this whole debate needs a dose of reality. the public pays for education no matter how you slice it. that could come in the form of property taxes, which is reasonably fair (even renters pay property tax through their rent.) but there are major draw backs - like the elderly who lose their homes. this page exists essentially due to those drawbacks. there are other options. if we tax the natural gas, the tax burden is shifted only to those homes who heat with gas. weve heard the relief argument before, with the casinos (wherein casino revenue was supposed to shoulder the burden of educational funding.) and this didnt happen. so where do you want to pay? as a tax on your property? in increased gas bills? when you purchase vices like cigarettes or when you gamble? colorado funnels the taxes from marijuana sales into schools and it works, but pa residents still thing pot comes from the devil so.... what do we really need here? heres a idea... that gas that is being extracted and poisoning our well water and no one can stop it... maybe we should nationalize that. as in, not tax it, but make it the property of the state collectively with all revenue (not just a percentage) funneled into schools. but we cant do that! profit, it seems, is more important than our kids. profit is sacrosanct in this country, and it is ruining everything. lets think about it differently. and the idea that teachers are overpaid or their benefits are outrageous, think about it. these are people who have a thankless job, deal with furlows and cut benefits, cut wages, have their collective bargaining hollowed out because their job is a giant political football that no one understands. your kids are bastards, you need to work so you cant raise them and you dont even want to pay the babysitter that cares for them 8+ hours a day. do any of you tea partiers even think about this stuff or am i speaking latin? maybe we should just do away with education altogether. maybe schools should be for the rich only, those who can afford it themselves. i hate to put it like this, because property taxes are genuinely unfair, specifically to the elderly. but average property tax in the state is an annual bill of about 2,200 dollars. average household has 2 kids. thats 2,880 hours of child care per school year, which equals less than one dollar per hour of education (on average, and not counting property taxes paid after your kids graduate.) you cant even get a teenage babysitter for that rate. Id say residents of this state are getting a pretty square deal. could it be better? could we do more to prevent people from being evicted? could education be more effective with people graduating with real life, marketable skills? of course, yes, to all of these questions. but im frankly getting annoyed by the posters on this page who complain about taxes just because its a tax without any perspective, people who complain about teachers instead of the super rich. these same people, who largely reveal themselves as republicans, didnt seem to care about president bush spending trillions of dollars in iraq, but draw the line at education? ridiculous. I want to help this cause, but the tea party attitude on this site is turning me off. youtube/watch?v=S6ZsXrzF8Cc
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 20:03:32 +0000