. These features should not be rewarded by a free dispensation of
benefits.
---------
> want to, and prefer obtaining funds from others by the use
> of coercion, which allows them to direct more of their
This is an unsupported assertion. It is not in the least true
in my experience. Check out the 40 million Americans who don't
even have medical insurance before you assume that the majority
are just being freeloaders.
### As the statistical data I quoted above amply demonstrate, 85 % of
families who take public monies *are* indeed freeloaders.
You assert some relationship of the educational spending situation to the
problem of the uninsured. The exact meaning of this connection eludes me but
let me just comment briefly on the uninsured: a large number of them are in
this situation by choice. With insurance plans starting at below 2k/year
only the destitute cannot afford it. The majority of the uninsured prefer
however to spend their money on luxuries, in the case of my brother-in-law,
a motorcycle.
--------
Children are our future at least until we can fully upload and
live indefinitely long lives. Not investing in your and your
species' future is not what I would call very rational.
### Your statements have a pleasant sound to them and I thoroughly applaud -
but why on Earth should I pay taxes for other people's brats? I can and will
invest, in my own children (and I intent not to take the blood-stained money
from taxes), and I will gladly pay for any services to be rendered in our
future by the children of my compatriots, on a voluntary basis, through my
disability insurance (which I bought individually), and the long-term care
contract I intend to buy.
--------
That
education establishment isn't exactly rolling in dough. Check
out what a teacher at the different levels actual makes on average.
### The teachers are doing OK, thank you, 38,046 in 1997, sometimes after
only a bachelor's degree, and almost firing-proof, too. That's more than I
got after MD-PhD. The hordes of administrators are doing even better.
Teachers' union monopoly and an open spigot of tax cash make for waste and
undereducation.
Rafal
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