-=> On 04-12-98  15:28, Walter Luffman did testify and affirm <=-
-=> to Robert Craft concerning advert. for 23% sales tax <=-
 
 RC> Poverty level is easily ascertained without goverment
 RC> intervention. Assuming four components of expenditures:
 RC> food, clothing, shelter and transportation; realistic
 RC> minimums can be established. 
 WL> Accepted.  But having been there, I still don't care for the
 WL> term itself, so I flinched when you mentioned it.
How 'bout "subsistence level" instead?
 WL> And I don't trust government when it comes to numbers (or
 WL> much else), so I flinched again because the federal gummint
 WL> collects and processes such data. (Better IMHO to handle it
 WL> at the state or county level, so that regional variations
 WL> in prices and wages aren't over-averaged.)
Fine by me. The availability of computing power makes
feasible local control of many programs which have
heretofore been handled by state/Federal agencies.
            
[...snip...]
 RC> How 'bout education vouchers instead?
 WL> I like the concept of vouchers; lets the government set
 WL> minimum funding for an essential service, the lets the
 WL> individual taxpayer decide which of the competitors gets his
 WL> share of that minimum.  I worry that, as the voucher concept
 WL> gains popularity, liberals will attempt to poison it by
 WL> making vouchers the only legal source of funding private
 WL> schools can accept.  (They've already done something similar
 WL> to doctors who accept Medicare patients.)
I think market forces will prevent that scenario. Since the
best schools will be able to charge a tuition of "Voucher +
$n", cash will remain a portion of the payment. 
[...snip...]
 RC> And it would be good advertizing in a competitive
 RC> environment to be able to claim: "Our graduating class
 RC> averaged 1200 on the SAT."
 WL> Also good for the community, since the local Chamber of
 WL> Commerce can use the same bragging-point when recruiting
 WL> industry to locate there.  It's being done near here, in fact,
 WL> using a school that has won the state's _academic_ decathlon
 WL> three years in a row.  The surprise is, the school being
 WL> touted is the largest *public* high school in that county.
 WL> Sadly, the school also has its share of "social promotions"
 WL> and probably teachers of OBE as well.
Remember when the high school diploma was a *guarantee* of
a certain minimum level of education?
 RC> Parents would gladly pay an excise tax on the education
 RC> voucher in order to get their kids enrolled.
 WL> Good, but not good enough. I want to slowly starve out the
 WL> inferior educators and administrators by reducing the
 WL> amount of funding that goes to them.
I don't think there will be anything "slow" about it at
all. In fact, it may resemble the "land rush" scenes of
last century when new territories were opened for
settlement.
 WL> If the tenure system and the teachers' unions are so
 WL> entrenched that we can't simply fire the incompetent and/or
 WL> lazy educators on the payroll, let's try to drive them out
 WL> of teaching through economic means.
OTOH, can't you see a corporations such as Boeing, etc
buying up a public school adjacent to the plant and making
enrollment available to employee children AND making
teaching positions available to Boeing staffers, either
active or retired?
 WL> Parents will quickly get the message and move their kids
 WL> (and vouchers) out of those schools and into the better
 WL> (and better-funded) ones; their actions will increase the
 WL> funding available for good schhols even more. 
Particularly since the good schools will be charging
premium fees of "voucher + $n". 
 WL> Before too many years, the incompetent and lazy will have
 WL> empty or nearly-empty classrooms. They may still have their
 WL> tenure-protected jobs, but that won't last more than a
 WL> generation --
It won't last that long. The local public schools will be
purchased out from under the union.
... Socialism: the politics of co-dependance and denial.
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