05-15-2008, 12:23 PM
Quote:25 % salary increase means a lot less tax money for other things.
I feel you're missing Kan's point by a large margin, eppie. If the education funding were removed from the tax burden ("privatized"), a 25% increase in salary doesn't mean a lot less tax money for other things... it's no longer being funded by the government. Perhaps regulated, but not funded - a 25% increase in teacher salary would correspond to an increase in education costs for the buyer of the service, in this case parents with children to educate.
However, the market would, in the long term, likely stabilize to salaries larger than now, but still reasonable: more people would choose to become teachers, increasing the supply and applying downward pressure on the salaries.
On that note, however, I'm not convinced that privatized education would remain affordable. You alluded to this I believe, Kandrathe, but everybody is currently paying for the education system regardless of enrollment. If you suddenly remove a portion of the "customer" base - those without children - the cost to the remaining portion will have to increase to maintain the same level of funding. Ignoring the often used magic bullet argument of private business = more efficient, yes, everybody's taxes would go down; however, the cost to a parent to educate a child would likely be more than the tax break. This may indeed exclude some children from receiving even a basic education. If I'm socialist for wanting to avoid that situation, so be it... I am Canadian, after all;)
Quote:ANyway these are things that cannot even be changed like this, there is not enough money to go around to have everybody for his own education, fire department, roads, trash collection etc.etc. if they were privatized.
The underlying point that I believe Kandrathe and I share is that the funding for the education system is a little... off. Things like FD, roads, trash collection, water supply are all related to owning property within a municipality, and thus should be paid with property taxes. Nobody is suggesting that those be privatized - at least not in this thread. Education is the one thing in that list "not like the others": it is not related to owning property at all.
Quote:My second point (main point actually) was the impact such a thing has on a society. There is no real stimulant to get skilled people to work on real problems we are facing. Things like world poverty, global warming, resistance of virusses to drugs, sustainable fuel economy.
There is a very large monetary incentive to solve the resistance of viruses to drugs. Pharmaceuticals is a very large-dollar industry, routinely attracting very bright minds.
On the other hand, solving 'world' poverty (what's wrong with solving poverty at home? Why is everything so much more appealing when it's in Africa? Slight derailment:P) is an inherently hard thing to monetize. Hence, there are relatively few in that "field", and those present are not there to earn big bucks. So yes, I suppose I agree that there is no real stimulant in some noteworthy causes. But talk is cheap. People can pay lip service to feel good causes all day, but try to tax them to provide some sort of economic incentive for solving world poverty and they'd riot. So at the end of the day, the market continues on.