Monday, February 27, 2006

Feed me, legislature.

Education is important. Education is difficult. Education is best left out of the hands of: government, parents, students, administrators, voters...namely, you. Education is a beast. The only thing that those groups above can do to advance education is to pay for it, with taxes. I stress with taxes. There are a few common ways for states and municipalities to increase funding for education: the lottery (this is a whole other rant), bond issues, and taxes. Of those the ONLY one that does not place undue burnen on the poor is taxes.

Bonds are the absolute worst way to do this because, pay attention here, taxes eventually pay this, and the wealthy profit from it. People love to vote for bond initiatives because they are marketed as free money. Hi, this is reality, free money DOES NOT EXIST. It has to come from somewhere, and, like all things government, that somewhere is taxes. In this case it is taxes deferred, which is at least adds a touch of poetic "justice" as it means that parents have decided that their children should pay for their own education. Taxation is the only way to fairly fund public education. As things are right now I think income taxes are a necessary evil (later). I much prefer sales taxes on "luxuries" where luxuries is anything except: real groceries (not hoho's, chips, soda, candy, ...), cars that cost less than ca. $10k, houses under ca. $125k, and, maybe, a handful of other necessary items.

Education is devastatingly important, and will likely be the most commonly discussed topic on this, my little cathartic forum.

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