Whether people want to admit it or not, government education is a form of welfare.  Most people think of welfare as going to poor people, such as food stamps.  But there are all kinds of welfare.  Social Security and Medicare are forms of welfare.  Corporate bailouts are welfare, mostly for the rich.  Wars and the military industrial complex involves welfare.

Of course, everyone in America could be accused of being on some kind of welfare.  We all get some kind of “benefit” from the government.  We have to drive on government roads.  With education, you don’t have much of a choice in having taxes taken away from you, although you do have the choice of not sending your kids to government schools.

I don’t fault anyone for collecting Social Security.  They had to pay taxes previously and are still paying taxes in other ways.  You may as well get back some of your money that is being confiscated.  The same goes for education.  I don’t fault anyone for using the government school system, at least as far as getting some of your money back.  If you are to be blamed at all for sending your kids to government schools, it is only because of the brainwashing and lack of actual education that your child is receiving.

Aside from whether it is a good decision to send your kids to government schools and whether you can even afford it, that is not the real issue here.  The real issue is this: are you an advocate of having government run schools?

I don’t see hypocrisy for being against government schools, yet using them because you are forced to pay for them.  I do see hypocrisy for those who criticize government welfare to a large degree, yet they are advocates of the public (government) school system.

Why is it any worse to be on food stamps than it is to use the taxpayer funded school system?  If anything, food is more of a need than education for your kids.  Without food, you can’t survive.  This is not an argument for food stamps from either a practical side or a moral side.  The point is, both food stamps and government schools are a form of welfare.

Of course, if we didn’t have to pay property taxes, then it would be easier to afford to pay for schooling for kids.  The same could also be said for someone on food stamps.  Despite what we hear, poor people do pay taxes.  They may not pay regular income taxes, but they pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes (often indirectly), corporate taxes (also indirectly), excise taxes, etc.  The poor also pay heavily for the worst tax there is.  It is the hidden tax of inflation.

There is absolutely no reason that the government should be funding education.  It should not be happening at the federal level.  But it should also not be happening at state and local levels.  People who have children should pay for their own daycare or schooling, or else they should find someone who voluntarily will.  We don’t hold a gun to someone’s head to make them pay other expenses for parents.  If the government is going to take people’s money to pay for schooling, why not clothing, food, furniture, and family vacations?

If education were left to the free market, we would see innovation and cost cutting.  Schools would get cheaper and the learning methods would get better.  Until then, let’s call government schooling what it really is: a form of welfare.