Cohousing-L Mailing List: Taxes and the Common Good

[Rowenahc (rowenahc]

Molly Williams said:
"We are non-parents, most of whose property taxes goes to pay for the local
public school system. While I believe that having an educated
populace is a benefit to the whole society, parents or not, it still
irks me to have to pay ever-increasing taxes for other people's kids
to go to school."

I find it surprising to find this kind of sentiment on a cohousing list,
since a major value shared by most cohousers is that community is vitally
important and that community occurs when we all try to pay attention to the
needs of our neighbors not just ourselves.

There are at least two lines of reasoning that support universal education.
One is economic - this country will not survive and flourish if we do not
educate our people.  As it is, our population is aging and would be
shrinking without immigrants.  Unfortunately, in too many places local
taxpayers are short-changing the schools and as a result we are having to
import most of our engineers and other technicians from places such as India
and China!  Without a flourishing economy, who will support us in our old
age?!   The second is moral.  The concept behind universal education is that
everyone raised in our country deserves the opportunity to succeeed - even
those whose parents had the bad taste to have a lot of children.  In this
day and age a poor education is a sentence to the cycle of poverty and while
sufficient funds do not guarantee a good education, an insufficiency of
funds guarantees a poor one.

I guess you pushed a button here.  Sorry if this sounds like a flame.

Rowenahc

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