Exactly. If a family doesn’t have anyone school age at home, why can’t they get 1 or more vouchers to continue their own education?
OT: Inflation
- Thread starter Jeffreauxdawg
- Start date
The purpose of publicly funded school is in theory that educated citizens provide a lot of positive externalities. It’s not meeting the highest of standards. It’s just about being efficient. I could understand not providing any public funding for school for affluent families. But it’s just weird to be like, we’re going to spend the money, if this doesn’t work for you and you’re poor, you can use the money to get your child an education. But if you’re affluent, it’s ha ha, 17 u you just randomly don’t get a benefit we’re paying for unless you’re willing to move your primary residence. It’d make a lot more sense to move it towards something more like snap, where you just don’t give the benefit to any affluent people rather than just having the benefit tied to your willingness or ability to move to a different place.
Police protection is a public good. Not as perfect of one as national defense but pretty close to it. That’s just a lot different than when we choose to subsidize a non public good.
As far as drawing the line, I’d let people spend snap benefits at any qualified retailer, even if it’s not the store closest to their house. If there is more than one dmv location, I’d let them pick where to go to renew their license, even to one that’s not nearest their home. Although I’d prefer not to subsidize rooftop solar, as long as we’re doing it, I’m fine with letting people choose their own installer, even if it’s not the one closest to their home. I don’t think any of those things have put us in a slippery slope situation. If people want to talk about opting out of public goods, I think that’d be a different situation.
It's all the government, and as we've seen forever, they can find a way if they want to. Especially when one party is in full control.
Oh, in other words - you are good with a total dismissal of the separation of powers, checks and balances, etc.
Well OK then, that is certainly one option.
This is the type of weirdness that comes up with vouchers. Why don't we give people with too much income to earn traditional snap benefits a different snap benefit to buy exclusively deserts? I don't know. I'd be tempted to say because it's stupid, but that's obviously not a a bar to something becoming public policy. I think it just hasn't come up and there's no logical policy reason for it to have come up and there's no obvious special interest that can gain from it. But that doesn't mean it won't come up in the future. What happened would depend on the politics behind it, both public opinion and what kind of special interests could gain from pushing it.
But I'd like to hear your thoughts. Why don't people without school aged children currently get to go to state owned universities for free?
My real answer is everyone (well, I guess esp most everyone) has a vested interest in an educated populace, knowing of course there is going to be some sort of baseline that is not enough for some and too much for others. That baseline doesn’t currently extend to higher education, albeit some places are attempting to get there. There of course must be oversight and accountability, which is a major reason vouchers are opposed by many.
As an aside, some states allow senior citizens to audit public university classes for free. I have no idea how many people avail themselves of this, prolly not many. Or for that matter if it even achieves any sort of policy goal.
Frankly I’d be supportive of some kind of universal higher education (of course not limited to colleges) but it’d be expensive and there’d clearly have to be a frank discussion of that cost which could be simply prohibitive. I’d be surprised if vouchers are the pathway there but I’m open to new information.
Not to read intent, but we should be very afraid if our sentiment is that it is OK for a party to be in control. If our Legislative (make laws; check Executive power and take your oath to the constitution more serious than your next step on the party ladder), Executive (administer the laws as prescribed by Legislative branch and honor the constitution and laws), and Judicial (settle disputes among the others with final say while honoring the constitution) don't work, we aren't a free nation for long. The idea that this is even a question among Americans is a very sad state of affairs.
The fact that many Americans somehow believe that installing authoritarians who don't respect any of that is not good, completely dismisses the entire history of the world as it pertains to such things. When freedom is lost and liberal democracy (please go look this definition up before you go on some "liberal" rant) is set aside, everyone suffers.
Great post. I can't pretend to have known all the information/stats that you included, but the points you make line up with my wife's experience as a teacher for decades. As with most things, complex problem that will not be solved with a sound bite answer designed to feed political agendas or get clicks to a news site.
The sentiment is on point. The reality is that a student that is in poverty will not typically have an adult in their life who advocates for them, understands options, is willing, capable, and can afford to transport them to some distant school. In states where this has been tried, there is clear evidence that it does not help people in poverty, but it does siphon funds from the school with the least.
In Arizona, roughly 75% of all voucher funds went to people who were already in private school. That seems to be the case in all states that have done this. It's a tough problem and I don't pretend to have an answer for it unless you can make people only have kids when they want them and then make them take proper care of them and then put a functional safety net in place for kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks. To date, most related measures have not been successful.
If the voucher for people who were in private school was equal to whatever tax millage they paid toward education, that seems "fair" but it's probably too simple. And honestly, the fact that their kids aren't in public school with that family being a part of the solution, is probably far more damaging than the money that is removed. If you can't fix public schools to provide education that is adequate and a safe environment, in areas where that is not the case, it is just a hard problem to solve.