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Did anyone else read the Readers’ Write section of the Yated this past week? There was a father who wrote in saying he’s an accountant making 120K after taxes and can barely to afford frum life. He goes through all his cash inflows and outflows, and comes out that he has no money for anything but the essentials.
With that in mind, how do we reconcile that with the unequivocal fact that many frum families don’t make 120K and can’t make it either. It must be with siyata dishmaya that many people work things out and manage. Also, the father in question gave ma’aser on top of things some feel he could have used it on.
Thoughts?
lower income families rely on government programs, while middle income families use up all their money on essentials
School vouchers is the answer. Indiana has school vouchers. Other states in the mid-west are developing voucher programs. We need to rise up together (along with the religious non-Jews)and lobby for vouchers in the east-coast. Without paying tuition a family income of 120k pre-tax is more than enough to live on, assuming some financial responsibility.
Also if frum people would not be scared to live in smaller communities many expenses (e.g. housing costs and taxes)can be drastically reduced.
How are school vouchers going to solve anything? All it’s going to do is make people pay property tax rather than tuition. That brings along a whole new set of issues, like lower property value. It will just drive Jews and non-Jews into separate communities, as well as resulting segregation of older and younger families. If anything, the current system is better because at least tuition can potentially be alleviated on the basis of need, whereas property tax is unlikely to be allocated that way.
If you have School Vouchers the government has the right to require certain things taught, They are not going to give vouchers to support torah education, they are going to give vouchers for secular education taught at jewish schools
I also read it and found it very interesting. Wondering how majority of pple manage.
Baruch ha-Shem we live at a time when frum people are so spoiled.
We have a physical standard of living that means that a pauper among us probably lives better than an affluent person did 100 years ago. Who among could manage living in a world with potatoes as the basic staple, new couples got a sheet to carve out a private living quarter, nobody suffered from obesity, air conditioning didn’t exist and most homes didn’t have central heat – not to mention serious problems of anti-semitism (not a punk punching someone, the government trying to massacre a village).
Try living like your great-grandparents did, and then complain.
It’s incredibly difficult. Basically, it comes down to showing the tuition committee every penny you spend and earn and begging for a large enough break that you can just manage to break even.
Veltz, I disagree with your math. Right now, we are anyway paying for the public schools with our property taxes. So sure, in districts with high percentages of frum people the property taxes would go up, but I don’t think it would go up as much as we would save.
I’m not aware that property taxes are much lower in Flatbush than in similar brooklyn neighborhoods with less frum people.
Veltz:
Thank you Poppa for answering for me. We all pay property tax already. It might go up slightly with the passage of vouchers but not enough to mitigate the benefit of paying tuition.
Z’sDad:
That is not necessarily true. In Indiana, I’m pretty sure that religious schools did not have to change curriculum. They still must maintain a minimum core secular curriculum and standardized test passage rates, but they needed to do that before vouchers were introduced.
Quoting from a CNN story “But in its unanimous 5-0 ruling, the [Indiana] Supreme Court said that [the constitutionality of vouchers going to religious schools] was not an issue. It said it did not matter that funds had been directed to religious schools as long as the state was not directly funding the education. The tuition, the court said, was being funded by the parents who chose to pay it with their vouchers.”
Solution to the problem is too move out of the expensive areas. There are many areas with affordable living AND Jewish life.
Ender and Popa, I don’t get what you are saying. There is no free lunch. If the average property has to support a third of a child in school, then property tax is $3500 on the average property. If the average property has to support seven children in school, then property tax will have to be $70,000 on the average property.
My impression is that in Monsey and Lakewood, busing, textbooks, and remedial programs alone were enough to basically double property tax, even as the public schools shrank dramatically.
Burnt Steak, there are few such areas, and it is hard to make a living at all in those areas. Sure, if you’re a dentist, you can move to Detroit and save $20,000 a year in housing over Monsey but there are not many jobs like that, and there are not many cities like that.
VM, why do you assume that vouchers would be distributed and funded in a local basis rather than in a state basis?
Veltz:
1) Your argument is strongest for communities like Lakewood and Monsey. This would not be the case in almost any other city.
2) Property taxes are not the only source of school funding, local municipalities pay a potion of school costs, while the rest is paid by the state and fed.
3) Even Lakewood has nothing close to 7 k-12 children average per home.
4) If everyone paid tuition (either privately or through vouchers) tuition would not need to be 10k per child. Th main reason tuition is so high is because most people don’t pay.
In sum, although vouchers may cause an increase in property taxes, the increase would be very small in proportion to the amount of tuition saved.
because then the non-frum people will bear their portion of the whole burden, instead of making us share their burden but not sharing ours.
The whole voucher discussions is basically pointless anyway
New York, NJ and most other states have Blaine amendments to their constitutions which forbid vouchers to parochial schools (They were written against catholic schools not jewish) and because of the way they were written , it would take a entire re-writing of the New York Constituton to undo it.
IS there anyway to see a copy of this article?
New York, NJ and most other states have Blaine amendments to their constitutions which forbid vouchers to parochial schools (They were written against catholic schools not jewish) and because of the way they were written , it would take a entire re-writing of the New York Constituton to undo it.
To the best of my knowledge, New Jersey does not have a Blaine amendment.
As for amending the Constitution in New York, it would not take an entire re-write, but the amendment process is, at a bare minimum, two years long and unlikely to succeed.
The Wolf
Or really the blaine amendmetns should be struck down in federal court because they were passed as a form of religious discrimination by protestants against catholics
Blaine amendments were passed in the 1880’s. Im sure they were fought against and lost.
You are correct about NJ, It does not have a blaine amendment. Its one of 11 states that don’t have it.
In the 1960’s they tried to repeal New Yorks Blaine amenement and it had something to do with the wording forcing an entire re-write of New Yorks constiotution.
That’s why New York actually provides a lot of indirect aid to parochial schools like bussing and books and computers that was found to be legal.
yah, but in 1880 we didn’t have a very well developed first amendment jurisprudence
If there were no mandatory schooling, tuition would not be so scary.
I am mortgage free and half way paid into my last tuition, in EY. I could live for ten years on $120k after tax. I was able b’h to transfer my work position as a forty something. Most don’t succeed at this, but it can be done. My former neighbor made a great living driving a street sweeper. I heard that they are in need of workers, but it starts at 5am. And driving the Tenuva truck pays ok too. It is a no brainer for young folks with a whole working life ahead of them. You don’t hear any kvetching about school vouchers here.
hello, there is already vouchers in Israel – the govt pays for Bais Yaakovs and some of the chadorim (I am not sure exactly how it works with boys). The tuition for girls is about 1/10th of what it is here. you also do not pay health insurance – that is 2/3 of the big expenses (mortgage being the third)
I think Israel might actually be worse than NY. In NY we have tution,but the salaries are generally higher.
Jerusalem was ranked as the most expensive city in the world to live (based on Median incomes vs real estate costs) And other major Israeli cities like Tel Aviv or Haifa werent much better.
Basically an apartment in Jerusalem costs as much or more than NY AND you make a lot less money.
ZD, it would depend on how many kids you had in school.
The letter to editor in Yated was honest, accurate and frightening. Especially when you need tutoring, therapies for your children, the sums are huge.
He neglected to include household maintance….my leaking toilet and broken boiler valve plus cracked window pane add much to the monthly expenses. You can adjust prices of clothing, food and recreation yet the other prices are givens especially with the new OBAMA MISCARE – how will medical expenses get paid?
Daven, have histadlus, train for parnassah and live simply.
Obamacare is actually going to make it cheaper for Frum people to get insurance
If You were an insruance company, whose main goal is to make money.Would you want to insurance a family of 10 kids where the women is getting pregnant every year or every other year.The Pregnancy costs and the costs of insuraing the children is not worth the premiums you will collect. They are undesireable clients. (From strictly a business point of view,you want healthy young (meaning 20’s-40’s) with small or no families for maximum profit.
FYI Europe might actually be cheaper to live as a frum jew. They pay the tutitions there and depending on the country housing might be cheaper as well with incomes being higher.
I dont know the exact cost of living in Belgium or France which would probably be the best ones to live
Obamacare is actually going to make it cheaper for Frum people to get insurance
I’ve heard the opposite, that with the new regulations, the insurance companies will be able to limit the number of children included in the policy, and charge more for each additional child.
Let’s say what I heard is incorrect (it’s just something I heard and might not be true). Still, since until now a family health plan did include all children, how would Obamacare be any cheaper in this regard?
I know people who worked for HR in frum companies and they told me many insurance companies did not want their business because of the large familes and likelyhood of larger payouts due to larger families.
Before you claim Anti-Semitism, A pregnancy costs about $7000 and a C-section $15,000, and thats before all the kids getting sick and having to go to the doctor. Why would a For-Profit company want to have a customer who costs them money.
Under the new laws that would be illegal
OK, in the case of companies in which most employees are frum, you might be correct.
For individual buying insurance, though, or those who work for non-frum companies, the changes might be to their detriment.
ZAHAVSDAD You surely wouldn’t expect an American to move to the hotbed of Anti-Semitism in Europe. Belgium is now requiring schools to teach their core curriculum and France has the largest emigration to Israel, America or other countries. So don’t think that is an option.
Maybe a move to Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee or Minneapolis, Providence where cost of living and tuitions are much lower.
Belgium is requiring core curriculum because they pay the tutions, If the government gives money they have the right to dictate what is taught for that money.
If vouchers ever been the norm in the US, expect the same.They will not pay for religious education,but might pay for secular studies
popa_bar_abba: “because then the non-frum people will bear their portion of the whole burden, instead of making us share their burden but not sharing ours.” – Good point. However, I recall hearing/reading somewhere that every child is entitled to free schooling. If you choose to go to a private school, that’s your choice, not the city/state’s burden. The city/state pays approx $18,000 per child in public school. I think i read this in an ad to vote from a candidate saying that he will push to get half of the tuition paid for a public school child, to be paid per child in a private school.
Can you imagine? If this was really true and if this came true, howmuch that would help the yeshivas and the parents too?!
Alas its a wonderful dream, but even if it were to come true, that probably wouldnt happen until my grandchildren were born…which is good too!
zahavasdad: “If vouchers ever been the norm in the US, expect the same.They will not pay for religious education,but might pay for secular studies.”
This is simply not true. like I said before states are starting to approve voucher systems, in which the parents are given a tax credit to use to pay for school, as opposed to having the state give the money to the school directly. This avoids any 1st amendment problems, and the state will not dictate the curriculum.
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