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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 25. 3rd October 1973

Who pays the cost?

Who pays the cost?

Although the figures again are not [unclear: strictly] comparable, they do give an [unclear: indication] of the extent to which the lower classes pay to keep going the system that d[unclear: ehnmanises] them. In 1969 direct tax on incomes comprised 85% of the total amount of taxes. This means that in 1969 $111,347,800 of the government's expenditure on education would have come from direct taxes. Those with incomes below $3198 paid about 54% of direct income taxes in 1967—68 while children of the less than $3000 income bracket attending university numbered 28% for males and 33% for females.

Ignoring the discrepancy of $199 in the statistics, and assuming that tax proportions were roughly the same for 1969, about 20% of the taxes paid by the lower income group were being used for the selection of the new elite from the upper income group. This amounts to about a $20,000,000 subsidy if educational taxes were placed on a fair payment by benefit basis (i.e. selection for university).

Salaries and wages taxation in 1967-68 was 77% of the combined taxes of wage and salary earners and self-employed groups. Taxes from this source for educational purposes amounted to $86,000,000. Semi-and unskilled workers pay about 40% of this amount. Students of semi-skilled and unskilled worker parentage at university number 5% of all university students. Therefore, this occupational group paid $30,000,000 to keep up an education system that would discriminate against their children's efforts to raise in the social hierarchy. It may be argued that the figures are grossly large as only a small proportion of educational expenditure is devoted to university education. This criticism would miss the point. The whole education system stops the oppressed from understanding our society and debars their progress up its social [unclear: gradations].

The entire educational system is therefore of no value to most of the lower classes; in fact it is a positive burden on their efforts to take political power and thus become more fully human. The education system from primary to university level operates to preserve the economic, political and social power of capital and management. It is geared towards conditioning all-those who go through it to accept the status quo, and to select the elites to govern society; the final stage of this process is the university and it cannot be examined in isolation. In its role of selection, school discriminates against lower socio-economic groups, and these groups subsidise the elevation to the elite of the children of the wealthy. If one considers that all taxes are paid ultimately by the people who produce the wealth of the community, then the extent of the subsidy is huge.

Taxes of Self-employed and Wage and Salary Earners (assessable income taxed at source) by amount of income 1967—68. Income $ Amount of tax assessed ($'000) % of total —3999 224,483 54 3200 + 193,727 48 Total 415,210 100

Table Seven

The oppression of our school system does not end here though. For if the oppressed were aware of their condition they would want to change things. The other aspect of education is the blinding of the oppressed to the truth of their society, conditioning them to accept the status quo and stealing the words from them that are necessary to understand it. This will ensure that they will spend dull passive work lives to provide profits for a few (many of them not even New Zealanders) to spend on idle, luxurious, leisured lifetimes.