Vouchers and Taxes: Do they Subsidize Religious Education?

Some would argue that school choice results in non-believers being taxed to fund religious educations for believers. That somehow this is unfair to unbelievers. Is that true? Is this preferential funding of religion?

From a law and economics perspective, how should we think about this issue? 

Might it be the other way around?

Michael McConnell and Richard Posner, take the position that equal funding of school choice is necessary for neutrality. They explain the economic impact of school choice this way:

“No one is taxed to support the religious education of another; rather, each person pays one lifetime's worth of taxes earmarked for education and in return receives (in advance) one education. Of course, things would not work out as neatly in practice as they do in this very abstract model. There would still be a subsidy from rich to poor…. But there would be no systematic transfer of wealth from individuals who attend religious schools to those who do not. On the contrary, to force individuals to pay education taxes but deny them education financing because they have chosen a religious school brings about a systematic transfer of wealth from the religious to the nonreligious.”

[McConnell & Posner, An Economic Approach to Issues of Religious Freedom, 56 U. Chi. L.Rev. 1, 18 (1989).]

 

 McConnell and Posner thus view k-12 education as a benefit to each child (not to their parents). Each person (each child) receives one government-paid education at the school of his or her choice; each person then pays a lifetime of taxes to repay the educational “loan.” No one is taxed to pay for someone else’s “religious” indoctrination.

Everyone receives what amounts to a government loan for a k-12 education and everyone pays a lifetime of taxes to pay back that loan.