Compare your analogy to that of two senior citizens who live in Bethesda paying $8,000 a year in real estate taxes that go to the local school systems, despite their having no children of school age. Too bad, right?
Actually as someone who worked as Realtor I would disagree. Good school systems keep housing prices up. It is to the best interest of any homeowner to want their taxes to go the school system, since that will drive housing prices higher than if it was poor quality school system. Additionally, if you play the game that they are now retired, but lived there for the past 30 yrs, and had kids that went through the system, born 3-4 yrs apart they also captured the benefit of those yrs and it is payback time.
Additionally, the way RE taxes work is the higher payers are business taxes, thus, if people are not buying into that area, than, companies will not move in or remain, if they leave that tax loss will have to be spread among homeowners, and there is always a point where people will say the taxes are too high and leave, thus the pool shrinks even more. By having good school systems even as a homeowner with no children, they protect their biggest asset.
Also, RE taxes only spend a portion on schools, so if you really wanted to drive home the point, it would have been a better illustration to say the homeowner in Bethesda that has school aged children, it is in their best interest not to fund the senior citizen center or the local library since every school has a library. However, again, I would come back and say that not every one fits that category either, and what the system intention was to create a system for all of their residents in a fair and equitable manner while maintaining home prices.
Or the federal taxes that are paid to support any government program that you do not get to participate in. I would love to go to the Moon, but even though I pay taxes that are used to fund NASA, I don't get to go.
True, however, where did ABS brakes start? They started in NASA. Did you not gain something from your car having ABS compared to cars in 1959? Somebody had to be the guinea pig to try it out! Look at many of the missions, they are used for scientific purposes, you actually did get something out of it from the fact that science has evolved. It may not be direct gain like going to the moon, but your life was impacted. Just like millions of Americans do not get the direct impact of SAs, but their lives due to leadership are impacted.
What about the fact that over 80% of all US Govt workers live in the DC area, yet their salaries are paid by all of the citizens of the USA from Alaska to Hawaii? Should taxpayers from AR carry the bill for those salaries when nobody from their state gets a proportional share of the jobs from the taxes they pay?
Yes, but are you saying that AR doesn't utilize the IRS? Those are govt workers. They may hate the IRS, but they are govt workers representing every citizen in the US. NTSB is another example, so if a plane goes down in AK, are you implying that they don't go to AK to investigate the accident? Of course they do, it is just that the govt has decided to place their hq in DC. How about the Cross issue in CA that went to the Supreme court? You do realize that SCOTUS is more than just justices, right? That means there are govt workers working for the nation, not just one state. How about the Pentagon, where the bulk work, you do realize they work hand and hand with Lockheed, Grumman, Raytheon, Rand, etc, who have companies located across the country? Lockheed has decided to place their HQ in another state, but the govt needs employees that are not affiliated with either the military or the company. JIC you don't know, many military members who go gov or contractors can not traditionally double dip for propriety reasons...in other words, if you are on terminal leave, they may require you to get a no-conflict letter. Bullet was required to sit on the side lines before he entered this world due to just the appearance of conflict issues.
Try again, the system was created to represent the entire country. If we all recognize the way PAR works, and that the SA's review the rigor of the school along with curriculum for 60% of the WCS, you would see certain areas having more cadets than others. Thomas Jefferson HS (TJ) is the number 1 public hs(it is a magnet for NoVA) in the nation, it ranks so high that they now have placed it in the private rankings, and it is still no. 1 is located in VA, you could load up with tons of kids just from that 1 school. Fairfax county, which is filled with a ton of military (5-9 miles from the Pentagon) has the median score for the top hs of 1360. That is the median. The majority of their schools are on the top 100 list in the nation. NoVA is a very competitive area, as competitive as NY if not more. Yet, NY does not have the number 1 hs in the nation, they do! I could go down the list of school rankings, and in the end what you would find if they remove the MOC would be a high percentage of kids getting in from nationally ranked high schools. I lived in ID, NM, AK, KS, NC and overseas, plus born and raised in NJ, I would say if my kid was coming from AK, KS, and ID under that system of going nationally, they would not get an apptmt because they couldn't beat out kids on PAR from states like, VA, NY, NJ. CA, CO and TX where they have the tax base to invest in the school system.
FWIW, Fairfax County has a bigger budget than the lowest 8 states in the US. That is just the county. Try competing academically from a system like that!
To me this is kind of like baseball and their salary cap...why are the Yankees so good because they can afford to pay top dollar.