I was listening to the Mark Larsen show on the radio yesterday while I was driving to work, and I heard a caller make a comment that I knew then and there would prompt this rant.
He compared school vouchers to a scenario in which the state pays you to hire your own police force instead of using the community's police for protection. In my view, the comment betrayed two fundamental misunderstandings - one about the nature of our system of government, and the other about the nature of taxes. Just in case the guy is smart enough to know about "The Annoyed Army" (I like that, BTW), I thought I would set him straight here.
The federal government - and by extension, the state governments - are governments of, for, and by the people. American government (at least in it's ideal form), does not exist if the people do not exist. It is a representative government that governs [i]strictly[/i] with the consent of the governed. There is no such thing as a government anywhere in the United States of America that governs without the general consent of the people. [i]Everything[/i] about our government - the direction provided by its executives, the laws it passes, the judicial decisions handed down, the budgets it enacts, the military it commands, the foreign policies it pursues, and the economy it shepherds, belongs to the people - not the government! The government is nothing more than the collective will of the people as expressed through the framework of our Constitution, which was given to us by our founding fathers. Is there anybody, conservative or liberal, that denies that our Constitution - at least within the framework of the day, if not for all time - is a perfect document? Heck, even if there is something in the original that you don't like, the original makes changes possible - with the consent of a supermajority of the people.
Now, what does the above say about the nature of taxation? Forget about arguments as to whether we should pay more or less taxes. I'm speaking to the issue of who owns the money collected in taxes. Money collected in taxes belongs to the people. Just as the government exists as the collective will of the people, the funds collected through taxes are merely [i]entrusted[/i] to the government by the people in order to be spent as the expression of the collective will. If I entrust my savings to bank or stockbroker with the stated purpose of earning some more money with it, that money is still mine. If the bank has to pay a money manager partly from the earnings made on my money, then that is part of the transaction. But it is still my money. Storing it in the bank does not make it the bank's money. It is [i]my[/i] money. So it is with taxes. I recognize that my government needs to spend certain monies on my behalf to maintain a military, educate my children, pave my street, clean up after hurricanes, etc., etc. I recognize that, in order for those things to happen, I must pay some form of taxation, be it on my income, property, or in other fees. But that is [i]my[/i] money that they are spending - not the goverment's.
So, when Nimrod on the Radio said that permitting school vouchers was akin to the government paying me to provide my own police force, he betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of who's money is being spent.
Here is a fundamental explanation of how school vouchers work: You pay a certain amount of your taxes toward education. If you are a property owner, you pay even more than if you are not. If you are a property owner with no children, the only possible benefit to you is that an educated society is better than an ignorant one.
However, if you have child in school and you are not satisfied with the quality of education provided by the public system, you get to take a certain percentage of the money that would have gone toward your taxes, and use it instead toward tuition in a private school. In no case that [i]I[/i] know of is this tax break enough to actually cover tuition entirely. Parents will still have to pay, out of pocket, above an beyond any tax credit they are likely to receive.
But beyond that, parents who use school vouchers are not receiving money back from the government! Instead, they are paying out less, from money they own, toward taxes. So, even if you erroneously believe that tax revenue belongs to the government, the voucher money is not yet revenue because it has not yet left the hands of the taxpayer. So Nimrod's analogy is bogus.
So, all of this prompted me to take a poll and I'm really interested to see how it turns out.
I was listening to the Mark Larsen show on the radio yesterday while I was driving to work, and I heard a caller make a comment that I knew then and there would prompt this rant.
He compared school vouchers to a scenario in which the state pays you to hire your own police force instead of using the community's police for protection. In my view, the comment betrayed two fundamental misunderstandings - one about the nature of our system of government, and the other about the nature of taxes. Just in case the guy is smart enough to know about "The Annoyed Army" (I like that, BTW), I thought I would set him straight here.
The federal government - and by extension, the state governments - are governments of, for, and by the people. American government (at least in it's ideal form), does not exist if the people do not exist. It is a representative government that governs strictly with the consent of the governed. There is no such thing as a government anywhere in the United States of America that governs without the general consent of the people. Everything about our government - the direction provided by its executives, the laws it passes, the judicial decisions handed down, the budgets it enacts, the military it commands, the foreign policies it pursues, and the economy it shepherds, belongs to the people - not the government! The government is nothing more than the collective will of the people as expressed through the framework of our Constitution, which was given to us by our founding fathers. Is there anybody, conservative or liberal, that denies that our Constitution - at least within the framework of the day, if not for all time - is a perfect document? Heck, even if there is something in the original that you don't like, the original makes changes possible - with the consent of a supermajority of the people.
Now, what does the above say about the nature of taxation? Forget about arguments as to whether we should pay more or less taxes. I'm speaking to the issue of who owns the money collected in taxes. Money collected in taxes belongs to the people. Just as the government exists as the collective will of the people, the funds collected through taxes are merely entrusted to the government by the people in order to be spent as the expression of the collective will. If I entrust my savings to bank or stockbroker with the stated purpose of earning some more money with it, that money is still mine. If the bank has to pay a money manager partly from the earnings made on my money, then that is part of the transaction. But it is still my money. Storing it in the bank does not make it the bank's money. It is my money. So it is with taxes. I recognize that my government needs to spend certain monies on my behalf to maintain a military, educate my children, pave my street, clean up after hurricanes, etc., etc. I recognize that, in order for those things to happen, I must pay some form of taxation, be it on my income, property, or in other fees. But that is my money that they are spending - not the goverment's.
So, when Nimrod on the Radio said that permitting school vouchers was akin to the government paying me to provide my own police force, he betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of who's money is being spent.
Here is a fundamental explanation of how school vouchers work: You pay a certain amount of your taxes toward education. If you are a property owner, you pay even more than if you are not. If you are a property owner with no children, the only possible benefit to you is that an educated society is better than an ignorant one.
However, if you have child in school and you are not satisfied with the quality of education provided by the public system, you get to take a certain percentage of the money that would have gone toward your taxes, and use it instead toward tuition in a private school. In no case that [i]I[/i] know of is this tax break enough to actually cover tuition entirely. Parents will still have to pay, out of pocket, above an beyond any tax credit they are likely to receive.
But beyond that, parents who use school vouchers are not receiving money back from the government! Instead, they are paying out less, from money they own, toward taxes. So, even if you erroneously believe that tax revenue belongs to the government, the voucher money is not yet revenue because it has not yet left the hands of the taxpayer. So Nimrod's analogy is bogus.
So, all of this prompted me to take a poll and I'm really interested to see how it turns out.
