Renegade

It is a self-correcting situation. As you get shortages, wages go up, incenting more people to enter that profession. The shortage also creates incentives for people to work longer instead of retiring, and as well for automation to replace manual labour.

Is your question about working population in general or specific to the part of the working population which cares for the aged? I would estimate no more than 5% of the working population is involved in the elder care industry. The population is not exected to decline for at least 30 years. Even if the population declines slightly, and the senior population increases substantially, it is still requires only a small part of the working population to care for them. What's not to make sense?

I'm not worried. If there are less kids, that also means that there are less need for teachers and child-care workers. Those workers can be redeployed to look after the aged. Even if the demand for people to care for the aged grows, it is still very small relative to the overall working population.

I don't see any problem with a gradual decline in population. What we need to augment the workforce we can garner through immigration. How many people do you think it takes to service an aging population? Currently a very small percentage of the population is involved in providing services for the retired population.

The world is already overpopulated and consumes way more resources than is sustainable. We do not need additional encouragement for parents to have kids. If making parents accountable for the cost of their kids causes them to rethink their decision or have fewer kids, that is a benefit for society. Except for insanely financed social programs which depend upon an ever-increasing base of working populations, society doesn't need ever increasing growth.

Both education and medicare would benefit if there was at least some element of user pay. By your logic doesn't food benefit society? Afterall, eating nutritous food keeps the population healthy, and isn't that good for society? So perhaps, I should expect that society should pay for all nutritous food.

For the same reason all of our daily life necessities don't come from general revenues. Why don't we expect government to pay for our food, accomodation, transport, and everything else?

If you assume that there is a beneift to both society and the individual educated, and that they should each pay a part of the education cost, why wouldn't society's payment come from general revenues (mostly income taxes) and the individual's from user fees. What you are describing sounds more like a voluntary contribution. I'm afraid it is not so. Most people contribute because either they are unware they are contributing (eg renters) or are forced to do so via taxes. It would be interesting to see how many people would contribute if it were not voluntary.

Actually it is pretty clear to me how libertarian principles steer a dicsionmaker, so I don't understand why you are having difficulty with it. Perhaps if you give a specific example of the kind of situation a decisionmaker would be faced with, in which liberterarian principles does not provide guidance, we can take it from there.

Who do you think I'm suggesting shouldn't contribute? You didn't answer the question on what evidence you have that everyone benefits equally. The system I propose is less unfair than the current one which bases education contribution upon house value.

Yes, parents with big houses would pay less as I've pointed out. Why is that a problem? As I've said there would be no school tax, so renters would not be paying it through their rent, they would pay for schooling up front. Can you show that everyone benefits equally? My feeling is that the benefits are unequally distributed and are primarily by those who undertake the education. The reason I prefer and propose an "as-you-go" payment is that it makes parents more accountable for the cost to the system that their kids incur. If the payment was only made 20 years later, there would be no accountability.

As I've already said, the definition is around the precedence given to individual rights and freedoms in libetarianism. Along with that comes the presumption that the individual is responsible for his own well-being, success or failure.

I don't think it is reasonable to always assure that a per student charge would be less than school taxes. There will be large families crammed into small houses who pay relatively low school taxes, for them it would undoubtly be more. There are small families in high-value houses which would pay less. In any case the actual amount paid are just details. What I'm proposing is a principle which is reflective of use of the system. No renters would not be exempt. They pay school taxes too, the only difference is that the taxes are included in their rent. In fact apartment renters are unfairly penalized in the current system, because the taxes on MURBs are much higher than houses.

Yes this is in lieu of school taxes based upon property value.

The information you seek is here: link

Here's how you do it other than taxes. Let's accept the principle that both the individual and society each benefit from an individual being educated. I think you've already acknowledged that parents or indivdiuals pay at least part of the cost through their taxes. What if instead of paying tax on the value of your house and income, parents instead paid $500/per year per child they enrolled in public school. Is is affordable? For most parents , probably. I agree with at least part of this, except that I think the major beneficiary is the individual themselves. The benefit that society recieves is incidental and is reflected in the compensation that individual gets.

You seem to have missed the rest of my statement. I asked why they should not shoulder the cost directly instead of indirectly through taxes. Yes, I realize raising kids is hard work, but it is also rewarding. I am a parent myself so I know firsthand. Parents in general do not have kids in order to maintain a continual workforce for society. They do so, for their own reasons, and the propogation of the next generation is simply a byproduct. While you claim that non-parents don't share in the work and effort in bring up kids, this is true, but the don't share in the intangible rewards either. The net is parents are not having kids because they are martyrs for society, they are doing so because on balance they find the rewards of parenthood outweigh the drawbacks. Yes, I am aware that society needs a workforce. Let's take your orthepedic surgeon example. I don't simply benefit from the orthepedic surgeon treating me. He beneifts too because I pay him. In essence they pay he gets is compensation for the investment he has made in his time and costs including education. You try and paint a picture where the sole beneficary of education is society. You seem to discount the fact that the receipents of the education benefit as well. They financially reap those benefits in terms of higher pay.

I agree. Are you suggesting that the vast majority of pregnant women tend to step out from work (as they would for a coffee) to give birth and then step back into work? I think not. For my "criteria" to become insignificant, that is what must be assumed. No, I'm not suggesting it at all, but your far-fetched scenerio is. The logical conclusion of your far-fetched scenario is that the lost time due to pregnancy, becomes insignificant (A single day lost is insignificant). I agree in the real world that doesn't happen so the possibility of pregnancy is a significant criteria. Yes I may have missed the point of your example, and end up picking at nits. sorry.

My short answer is no. The need for explicit consent doesn't define libertarianism. It is simply a mechanism to ensure that when an individual gives up his liberties, he truly means to do so.

Here's why it doesn't. There are a variety of of conditions which affect men but not women. For example, a man might have to lose work time to undergo an operation for testicular cancer. That is a condition which a woman will never be faced with. For your far-fetched example to stand up, you would have to prove that the days lost by women (in your far-fetched example) still outweigh any time lost by men-only conditions. Here's another reason why your far-fetched example doesn't work. Job-hiring and raise-determination decisions are made by humans. Humans to simplify decision-making, will ignore all but the most significant criteria. When a criteria becomes insignifcant, as it is in your far-fetched example, it will be ignored. Now, if it was a computer making those decisions and it considered all factors, then maybe you have a point.

Please explain your question more clearly. I don't think I could have responded any better than August.

OK, I can accept that the broader community does see benefit beyond the individual for education. The question is how much. My question was general, not specific to the scenario I proposed. To what extent are parents or for the individuals themselves responsible for their own education costs? Clearly the individuals themselves will profit from their own education through higher wages, so why shouldn't they or their parents be expected to shoulder part of the cost? Now I know that the indirectly shoulder part of the cost, through real-estate and income taxes. But those are clearly independant of the amount of education consumed. What I'm suggesting is that the part they shoulder should be tied to what they consume. You should care if you want to defend your nonsensical statement that foreign aristocrats come to Canada presumably because we fund public education. Of course it is not about the choices foreign aristocrats make on educating their kids, so I'm unclear on why you made the statement in the first place.

Let me understand you claim. You are saying that people with kids subsidize people no kids, correct? And the more kids they have the more they are subsidizing non-parents, correct? What does that have to do with your claim that foreign aristocrats will send their kids to Canadian schools? Do you think a foreign aristocrat cannot afford a private school in their own country?

I think it is not the only distinguishing feature. There real distinguishing feature is the weight of individual rights and freedoms, over the "common good". Libertarianism doesn't acknowledge a "common", so it don't acknowledge a "common good". The weight is completely toward individual rights and freedomes.

I do know exactly how much on average it cost to educate a child. 7-8K/year. I admit the figure I earlier quoted to RW was not correct. The reason I say you cannot use private school rates, is that the costs for private shcools are made by a composition of costs which what public schools don't incur. Private schools include in their cost profit, higher wages for presumably more qualified teachers, lower student ratios, better facilities, etc. If you consider private shools and public schools as differnt "products", I am not advocating offering a differnt product, I am simply suggesting a different way to pay for the same product, so the rates for the same product, (ie public schools) are the ones used. The reason I'm confident that most people can afford it, is because they already afford it now. People contribute toward public education today, for most of their adult lives. If you sum up the cost contributed through real estate and income tax through a person's lifetime, and compared it to the cost of providing that public eduation, for most peopel the gap would minor. If your issue is a cash flow one (ie most parents couldn't afford the upfront cash to pay). I'm perfectly fine with financing solutions which spread that burden over as many years as necessary. What I am suggesting is that the parents are the primary ones who carry the obligation for educating their children and should be the prinary ones having responsiblity to pay for it. I agree. It was clear from the start. I didn't set out to reconcile with your philosophical views. I set out to address your statement about the program being a "deferred benefit" or "deferred payment' program which implied what you put in was what you got out but at a different time. I have shown that in many cases this is not true. Have you actually seen or experienced education in some other (non-western) countries? I doubt it or you would not make such as statemetn. You can get a fantastic elementry school education, far better than what is available in most private schools in Canada. It is virtually unherd of for the elite there to send their kids overseas for elementary education. With university education it is a dfferent story. Univeristy education in western countries is far superior to those offered elsewhere. Most elite will send their kids overseas to complete university. Most of time the kids are sent to the US, instead of Canada, because the education is expected to be better. So the only times those "autocrats" are coming to Canada and other western nations, is AFTER the time general public education is freely avaiable, and at the time when parents actually have to contribute to their kids education.