Middle Class Blues

I’m looking at my town’s tax bill, which came in the mail yesterday. Roughly, I’m paying about $8,600 a year. When I bought my house eight years ago, taxes were around $4,800 a year. So they’re now in my wallet 1.8 times as much as they were before I provided them with two more future tax potentials (bureaucrat-ese for my daughters).

What’s interesting is that just under $6,000 went to the town’s public schools. Now, we have great schools here, Blue Ribbon schools (look it up), so in theory I have no problem with that. I’m paying $33 a day for Little One to get the best public school education she can. In two years, assuming tax rates stay the same (I know: ha ha ha ha!), I’ll be paying $16.50 a day per child for a Blue Ribbon education.

But imagine this … imagine if I got a voucher for that $6,000. That is, if I didn’t send my child to the town’s public school, I could take that money and apply it to a private school of my choosing. From what I hear, tuition this part of the country for a decent Catholic school runs about $12,000 a year. So I’d still be in the hole six grand, but my child would receive a Blue Ribbon Catholic education.

I can dream, can’t I?

Well, it will never happen in our lifetime. As my wife cynically remarked, and I dare you to refute –

“The poor get [almost] everything handed to them. The rich can afford anything they want. We’re middle class. We get screwed.”