Brown, R Ken wrote:

Same applies to education - I might be able to pay for my daughter to go to school but we want everybody else's kids to go to school as well because my life is better if they do. So we pay for it through tax.

"SHOULD EDUCATION BE COMPULSORY AND TAX-SUPPORTED, AS IT IS TODAY? The answer to this question becomes evident if one makes the question more concrete and specific, as follows: Should the government be permitted to remove children forcibly from their homes, with or without the parents' consent, and subject the children to educational training and procedures of which the parents may or may not approve? Should citizens have their wealth expropriated to support an educational system which they may or may not sanction, and to pay for the education of children who are not their own?" -- Nathaniel Branden Absolutely not. But even if you take a strong socialist/statist position and answer "yes," how can you justify expounding on the evils of coercive monopolies, their arbitrary power, abuse and inefficiency, and then at the same time make Education, one of the most important services to society, a coercive monopoly?! This simply does not make sense. Education needs to be brought into the marketplace so it can be objectively evaluated. VALUED. As an entitlement, education is not valued as it should be, and as a monopoly there is no leverage to choose standards which to value, to discriminate service. The educational system has failed worse than any other industry, not for lack of supply and demand, but for lack of free competition. Matt