Essential Liberty

Columnist John Stossel: “We don’t do poor kids any favors by keeping them trapped in the poorly run government system. If you really care about ‘the public,’ you should let people go where they get the best service. When government gets bad results – high dropout rates, poor test scores – its defenders say schools need more money. But spending per student has tripled. There are more computers, teachers, social workers, reading specialists, principals, assistant principals, etc. But test scores haven’t improved. Unpredictable things happen when you leave people free to experiment, and competition produces better results than one tired monopoly. … This is how leftists think. Everyone must jump into the government pot. Even if it is mediocre (or worse), we’re all in this together. Otherwise, the rich will get all the goods, and the poor will suffer. Don’t they notice that cellphones, cars and air conditioning keep improving yet poor people are able to buy them? No. They don’t understand that market competition helps everyone, especially the poor.”