partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 days ago
For many states property taxes are the majority of funding for public schools. If that’s the case for the pictured person, the sign could also read:
“I got my public education for free from age 5-18 funded by property taxes including learning how to read and write to make this sign you’re reading. Now that I’ve received that free public education and benefited from it, I’m not interested in paying for any kids to be educated using my dollars. F you I go mine.”
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 days ago
We could also just pay for education differently.
Damionsipher@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yes and. How most of the US funds their school system is super fucked up. Here in Canada, primary education is paid for by the province, and school funding is based on student enrollment numbers. This translates to much more equal levels of education, regardless of how wealthy a given neighborhood may be. I was shocked to find out that schools are paid for by catchment area taxes in must of the states - it makes the history of redlining so obvious when the is literally a “wing side of the tracks”.
ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Via property taxes.
Damionsipher@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Property tax is the mechanism through which the taxes are gathered, but funding is through the province. This is very different than how allocation happens in most states, where schools are directly funded by their catchment area.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 days ago
So the source is the provincial government, but in that system where is the province deriving the revenue to pay for schools? What is being taxed by the province to bring in the money it uses to fund schools?
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Property taxes is the answer
Kroxx@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I love the “but it pays for schools” argument, like how about we drop 3 less bombs per year and just pay for all the schools out of the existing tax pool like it should be.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I agree with the sentiment but to put some numbers into perspective we spend about 850 Billion a year on K-12 education. The US military budget is about 850 Billion. Now I would fully support switching about 200 Billion of that and throwing at the most underfunded schools in the country. Another source would be police budgets. Police are massively overfunded and take most of a local region’s money. So we could easily grab some of that funding too.
Generally wealth transfer taxes should be higher though, so buying houses (especially second and third houses or out of state houses), buying vehicles over the “budget” category (ballpark 35K these days?), any boat that’s not a primary residence or a 10 foot fishing boat, etc etc… This idea that anything other than income tax should affect everyone equally is pretty ridiculous, as is the idea that the only way to tax wealth is to tax stocks.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Until we do, we can’t stop the current funding source. Feel free to present your argument on your proposed alternate method.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Have the rich actually pay taxes. Use that.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 days ago
If you actually serious, you have to do better than that for an answer. How are you going to tax them? What are you going to tax them on? Who is considered rich?