Originally Posted by
kmdv
I do not live in the US nor I know much about its economy, but since the topic became more generalised I will say a word too.
Reading your posts I hear from you something pretty much similar to what Mario F. has said.
To be honest, it sounds to me like a piece of socialistic you know what.
Let me get back to your previous example of two girls, A being richer and B being poorer. From my point of view these are two separate individuals. There are no relationships between them. They live on their own, work on their own, and do not know each other.
You can state that B worked much harder that A and still does not have as much as A has from her parents. This can be true indeed, but you are a bit injust, since you miss one important part, the origin of the money:
If person A is rich, he must have some source of income, which allowed him to get this amount of money. What if he does not have such an income? Then probably, he got it from his parens. Wait, what if his parents do not have such an income too? Then we can get yet deeper to his grandparents, great-grandparents and so forth. Money has not appeared from nowhere. Someone worked HARD to accomplish this. Whether this was the girl or not, someone is the owner of the whole money and it is HIS decision who he will give HIS property. So, it does not matter whether the girl A earned this money on her own or not. Someone has done it before and noone has right to take any part of it (oh god, the inheritance taxes!).
So, since we have the owner of the money, why are we talking about justice at all? The owner can be just or not and this is his choice and his moral decision. He could have given it as well to a welfare organization, noone has any right to make decisions for him.
Another important fact is that such public services will be more expensive. In your model of education, this poor GirlB also pays for school, but probably much less that the GirlA. The problem is more visible when we look at them as a whole. The money has to travel from both girls A and B to the budget and then, from the budget, back to the schools. Everyone can notice that there is a loss, since these operations also cost.
It is not that I see it black and white. I know that this is a problem, but why should we enhance somebody's life on someone's else expense?
EDIT:
I'm sorry, I started writing this before xentaka removed his post.