Milton Friedman reminds readers of Opinion Journal that he is still an education socialist. The separation of finance (public) and administration (private)? Imagine how that would system would affect, say, WalMart or Dell. At the least, it would require compulsory shopping laws–a correlary to the compulsory education that Friedman still believes has “some justification.”
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/3696/still-wrong-on-schools/
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Friedman is hardly the first to fudge on education. British liberalism had its great divide as well between Manchester Liberalism and Leeds Liberalism on this matter.
Cobden, who was the great leader of the British classical liberals for decades, also supported state education whereas the Leeds liberals were almost unanimously opposed. The great Edward Baines’s of the Leeds Mercury and other publications (hence, the knickname, “Bainesocracy,” for Leeds Liberalism), Samuel Smiles, all the way down to Wordsworth Donisthorpe, were antistatist in this matter.
I would have thought that Friedman would have recanted on this, considering the way new technology is affecting the educational field. What with educational software and programs on the internet for almost any topic imaginable, why would we need a “Bricks & Mortar” approach anymore? Why forced education when all you need is at the touch of a button?
Just a thought.
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/
Come on guys. Don’t make perfect the enemy of the good. Having a wider range of real choice, making all schools on equal financial footing (rather than the government monopoly ensured of tax funds) is a good thing. Guess what – you will always pay income tax. That doesn’t make tax cuts a bad thing.
“Voice of Reason”,
That’s a bogus argument. Who says that vouchers are good? That system would infiltrate private schools and ruin them, subjecting them to numerous government whims and whatnot. It is like Pres. Bush’ “social security” program, which will most likely result in the socialization of the stock-market.
It is not “good” at all.
A “good” — but not perfect — thing would be allowing those who do not have children or who send their kids to private schools to get a tax-deduction for the money they spend on private schools.
I think Education is a very important area and it is pretty clear that students need education financing. So, who is going to provide that? Govt. or the market?
I believe market can easily finance education but it needs enforcement support from the Govt. The way to do this to allow students and their financiers to enter agreements that will allow students to repay their financiers through a share in their future earnings.
IRS can act as a collection agency for the financiers and can also use tax withholding. Once we do that then role of Govt. in education will be reduced and Govt. will only enforce contracts just like it does for mortgages, stock market and so many other legal transactions and contracts.
I think Education is a very important area and it is pretty clear that students need education financing. So, who is going to provide that? Govt. or the market?
I believe market can easily finance education but it needs enforcement support from the Govt. The way to do this to allow students and their financiers to enter agreements that will allow students to repay their financiers through a share in their future earnings.
IRS can act as a collection agency for the financiers and can also use tax withholding. Once we do that then role of Govt. in education will be reduced and Govt. will only enforce contracts just like it does for mortgages, stock market and so many other legal transactions and contracts.
Hey, “Voice”! I have no interest in being forced to send my kid to a school at all.
I would be interested on your opinion of that.
Money is a non-issue. I can get a kid up to “community college” level in most any class with just books, pencils and paper. Ya know, the way it was done for thousands of years?
Curt,
No guardian should be forced to send their children to any institution. And if we lived in anarcho-cap land, that would be the reality.
“Voice”, it doesn’t take Libertopia. All it takes is one repealed law, one state at a time. It was reality until only recently.
Voice O’Reason said:
“No guardian should be forced to send their children to any institution. And if we lived in anarcho-cap land, that would be the reality.”
Perhaps you misunderstand anarchocapitalism (or as I like to call it, the voluntary society). How is it that guardians would be forced to send their children anywhere? I don’t seem to remember Rothbard describing that scenario.
Up to a point, which we have long passed, state supplied and financed education provided an untargetted Pigovian subsidy that offset the market imperfections that hurt everybody. Which is not a justification for the principle or for present practices, and does not work well enough to provide that side effect benefit. Similar untargetted subsidies worked out in other areas in some times and places, like universal health care. Similar objections apply to those too.
There is nothing wrong with the existing compulsory publicly financed education (oops, I mean schooling) system in the United States.
It does exactly what it was designed to do – which is not to educate. It was designed to produce thought free masses programmed to work hard and spend harder.
See http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
for a lengthy discussion of the above.
The total amount spent on public schooling in the United States dwarfs the military budget. It dwarfs anything else in the public sector.
You see, the mass of thought free consumers is very important.
Good point JD. Whenever I talk to the education majors at my school i cringe. I am throughly convinced that the least amount of education occurs at the “education building” on my campus..The math and econ majors are banished to a 120 year old building with rotting floors and no AC…
But regardless, if my parents didn’t have to pay so much in income taxes to finance public education, they could probably send me to private school.
What about home schooling? I know several couples who have provided an excellent education to their kids at home. Nationwide, home schooled kids test better than the national avg.
Keep in mind the original idea behind compulsory education: Withholding education was considered a type of child abuse. A few families would keep children home to work on the farm. While that helped the parents, it was a severe handicap to the child when he got old enough to support himself or his own family.
There’s another problem with Friedman, in that, he thinks schools that recieve the vouchers need to have a stamp of acception by the government.
I don’t have the quote here with me but it’s part of that Free to Choose book he wrote. About people should be able to get the amount of money that would be spent at a government school, and use it at a private school assuming it was an acceptible private school.
But wouldn’t that just turn private schools into de-facto government ones?
Tracy
“The narcissism of small differences”? — Karl Marx
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