Too much Taxes

Perhaps I'm just cranky about paying my Personal Property Tax bill for Fairfax County, but I'm fed up with too many taxes in general.

So I always like to do a little math from the info sheet FX County gives me.

It says that they plan to collect $3,319,047,284 in FY 2008. The estimated # of households for FX county is 377,600. So that's about $8,790 per household to live here. I'd have to look and see how that compares to other counties but seems like an awful lot to me!!

Now on to education expense. From Wikipedia it says that enrollment in FCPS is at 164,843, now divide that by the amount that goes to schools from the sheet FX County gave me which is $1,734,459,426 and you get $10,521.88 per pupil.

Now I will refer you to UVA, where in state tuition for their engineering school is $3,927 per semester. Assuming two semesters, that would be around $8,000.

Now you tell me, would you rather take a voucher for $10,521 and send your kid to UVA and still have $2,500 left over to spend on books, etc.? Or send them off to a Govt. run monopoly?

Now I know you can't exactly send your 1st grader to UVA, but you get my point here. $10K buys a whole lot better education at a private institution, then at a public one.