Suppose someone said: I live in this state, but that state offers more generous welfare benefits. So I should be able to live here, but collect benefits from there.
Or suppose someone said: I live in this county, but that county has a better nursing home, so I’d like my elderly mother to be cared for there.
Would that be reasonable?
I just ask because they’re the same basic idea as saying: I live in this town, but the schools in that town are better so I should be able to send my kids there.
They’re all examples of what we might call welfare choice, which is the idea that your welfare benefits (that is, money taken from other people so it can be given to you, or spent on you) should not depend on where you live. But people who would laugh at the first two, for some reason take the third one very seriously — because we call it school choice, which warms bellies, instead of welfare choice, which engages brains.
As Confucius said, the first step towards wisdom is to call things by their right names. Nowhere are we further from wisdom than in our policy discussions about tax-funded education, and more in need of his advice. We can start with the simple, obvious recognition that when government takes money from some people in order to give it to, or spend it on, other people, that is welfare — regardless of whether it’s for food, or housing, or heat, or internet connectivity, or education.
Ruth Ward et Rick Ladd removenda sunt
