Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
Not a lot, really.
Public schools provide different services than other welfare agencies, but each welfare agency provides services that are different than those provided by other welfare agencies.
The most important similarity between public schools and other welfare providers is what many parents are only now discovering: Welfare recipients - such as parents of kids in public schools - do not hold the power over how the welfare distributed. Nor do they pay for the welfare. Welfare recipients are free to gripe about the amount, form, requirements, or whatever. But the agencies providing the welfare have no reason to listen to them. Tax payers pay for welfare and voters elect those who manage it.
Some parents pay for the schools through taxes, but no differently than any other taxpayer pays for the schools. Parents don't pay more for having more children in school, nor do they stop paying after their kids graduate.
Parents get to vote for the school board members, but so does every other adult who lives in the district. So, for the middle-class family with two working parents and three kids in public school, their votes count exactly as much as the vote of the nineteen year-old college freshman lesbian couple who have vowed never to have kids of their own because they are too busy being activists and influencers over how "everyone's" children are educated.
Libertarians warned decades ago, even when public schools were a source of great pride for people of all other political stripes, that when you let government tax "everyone," to provide something for "free," tyranny often follows.
Public schools provide different services than other welfare agencies, but each welfare agency provides services that are different than those provided by other welfare agencies.
The most important similarity between public schools and other welfare providers is what many parents are only now discovering: Welfare recipients - such as parents of kids in public schools - do not hold the power over how the welfare distributed. Nor do they pay for the welfare. Welfare recipients are free to gripe about the amount, form, requirements, or whatever. But the agencies providing the welfare have no reason to listen to them. Tax payers pay for welfare and voters elect those who manage it.
Some parents pay for the schools through taxes, but no differently than any other taxpayer pays for the schools. Parents don't pay more for having more children in school, nor do they stop paying after their kids graduate.
Parents get to vote for the school board members, but so does every other adult who lives in the district. So, for the middle-class family with two working parents and three kids in public school, their votes count exactly as much as the vote of the nineteen year-old college freshman lesbian couple who have vowed never to have kids of their own because they are too busy being activists and influencers over how "everyone's" children are educated.
Libertarians warned decades ago, even when public schools were a source of great pride for people of all other political stripes, that when you let government tax "everyone," to provide something for "free," tyranny often follows.
