The Cost of Public Education

As many states face serious budget deficits and teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, the funding of public education has come under scrutiny.  While some cry foul and list education as a sacred cow, I'm all for looking at how this service can be delivered better, cheaper and more efficiently.

Recent statistics list the US as the third highest in spending for education with $7,764 per secondary school student.  However, in Math and Science the US student perform far below other countries that spend less.  We are 10th in those categories and a distant 10th at that.

I've been hearing a lot about paying teachers more and even had a conversation with a woman currently in school to become a teacher who was excited about Obama paying off her student loan.  When confronted with my objection to paying the balance of a loan she chose to take out, she replied that it was the least we could do for our children's education.  Poppycock!  The least we can do is give them a quality education which is currently not happening.

Let's do something unthinkable for a moment and really do the math on this.  If we're spending $7,764 per student and we have a classroom size of 30 students then we are spending $271,740 per classroom.  The teachers make about $30K per year but we can double that to include benefits and salaries for bureaucrats.  So that would leave us $211,740 per classroom.  We have the books that must be supplied but many of these are re-used.  Calculating a text book cost of $50 would still only be $1,500.  Then there are maintenance costs and the bus drivers and such but does that make up the remaining $210K per classroom?

Even for a moderately sized school of 250 students per grade, this would equate to $7 MILLION dollars for 4 years of students.  That is $7 Million spent on something other than the books and the teachers.  This means that only 22% of the money allocated to education is actually being spent on educating.  What in the world is the other 78% of the money being spent on?

The main focus of improving education and controlling spending should be around that 78% of the dollars.  Where's the money going, how is it being spent, is it adding to the quality of the education of the students, etc.  With the current situation we could throw more and more money at the problem and never have any of it trickle down into the actual classroom. 

We keep hearing that with budget cuts the government will have to cut teachers.  Really?  Why?  Especially considering that the teachers are only 22% of the budget.  Whey don't we do some serious cutting in the remaining 78%?  Why is it that when it comes to educating our children, the last consideration given is the actual process of educating them?  I'm all for paying great teachers more money, but that doesn't mean we should have to pay more in taxes.  It appears that there are TONS of places that the education budget can be slashed. 

Why Do We Want To Be What We Fought To Escape?

Obama seems bound and determined to turn us into England. But didn't we fight the revolution so we weren't England? And why would we want to be them anyway?

The English people are the most filmed and photographed by their government. All things that the ACLU would pitch a fit over if it as anybody but Obama headed that way. So is that what we want?

Nationalized healthcare in England is the model that Obama wants to use. The administration says that our current system is failing the people who can't get care. So does the British method fail no one? Don't think so. They already found out that totally socialized medicine doesn't work and had to reintroduce some free market health care back into the system. I have a friend over there who had to drive her father 4 hours for a procedure. Not because there was nowhere nearer that could do it, but the place that could do it had already met it's cap for that procedure for the year. So they had to search to find someplace who had not. This is exactly what we want to do.

How about taxes. They just hiked their tax rate to 50% and isn't that VAT thing done over there as well. So you pay an additional 20% on purchases. That's for that FREE healthcare thing. Gas prices about $7 a gallon. That's where we want to go.

Our founding principles and our Constitution was set up so that we would NOT become Great Britain. So why are we abandoning that philosophy now to follow in the steps of a country we have traditionally led?

How Much Do We Actually Pay In Taxes

With the wild spending spree the new administration and Congress have been on, and with the statements about paying a fair share in taxes, I decided to try to figure out what percentage of my salary I actually pay in taxes. It's appalling.

When we think about our tax rate we generally think about payroll taxes only. But there are so many more. In looking at my W-2 I calculated that between federal and state taxes I pay 29% of my salary just in payroll deduction taxes. If that weren't bad enough, once I started adding the other taxes it got really frightening. The corporate tax rate is 25%, so for the bills I pay I have to figure that at least 25% is the passing on of their taxes to me. So if half of my take home pay goes to my bills, then I'm paying 25% of half of my remaining 60% in additional taxes. So now my tax rate is up to 44%.

If I spend the remaining half of my take home pay (30% of my salary) then I'm paying corporate taxes again, but I'm also paying sales taxes. So for that last 30% of my salary that I actually get to enjoy, I'm getting taxed even higher. These 2 taxes together equal an additional 17% of my total salary. So now I'm up to a combined tax rate of 61%.

So now what about all of those hidden taxes on individual items. Plus the tariffs and import taxes. It's totally conceivable that with these additional taxes my total tax rate could easily equal a full 2/3 of my salary. Between the federal and state governments they're taking 2/3 of my salary and then have the temerity to tell me they don't have enough money to keep police on the streets. If they're taking 2/3 of everybody's salaries what, pray tell, are they doing with that money that it is still not enough.

With the additional spending and quadrupling of the deficit, we all know they're going to ask us to pay more in taxes. My question is not whether it will eventually get to the point where my WHOLE salary is paid in taxes, but how soon that will happen.