nice article

[Pantalaimon]

Well, because you might see education as an investment in a person so that this person can make money the rest of his life. This is only one part of it however. An educated population will be richer than an uneducated one because with the same means a lot higher level of prosperity can be obtained. So spending public money on schooling seems a good thing to me.

Umm, agreed? It doesn't change the fact that use of the education system is not proportional to owning property. Therefore, I think the funding scheme leaves something to be desired. I don't believe the funding should be removed.

Your assumption in your first paragraph that salaries would in the long term be larger than they would be seems also a bit strange. If the distribution of wealth would remain the same as it is now there would not be enough people able to pay for education. Some of them would have more than enough, but most of them wouldn't and would choose to not give their child education.

I don't think the increase is education costs would be as substantial as the knee-jerk doomsday reaction typified here, when taking the tax reduction into account. Yes, the cost would be more because some people are no longer paying into a system they don't use. Yes, this would likely decrease the amount of people who receive education - and yes, this would have an economic impact on society. I wouldn't like it, as I already admitted to: call me an altruist, but an educated workforce is too valuable to quibble over a few thousand dollars a year that I pay into a system I may not be using now, but will likely get my money's worth in the future.

However, I firmly believe educators are currently underpaid compared to the market value of the service they render. Their pay doesn't reflect their value within society. That is, after all, the point you started off with, correct? "Useless" jobs getting paid more than "useful" jobs like teaching? Therefore, it stands to reason that if you let the market dictate teacher salary, it would increase over what it is now - they'd be being paid fair value for their service, no more and no less.

I'm not an economist, I'm an engineer, so correct me if I'm wrong but basic Economics 101 suggests to me that the price point for a product would be where they can make the most money. It's highly unlikely that this point would exclude a large number of people. Yes, you can charge 2 bucks a glass for a lemonade stand and sell two glasses a day because you're adorable. But charge 25 cents a glass and sell twenty glasses and you come out ahead.

Back to the costs we pay for teh fire department......would we pay them if they would solely rely on private gifts? I think nobody assumes that his house will burn down....and if it would, why not just take out an insurance?

I'm not sure I understand this, could you elaborate? If the fire department were privatized, the only logical scheme I can fathom is that your insurance company would pay the fire department for their services rendered in case of a fire. So yes, you would take out insurance. And no, the fire department would not have to rely on "gifts"... privatizing something does not mean turning it into a charity, it means charging enough for a service to maximize your revenue.