Educational Vouchers: The Double Tax

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by Gary North
Foundation for Economic Education
Saturday, May 1, 1976

Excerpt:
“The problems of American public education are the problems associated with any system of government-enforced, tax-supported coercive wealth redistribution: the system of financing conflicts with the expressly stated goals of the planning agencies. This conflict between the method of financing and the stated goals of education has been with us since the days of the Puritans of New England who set up compulsory education which was to be financed, in part, by money collected by the local property tax assessor.

“There is no education apart from conformity of thought. One thing is true and another is not. Education requires indoctrination. But the conformity of thought which is basic to all education creates conflicts when parents of differing first principles are required either to finance a hostile educational system or to send their children to it. The Puritans’ solution was to enforce conformity by expelling hostile families from the community. The modern bureaucrat’s solution is to force parents to finance an alternative school system as well as the government system, and then to take control of the private system later on.”

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