The Talent Show has a very interesting counterpoint to my previous article on Lewis Lapham calling conservatism ‘utopian anarchism’. He points out to a Thomas Frank commentary that has this to say:
Time was you could always count on conservatives to scream for a balanced federal budget. Not anymore. What they want these days is tax cuts and the budget be damned.
You’ve no doubt heard that this year’s tax cuts will mainly be enjoyed by the rich; that three-quarters of them will go to society’s wealthiest fifth. This is true but describing them this way misses an important point: The reason the Administration wants to do away with dividend taxes, estate taxes, and all the rest of it is not just to reward the wealthy but to de-fund government, to pull the rug out from under the New Deal social order once and for all.
"Government is not the solution to our problem," Ronald Reagan famously said in 1981. "Government is the problem." And today the phrase reverberates across the years echoed by a mighty chorus : Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, North, Gingrich, Barr, DeLay, Heyworth, Graham, Santorum..
Yesterday’s far right is today’s mainstream and the belief that government was merely misguided has given way to the belief that government is unredeemable. That the bureaucrats who staff it are elitist, un-American, treasonable.
Now destroying government would be tough to pull off if you had to break down each job that the government does and prove that we’d be better off without it. It’s far easier to just pull the money and let nature take its course. Five years from now we’ll all no doubt be reading bestsellers about the menace that budget deficits pose to our grandkids and our legislators will have no choice but to pack up and turn off the lights.
Massive deficits are great because they force government downsizing down the road and this is why they’ve become the signature gesture of Republican administrations, from Ronald Reagan to George Bush Sr. and now to his son. The true goal is not to "jump start" consumer spending or even to spark entrepreneurship, but to throw a wrench into the works of this despised institution : To jam the locomotive into reverse, throw something heavy on the throttle, and jump for it.
This concept that the Republicans want to "end the New Deal" (despite the fact that most of the New Deal ended decades ago) is all too common among the left in America. If that is true, then why has the CBO estimated that discretionary spending has increased by 15% in Bush’s two years in office. The federal budget has grown by $222 billion in the same period. Outlays on social programs like Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and other services have increased from 11.5% of national GDP to 12.7% in the past two years. Some conservatives are even criticizing Bush for spending too much. While tax cuts will supposedly cause Washington to cut spending, that’s unlikely to happen. As happened in the 1980’s Congress will simply put more on credit.
If the Republicans are trying to ‘de-fund’ the government, they’re doing a piss-poor job of it. The total amount of federal spending is increasing year by year, and defense spending is only a fraction of the increase. The vast majority of the increases are in social spending.
If anything, I wish Mr. Frank were right. The size and scope of government has done little to rectify the problems of America. In fact, it’s never in the interest of a government bureaucrat to solve a problem. If problems are solved, they are no longer needed. So government is always looking for more "problems" to solve – which is why the federal government continues to grow at an alarming rate.
The faith of liberals in government is based on the irrational idea that government is somehow more morally pure than the free market. That the free market is the domain of ‘robber barons’ and that government somehow is free from self-interest and outright greed. Throughout history, this utopian notion has never once been proven to be true. Government is no less self-interested than the free market. Unlike the market, however, government is not under the pressures of efficiency, competition, or responsiveness. Government programs are rarely held to account for their success or failure. In fact, even if a government program is an abject failure, there’s always a constituency willing to fight to the death to ensure it goes on. The idea of reform rarely touches the darkest recesses of the federal bureaucracy, which is why we still pay a phone tax designed to pay for the Spanish-American War.
This is a system in which the efforts of millions of working Americans go to pay for a system where failure is rewarded as much as success and sometimes more, where responsibility is rarely exercised, and which even those with the best of intentions quickly find themselves mired in a sea of incompetence and red tape.
The reason why liberals fight so hard for these programs is not because they do good. Whether or not they do seems to be largely immaterial, and despite years of expanding welfare states there appears to be no end to the cries of ‘unfairness!’ and ‘exploitation!’ from the nation’s chattering classes. If every person in America lived in mansions, eat caviar, and weighed 300 pounds there would be those who would point out that the ‘rich’ have slightly bigger mansions, get to eat imported caviar rather than domestic, and weight a few pounds more. Chances are they’d get a nice government agency to do something about it.
This is a system that does not work. It is a system that harms those whom it is supposed to help. Fostering more and more dependency on the paternal hand of government is only the path to slavery. There is room for some social welfare – even a dyed-in-the-wool conservative like myself will grant the need for there to be a "safety net" for those that have no other choice. However, conservative is about realizing that when a safety net becomes a crutch freedom quickly fades. I have read more than enough history of governments using social benefits as a way of controlling the population and keeping them fat and docile while government kleptocrats robbed them blind. From ancient Rome to modern Europe, the bureaucracy has been a greater threat to human liberty than any 19th Century robber baron.
I believe C.S. Lewis said it best in describing the fundamental conservative realization of the difference between private enterprise and government:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
That is exactly the kind of threat that must be met with eternal vigilence. Mr. Frank is right – government is viewed as a threat by conservatives. The thing is, government is and always has been a threat to liberty, and this country was based on the idea that only a system that restrained government could minimize that threat. I have far more faith in the ability of the individual than I do in government, and if that makes me heartless and inconsiderate, then so be it. However, if there is one criticism to be made of the Bush Administration it is not that they are de-funding government, it is that they are not de-funding government.
I feel like your C.S. Lewis quote was wrongly applied. Lewis mentions “moral busybodies” which most liberals are not (ex: abortion, gay rights, women’s rights) and which you do not seem to subscribe to either for the most part, though many on the religious right fit this mold perfectly. In fact, liberals are trying to de-legislate morality and instead to create a society which is more libertarian socially and more equitable (granted at the expense of the efficiency that you mention)economically.
I’m very doubtful that our social safety net in the U.S. has gone far enough to become a crutch. The troubles the U.S. is facing run far deeper than anything economic and welfare policy alone can address. There is no economic policy- interest rate cut, tax cut, welfare increase,social spending, that can really change the fabric of our society. That can only happen when individuals and small groups of people decide that they have had enough and we get movements like the Civil Rights of the 1960s and 70s and the Human Rights Campaign and the Sierra Club- suddenly we are environmentalists, we are tolerant of racial difference and we are not bigoted against gays because SOCIETY tells us that it is no longer couth to be so. Isn’t that great and horrifying at the same time?
I was very turned off by your Ann Coulterish: “The reason why liberals fight so hard for these programs is not because they do good.” Let’s be honest with each other here and quit demonizing. We both want the same things: happiness, prosperity, peace, and freedom. We just have very different ideas of the best route to get there. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take the politics out of politics and just base policy decisions on mathematical equations? But then we could argue about which equations…
However, its the left that wants to ban smoking, sue McDonalds, and generally do far more to restrict freedom in this country than any other mainstream political group.
I also stand by my comment. Most government social programs are at best inefficient, and do very little to alleviate real suffering. Groups like Lutheran Brotherhood and Catholic Social Services as well as others have a long history of real results, but they receive little attention and less funding from the public.
Schools are one example. The liberal refusal to accept accountability and choice into public education is in direct opposition to the needs of students. Instead of concentrating on the quality of education, teachers unions and other liberal interest groups seem to only care about the quantity of funding they receive. Such opposition is hardly ‘progressive’ – in fact it’s a reactionary refusal to alter the status quo that enriches administrators and union leaders at the expense of students.
Liberals fought welfare reform in the 1990’s, now they are fighting educational and Social Security reform through shameful scare tactics and constant demonization of anything that might even resemble privatization. Look at the fight over prescription drugs and Medicare. By liberals speechs on the House and Senate floors you’d think that the GOP was going to put Granny out on the streets when the actual proposal actually expands the Medicare bureaucracy and won’t make an substantive changes to the way Medicare is run until 2010. Yet even then the shrill cries from the left continue.
The left seems more interested in lining their constituents pockets than in real reform, which is why I believe that liberal policy makers have little regard for the results of social spending.
Liberals do not want to sue McDonalds. Mearly a few slobs who see a get-rich quick scheme, couple of really bored trial lawyers do, and myself for working a year in one of those hellholes.
C’mon Jay teachers wages are so abysmally low do you honestly object to rasing them?
Just a quick correction- it’s Lutheran Social Service and Catholic Charities. I actually work at LSS, so it’s strange that you mentioned it, but here’s something that might interest you. We are the largest provider of social services in MN- bigger than the counties or any other organization and we receive the great majority of our funding through the state. We “contract out” for jobs counseling, meals on wheels, shelters and counseling services, etc. I believe in liberal policies not because I want to line the pockets of my “special interests” which is laughable, in my case. You say organizations like ours do a better job than the gov’t. We are a nonprofit. 79% of our funding comes from the government. Funding a nonprofit is not the same thing as contracting out Medicare to HMO’s which, thank God, did not happen.
I know that you think, as a Republican, that the free market will provide services better than the government can. I think privitization is dangerous and that the free market is unreliable because it is impersonal and leaves many people out of luck.
I would make the same argument as you- throwing money after a problem is not the best way to go about solving it. However, simply pulling the rug out from underneath people is not the same thing as “reform” (let’s think MN here instead of nationally for now). Cutting the HHS budget by 33% will not help the healthcare industry. Nationally, the Medicare bill is obviously a disaster and not because it spends too much or too little but because it is simply BAD POLICY. Junk legislation. Just perhaps, the left is screaming shrilly because the Republicans’ plan is horribly complicated and, basically, sucks.
I also love that “the left…do far more to restrict freedom in this country than any other mainstream political group”. So since the dems are after our civil liberties, then that leaves…the Republicans as our defenders? Scary!!!!
Alex, what do you think is a fair wage for teachers?
Teaching is among the five lowest paying professional occupations. Most teachers could easily earn higher salaries in just about any other occupation with their level of education and training, and not have to put up with the vicious wrath of conservative ideologues hellbent on pitting the public against them in pursuit of a hairbrained halfwitted privatized education system. The idea that the teachers union is this aggressive protection racket fighting to preserve $26,000 a year professional jobs for lazy and incompetent people would be laughable if not for the fact that the right wing sewer rats have convinced so many people of the argument’s validity.
Kerri, excellent job pointing out the way things work here on planet Earth as opposed to whatever planet Jay lives on.
26,000? Hell around here (South Dakota) I heard it wasn’t much over 20,000.
Well I’m no expert on the subject Monkey but I don’t think it is much to ask that they get paid a bit more than that. Why? I don’t know. Maybe having the one of the most IMPORTANT jobs out there might small reason…
I’m all for raising teacher’s wages, but that’s something that needs to be done at the state level. I’d also like to see a system in which the demands placed on schools at the federal level is removed. In many districts there are people whose sole job is keeping in compliance with federal regulations, a bureaucratic overhead that takes away from education.
Social services have the same problem. I have no problem with Lutheran Social Services (yes, I completely forgot about the name change) getting federal money. In fact, I think that’s exactly the way things should work. LSS is a private non-profit organization. (Yes – a corporation, although a 501(c)3 one.) LSS does far more than any government agency to meet the needs of the poor and sick. At the same time, they and every other social services group have to bear a significant regulatory cost. Reducing the cost will increase the ability of these organizations to do their valuable work.
As for the private market being so unreliable, I have long advocated that Medicare be modelled after the Federal Employee’s Health Benefits Package (FEHBP), which has met the needs of federal employees and the their family for decades now. It’s a program that lets federal employees choose from a variety of private health care firms that meet certain criteria. Even former employees benefit from the system. It offers something that the current system doesn’t: choice and competition. Federal employees get better health care after retirement because they’ve been able to choose the best plan for them, regardless of their condition, age, or pension.
The federal government leaves people in the cracks all the time. It’s even worse in places with national health insurance like Canada or the UK where government bureaucrats decide what procedures you can get based on some bureaucratic calculus. Which means if you get cancer in Canada, you’d better pray you have enough money to go to the US for treatment, because the government might decide the costs for your chemo or radiation is too high for them to pay. (If you don’t die just waiting for treatment thanks to the government’s limiting how many facilities there are and where they can be located.) Such a system must never be allowed to come to the US, or it would lead to a massive decrease in the quality of health care for all.
The US health care system is fast becoming the worst in the world since its privatized funding will put more and more people in a position where they will not be covered. The massive increase in health care spending in the past few years shows little sign of softening, meaning that employers will continue to direct their hiring practices to minimizing health care expenditures. In other words, more outsourcing of good jobs from big-name employers, fewer full-time positions, and more working Americans lacking health care coverage. There are no perfect answers and the socialized medicine model you mention has plenty of drawbacks, but it’s definitely not the worst-case scenario for a civilized economy. The American model is…or at will become so when the majority of our citizens lack health care coverage as is likely to be the case in a decade or so.
If public money is filtered through private non-profits, there is little difference in overall government spending allocations, and they may in fact increase since the money is now flowing through two bureaucracies, rather than just one, before getting to its intended target. With charities as corrupt and mismanaged as United Way out there, I would trust the “inept pointy-headed government bureaucrats” any day to deliver money to the poor. That’s not to say that all charities are fraudulent, but enough are to where “faith-based” aid for the underclass is likely to end up being a more expensive alternative than government at the end of the day. Beyond that, the “faith-based” initiative essentially puts the government, and specifically the Republican Party in a power-broker position, using federal dollars as leverage to win political allegiance from charitable organizations who, when it conveniences them, beckon the separation of church and state principle, but when it inconveniences them, receive government funds and then return them to political party coffers as a kickback. I think I’ll stick with government inefficiency, thank you very much.
“Had I but one wish today for the American Church, it would be that it come to see the difference between charity and justice. Charity is a matter of personal attributes; justice is a matter of public policy. Charity seeks to alleviate the effects of injustice; justice seeks to eliminate its causes. Charity in no way affects the status quo, while justice leads inevitably to political confrontation.”
-The Rev. William Sloane Coffin
I am an atheist who was very very wary about taking a position with a faith-based organization. Bush’s faith-based initiative makes my stomach turn- he used LSS amoung other groups in Texas to show how good faith-based programs worked, cut funding for the state-run programs, then pulled the funding out from underneath the underachieving students that LSS was serving. This faith-based initiative is just another way that the Reblicans are attempting to reduce social services. NOT because they hate people but because they are fans of personal responsibility.
I also agree with the potential for corruption. The relationship this administration seems to have with the Christian God is a little too close for comfort. What with Bush telling the Palestinian Prime Minister that God told him to strike Saddam Hussien…are we out looking for an escalation to the Holy War? I would prefer not to feel like a pawn in some crazy chess game between God and Allah, thank you very much. GW’s “bring it on” does not help my confidence.
Mark makes a great point- it is the SAME money going to nonprofits as the gov’t would otherwise spend on its own programs. Actually, as we well know, it does both. How’s that for consumer choice? There are also private for-profit providers for those who can afford it (for people with developmental disabilities and to oversee adoptions, etc.) Choice coming out of our ears! And all of it utilized- there are waiting lists for these things, for crying out loud.
Charity can alleviate some temporary misfortunes but only gov’t can really help bring about justice. Isn’t that part of our pledge- justice for all? Enough rambling.
Teachers make $30-60k in NY. Seems fair.
Monkey, try living anywhere in New York off of $30,000 a year and you might disagree. You’d most likely have to live with several other people or live in the slums. Neither is the kind of life most people who went to college four years would want to live. It’s also interesting that you choose the state with the highest teacher pay as your example.
$30k for working 3/4 of a year? Not that bad. People make less working full year.
…Neither is the kind of life most people who went to college four years would want to live…
Oh, my.. Do I detect a hint of elitism?
…It’s also interesting that you choose the state with the highest teacher pay as your example..
Isn’t the cost of life in NY one of the highest, too?
Yes, people do make less than $30,000 working all year round (even me, Mr. Elitist, fits that category), but not very many who have professional degrees like teachers do are earning such a paltry income. If the profession continues to see low salaries and vicious bully tactics by the partisan political right, fewer good people will want to enter the profession, which is ultimately what conservatives want since fewer good people in the system will make it easier to dismantle and privatize it.
Would you think a company CEO should be satisfied with a salary of $80,000 a year? It may sound high to you an me, but in order to attract a qualified candidate for such a demanding position, the pay has to be high enough to make it worth their while. The same applies to teaching. Pay them just above the poverty line and fewer quality applicants will show up.
As for the “elitist” comment, isn’t owning a home quintessential to the rapidly fading American dream? Few people are gonna be satisfied living in a cramped apartment with three roommates eating bologna and cereal to pay the bills, which is where a $30,000 per year job in New York would leave you. The fact that these are intelligent people with professional degrees who you’re telling to “be content” with 30K per year makes the profession, and the corresponding lifestyle of poverty, all the less appealing.
You apparently missed the point completely about New York teacher salaries. Yes, New York does have one of the highest costs of living, which is exactly why your $60,000 figure is misleading. 60K in New York would be lucky to be worth 30K in most places in the Midwest. If you had to get by on 30K in New York, I think you’d learn quickly that it’s not that damn much money and may even dismiss the belief that teachers who want to earn more money than that aren’t quite so “elitist”.
…vicious bully tactics by the partisan political right…
Obviously not a statement by someone who is partisan, right? 😛 Again, $30 is for working 3/4 of a year. Keep in mind that most people in the business world work far longer hours then 9-5.
…You apparently missed the point completely about New York teacher salaries…
Not at all. You said:
“It’s also interesting that you choose the state with the highest teacher pay as your example”
to which I replied: “Isn’t the cost of life in NY one of the highest, too? ”
So how did I miss the point? I thought I was the one making it? By the way, the reason why I picked NY is because I live in NY. No vast right wing conspiracy here.
Nice point with the CEO salary there Mark….
Problem with your comparison is, CEO’s…… they get FIRED if they slip up even a little.
Sure, the best demand the higher salaries, but guess what…. They have the most demanded of them. This is because, if they DO make mistakes their customers will choose other companies. Thus the beauty of COMPETITION….
Are state ran schools competitive? Answer is, in no way, shape or form are they competitive. If your child’s teachers suck, what are you gonna do? Complaining is about all you CAN do if you are still looking for government sponsored schooling for your child.
These teachers, of whom you speak, operate under almost NO pressure. They are backed by teacher unions who DEMAND more pay for less work.
So, if you are a good teacher with a lot to offer, where do you look to for financial prosperity? PRIVATE schools. More is demanded of you, therefor you are compensated more for that…..
What’s more is that those teachers make it more difficult for the ones who are honest, do good work, and want to see children succeed. Usually its the teachers who are most adept at greasing the bureaucracy that get ahead over the ones who do the best job.
As for the idea that the government should provide ‘justice’ that’s a concept that gives the government a blank check on power. Exactly whose ‘justice’ are we going to uphold – the ‘justice’ that says that success is to be punished.
The only kind of ‘justice’ this nation was founded upon is equal justice under law. It is not founded, and was never meant to uphold, on the principles of redistributive economic justice. The Founders of this country quite correctly noted that when people become dependent on the central government for all their needs they are nothing more than slaves to the state and democracy is essentially doomed. There is a place for helping the poor, but there are better ways of doing it than from Washington. As one commenter put it from a previous thread, if people spend a fraction of the time they spend in front of the TV working in a soup kitchen or helping those in need, we wouldn’t need to spend billions of dollars on social programs. Indeed, if we had a culture that didn’t eschew morality and religion, we might not be in this mess in the first place.
Imagine there is a country out there where government involves itself in no private industry.
There are many charities, schools, hospitals, all which run off of not only profits, but contributions of compassionate citizens.
Suddenly, the organization that runs its charities, schools and hospitals in the worst manner starts going out and forcing people to fund it; a gestapo type organization. When they come to your door, not only is your freedom threatened if you refuse to support their corrupt programs, you are also painted as a mean, heartless, rich bastard, who has no compassion for the downtrodden.
Now, substitute that organized crime syndicate with our current government policies, and pretty much nothing changes…..
The idea of competition enhancing public education quality is not terrible in itself. I’m all for private schools existing as a source of competition IF they operate self-sufficiently. The idea that the corrupting demons of public funding should be transferred to private schools does wonders for GOP political power-broking, but would bankrupt the education system by shifting the current privately-funded schools outside of market forces and make them dependent on government dollars. Government currently subsidizes tuitions at private colleges (like Gustavus) and the result has been a disastrous hyper-inflation of private school tuition rates is well above what these schools would be able to charge if they weren’t getting these subsidies, In the end, taxpayers are being fleeced by this system and will be fleeced to a much larger scale in government gets involved with private education to satisfy Republican party campaign coffers, who would be the primary beneficiary from the payola.
As for the “accountability” factor we’re supposed to hold teachers up to, who should determine it? Should the district principal or superintendent hold individual teachers’ fate on their strings? Should it be other teachers? Or should it be all based on student evaluations? I know I had alot of teachers I resented back in middle school but whose approach I respect much more today…and vice versa. The lame teachers would often get good student evaluations because students appreciate not being pushed too hard. Or should it be pointy-headed bureaucrats determining which teachers are fit to get “performance-based pay” and which should be fired? Seems like every one of these scenarios is open to favortism, corruption and outright poor decision-making.
Furthermore, rating teacher performance operates under the mindset that all students and all classrooms are equal. If I’m a special education or ESL teacher, I’m gonna be at a distinct disadvantage to offer student performance achievements that the calculus and advanced-placement English teachers are able to. If I’m in a poor district with a high dropout rate and a high mobility rate of the non-English speaking children of immigrants being used to suppress blue-collar wage levels in many urban and rural areas, I’m not gonna be able to compete with the performances of suburban districts filled with doctors, lawyers, and executives kids…..unless I fudge the numbers.
And therein another big problem with “performance-based pay” in public education. It encourages grade inflation. If I was a teacher, I would be more likely to give a D paper a C and a B paper an A if it meant the difference between a higher paycheck or keeping my job. These are the sorts of things conservatives choose not to think of when riding around on their ideological high-horse since it throws a monkey wrench into their black-and-white worldview.
As for Jay’s latest blather, what “mess” are you referring to that we’ve gotten ourselves into in by “eschewing morality and religion”? Kerri’s quote was excellently applied differentiating charity and justice. It’s also ironic that you’re chastising Americans for not spending more time volunteering for soup kitchens and other charities while simultaneously wagging your finger at our lack of productivity and corresponding support for the Bush-backed overtime repeal that will allow Americans even less time away from work to volunteer for charities.
Perhaps if Jay Reding spent less time spewing right-wing venom on a blog and more time working at soup kitchens himself, his self-righteous moralizing would have an ounce of credibility.
…unless I fudge the numbers…
Welcome to the real world, Mark. They already fudge the numbers.
…Perhaps if Jay Reding spent less time spewing right-wing venom on a blog…
I thought liberals were the tolerant ones? Jay Reding, obviously, has an opinion that differs from yours, but to refer to his as “venom” is to display your own close mindness.
Of course they already fudge the numbers with all the impractical scrutiny placed upon them to turn water into wine with student performances. To whatever extent that number fudging and grade inflation is a problem now will pale in comparison to what it will be if high student marks directly affect the teacher’s paycheck and/or job security. The medicine that accountability Pollyannas are advocating will make the system sicker than the disease itself.
As for the term venom and being open-minded, I am open-minded to Jay’s comments and anyone else, but after reading them and determining they are frivolous, I have no problem labelling them as venomous. And the term “venom” applies more to statements being inflammatory and confrontational than being outright rubbish which you appear to believe I meant. In this case, either potential definition would fit. 🙂
Believe me, if you think I’m venomous, then you live a very sheltered life.
…Of course they already fudge the numbers with all the impractical scrutiny placed upon them…
Give me a break. I went to a public school in Brooklyn, NY which was !40% black. A sizeable chunk of teachers operate by liberal guidelines. Teachers would make excuses and stretch deadlines for students of certain color. If you are white and you miss a deadline or don’t do so well on a test its one thing, but if you are black – you’ll get a second chance, a 3rd chance ,and even then they might just disregard the failure. Liberal “guilt” at work.
…but after reading them and determining they are frivolous…
FRIVOLOUS??? Oooooh. This is rich. Aren’t you the guy who claimed that 50% of the federal budget goes to Pentagon? Wow.
Actually, Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, former commander of the U.S. Second Fleet is the guy who claimed that “the Bush administration’s $399 billion Pentagon budget request would devour over half of the discretionary budget which Congress is about to approve.” I’m just the guy who repeated what he said.
You said:
“I just read an editorial by a retired Navy colonel who pointed out that approximately 50 percent of this year’s federal budget went to the Pentagon.”
~50% of the federal budget? tsk..tsk..
There’s a big difference between 50% of discretionary spending and 50% of the budget. $400 billion is not half of $2.8 trillion.
Furthermore, discretionary spending is money that is outside the normal legal entitlements on the federal budget like Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, and interest payments.
That $396 billion also includes humanitarian missions in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as infrastructure rebuilding in those countries as well.
In terms of military spending, we do spend a lot, but we get our money’s worth.
….I’m all for private schools existing as a source of competition IF they operate self-sufficiently…..
Oh, so THERE’S your capitalist spirit!
Why is it that the answer is practically sitting on your face, and you ignore it?
How do you get teachers to be honest with “performance based pay”? Try leaving it up to the parents. I would think that THEY, paying the teachers salaries, and also being the guardians of their children should know truly if their children are being taught well.
When that money is routed through a middle man, the middle man makes the decisions, i.e. the government.
Want to know the solution? Abolish ALL public schooling.
And shut up, I already know the next ignorant thing that shall spew forth from you. YES, those that can’t afford it WILL be taken care of. Only THIS time, those that support the less fortunate will have a SAY in how their money is spent.
I’m sure you’re right. The children of public school students would be taken care of if education was entirely privatized. Brave and selfless sweatshop owners would take them in and put them to work sewing shoes and blouses 120 hours a week just like they do in other countries where public education doesn’t exist.
Mark, thanks the for the chuckle.
just like they do in other countries where public education doesn’t exist….
Always love to see the inner working of a liberal mind.
So the only difference between the U.S. and 3rd world countries is our government funded programs such as public education huh? I guess I could see how you would believe that…….. NAWT! (retro is back)
The fact of the matter is this….a privately-funded education system would operate according to marketplace values. If a student is performing well and their parents (or government subsidies that would nullify the entire concept of “private” education) are paying the tuition, continuing to educate that student would be a wise investment for that institution. However, a student that isn’t making the cut will also be subject to marketplace values. Just like an insurance customer who files too many claims gets dropped by his/her insurance company and has a tough time finding a new one willing to gamble on them, underachieving students will be dropped by private schools who are not seeing sufficient return on their investment in this student…and very few other private schools are gonna be too interested in taking in a student that’s not performing well enough to sustain the school’s reputation.
This is the very reason why education is, and forever should be, a mostly public undertaking. The future of our young people should not be dependent on egocentric and individualistic marketplace values, which would definitely be the case if our schools were privatized. It’s easy to point to isolated success stories of underachieving students going to private schools and turning themselves around, but if all public schools are merely transitioned into privately-owned entities, they become the public schools, picking up the same large-scale problems the public schools have to deal with.
The end result would be a significant share of underachieving students having no place to go but the streets since private schools would have no incentive to absorb them. At this point, the private schools partners in private industry would have a newly-created class of cheap labor to take advantage of. The only thing currently stopping that is child labor laws, but with the Bush administration slashing every other check-and-balance that protects workers from exploitation, you can bet he’s on the case to weaken child labor laws in his second term if he gets one.
underachieving students will be dropped by private schools who are not seeing sufficient return on their investment in this student…and very few other private schools are gonna be too interested in taking in a student that’s not performing well enough to sustain the school’s reputation……
I would LOVE to see how you came to that conclusion.
I have taken some Microsoft classes at a tech school. You would agree that this would be a 100% private school right?
Do you think they would ever even THINK of refusing my money? No matter how many times I have failed the exams? Hell, if I were that hard to learn, I would be a gold mine to them.
Now, the only argument you could make are of student who weren’t willing to learn, who’s parents, or those sponsoring his/her schooling refused to continue paying for non progress. I, however, see this as a GOOD thing. It is the students, themselves, who do not put forth an effort that suffer the most by the system continually supporting them, no matter what. It is suffering no consequences that motivates these kids further in not trying.
Also, your argument has been proven wrong due to the fact that there are PRIVATE schools out there that SPECIALIZE in troubled students.
In public schools, teachers have no motivation to give the extra effort it takes to effectively teach troubled youths. Public school simply becomes a daycare that keeps the students off the streets. Whereas, in a privately owned school, where the teachers were strictly being paid based on their ability to get results with troubled students, they would be happy to put forth that extra effort.
….underachieving students will be dropped by private schools who are not seeing sufficient return on their investment in this student…and very few other private schools are gonna be too interested in taking in a student that’s not performing well enough to sustain the school’s reputation……
I would LOVE to see how you came to that conclusion.
I have taken some Microsoft classes at a tech school. You would agree that this would be a 100% private school right?
Do you think they would ever even THINK of refusing my money? No matter how many times I have failed the exams? Hell, if I were that hard to learn, I would be a gold mine to them.
Now, the only argument you could make are of student who weren’t willing to learn, who’s parents, or those sponsoring his/her schooling refused to continue paying for non progress. I, however, see this as a GOOD thing. It is the students, themselves, who do not put forth an effort that suffer the most by the system continually supporting them, no matter what. It is suffering no consequences that motivates these kids further in not trying.
Also, your argument has been proven wrong due to the fact that there are PRIVATE schools out there that SPECIALIZE in troubled students.
In public schools, teachers have no motivation to give the extra effort it takes to effectively teach troubled youths. Public school simply becomes a daycare that keeps the students off the streets. Whereas, in a privately owned school, where the teachers were strictly being paid based on their ability to get results with troubled students, they would be happy to put forth that extra effort.
Mark,
If a student is performing well and their parents (or government subsidies that would nullify the entire concept of “private” education) are paying the tuition, continuing to educate that student would be a wise investment for that institution.
You got it backwards. If the teachers are performing well then the school will attract students. Otherwise the school will be forced to close just like any other business – due to the bad service that it provided.
The end result would be a significant share of underachieving students having no place to go but the streets…
So even you admit that at worst the things will stay the same as they are now.
…,So even you admit that at worst the things will stay the same as they are now….
Game, set, and match….
This thread will soon be removed, so I hesitate to write too much. But in answer to the question of whether I think private schools would “even think of not accepting the money” of a failing student, the answer is yes. A private entity’s reputation will be based on prolific results, meaning that a student dragging down their lofty standards is not likely to be welcomed for very long…especially when considering these schools could maximize efficiency in classrooms by minimizing the number of students.
If your theory was correct, private colleges would grant admission to every single student that applied since “they wouldn’t even THINK of refusing anybody’s money.” Here on planet Earth, private institutions accept only the number of students that they feel they can effectively educate and still maintain the college’s reputation.
We’ve already heard the tired reasoning for applying “performance-based pay” for teachers and how wonderful private schools are for doing so, although nobody has given me a realistic way of determining performance adequacy. One crackpot, perhaps it was you, said the parents of students should be the ones deciding it, which definitely made me smile. I can see it now….”My Suzy only got a C from that awful Mr. Hobbs. I say you send him on his kiester because there’s nobody smarter than my Suzy.” Is it really wise to put the livelihood of teachers into the hands of the same crowd that’s busy killing umpires at their son and daughter’s T-ball game because they didn’t like a call at home? If I were a teacher whose fate was decided on parental critiques, I would be sure to give all my students A’s and I can promise you not a single parent would find my performance objectionable.
And Monkey, no students are intentionally led to the streets in public education since we mandate students attend classes until they’re at least 16 or face legal repercussions. With an entirely privatized education system, there would be every incentive for the system to wash its hands of underachievers after a couple bad choices….which many of us make between the ages of 13 and 15. Thus, like so many things conservatives favor, a few bad choices made in childhood are certain to destroy an individual’s choices. There are enough checks and balances in the current education system to avoid that scenario as much as possible.
A private entity’s reputation will be based on prolific results, meaning that a student dragging down their lofty standards is not likely to be welcomed for very long…
Why would you say that? If you fail a class – you take it again. If you fail to advance, you repeat the year and pay the tuition again.
If your theory was correct, private colleges would grant admission to every single student that applied since “they wouldn’t even THINK of refusing anybody’s money.”
Come on, Mark. This is very basic. If let’s say Yale didn’t have enough students applying to fill their classrooms – they would be admitting *everybody*. But, since they have dozens of people fighting for the same seat – they can be picky. Come on, man. Supply and demand. There’s more demand then supply, hence they can set the “price” pretty high. This is basic.
Show me any private school which has a shortage of applicants and at the same time it turns away students.
If I were a teacher whose fate was decided on parental critiques, I would be sure to give all my students A’s and I can promise you not a single parent would find my performance objectionable.
Uh. No. School would decide if the teacher is advancing their reputation or spoiling it. If there is some unreasonable parent who has beef with that teacher – school would do nothing because there would be dozens of parents who *ARE* satisfied. Capitalism scores again. You don’t change your service to gain 1 customer if you are going to loose 10.
since we mandate students attend classes until they’re at least 16 or face legal repercussions
If you want to keep that mandate – you can.
This thread will soon be removed…
No it won’t. Click on the July 6- July 12 link in Archives.
If your theory was correct, private colleges would grant admission to every single student that applied…..
Why, then, are there private “community” type colleges that do?
Um, maybe because there is a market of lower quality learners out there that still wish to pay for college and to learn.
All you are doing is putting on your liberal colored glasses on to look at this and refusing to look at pure and simple LOGIC. You are just convinced that those that have are that way because they keep those that have not without. You have been trained to look at a free market with disdain and to always believe that the smaller guy gets shafted.
You fail to look at the logic in the fact that as long as people are willing to pay for something, there will be people there to provide that something with quality. Are you telling me that there are none willing to pay for the education of troubled children? Especially, when it’s their own?
Hell, we already know that people are out there who are willing to teach these children for peanuts, figuratively speaking. Why do you think that will change if the government isn’t in charge any more? Do you really believe that we require government to give our children the best possible futures? That we simply aren’t capable of doing it ourselves? For our own children as well as those around us?
Is it really wise to put the livelihood of teachers into the hands of the same crowd that’s busy killing umpires at their son and daughter’s T-ball game because they didn’t like a call at home….
First off, if you think one dissatisfied customer can typically get someone fired, then I would have been fired a hundred times over. A school isn’t going to fire a teacher with a few mad parents when the rest are happy with them.
Also, the wording of that sentence almost makes me think that you are saying that parents do not know what is best for their children, and that the government knows better…. Democrats would be happy to hear you saying that.
we mandate students attend classes until they’re at least 16 or face legal repercussions.
Really? And that works? When is the last time you have been in a urban area during school hours?
A starting teacher, teaching at a Class “C” (on average about 450 students, K-12) school in Nebraska, with a BA in Education (which any student averaging “C+” grades in high school can get) will earn about $25,000 per year on a 184 day teaching contract (average contract length in NE). Plus they get all their insurance, FICA, and Medicare taxes paid by the school and until the last few years, paid no deductible on health insurance. That’s about $17/hr. That’s a darn good starting wage just out of college plus exceptional health benefits. Plus retirement. I don’t think teachers are poorly compensated for their work. 70% of a school districts costs are tied to teaching salaries, and, whether a school district can afford it or not, they are guaranteed an increase based on pay scale and negotiations. So alot of the major media hype about teaching wages being so terribly low is inaccurate. The amount of money spent on public education has increased 200% in the U.S. since 1991. The U.S. has the highest cost/pupil figure of any industrialized nation but consistently performs at lower levels in terms of assessed skills. Private schools consistently educate children at a lower cost (on average about half the cost of public education) and students of private schools do better in assessment testing than public school students. I am a board of education member in my children’s school district. The cost of running a shool is out of control and I don’t see any help in sight. Administrators are taught to tax and spend. It’s scary. A dramatic overhaul of public education is overdue. The first step is to eliminate the death grip of the NEA on public education.
it is terrible