Don’t even bother with the grandstanding. I’m pretty sure I donate far more than the typical generous-with-other-people’s-money type do. When was the last time you voluntarily donated over $5000 to anything in a single calendar year? There is absolutely nothing preventing you from donating to any of the causes that you mentioned with your own money, but have you done any of it? Instead, you want to be generous with other people’s money. In other words, you want to rob other people at gun point and pretend that you are generous. Before the advant of intrusive government in the mid-20th century, such coercive “generosity” was typical of the mafias organizations.

In my community, given its resources, we could have outstanding schools. That costs money. I don’t mind spending my money on it because I care about my fellow human beings, and because my property taxes essentially buy me the community I live in. Yes, my house is an investment, just as yours is probably a magnificent tax shelter. I’d like to see more people buying and building wealth, and any money I put into my community — improving the roads, the schools, emergency response, parks, libraries, senior care, free food programs, and other evil schemes like that — is money well spent, because it makes my house more that much more desirable at the point in my life where I decide between a managed care condo and a cell to die in.

Considering what’s been happening in the public school system nation-wide in the past few decades, I wouldn’t trumpet literacy as an achievement of public education either. There are plenty illiterate high school graduates around. Average state college graduates are less knowledgeable than high school graduates 60 years ago, and their pay rate reflect that, on purchasing power parity basis.

Education for the poor has been in place for a long time. Mandatory public education on the other hand is an integral part of state brainwashing, carried to an even more thorough degree in totalitarian states. I wouldn’t call that progress.

Hogging the pie is of course wrong, worse still is stealing from other people’s slices.

“Buying a home and providing for your future isn’t greed.”

Huh? Is that some kind of realtor “new-speak”? Speculation and hoping a bigger foool to buy you out and provide for your future is certainly greed.

” Consigning entire socioeconomic groups to illiteracy and wage slavery is.”

So are you for public food? public housing? publicly paid computer ownership? and publicly paid car ownership? Because, apparently, you don’t see people being able to acquire any of thing through private means. While only communists and their fellow travellors would call employment relationship wage slavery, the taking of service or goods of value through the use of violence (and threat thereof) on a routine basis without compensation voluntarily agreed to by the owner is actual slavery/servitude; taxation fits that description quite well.

Town tax table and school test rankings. You are more than welcome to verify the numbers yourself. The typical top public school towns all have residential property tax at around 1%; some even lower. Whereas all the high property tax towns at 2-3%, all have crappy schools.

“As for your monopoly argument, schools are an altruistic endeavor, and thus the free market fails for them.”

I don’t think many teachers work for free. Principals often make close to six-digit salaries. District superintendent usually in the quarter million to half million range. Just because some one works for “non-profit” doesn’t mean they don’t have personal interests. That’s why competition is critical for efficiency.

I’m not aware of the quote that you attributed to Adam Smith. Government is a framework for legalizing the use of violence by a select elite. If your point is that people with self-interest shouldn’t run government, I actually agree to a degree; in other words, nearly nobody should run the government at all, and the government should be deprived of most of its powers lest such powers be abused. Remember, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

“P. S. Way to go on donating money to kids for education by the way, but seriously, how many people do you know who are willing to do that?”

Thank you for your compliment. I don’t think I’m especially generous . . . seeing that myself enjoyed the benefit of private donation for education when I was in school. Many private schools are some of the most well-endowed institutions in this country. If government doesn’t get in the way by taxation and driving prices sky high, private charity will be more effective. In fact, even as we speak, many private colleges are putting together programs of 100% free education for kids whose parents make less than $100k a year. It’s not just a publicity stunt. Alum donations kept colleges alive and prosperous for nearly 300 years before the mid-20th century government programs. Was Harvard’s and Standford’s initial founding acts of altruism? perhaps to a degree. They were also results of personal ego. It’s better the egotistic buy good names with their own money than us taxpayers getting robbed blind at gun point to fulfill some politicians’ big ego, not to mention their friends’ wallets.

I was raised with a value system that says that hogging the pie is wrong.

Being pro-advancement is not the same as being classist. Buying a home and providing for your future isn’t greed. Consigning entire socioeconomic groups to illiteracy and wage slavery is.

1. Where are you getting your stats for the inverse relationship between property taxes and school quality?

2. As for your monopoly argument, schools are an altruistic endeavor, and thus the free market fails for them. The free market only rewards self-interested behavior. This is one reason why Adam Smith, the daddy of capitalism, stipulated that capitalists should not run the government. Remember teachers can get jobs elsewhere. “Punishing” a school district by removing funding is annoying and often sad for teachers, but not necessarily the financial lever you might think it is.

P. S. Way to go on donating money to kids for education by the way, but seriously, how many people do you know who are willing to do that?

$250 per family may NOT sound like much, but keep in mind, the so-called economic stimulatin check is only $600.

Missing the important negation “not.”

College graduates do have higher income than non-college graduates; however that’s like saying A students make more money than D students. There is no study proving that the same caliber students getting A’s, would be better off going to college than if the same student had taken up a trade early on without taking on the studepndous student loan debt. How much of your undergraduate education are you using on daily basis now? I’m not using any of mine, and I had one of the best educations money could buy, at least according US News and World Report. Given today’s student debt level and how obsolete the material they teach at undergrad level they have become, and how much grade/diploma inflation has taken place, it’s quite probable that a $45k a year undergrad education doesn’t pay at all even in the long run.

What I propose is not classism at all. On the contrary, your theme that “so we can sell our houses for more” to relatively poor parents desperate seeking better education for their kids does seem a little classist . . . as in each town would be in a different class. In fact, since house is heritable property, if you believe education is of paramount importance to a person’s development, then tying education to housing is the very mechanism through which hereditory wealth and previlege is to be perpetuated.

Education doesn’t have to be expensive, not until the government got into it anyway. There has been charitable education for the poor since time immemorial. Broad-based taxation to support education is a new phenomenom created in the late 19th century, supported primarily two political forces: (1) the merchant and manufacturing businesses that wanted the public to fund their employee training; (2) the collectivist politicians who wanted uniforminty in thoughts. By the mid-20th century, the bankers also got in the game because there is risk-free interest profit to be made, both on student loans and school constructions.

Nazism is not just about the elimination of people on the edges. It’s economic collectivism that has the state run the economy to benefit monopolists. The inevitable economic hardship from such government mismangement will inevitably lead to social darwinistic elimination attempts. As the pie gets smaller, many people would look to the neighboring slice in order to preserve how much pie they get for themselves and their own family. That’s why it’s critically important that the greesy hand of the government doesn’t get in the way of economic opportunities. $250 per family may sound like much, but keep in mind, the so-called economic stimulatin check is only $600.