WEALTHY parents should pay a levy to upgrade the nation's rundown schools, according to the headmaster of Australia's oldest private school.
Tim Hawkes, head of The King's School at Parramatta, said the levy should apply to well-off parents who send their children to government schools, which he described as an untapped funding source.
Well-off parents already paying school fees to send their children to private schools would also have to pay the levy.
Gee. I bet that has made him popular with his customers.
Of course I fundamentally disagree with the proposal for any number of reasons. How is wealthy defined? Many wealthy parents already pay a lot more to educate their children so how is 'fairness' achieved? Why punish effort and entrepreneurship and reward the absence of it? I could go on.
But the reason I thought the article from The Age worth comment, is the response from readers. The poll (at 6 am) shows only 33 percent agree with the idea. If the same sort of thinking got an airing in the NZ Herald I believe the 'yes' vote would be significantly higher.
And the difference is why Australia is leaving us behind for dust.
6 comments:
As Andrew Bolt said this morning:
The well-off already pay a significant stipend for educating their children. It's called 'Tax'. In fact, those who send their children to private school get the privilege of paying for the same service twice.
I think this is and excellent idea - and one that really shows up the difference between a merely socialist country like Australia and a communist country like NZ.
In Australia, there are tax breaks for "wealthy" citizens to take private health insurance - in fact if you don't you pay a surtax
This is just the same thing for schools - if you're above the median wage why should someone else earning less be taxed to pay for you to educate your kid? especially when you don't love them enough to make private provision.
Frankly its commonsense that - if we are going to use taxation to pay for education - it should only be open to those who really need it - Beneficiaries kids I guess.
Productive citizens can and should care enough about their children and pay for real schools. It's called love. Liberals and beneficiaries should try it sometime.
The policies of envy at work!
Anon:
To your first ridiculous question: "why should someone else earning less be taxed to pay for you to educate your kid", I would say "why should I be taxed more so someone with less wherewithall than me can send their kids to a 'free' state school while I send mine to a private school? Should I not get a tax break for not burdening the state indoctrination centres with my progeny?"
Secondly, it is NOT commonsense that state-funded education should only be open to the children of bennies. Not unless my tax bill gets slashed back to the bare minimum it will take to provide the bennies' kids with the bare minimum of education.
This 'levy' is a stupid, stupid idea. It is the politics of envy, and I expect to read in the paper on Monday that Tim Hawkes has been fired for being grossly moronic and gratuitously socialist.
We have learnt we can vote for more money for themselves, knowing that we gain through doing so, having voted for subsidies and tax cuts for ourselves at election times. The polls are asking people to vote for more money for themselves. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant, they rich are a smaller majority, they will always lose the vote. This is gutter journalism if you ask me, it is only trying to evote an emotional response. There was a similar poll taken that asked voters if only the rich should be levied to pay for the Christchurch rebuild. What does that tell you, that people are greedy. Absolutely fucking brilliant.
Gloria
If you are stupid enough to give credence to 'newspaper polls' enough said.
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