The primary problem for American educational finance is not how to tax but how much to tax. In modern fiscal arrangements, States and localities extract resources from their citizens in some combination of sales, income, or wealth taxes. Any tax reform juggles the relative contribution of each source, but the total amount extracted is still the same. For those who wish tax reform, the issue is not the system of taxation, but the system of tax allocation. For example, this society must decide how much education is desirable relative to needs for roads or armies. Education should provide a foundation for political literacy. Because education invests in human capital, it should be pushed to the point at which investment in people yields the same return as investment in things. (RA)