Really setting the record straight

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program's voucher cap story from yesterday has generated a lot of commentary (a few links here), some well-informed and some not.

But the not-informed notion that I wanted to talk about this morning showed up in a comment to Paul's post at the Electric Commentary. "For clarity here," Chris (that crotchety guy from up north) writes,

I would once and for all like to set the record straight. [. . .]

As a taxpayer, I am compelled by the threat of conversion to pay real property taxes. As one who purchases other items and has earned income in the State of Wisconsin, I also pay sales tax and income tax. Each of these taxes are sources of revenue for the state and are used to fund the government schools; not a dime goes to fund home schooling, private or parochial schools. [. . .] The issue then is as follows--as a parent raising a child it is my solemn duty, responsibility and, in fact, pure joy to provide protection and to see to the training of the mind of my child so that she can become an independent, rational, self-reliant person. [. . .] If I choose to send her to the local government school for this mind training, I fully expect to pay for it and I do--via the taxes already mentioned. However, if I make an independent decision as a parent that what is in my daughter's best interest is not attendance at Government Elementary, but rather Parochial School, I am exercising my parental rights and making a choice. Furthermore, I have to pay tuition at Parochial to exercise this state authorized choice because they do not receive funds from anywhere else. So, I have exercised my right granted to me by the state to send my daughter to a non-government school, however I have been denied the economic right to close the deal because I am still required to subsidize the education of other peoples children who attend the school that I deemed inappropriate for educating my child! I am being denied the economic right of choice by the state.

This denial occurs because economic choice implies voting with dollars between competing choices--if you buy a hamburger at McDonald's but are required by law to also buy one from Hardees have you really made a choice? The fact that the state requires me to pay twice by not crediting to me the amount I have paid in tuition to exercise my parental rights over where my daughter is educated is simply and purely immoral. While I am educating my child, I have no obligation, duty or any other moral requirement to simultaneously pay for someone else's child to be educated! Unless, of course, I should choose to be truly benevolent. Moreover, when I am done educating my child my taxes will remain and I will continue to subsidize public education. The irony is glaring, by creating the socialist/altruist mentality that permeates the government schools they have removed from us the ability to engage in true benevolence.

To paraphrase: These taxes are my money and I want my money back if I don't use your services!

I have lived in Milwaukee for almost a decade, and I've never called 911. Can I get that money back? How about if I install the ADT and hire a bodyguard, can I get the money back I pay for police? If I haul all my trash to the dump myself, or if I put in an extensive sprinkler system, can I get money back for trash collection and the fire department? If I resolve to stay inside and never go anywhere, can I have back the part of my taxes that pay for the streets?

The answer to those questions are, quite sensibly, no. See, as residents of this state, we are all members of an exclusive club called the state of Wisconsin, and the taxes we pay are the membership fees. Those fees entitle us to free use of the metaphorical golf course, club house, pro shop, pool, and so forth. You don't have to use the golf course, for example, but your fees make it possible for you to do so if you want to.

This is true especially for public schools, as way back when the people who founded the state and wrote our constitution explicitly included language guaranteeing a free education to every child in the state. When you pay your taxes, you are not paying for your child's education; rather, you are paying for the education of all the children in the state. It is our collective responsibility to provide that education to all, not just for our own children. Chris calls it the "socialist/altruist mentality"; but his frustration should not be directed at the "government schools" but rather at the language in our constitution that places the responsibility of educating all of the state's children on all of us collectively. If he wants to, I suppose he can start a movement to get that language redacted--but that seems unlikely ever to happen.

I can understand the frustration of people who do not have children in the system but who have to pay for the system--I am one of them. But I also recognize the value to me as a citizen of living in a state with high educational standards and achievement, and I am willing to pay for that, and for my neighbors' children to have access to quality, free schooling.

And it turns out to be quite a bargain: The average Milwaukee property tax payer paid $1096 in property taxes to the Milwaukee Public Schools. MPS enrolls about 95,000 students. Doing the math, that means the average taxpayer contributes $1.15 to the education of every child in Milwaukee. The state of Wisconsin collects about $1600 per person in sales and income taxes, and about half our budget goes back to schools. Wisconsin enrolls about 900,000 students statewide in public schools, so the average taxpayer's $800 contributes another dime to the education of every child in this state. (Updated with the correct math.)

But back to the I want my money back mentality: If the average Milwaukee taxpayer wants a refund of his or her tax contribution while sending children to private school, then I think it perfectly reasonable for the state to write a refund check of a buck and a quarter per child--the amount that the taxpayer has contributed to his or her own child's education. I know that certainly won't satisfy the anti-tax, anti-government people like Chris, but it is, in fact, fair, based on the way we actually do things here in Wisconsin. I hope this really sets the record straight.