Why Should I Pay For Someone Else's Education? by Ernest Partridge - Democratic Underground

Why Should I Pay For Someone Else's Education? by Ernest Partridge - Democratic Underground

You have to pay for someone else's education so that instead of becoming criminals they will become tax-paying citizens, to support the system that defends your property.

The property tax is still used for it because "There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue."

"Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds;"

- "Agrarian Justice" by Tom Paine.

But in the 21st century it is rather anachronistic to pay for public schools with the property tax. Income tax would be better.

(More on Paine and agrarian justice)