> If Harvard were taxed, would it still provide better education?
To fewer people, and in particular to fewer non-wealthy people, most likely. That money has to come from somewhere.
> Which is why I see this as a policy question - is it better to have one person with a "better" education at a private school, or use the same money to have two people receive a college education at a public school?
Sure, it's a policy question. That does not automatically make it government business; that policy has already been made by the people who decided to donate their funds to a private university rather than to some other cause. I don't favor the Darth Vader approach to government policymaking ("I am altering the deal; pray I don't alter it any further").
We have a set of tax laws about non-profits. If we're going to poke holes in those laws to collect more money, we should not do so while listening to arguments about where the money would be "better" spent, unless it is to be put into a special untouchable budget for only those purposes. Laws that say "we'll collect these funds for this purpose" fall flat when the budget doesn't work that way; the funds spent are not in any way tied to the funds collected, nor are the two kept connected in future laws.
> I don't dismiss your point regarding past evidence. However, I think that's symptomatic of a different structural failure, where the cult of hiring MBAs running something "like a business" has taken over schools, health care, government and other organizations which should not have the high rate of failures seen in businesses.
"like a business" seems to only get used when convenient, and discarded otherwise. When people talk about wanting to keep extra money in the budget when returning it, they talk about running the government like a business, and saving the funds for future expenses. Yet governments people have no problem spending more money than they have, and either raising taxes to cover the difference or simply going into debt.
> Regarding "looking at the contents of someone else's bank account and wishing it was yours" - that's a wealth tax, and it exists in France, Norway, Spain, and several other countries, so it does make sense to some.
Yes, some other governments have an even more entitled attitude over other people's money. That doesn't make it right. The justifications used for wealth taxes are even more tenuous than those used to justify income taxes.
Might does not make right. And getting half of voters to agree to take money from the other half is tantamount to rustling up a mob to take what they feel entitled to, but with more diffusion of responsibility.