Reply to I never understood the difference between public and private until today

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Government is a service we buy, like trash removal or dishwasher repair, to do things we cannot do ourselves, generally to resolve collective action problems.  (No one would individually build a road or design an aircraft carrier.)  As such, taxes are indeed user fees -- money we pay for these services.  Every few years we get the chance to change the service provider (I've switched my Internet, cell phone and lawn care company less frequently) through elections. If I am paying a $70k user fee for state-provided services, I expect them to be good.

Public education is one such collective action problem -- I have no intention of opening a little red schoolhouse or home-schooling my children.  And I fully support using my user fees to pay to educate children with disabilities.  However, I do not support structuring the educational environment in such a way that the education of one group materially and negatively impacts the education of another group.  In the case of junior's time in the MD public school system, putting four special needs kids in with 28 other children was a significant distraction to the one already-frazzled 4th grade teacher, who then off-loaded part of the responsibility to care for them to the other non-special needs children, including junior.

[/quote]

No. If taxes were user fees, then you wouldn't pay public-school taxes unless you had a child in school; and, conversely, if you didn't pay taxes, you would not be allowed to send your child to school. But that's not how it works. Every child gets to go to school, regardless of how much or how little their parents pay in taxes. And everyone has to pay taxes, regardless of whether or not they have a child in school.[/quote]

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