[extropy-chat] change of topic

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Stephen Van_Sickle <sjvans at ameritech.net> wrote:

> 
> --- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > The biggest consumer expense today is debt. Don't
> > get into debt to
> > start with and watch your standard of living go up.
> 
> Yep, that is the trick.  If you don't "sell your soul
> to the company store" you are a lot better off...but
> once you do, like then, it is a tough trap to get out
> of.
> 
> > And don't live some place with a big public school
> > system. 
> 
> What difference does that make, given how much funding
> is State and Federal?  That throws your calculation
> way off.

Depends on the state you are in. Here in NH, we have no income or sales
tax at the state or local level. There are local, county, and state
property taxes, so their burden is proportionate to your property
valuation. Property valuation is largely impacted by regulation.
Restrictive zoning, planning, and other ordinances increase market
value of property by creating artificial scarcity, ergo the way to
minimize your tax burden is to live in an area with no such ordinances
in place.
Having a large geographic area with few children needing education and
a high incidence of homeschooling/private schooling among those who do
also helps reduce your tax burden.

However, my calculus of the previous post is more of a macroeconomic
model. Few, if any, people with three kids pay $27,000 in taxes to
educate their kids. That burden is spread around among many people
without kids: young single people, elderly retired people, childless
couples, in a way that is morally illegitimate. Those that have kids
already seek to use public policy to close the door on those who want
kids in order to prevent increasing the public education tax burden.
Economically exiling young breeding couples who earn below the median
income is a common occurence in many communities through the use of
regulation to prevent housing development.

Communities that do not have the ability to become high value, high
income enclaves can only reduce their tax burden by reducing and/or
eliminating the centralized public school infrastructure,
decentralizing the public school system to a network of small
neighborhood schools/resource centers similar to the sort of one room
school house system that grew in the US in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries that created the highest level of literacy in our history.

The era of the behemoth super-school is over. The cost of such
infrastructure is a relic of the union movement toward monopolizing the
educational labor supply and does not add value to the education of children.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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