Well, let’s look at it a bit differently. If I’m a lower middle class single guy, I may end up paying more in taxes than a middle class guy with a wife and 3 kids (gotta love those deductions). He makes more money than I do, and I’m paying for his kids education. Now, he does have more expenses than I do, but we both made our choices. He gets to have his plasma TV because I’m subsidizing his kids’ education.
One might argue that it makes sense to subsidize the education of poor people, but why do so for middle class people and above? After all, half the working people in the US make more than the median income, yet their kids could very well be getting “subsidized” education.
I think there is more to this issue than simply arguing that the status quo is the way things ought to be. What are you guys-- a bunch of conservatives?
Well, one could argue that he is paying indirectly since those people he buys food from are charging him “x” amount due to the fuel taxes they pay to get the food to market. Same with mail, when you buy stamps. Etc.
Society benefits from children being well nourished, too. If you want to get that benefit then you have to pay for them to eat well? There are all sorts of things one could claim that “society benefits from” that we pay for individually, or at least those of who can afford it do.
That argument is a bit more nuanced than the one presented by the OP, which is, essentially, that one should be taxed only for the benefits that one receives.
Has anyone really argued that the status quo is the way to be? I see arguments against the idea that taxes and benefits should have a one to one relationship, but I don’t see them couched in those terms.
I dunno. Although I agree that the OP could use a bit more nuance to his argument, he is asking a legitimate question and being jumped upon like he’s “greedy”, to use one term thrown his way. I don’t see a lot of nuance in the responses so far, but what I do see is a lot of hand waving.
I’m just trying to make this debate more about thinking outside the box, than just saying things like: Society benefits from educated children, so you have to pay to educate them.
How about “Society would crack like an egg if children received no education at all.” An extreme position, admittedly, but if schools were sustained only by those taxpayers who wanted to, public education would disappear. Why require parents to pay school taxes? It’s hard enough getting some of them to feed their kids. What if those parents did not want their children to be educated? Should the be required to? Why have mandatory education in the first place?
How else would we educate children? I’m a lower lower middle class guy who was raised by middle class parents, and if my education had depended upon them I would not know how to tie my shoes.
This is one of those arguments that, like most Libertarian ideas, sounds good on paper, but would be horrible in practice. I mean, sure, in theory, people should not have more kids than they can support. Unfortunetly, this does not stop people from having more kids than they can support. And by denying services to the kids, you aren’t doing anything to punish the parents, you’re just punishing the kids. Who can’t help being born to irresponsible parents.
You’ll end up paying anyway. If non-parents don’t have to pay for schools, then schools won’t have as much money. If schools don’t have as much money, they won’t be able to impart as good an education. If the schools aren’t giving out as good an education, fewer people will end up going to college and becoming professionals. If there are fewer professionals, than the remaining professionals will become a more valuable commodity, and be able to charge more for their services. By not funding education for everyone now, you’ll just end up spending more on… well, pretty much everything else, later.
Actually, most societies need educated professionals much more than they need uneducated, unskilled workers. This is why you get more money for being a doctor than you do for being a janitor. If there was equal demand for both positions, they would receive roughly equal recompense for their services.
We do pay for nutritional programs, to some degree. WIC comes to mind. There are others.
I agree that the tax system is usually fucking the middle class over. But he’s not talking about an adjustment. The OP feels that he has no obligation to pay taxes for education at all. That doesn’t fly with me.
That’s the fly in the ointment, isn’t it? It would appear that people of all ages, men and women, rich and poor, black and white – they like to fuck. A lot. And fucking makes babies. We haven’t found a way to prevent this on a wide scale yet. In the meantime, we need to take care of all these people that keep being birthed every day.
So, if we’re going to create a poor, non-educated underclass then we’re going to create a lot of criminals. Criminals tend to rob, kill, and rape. Maybe they’ll do one of those things to you, your family, or someone you know. So consider paying taxes for public education a form of extortion.
It’s not society that benefits from educated children, each individual does. People are not living in isolation. The standard of living that Fireclown would enjoy if he were dropped naked into the jungle is all that his skills and strength can provide. Everything else he has is a benefit that he derives from living in society with the rest of us.
When he wants to continue to enjoy those benefits without putting anything back to benefit society what can you call it but greedy? Hey, it’s easy to stop, or at least minimize paying school taxes. Quit your job, get rid of all your possessions, and move under a highway overpass. Stop taking anything out of society, stop putting anything back. We’ll even let you live under our overpass for free.
Well I intend to send my white upper-middle-class daughter to either a private school or I will homeschool her. I think you should stop having to pay taxes for all those good for nothing negro and hispanic kids, it won’t matter none to me because I won’t be using public school anyway. While we’re at it let me stop paying money for police officers and I’ll just get myself an assault rifle.
Taxes for education also even out the costs of living. For most people, the most expensive time of life comes while the kids are living at home (and going to college!). If we’re all paying taxes for educating all kids, then some of that monetary burden is being taken away while the kids are small, and repaid when they’re grown and gone. It evens out a bit for the middle classes that way, unless a family voluntarily decides to take on the extra costs of private or home schooling.
It’s all very well to say that we should only have kids we can afford, but I don’t think that takes the actual uncertainties of life into account. How many parents have lost jobs while children were still at home? It’s entirely possible to have a good job and a stable life, decide to have children, and then lose the job or have something else incredibly expensive go wrong. Since none of us can see the future, having children is always going to be something of a gamble, for anyone except possibly Bill Gates.
:dubious: I never voiced any disagreement for publicly funded education; my only problem with your statement was the idea that because people like to fuck, we’re going to have people making babies. I don’t really think that is the situation here in America anymore; I think educated, informed people can typically avoid unwanted children (even if you fail to use contraception, you can always abort.)
While there are certainly many children out there who only exist as incidental results of fucking, there are also a huge number who exist because the parents made a deliberate choice to have children.
Lots of people use birth control successfully, so the idea that we can’t control our reproduction on a wide scale is one I don’t buy into. You don’t have to give up fucking to refrain from having children.
I wouldn’t disagree with that to any significant degree.
Where did he say that he didn’t want to put anything back?
Besides, most of work as productive members of society and, in doing so, are putting something back into that society. I’m not trying to brag or anything, but I’ve been primarily responsible for the development of several products that people buy every day. I’ve started companies that gave people jobs they might not otherwise have. I’m active in several local charities that I think are making an impact on the community.
Now, I’m happy to acknowledge your political position as legitimate, given the assumptions you make. But that doesn’t mean other assumptions, leading to different political positions, are the result of “greedy” thinking or are somehow not legitimate.
Absolutely. When I was a kid, it was almost unheard of for married people to not have children, and families with 5 or more kids were common. Today, a couple with 5 kids is hard to find. I don’t know anyone under 40 who has more than 3, and I have lots of married friends with no kids at all.
Whoah–are you seriously suggesting that, for middle-class people, having kids results in a net increase in disposable income? That’s not nuanced, that’s crazy talk.
Cite?
[sub]kidding, kidding[/sub]
We pay for school taxes because we’ve found that it increases social productivity, as Miller suggested. Folks get educated and are able to increase innovation, and innovation means that your dollar buys more goods and services than it did before, because more goods and services are produced per capita. We also do it as a benefit, not to parents (who have some choice in the matter), but to children (who have no choice in the matter): our society places a strong emphasis on giving everyone a fair chance, and we tend to believe that starting one kid off with a stellar education while another one gets no education violates that principle. (In practice, it doesn’t always work out as planned).
Why do we pay for the educations of middle class people? Because we’re doing it as a benefit to the kids, not to the parents. THat’s also why education is compulsory, not voluntary: the kids are the ones who benefit, and we believe they’re not capable of making a voluntary decision about whether school is in their best interests.
No. Did you miss that I was a hypothetical lower middle class person in that post?
My post is my cite. Hey, that actually works that time!
So, let’s require middle class parents (and above) to pay for the education of their kids. Perhaps there should be an added tax on people with children instead of a tax deduction, phased out as your income is lower.
