Uhh, with complete privatization, the poor have to pay for their childrens' education. Poor families might benefit from not being taxed for compulsory education, but this would be more than offset by the cost of education.
You're just going in circles (but then socialists always do). They get three net benefits.
1. The cost of a good education is reduced to between $1000 and $3000 per year per child -- a price most lower class people can afford, and a price which is sufficiently low that charities will happily pitch in.
2. They are not subject to inflation tax, or income tax, which is a real savings tax of currently around 15%. This puts more money in their pockets.
3. The children may choose a partial schooling, with part time attendance, or a special type of schooling which helps them to quickly get out of poverty. Once the child has acquired a skillset of his own then he is no longer forced to be dependent on his impoverished family and may take years out of his education to work to pay his way.
So everything costs less, especially education. Poor people have more money. And appropriate customized education services may be purchased which specifically aim at helping the lower class individual.
How did I get $1000 - $3000?
On the market upper-end intellectuals are paid about the same amount regardless of their field. That rate is around $30 per hour. It doesn't matter if you're a software engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor, that is the wage rate the intellectual worker is paid when his occupation is subject to sufficient competition.
So if you have a class size of 30, and must pay the teacher $30 per hour, thats $1 per child per hour. Double that to include all the overhead -- buildings, textbooks etc.
$2 per hour per child, 6 hours a day is $12 per day.
$12 per day, 5 days per week is $60 per week.
$60 per week, 48 weeks a year, is $2880 per year.
That's the rate you would expect to pay for a GOOD full-time education under free market capitalism, years 4 - 10.
But of course class sizes could be much larger, as with universities, and study may be part time, ie supplemented with work.
Is it any surprise that the figures work so well? Free-market capitalism is the highest form of economic democracy. Everyone votes in realtime when they engage in economic transactions. Vote with your feet and vote with your wallet.
pening up the market would increase competition if anything, although I doubt the effect would be immediate or pronounced.
Well then again you fail utterly to understand economics.
The demand for good cheap education IS staggering. The second this market is opened up people like me will start education businesses and we'll have lines of instant customers, because the public education system fails that badly to deliver any sort of objectively acceptable standard of education.
How do you arrive at that conclusion?
EDIT: of course it wasn't absolute poverty, it was relative poverty.
Because feeding you is actually more expensive than teaching you.
Consider an average growing child costs around $10 per day to feed. Thats $70 per week, $3640 per year. More than the education (particularly a part time education).
Relative poverty is not something we wish to abolish. Only a marxist would be foolish enough to assert that we need to equalize unequals. You have the right to work a minimum wage job and I have the right to not work one.
So a child either has to have no education, seek apprenticeship at the nearest widget makers' (without basic numeracy or literacy skills), or be sent off to a charitable organization. Great, I'm sure the parents would be glad you scrapped the state system.
Or pay their way, if they can't afford full time education.
Heres what I support: a voluntary system in which prices are continually and systematically reduced by market competition and increasing productivity, in which consumer goods and services are not just available to those with political connections, but also to the common man.
Heres what you support: a system of child slavery paid for by extortion and run by the same people who are currently committing genocide in the middle east.
Go figure.
A public school education is worthless? I don't actually see what you're trying to say - is this just your view of the current education system?
Public education is of little value on the market. If you go to your first job interview with nothing but a public education under your belt then unless its walmart you're not going to get the job. I wouldn't hire you and neither would anyone else. This is because the quality of the certificate has been destroyed by the lack of objective standards in the school system. School leavers barely know how to read and write. And this isn't restricted to the US, or Au. Its occured/occuring everywhere there is compulsory public education.
Environmental factors have a hell of a lot more to do with this than genetics. The poor folks' kids don't inherit a stupid gene, do they? Where is the science to back your viewpoint up?
Intelligence is a genetic trait. Some 'self made' millionares jump the divide, but chances are they're a rare case of some recessives in their bloodline popping up.
You need only look at the extended families of poor people to notice a distinct pattern. None can handle money, all have below average intelligence and none of them care enough to do anything about it. Commonly referred to as trailer trash and the like.
I'm not going to punish them for being crap at virtually everything, but you seem to want to.
There will always be a class of individuals who are suited to manual work because they are stupid. My point is that poverty, not stupidity, is a major factor in keeping families on the bottom wrungs of society, generation after generation.
Well your concern is then misguided.
People are kept on the bottom of the fishbowl because they cannot get a better job, and cannot save enough money to move up in the world.
This is due to a lack of wage competition, due to a lack of general competition. And they cannot save money because they cannot manage money, but also because their bank account is a leaky bucket, where the government just takes what it pleases through inflation.
If you want to help the poor then you should support the abolition of trade union laws, and the fed. This would open up the market place to higher competition driving wages up and prices down, whilst allowing people to save money to buy better educations and new homes.
The education system needs fixing. Did I ever say that we are living in an ideal socialized utopia? However, the system does work, albeit inefficiently. Every child, poor or rich, gets an education. If you want people who can contribute meaningfully in any sort of society, they need to have the basic skills in order to do so.
If sitting in an inner city school dodging shank attacks and trading drugs under the table is learning then knock me dead.
What you currently have is a system in which virtually no real education takes place, but it wastes 12 years of a person's life ANYWAY. 12 years they could be learning a trade or getting ahead in life. You force them to do nothing, be paid nothing.
The problem of central planning is not going to be fixed with more central planning. What are you, stupid?
Your system doesn't work, and nothing you would try to fix it will work either. And lord knows they've been trying for 50 years to fix this system and every year it just gets worse, in every country. Why don't you stop with the insanity? People who do not want to be educated should not be forced into an education system which does not want to educate them!
"Gain wealth, forgetting all but self" is fundamentally incompatible with collective cooperation. The money is "stolen" money, but it isn't being thrown into a hole, much of it is implemented in our own best interests.
I was actually referring to existing private education institutions. There are three private schools within walking distance of my home. They all have fees of over £100/week per pupil.
As a % of GDP, the welfare state incl. education stands around 26% in the UK and 20% in the US. No advertising campaign is going to get either rich or poor giving that sort of money to charity. Total current charitable donations account for something like a tenth of that, and charities do a great job of advertising their cause already.
Again, this is fucking typical of a socialist. You don't understand markets.
Most of that stupidly high amount of GDP is being wasted. In the market most of it would be delivered to where it is needed.
And your argument just outright collapses when, again, you consider democracy. If greater than 50% disagree on paying that much for the welfare state then why haven't they voted it out the door?
