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Debate on education vouchers. 

The following exchange on education vouchers and education tax credits was very interesting, so we are sharing it with you.  The italics are one person's statements, and plain text shows the responses to those statements:

I agree that tax credits are far preferable, but any time you get the government involved there is a risk of creeping control.

Correction: Any time you get government involved, there is a GUARANTEE of creeping control. By definition, government = monopoly = control. And, as with any monopoly, the long term and inevitable trend will be for prices (taxes) to increase and quality and service (education) to deteriorate. This monopoly will not be broken with either vouchers or "tax credits" - especially from the federal government, as state and local property taxes pay for the bulk of "public education," and a "tax credit" assumes you have paid a tax - but tax "exemptions" might. Anyone not using the government schools should be exempt from paying for them - whether by way of property taxes or federal taxes directed to "education" - period.

On the  other hand, I don't know how else to begin to wean people from education welfare.

I am not convinced that it is even possible to "wean" people from the long habit of living at the expense of others. As long as the apparatus (The State) that allows them to do so exists, they are likely to continue to vote for the politicians promising the most.

It certainly would not be politically feasible to just end government schools,  and families need a way out right now.

But we haven't exactly established that vouchers are necessarily "a way out". Instead, it appears they are more likely to be a way "in" - for the government.

Not so many can afford to pay twice -- once through taxes and then again directly to the school.

Ahh!!! And now we come to see the "Catch-22" nature of our dilemma. The Government - like any tabetic or parasitic organism - having incrementally and progressively (no pun intended) enervated and emaciated its host - society, there now remains little the victim can do to save himself. Where will the money (not to mention the will) come from, to support an
alternative PRIVATE education system, now that the monopoly provider of our PUBLIC education system has control of so much of our wealth and our wherewithal? Why, the Government will simply have to seize even more from those who have and "redistribute" it to a whole new batch of mendicants, through vouchers or "tax credits". More likely it will simply create more of its monopoly scrip and pass that out, thereby further devaluing the dollar and forcing ever more of us to depend on government largess.  Sixty some odd years ago, Albert Jay Nock likened our condition to the plight of a man in a rowboat on the lower reaches of the Niagara River. Each day, I come more and more to agree with him.

[NOTE]  My parents put three children through 12 years of private (parochial) school each, on a civil servant's salary (supplemented at times with  part-time jobs). It wasn't easy, but they both placed a very high value on seeing to it that their children received what they considered a quality education.  My mother did not work - outside the home, because both my parents placed a high value on having her at home to "raise the children". She sent us off to first grade knowing how to read and write, and add 2+2 - in more ways than one! (wink,wink,nod,nod). In order to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat, my parents sacrificed much in the way of material rewards and/or a "social life". And they did it all without vouchers (and without complaint), all the while paying property taxes to support schools they weren't using. Thanks Mom! Thanks Dad! I may not be rich, or successful in the eyes of others, but I can read and write (and love to do so); and I can still add 2+2! (wink).

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