Newsletter #2 - A Message from Scituate Citizens for Limited Taxation by Norm Paley

A Message from Citizens for Limited Taxation Norm Paley

The following quotation is attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, economist and professor at Edingurgh University, writing at the time of the American Revolution.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous benefits) from the public treasury.

“From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

“The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

“From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back to bondage.”

We are in my opinion in the next to the last stage of Tytler's warning. We have a public wanting more services and a government more than willing to provide them and an apathetic public unwilling to educate themselves as to why it costs so much. We are beginning to reach the point where government has grown so large and has become so powerful that they really don't care what the public thinks or what their programs cost. But those services do come with a price. Government tends to be a ferocious feeder. Feeding on our wealth and labor and always eager to add to their ranks workers dependant on the State, City or Town for their jobs. They then form unions to increase their wages and decrease their workload.

We pay for the School Department to educate our children to a level that will provide the best and the brightest a path to college or university. We also provide for the others a path to a decent job and decent living. I use the term path because we cannot make a promise that all children can, or desire to, make the effort to continue on to college and a great career.

The School System operates on the theory however that everything that possibly could be done will be done to make all children equal in their educational outcome. This is known as Outcome Based Education. The state joins them and provides mandates that while illegally unfunded are pursued none the less. In order to try to achieve these goals they have pursued several avenues. Small classes that make it easier for the teacher to give special attention to each student, specialist teachers to take up the slack for what the regular teacher can't, won't or has not been educated to do, and administrators and assistant administrators and principles and assistant principles all there to see that all the goals are met.

We then add the publishers of new curriculums all promising that their new method, or their new technique will suddenly enlighten even the most uninterested or challenged student. Most of these new programs have failed. The so called new math curriculum is the most recent and is being abandoned throughout most of the country. The cost of most of these new programs is exorbitant but is pushed with the same enthusiasm as the drug companies marketing the next new cure.
The cost will continue to grow as the size of the workforce grows to provide the service. There will come a point where we will no longer be able to fund this. We will either put an end to the insanity or we will vote with our feet and leave the town and then the state to find a school system where learning goes on at a more reasonable cost. The march out of Massachusetts has already begun. And an apathetic public continues to elect the officials responsible for the high cost and the poor performance.