Simple Plan to Provide Financial Support to Parents (USA edition)

Total USA public K-12 education expenditures are $857.2 billion per year. There are about 73 million children age 0 to 17 in the USA. Take the money from the schools and give it to parents (or whoever is raising the child). They would get about $11,800 per year per child. This is not an education voucher, they could use it for whatever they see fit: education if they choose, but they could also buy food, a larger apartment, or a treat for themselves in recognition of their work in raising the next generation.

I’d want to add in parents of children in utero. I estimate the payment would still be over $11,000 per year per child.

More controversially, I’d want to not provide payments to parents of teenagers. Teenagers should be allowed and expected to find gainful employment where they would get real training and caretakers could then get more than $15,000 per child per year, by my estimate. Maybe the teenagers could be phased out. The schools have trained the current teenagers not to take responsibility for themselves, so we could give society some time to adjust.

Update: Dana and I discuss this more here.