One part missing from the article is what percentage of income to tax rate. Merely claiming 29% of the population pays 42% of the tax is meaningless without their income level or their property value. If that 29% of the population's property is actually worth 70% of the property in the county, who would be arguing? It's the same incomplete argument that the top 50% of earners pay 96% of all taxes.

The redistributive effect of property tax in a county like this for education is just that and not necessarily an example of taxes gone awry although it could be. Education is generally considered a public good. People who have at least a primary school education can generally function in society and join a workforce that is more fluid. This in turn creates lower rates of unemployment as well as reduced need for welfare programs (now known as TANF) not to mention reduce the odds of them mugging you at night. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families forces those w/ assistance to attend vocational training and attempt to find work...reform that came along in the Clinton admin w/ the Republican congress that forced time limits on benefits. According to this article the welfare rolls in GA have fallen nearly 75% since 2000 which is a fairly big push. There is still the work disincentive(where you lose benefits if you start working) but at least the time limits attempt to reduce the number of those habitually in need.

The fact that schools still produce some people who are wholly incapable of joining society is a different story and one that will not be solved by vouchers which have been proven to only provide private school education for those who could already well afford it. I don't particularly agree with high levels of social welfare and this is just another example at the expense of many public schools that are functioning just fine. If you want your kids to be coddled in private school, belly up the money and be glad the riff-raff can't afford to sit next to your kids. The university system(outside of GA) works just the same. Send your kid to local U and hope for the best unless you're willing to drop 40k/year for every last bit of advantage. Georgia's Hope scholarship may seem analagous to a voucher system but imagine if your kid had to compete to get into a decent kindergarten.

As for tax burden...I had over 18k withheld from my paycheck for last year and this year it will exceed 20k if I don't work up some more deductions. That's a Civic Si a year I give to Uncle Sam. As a single male w/ health insurance I don't exactly get a huge amount of benefit from gov't services but that doesn't mean I don't have to pay up. Nor do I expect SS to be there in the 39 years until I can retire. That money is paying up for all those retirees today who probably earned less as part of the workforce than in retirement but blame AARP and pandering politicians for providing welfare to retirees. In all honesty SS could be fixed w/ a couple % reduction in benefit growth and an increase in retirement age (people used to not have a 1/4 chance of making it to 90) but all those silver haired folks living it up in Boca Raton would stage a coup d'état if we tried that. Private accounts aren't a fix either...hence Bush's utter failure at reform.

My last job formerly had a pension(only for those over 40) that was promised to be fully funded but instead was cut 2 years after that promise to make quarterly earnings statements to appease the shareholders. Many of my coworkers had put in 20+ years and put up w/ good and bad times with the expectation of a comfortable retirement which was suddenly taken from them toward the end of their career. For them SS is the only safety net they may have to a reasonable retirement since they didn't put much into their 401k's or demand rapid salary increases in exchange for lifetime employment.

As for complaining about the quality of the school, you should instead be more involved in your children's education. Even the best private school has produced its shares of useless, albeit priviledged dropouts. I actually attended one of those crappy public schools in Gwinnett County yet I still managed to go Ivy League as did my younger brother and my older brother still managed GT but it had little to do w/ the teachers or so many of our classmates that wound up working for $8/hr despite having families that were fairly affluent. Our parents pushed us as did all of the other people I met in college up there.

I apologize for the extraordinarily long post but my economics background in public finance just got the best of me.