Republicans & Conservatives Archives

Eric-

Before I comment on school vouchers, I’d like to comment on your argument with yourself. When you’re playing the part of the liberals, you’re choosing an obviously extremist liberal perspective. I’ll create a similar argument between “myself” and “a conservative”

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”

- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

Conservatives are so desperate to silence their critics that their ONLY REGRET about an act of terrorism is that it didn’t happen to liberals.

“Homosexuals want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers.”

- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 01-18-95

Yep, leave it to the conservatives to perpetuate a stereotype about homosexuals and AIDS, when educated people know that infection among this population has been declining ever since the gay community realized that they needed to protect themselves against it. It is actually heterosexuals, specifically african american women, who have an upward trend in infections. Of course, conservatives want you to fear homosexuals, so they need to portray them as lethal.

“Quit looking at the symbols. Get out and get a job. Quit shooting each other. Quit having illegitimate babies.”

- State Rep. John Graham Altman (R-SC), addressing African-American concerns about they ‘symbol’ of the Confederate Flag, New York Times, 01-24-97

You see how the conservatives to tell people who are offended by a symbol which is undeniably tied to slavery and racism to simply ignore that symbol, and then they continue to perpetuate stereotypes. I wonder what the conservatives would have to say to a black man who has a job, has no illegitimate babies, and has never shot anyone. I speculate that there are more people who fit my description than there are who fit his. But I guess conservatives just don’t get that.

So you can clearly see that conservatives fear homosexuals and black people, and if you try to tell them that they are wrong, they hope that you are killed by terrorists.

You see why this tactic is completely misrepresentative and unfair to the majority of Republicans who don’t agree with the crazy things that the people I have quoted have said?

Now, I know this is completely unrelated to school vouchers, but if you would like to discuss that issue with a liberal, you should do so and stop quoting extreme leftist sources which don’t represent the views of the majority of Democrats.

I’ll post my views on school vouchers seperately, because this is long enough.

On school vouchers-

I think that the education system needs to be improved. This country has an interest in educating its children, and public funding for our education system is entirely appropriate. There are no free lunches, but if we require everyone to buy their own education, then you will end up with fewer educated people in society.

We have a finite number of brains on this planet at any given time, and it’s what we DO with those brains that determines what happens in this world. Therefore, it is in the best interests of society to get as much knowledge into each brain as possible. We should not be ok with leaving a bunch of brains unattended.

So if our goal is to get at least SOME education to everyone, then public schools are good. they are the best way to accomplish this goal. However, capitalism is also good, and so private schools are good too.

So we have two systems: a public system controlled by the government and a private system in which each entity is self-governed. Now, if one of these systems is experiencing problems, what’s the best solution? To fix the problem or to throw up its hands and help to funnel its luckiest participants out to the other system?

I happen to think that the government should focus on fixing its own system. Yes, they are trying, and yes, there are still problems, but I don’t think it’s time to throw in the towel. I see vouchers as throwing in the towel. Instead of chasing kids out of the system with the message “we can’t fix this, so here’s an incentive to leave,” we should fix No Child Left Behind so that it can actually accomplish things, we should work to pay our teachers better so that more qualified individuals will be able to pursue that career, and the parents in our country should do all that they can to support public education.

I think there are plenty of ways to improve our existing system without abandoning ship, and if parents can’t stand that idea, they are welcome to pay for their children to go to private schools. The government should focus all of its education resources on improving its own system, though.

Sorry Kathryn, I neglected to mention that this is a continuation of sorts of another blog entry. When I saw this story it leaped out at me as the perfect compliment for the previous post. I couldn’t pass it up.

But I’m not sure that I am portraying an extremist liberal perspective here. I see this issue as one which exposes the ideological underpinnings of today’s left. Progressives share an ideology. Some more strident than others. We can play tit for tat, goose and gander… but the left is for bigger and more government control of virtually everything.

School vouchers are anathema precisely because of this prediliction for government control. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve argued with someone about Microsoft or Walmart not being a monoploy, when the solution in their minds is for the government to have more control. The problem is that no amount of money will solve the problem in our schools when the government and labor groups like the NEA have vested interests in keeping this their monopoly.

The issue is one of choice. Public monopolies preclude private markets. The story kind of highlights a curious hypocrisy, while decrying sucessful private business which actually does it’s job, it is all for giving huge beauracracies more money and more control of the education market. When it fails to do it’s job we are told it’s because we haven’t paid enough in taxes and it would be sacrilige to abandon it.

We have two systems of education but how can they be said to be equal? One argument used against Microsoft and Walmart was that by dominating the market and keeping their prices low they drive others out of business. This same charge could be laid to our ‘free’ public education system. They are in effect devaluing education. But free doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cost. The cost for our free education is hidden because the payer is not the same person receiving the goods. This makes it easier to inflate the cost of the product. My contention would be that public education costs more and delivers less than a free market would.

This dovetails into the Walmart as evil argument of the left as well. Isn’t it really an argument about free markets and who should control what? Some argue for ‘democratic’ control of education, health care, and virtually every other industry you can think of.

I can’t understand why Democrats, throughout the primaries and even today, keep attacking Wal-Mart, of all things. Wal-Mart? Why not mom and apple pie? I guess that boutique-shopping elitists think that there are huge numbers of voters (many living in relatively poor mid-American swing states) burning with hatred against the types of stores where many of them get their first jobs and where they shop to try and stretch their hard-earned dollars.

The financial argument for vouchers is deceptive. First, people have to be of pretty good income already for the good private schools you’re describing to be available to them, even with the vouchers, which, from my understanding, does not fully cover tuition for those kinds of schools. Second, the government is still paying for it, so it is socialism by definition. Third, it ignores economies of scale that might allow a better system for a majority of students under a public system.

The financial arguments are cover for those who want to subsidize sectarian/partisan education on the government’s tab. The so-called choice is one that’s always been present. They just want to skew the market’s equilibrium in their favor, and pull money out of the secular public school system.

Walmart and Microsoft similarly skew the market. They attempt to take up monopoly presence in their sector, effectively buffering themselves against the punitive forces of the market which your people are so worshipful of. They do so by relying on labor that for the near term is ridiculously cheap, but which is not guaranteed at all to retain its low price. What happens to those famous low prices when and if the labor becomes more expensive there? The prices for products will rise, and so will the retail. If there are no competitors forcing the product’s price down, what becomes of the consumer?

I think you guys envision your markets too perfectly, and don’t leave enough room in your model for imperfections relating to communication and information, scale, and non-economic influences on economic systems. Because of that, you create artificial, fragile systems that don’t stand up well to the shocks and surprises of the real world, and which allow cascading series of bad decisions to take major bites out of the economy.

I’m pretty sure that with or without vouchers, my parents could have ill afforded to school me. But because of the public school system, I was recieved into a environment capable of bringing out my innate talents, despite my unimpressive income. As a result, I will be able to compete where I otherwise might not. Others undoubtedly have succeed out of public school where they might not have been able to afford it to bloom in a private school setting.

In the end, it is not the competitive edge of the school that matters, but the child’s, and the knowledge and technique to properly teach such things are not trade secrets of the private school industry.

I can’t understand why Democrats, throughout the primaries and even today, keep attacking Wal-Mart, of all things. Wal-Mart? Why not mom and apple pie? I guess that boutique-shopping elitists think that there are huge numbers of voters (many living in relatively poor mid-American swing states) burning with hatred against the types of stores where many of them get their first jobs and where they shop to try and stretch their hard-earned dollars.

WalMart? Do I burn with hatred at Wal-Mart? No, not at the moment. I shop there, on occasion. but their selection is crap, and in my neck of the woods, They aren’t the only game in town. But I live in a much more developed, Suburban area, and as such, the market has more room for things, and people much more employment opportunities. What I do, is I sympathize with those for whom the “mom and apple” small town stores are no longer an option. I don’t know when agressive chain stores that use market share to annihilate the competion became patriotic symbols of America, but I’m sure you’ll tell me at which point that became the case. As for people stretching their dollar, they have to if they work at Wal-Mart, especially since Wal-Mart often lays off hard working people before they attain the seniority to attain higher pay.

If that weren’t enough, they’re even building these supercenters, horning in on supermarket business. Now people have to watch out for their grocery store businesses. I mean, at some point such domination of markets create dysfunctional relationships. There are already reports of such stores raising prices once again, once they’ve destroyed the competition.

It just seems to me that your economic philosophy tends to have your people fiddling while Rome burns. Everything real that occurs in the economy takes a backseat to theory. If somebody’s cheating customers, it’s caveat emptor. If somebody’s dominating the market, it’s financial destiny. If a company goes under because of common accounting and finance practices, it’s an isolated incident, and the market teaching the bad guy a lesson.

When a theory can be tested, can be rendered wrong by a mismatch of predictions about the facts, that theory is useful, because it’s correctness is assured by the pattern of the facts itself. When it can’t be tested, when no arrangement of the facts can make it false, then such a theory is not only useless, it’s also a form of denial.

Everything seems to serve the market, no matter how dysfunctional it is. If the tax cuts cause enormous deficits when they are supposed to drum up business and recover the lost revenuce, you claim they’re preventing things from getting worse. If huge companies are gobbling up market share, and then raising the prices to what the market will bear, instead of continuing to discount, you claim it’s their right as “the winner of the competition” When there’s not supposed to be a winner, according to Adam Smith. He despised the guild monopolies and the mercantile companies that forced people to deal with them and them alone.

On and on it goes, until the thought pops into one’s head, that all this market justification of dysfunctional activities is simply too ad hoc. And that the system trully is screwing up, and it’s not just our imagination.

Adam Smith never imagined that local economies could gain the scale of national economies from his time, and that national economies would be woven into a global one. He always imagined things in terms of the business power, information distribution, and transportation speed of his time. For his system to work, people must think about what they are doing, act as rationally self-interested parties, not merely selfish, as Ayn Rand’s Objectivists would have it. There is a such thing as biting off more than you can chew, and unfortunately the financial markets have made a habit of it. They would justify it in terms of the market making the decision, but the reality is, Adam Smith was talking about people making the judgments themselves rather than simply following a herd. That’s the whole point of free market capitalism: not a lack of rules as to how one pursues success, but instead the personal freedom to chose the best products, the best services for all one’s interests. Cheap if one can get it, but premium if there is something to gain by it. That freedom is also extended to work. Unfortunately, businesses have grown to the point where they can disrupt such freedom as effectively as any government, lowballing premium work, and charging premium prices for el-cheapo merchandise.

Of course, such matters of content don’t matter in the conservative scheme of things. Market forces and all that.

Truth is, the market is a game, and it’s best played when the rules reinforce rather than asphyxiate the power of the market to do its work, when it allows the truly important market force, human judgment, to do its work.

but the left is for bigger and more government control of virtually everything.

I don’t know what “left” you’re talking about, but under Clinton, the Democrats were able to reduce the size of the government and balance the budget. Come back when the “right” can claim the same thing.

Now to schools,

First off, public education is a favorite target of both the left and the right, although for different reasons. The fact is that it’s not as bad as everyone in government would have you believe. Test scores have generally gone up or stayed the same since the seventies. The exception being science scores for 13- and 17-year olds.

Having said that, public schools still have some problems, high student/teacher ratios, overcrowding, and deteriorating facilities being the biggest.

Currently only 7% of public school funding comes from the federal government. Until 1957 (sputnik) the federal government spent nothing on public schools. Most of the 7% goes to the Title I program, aimed mostly at schools in low-income areas.

So when Republicans talk about using federal funding from public schools to apply to vouchers, they’re talking about a pretty small amount of money per student. If Title I was fully funded (it never has been), each student’s share would be $2,400.

The average private elementary school costs $3,200 per year and the average private highschool costs $7,400 per year. Andover, where GW went, costs $28,500 per year.

Another problem with the voucher “scheme” is the lack of private schools. In 1998, there were only 150,000 unfilled slots in private schools. The number gets smaller if you take into account the private schools that will not take poor, inner city kids and the schools that won’t accept vouchers if it means following federal regulations.

If the goal is quality education for every American child. Vouchers aren’t the answer.

According to the Policy Almanac the expenditures of elementary and secondary schools are expected to total $423 billion for 2000–01, while those of colleges and universities are expected to total $277 billion. The total expenditures for education are expected to amount to 7.1 percent of the gross domestic product in 2000–01.

The number of public school teachers in 2001 was 3.1 million, and the number of private school teachers was about 0.4 million.

In the fall of 2000, there were an estimated 16.0 public school pupils per teacher, compared with 17.2 public school pupils per teacher 10 years earlier. -Policy Almanac

On the cost of public verses private, “An average of $6,911 was spent on each student…” -Policy Almanac This is only what the Dept. of education deems to have been ‘spent’ directly on the average child. Not total cost of education divided by the number of children. Decent private schools run around $6-7,000 dollars a year. That pays for the entire education. Public school ‘cost’ is actually higher than what is estimated to have been spent on each child.

As for economies of scale, one thing I am sure of is that the assembly line approach is one of the number one things wrong with our public schools. Education is a singular process which involves the will and interests of the participants. My experience of compulsary ‘free’ education was, on the whole, unpleasant and not very encouraging …and I love learning!

My opinion is that public education is far too inflexible, too beholden to special interests (who are incapable by their nature of having the interests of individual children preemminent), is too expensive, and too much of a sacred cow.

Average is a nice word. It hides a multitude of logical sins. The source you cite notes nothing about the local school spending that figures into the average, and nothing about the proportion and spending level of the districts that compose the high end of the sample These can skew the average.

Anyways, you don’t question the government monopoly on military units, do you? Some efforts dealing with large populations benefit form a socialized approach.

Stephen,

Actually they are citing government figures.

Adapted from U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics: 2001, Chapter 1 March 1, 2002

I believe it includes local spending because it mentions that on one of those pages…

By far, the greatest part of education revenues came from nonfederal sources (state, intermediate, and local governments), which together provided about $346 billion, or 92.7 percent of all revenues. The federal government contribution to education revenues made up the remaining $27 billion. The relative contributions from these levels of government can be expressed as portions of the typical education dollar. For school year 1999–2000, local and intermediate sources made up 43 cents of every dollar in revenue, state revenues comprised 50 cents, and the remaining 7 cents came from federal sources.

There’s also a good point to be made here about equity. The poorest school districts get the least amount of money. If we really wanted true equity in educational opportunity one way to do it would be to distribute the money equally. But we will never be able to do that because the people who support public schools the most are those in the better districts.

The fact that African Americans are some of the largest supporters of vouchers illustrates this fact. Vouchers would be one way to both distribute educational dollars more equitably and put the control of education back into the hands of those with whom it matters the most, the parents.

Our present public educational system does not empower the true consumers of education. The golden rule? “The man with the pesos, has the say so’s.”

People take from school what they want - public or private. The reason private schools are perceived to be better educators is because they have a much larger percentage of students and parents that want to be there. While under funding certainly does not help public education’s cause, I would bet that private schools could not do any better given the same populace public schools have.

People take from school what they want - public or private. The reason private schools are perceived to be better educators is because they have a much larger percentage of students and parents that want to be there.

DaveO,

I actually agree. Education is not something that can be forced. I also don’t think it’s something that many would actually spurn if they had to pay for it. In fact I think that when something has to be paid for you value it more.

With a monolithic public education monopoly we have mass production style education. What if we had a free market many school alternative?

Eric, in my experience, one values things through self interest. I learn because it because it helps keep the world a calmer, less bewildering place for me.

What we should do regardless of the public or private nature of the school is tell them the truth: that their lives will not be defined by the recreation they seek out, but by the Jobs they choose. Make their career and subject interests a part of their identity, and they will take it upon themselves to learn, unbidden.

With a monolithic public education monopoly we have mass production style education. What if we had a free market many school alternative?

Ooh! Ooh! I know! I know! Pick me! We’d have a whole bunch of illiterate poor and lower middle-class people draining the resources of this country without contributing anything.

Education is not something that can be forced.

Because most 2nd graders are naturally resistant to learning?

No. If the goal is to provide basic literacy and math to every American child, free market schools are not the answer.

What I like most about the radical-activist-left is their cogent and coherent arguments based entirely on the logic of Marxism. Which is, for those who don’t know, roughly equivalant to the esteemed science of phrenology.

Two “radical” suggestions from the Communist Manifesto:

“9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. “

Let’s see, we now have implemented most of the suggestions in number 9 in the U.S., and I daresay agriculture is more productive because of these changes. Ironic, too, that it is the conservatives arguing against limits to suburbanization. You Marxists stooges!

Any conservatives in favor of child factory labor? No? You Communist dogs! Any conservatives arguing against teaching more business classes in public schools? None? You Red Pinko fools!

Is the conservative ideal of school vouchers designed to end free public education? No? Why not, if it’s just a Communist plot? After all, if Marx suggested it, it must be wrong!

Just a lesson you conservative pundits seem to forget: understand something before you criticize it. It’s called educated thinking.