Posted 10:46 PM by Floyd

The Mercury News ran one of its usual We Must All Pay More Taxes editorials today. One of the pieties that the Merc is fond of beating us over the head with was mouthed by Marimba CEO Kim Polese:

"[Silicon Valley leaders] need to do even more to encourage our government to invest in education (and) fix our public education system."

and further stated in the headline:

"IT'S REASONABLE TO ASK BUSINESSES TO PAY A LITTLE MORE FOR WHAT THEY SAY THEY WANT: EDUCATED WORKERS"

This has a kind of superficial appeal to it: Silicon Valley businesses hire educated employees, therefore Valley businesses should pony up more funds for education. But this is nonsense. The Valley hires from a vast pool of college graduates, a very small percentage of whom have had four to eleven years of schooling after being educated as children in Silicon Valley. It is ludicrous to expect that a hi-tech business could improve the education of its applicants by paying more taxes to local schools. It would be as if I tried to increase the quality of the beef I eat by planting a rich green lawn in the hope that cattle would graze on it.