Less affordable for who? I graduated with a CS degree after going to community college then a state school. I graduated with no loans or debt of any kind. I payed $11/unit at CC and about $800 a quarter at state school.
You can't seriously claim that this would have been cheaper for me if only the government had gotten out of education.
Maybe I should have said "It hides the costs really well." Some people benefit from transfer payments, but much less than they think, and on balance nearly everyone loses. To paraphrase David Friedman, suppose the government takes a penny from each of 100 people, and dumps 50 cents on one lucky winner (that's you)---and then repeats the process 100 times. Everyone feels like they're getting a good deal, but you're still 50 cents poorer.
Sum up the total cost of increased prices due to taxation and your personal lifetime tax burden and it's not nearly as clear-cut that you come out ahead with public schools. Add to that the distorting effect of school monopolies on incentives and quality (virtually all public school teachers are in the bottom half academically, etc.) and you've got a shaky argument for government education, even for your case. I'd bet that even you would have been better off if schools were provided on the market.
your paraphrasing fails to deal with the reality of the situation. By "dumping" tuition assistance on me you didn't merely transfer money is a zero sum game. I am now a competitive worker in the global economy, which I wouldn't have been, and I make a far larger salary than I would have. Now I"m paying far more money into the government than I would have in order to enable another person a similar opportunity.
This makes us all richer in the long run, and is not the zero sum game you claim it to be.
Your argument assumes that the same or superior goods couldn't be supplied more efficiently on the market. After all, the same argument applies to having the government buy people cars (now they can drive to work), hard-hats (now they can work in construction), or food (who can work if they're hungry?).
When the government is the monopoly supplier of a good, it's difficult to visualize the world being any other way. But there are instructive test cases: just look at how much more vibrant religious life is in the absence of a state religion. (I'm a Pastafarian, BTW. ;-) Or look at how much scarcer and less varied food is in command economies.
Education is tremendously valuable, and there are powerful incentives to unlock that value. I think you'd be surprised at the institutions that would arise to help you become a competitive worker in the absence of a government monopoly on education.
Maybe if Patri's Seasteading Institute (http://seasteading.org/) takes off, we'll get to find out. :-)
That is a ridiculously stupid argument. Cars & hard hats you buy when you are 17-18+, i.e an adult. Education starts when you are 3. Are you going to penalize every kid whose parents decided buying a new car was more important than getting the better school? Sure some parents will make rational choices and send them off to great schools, but many will take the cheap route. At least right now the default, free, school is the one that MOST people go to. It is the exception to be paying to go elsewhere. If you find the fastest way to separate the classes in America, this is it. Next thing you will say is "but there will be vouchers it will be all equal", sure except that the bar before was $0 for public education out of my pocket vs 20,000 a year for private. Few would make that leap, except those with piles of money. So now everyone is making the leap, and you know what will be the differentiation? Not money, but skill. It will be competitive. Who will get into the best elementary schools? The kids whose parents push them, because who at that age makes decisions out side of their parents will. And then they will get further ahead than the school with the lower achieving kids, and so it begins. By high school you totally separate curriculum, one that is significantly more advanced than the other, and the kids have totally different chances of getting into college. Decisions at age 10 by their parents suddenly have impacted their life, sounds like a great improvement to me! If you don't think it happens, compare Wilmington Charter to the rest of Delaware, their acceptance rates to colleges, the racial makeup of the school, it is atrocious.
Yes there are. Look at all the countries at the top of the list on education. They all have strong federal education. No country with a purely private education system is even on the list!
No country with a purely private education system is even on the list!
That's because no such country exists. But no country had freedom of religion (in the modern sense) until 1787, the year the U.S. Constitution was ratified. That doesn't mean it was a bad idea.
"But no country had freedom of religion (in the modern sense) until 1787"
So there was no country in the world prior to 1787 that ever allowed it's citizens to practice the religion of their choice? Are you sure about that?
edit: you do realize that the US primarily had private schools in the early days. The idea that no one ever tried private education is simply false. So is the idea that America is the first country that ever allowed it's citizens to practice the religion of their choice.
The government doesn't have a monopoly on education, especially not higher education.
Transfer payments aren't the same thing as a centrally directed allocation of goods. You can still choose where to spend them. Even targeted assistance for education still lets you choose what institution to attend.
The transfer payments in the current system pay huge dividends over market allocation of educational goods, because the market tends to give these goods only to the children of those who are already well-off.
However, the primary and secondary public school system is radically broken, mostly through the fault of the government. It needs not only more competition, but also the elimination of local funding through property taxes.
You can't seriously claim that this would have been cheaper for me if only the government had gotten out of education.