Long Tuesday.

[valarltd]

So, I got my challenge vid finished up.
It's adorable, funny and slashier than expected.

Got some good advice on the sound idea. Since I have 3 of those Big Mac downloads around, I know what I'm doing tonight.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the doctor. I have the bad feeling my insurance card is in Ohio.


Why do I even try to argue with anarchists?

They may call themselves Constitutionalists, but they are anarchists. They want all social services destroyed. I'll be the first to admit public schools have problems, but I think eliminating them is huge mistake. We already have a gang problem here, and you want to dump thousands of idle, unemployed youth onto the the streets? That's bloody brilliant.

I've even come to see vouchers as a placebo. I used to be for them, until I started thinking things through. Vouchers work when there are school options, transportation options and the parents understand them. There is no competition if it's the only school for a 50 mile radius. Private schools will just jack their tuition by the amounts of the vouchers, so no gain there.

And not everyone pays taxes that support the schools. Renters don't. Squatters don't. Drifters/couch-surfers don't. Down here no one says "where do you live?" The question is "Where do you stay?" It implies an impermanence.

Sure, strangle the social services. Close the schools. But don't come crying to me when a band of unemployed, starving people beat in your door and steal everything you have.

I can see a world like that. It's a staple of dystopian fiction. Cities run by gangs of thugs, decent folk afraid to go out, those who can afford it living in fortresses, constant hunger, disease and death.

Quite frankly, I don't want to live in a Cyberpunk milieu. And Soylent Green is still people.


Don't argue with me, kids. I can beat you with half my brain tied behind me.

Comments

[tanacawyr.livejournal.com]

Vouchers work when there are school options, transportation options and the parents understand them. There is no competition if it's the only school for a 50 mile radius. Private schools will just jack their tuition by the amounts of the vouchers, so no gain there.

Competition being the crucial word; voucher supporters really don't seem to realize the one vital and incorrect assumption they're making:

Schools are not free-market mechanisms.

They never twig onto this. Schools do not run at a profit. They run exclusively at a loss. They bring in no revenue. The only way to measure the success of a school is by means that would guarantee the failure of any corporation: they must make their customers successful in ways that are impossible to calculate, possibly twenty years down the line. And they still bring in no revenue.

Try measuring Sun Microsystems by those yardsticks and then tell me that schools are a competition-driven free-market mechanism.

Schools are, at their very base, socialist. 100% shared monopolistic government service, no revenue generated whatsoever. You cannot measure their success or effectiveness by using free market mechanics, but people in this goddamned country seem to worship the goddamned free market to the point of applying its behavior to systems that come nowhere near it. *grumble*

Schools run exclusively at a loss and can only be measured as effective organisms twenty years after their customers have moved on. And somehow the free market rules of competition are supposed to apply to them ... how, again?

[kitsap_charles]

And not everyone pays taxes that support the schools. Renters don't.

Oh, yes they do; just not directly. Don't think for a second that landlords pay property taxes themselves, out of the goodness of their hearts; they pass that cost along to the renter as part of the rental cost.

Same thing happens in countries where taxes are imposed at every stage of production, like the U.K.'s Value Added Tax (VAT). Each producer of raw materials or product components incorporates VAT into "Cost of Goods Sold", and that accumulates until it's finally paid by the end user of the final product.

Now, when government (or more likely, The Peepul through the initiative process) reduces property taxes below the level needed to maintain schools and other tax-supported services (as California did with their Proposition 13, many years ago) then everyone suffers the ill effects.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Actually, you're right. I should have said "directly."

The property tax refunds suggested by the Anarchists would go to the people who make the payments, the ones on record: the landlords. The renting families would never see a dime of it, and would still have to pay to educate their kids.

I think taxes should be low, after all, the more of my money I keep, the better I'm able to provide for my family and the less need I have of the dole. OTOH, there is a minimum amount necessary to provide adequate services such as schools, roads and police & fire protection.

The trick is to find the balance point.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

What you said.

Schools provide three services: an educated populace, a holding tank for youth and keeping the under 18 (under 22?) out of the workforce.

They are a public good, and contribute to better jobs, lower crime and more industry. They shouldn't have to compete. Not with each other and not with private schools.