I don’t think that independent private schools are more independent than they would be if there were school vouchers. While vouchers will have a cartelizing effect just as food stamps do on the major grocery chains, some market is better than no market. The government saying “We’re going to take $15,000 from the taxpayers and spend it on this school which is the only school which your children may attend” is definitely worse than the government saying “We’re going to take $15,000 from the taxpayers and give you this coupon which you can use to offset $5,000 worth of tuition at any school of your choice.” Equal damage is done to the taxpayer either way but in the latter case some latitude is permitted in the choice of how that damage will be offset in terms of choosing the school to which the funds will eventually go.
Wow, there are a lot of socialists in this thread.
What we have now is “some market.” There are numerous private schooling options available to parents and students. With a fully implemented voucher system where every school gets 100% of their funding from the government, then we will have “no market.”
What government in the history of the world has ever implemented an “ideal program”? Government programs are implemented by politicians, who are by definition robbers and liars; they will never implement anything close to your “ideal program.”
And how would an unregulated voucher program work anyway? You’d have this huge pot of stolen tax money that is ready to be giving out for vouchers. The potential for abuse is astronomical, people would send their kids to their buddy’s “school” funneling money into everywhere except education.
This. However, I’d like to add that I only support school vouchers to the extent that they’re used to de-fund traditional public (i.e. government-operated) schools. If funding for those is maintained, then the voucher program only adds to the tax burden and I won’t support it. The idea for me is to ultimately eliminate government-operated “education”.
Think of it this way. Municipal school districts get funding mainly (if not entirely) from property taxes. If vouchers are given to homeowners with children, then it’s essentially a form of tax credit for them.
What if corn vouchers are given to farmers with corn, are they also a form of tax credit? What about food stamps? A universal vouchers system for everyone for everything would be just a big tax cut for everyone.
When you strawman people, you can see as many “socialists” as you like…
Who said “every school gets 100% of their funding from the government”??? The point of the voucher systems which have been proposed is to leave independent schools alone (for example, religious schools can refuse to accept government vouchers, if they like) while permitting parents to take the voucher to any school that will accept it. While that’s not “free” and it’s not a “market”, it’s still better than the ironclad government-school monopoly we have today.
Try reading what I wrote next time and maybe you won’t see a socialist behind every bush.
But many and even most will, and it’s the consequences of this that you fail to grasp.
You and others are failing to realize that you are introducing new and more perverse incentives into an industry that currently do not exist, and failing to grasp the transformational affects, the “unintended” consequences, this will have on the industry in the future.
No plan … absolutely no plan, that introduces perverse incentives that did not previously exist into a private system can be said to be “step in the right direction”, or a “like market solution”, or whatever. It’s more like a step towards a complete destruction of whatever freedom is left.
There’s nothing more destructive and corruptive to the institution of private property then to have the government start picking up the tab for alleged “private” services.
I think you bring up a good point, one that I missed earlier. Obviously a school voucher couldn’t be spent on something unrelated to schooling. So it’s not simply a tax credit in the sense that you get to keep more money that you can spend on whatever.
Still, if the goal is to eliminate government-operated schools, I think school vouchers could help. It won’t solve the overall problem of government, of course.
I’d like to see you list at least some of the new and more perverse incentives that you think school vouchers would necessarily introduce, along with the transformational effects and consequences (intended or not).
They are trivial enough. You can figure them out on your own.
I’ll just say this. Focusing on “choice” and that’s it produces really bad economics and leads one to infer quite self-contradictory conclusions. The voucher system proposal is the perfect example of this.
In the name of giving more choice to current government school [poor] students, you are proposing to destroy whatever private sector there is left. Why? Because ..
People!!, Markets do not work on vouchers! They work on money. And for that you need private property, period!! Get it out of you head that there are other ways.
I’m sorry but, as far as I’m concerned, this response tells me that one (or more) of three things is true about you in this situation: 1) you’re too lazy to explain to me what you’re thinking in more detail, 2) you don’t actually know of any examples of such new and more perverse incentives, or 3) you’re afraid that the examples you have in mind will be shot down by your opponents.
Another problem with this outcome is when this system of pseudo-“private” schools fail like the current public schools the blame will be put, like nearly everything else, on capitalism and rendered as a failure of the “private” market. Similar to how most people think there’s a free market in health care and blame those “greedy” capitalists.
Indeed, and vouchers sometimes come with strings attached for the schools that accept them. If school choice is a noble goal, then the seperation of school and state is the only true answer. Until that day, homeschooling is the only viable solution for middle class families.