US Presidential Elections 2

[Killian Kalthorne]

sometimes i think you need to really think a bit more before you post...

 

the point, killian, is that the government does not do anything "well" except maybe defense, but particularly not education, not at all. yet you want them to have an even larger role at a federal level. yeah, that's a good solution. see my earlier homer concept.

 

you totally missed my charter school comment, too. they are free, and get less funding than standard public schools yet outperform standard public schools... why is that? hint: privately run.

 

anyway, if all schools were private they wouldn't be accessible only to the rich. competition would see to that. plus, we'd all be spending less on taxes (locally, and at the state level). here you have yet another moronic comment that's based on the current socialist system (being applied to the capitalist system), rather than looking at how it would be different if the state was out of it totally.

 

taks

 

 

Competition?

 

Let me tell you something, the closest private school to where I live is 60 miles away. 60 BLOODY MILES. I am not just talking about school costs, idiot, but also transportation costs. Yes, gas is going down but not that much that I would be able to pay 120 mile round trip 5 days a freaking week. That isn't counting extracurricular activities. Again, you fail to realize the real cost of living for those who don't make $100,000 plus a year.

[Laozi]

yeah, but voucher schools work, its the state and teacher's unions that keep parents from being able to decide where their kids go to school with the money provided for by taxes.

[Enoch]

Once again, economies are complicated, and you can't assign a single cause to any effect.

that's a complete cop-out. everything touches everything in an economy, and when the federal government creates artificially low levels of risk, it effects every aspect of the economy. artificial risk, enoch. i'm sorry if you don't understand, but that permeates the entire system.

 

here's a good article on the problem:

 

http://mises.org/story/3165

I'm sorry, I have a tough time taking seriously an article that concludes with the following:

The logical stopping point of this process is that one day everyone will end up being shackled to a wall, or at the very least being compelled to do something comparable to living in a zip code that matches his social security number. Then the government will know who everyone is, where he is, and that he can do nothing whatever without its approval and permission. And then the world will be safe from anyone attempting to do anything that benefits him and thereby allegedly harms others. At that point, the world will enjoy all the prosperity that comes from total paralysis.

It's a whole lot of manichean, "market=capitalism=good, government=socialism=evil" advocacy. Everything good that happens is because of markets, and everything bad that happens is because of governments. Reducing all social and public policy questions to a single axis with "good" on one end and "evil" on the other betrays a rather sophomoric understanding of how the world works.

 

It's not idealistic to believe that a bunch of organisms as stupid, venal, messy, corrupt, and short-sighted as human beings are can come up with and successfully implement an economic system (or any other system, for that matter) that is completely safe from risk, instability, and periodic fluctuations? Seriously?

are you joking? seriously, where have i EVER said that there is no risk, instability or periodic fluctuations.

 

you are now making the exact same type of strawman argument, incapable of reading or understanding what i have said.

"your examples [of the business cycle] have never actually been shown, or demonstrated, to exist in a pure-free-market economy."

"the capitalist system wouldn't be susceptible to [people making mistakes] because mass bad decisions couldn't happen"

 

I overstated a bit. But not a whole lot. "Mass bad decisions couldn't happen"? How was I supposed to read that?

 

And, outside of the most simplistic of blackboard charts in Econ 101, I've never seen anything close to the "evidence" that you claim we have so emphatically.

try the first 100 years of US history. the value of the dollar actually increased. booms and busts did not begin until we began to regulate the economy. did you forget about that?

Antebellum America had major periods of contraction in 1819-1824, 1837-1843, 1857-1860, as well as minor ones in the late 1790s and late 1800s.

 

As an aside, increasing real currency value is rarely a good thing (and, at that time, with a specie-backed currency, it was a function not of any particularly good economic management or performance, but of population growth outpacing growth in gold mining). Investment and credit markets tend to freeze up when negative inflation puts nominal interest rates at or below zero.

Edited October 23, 2008 by Enoch

[Gorgon]

No one country is going to just leave the economy to do it's thing, there are vested interests after all. The thought is utopian.

Edited October 23, 2008 by Gorgon

[Gorth]

No one country is going to just leave the economy to do it's thing, there are vested interests after all. The thought is utopian.

I think the "ideal, utter and complete" capitalist solution wouldn't work for other reasons. All those economists and their fancy books, funny ideas and what have you forget something important in their models and equations. People are people, which means if you create a society so divided that it starts losing it's cohesion, it will all fall apart due to social unrest. You can't sell a new car to the guy with the pitch fork, who is busy burning you at the stake

 

Put more simply, either extreme wouldn't work any more than any other extreme form of society, whether it be political, theological or economical extremism.

[Meshugger]

I watched the third party candidates-debate today between Nader and Baldwin. To no ones suprise, they had more interesting things to say, and kept it very civil, despite their differences. If they would've been included in the debate with Obama and McCain, things would've been far more interesting, since they would actually attack the very basis of the war on terror, patriot act, and the evident corruption in Washington DC.

[Killian Kalthorne]

yeah, but voucher schools work, its the state and teacher's unions that keep parents from being able to decide where their kids go to school with the money provided for by taxes.

 

VOUCHER SCHOOLS? That is still government paying with public funds to education.

 

Also, don't you think that a group of professionals coming together through a joint interest has the right to seek what is the best for themselves? Without unions the little guy worker has no voice and can get screwed over on a regular basis.

[Meshugger]

 

Interesting statement. So, my fellow board members, how your civic freedom today?

[Hurlshort]

yeah, but voucher schools work, its the state and teacher's unions that keep parents from being able to decide where their kids go to school with the money provided for by taxes.

 

VOUCHER SCHOOLS? That is still government paying with public funds to education.

 

Also, don't you think that a group of professionals coming together through a joint interest has the right to seek what is the best for themselves? Without unions the little guy worker has no voice and can get screwed over on a regular basis.

 

As a teacher and a member of a teacher's union, I gotta agree with Killian on a few points. Private schools would fail to service a huge part of the population. What kind of private school are the kids of downtown Compton going to get? They rely heavily on government funding. They also can't get vouchers passed. The community doesn't have the money to create a school that can compete with affluent areas.

 

Charter schools are also a very complex situation. They work well right now because they work as an extension to the public school model. If every school was a charter school, the system probably wouldn't work. They serve special populations and they tend to rely on small classes. If you have 30 schools, and one decides to go Charter, then the other schools can support the fact that the one school is servicing less students.

 

My district averages about 600 students in their elementary schools. Charter schools aim for about 250. Meeting performance standards is much easier with a small group. Sure, my job would be much easier if I had 20 students in each class, but there already aren't enough teachers available to support those class sizes in every grade level.

 

I can really go on and on about this stuff. It's just a complicated situation, and there is no easy fix, and the system really isn't as broken as folks like to make it. There are success stories all over the place.

[Killian Kalthorne]

My main changes to the education system I like to see is that we go from the base agrarian standard and have school year round. Have the same number of school days and break days but spaced out evenly throughout the year, and have 4 day school week. On the Friday, extracurricular activities would reign such as sport events, chorus/ochrestra concerts, school plays, dances, and the like would occur for the studeents, while the teachers could use that day for planning the week ahead.

[Hurlshort]

My main changes to the education system I like to see is that we go from the base agrarian standard and have school year round. Have the same number of school days and break days but spaced out evenly throughout the year, and have 4 day school week. On the Friday, extracurricular activities would reign such as sport events, chorus/ochrestra concerts, school plays, dances, and the like would occur for the studeents, while the teachers could use that day for planning the week ahead.

 

That's not a bad idea at all. My wife and I are both teachers, and we basically work six days a week during most of the school year. In fact I just returned from a dance program that she was running. Moving most events to a Friday would definitely help that situation.

 

But I think you'll see too much opposition to it. First, because parents want to attend those Friday events, and most businesses are still going to run on Friday regardless of what school districts choose to do. Secondly, many students need the summer months to finish summer school. In my community, most families are partially based here and partially in another country, and the 2 months in the summer give them a chance to go home.

 

But summer is getting shorter every year, it seems like. We are down to about 8 weeks, whereas when I went to school it was about 11 weeks. Plus there are quite a few schools that run year round, we have one in our district, so the option is there.

[taks]

Private schools would fail to service a huge part of the population.

this is a naive view, actually. you're basing your position on everything else being the same, i.e., the economic environment as it stands today, which is hardly appropriate for a situation in which all schools were private. apples and oranges.

 

taks

[Hurlshort]

Private schools would fail to service a huge part of the population.

this is a naive view, actually. you're basing your position on everything else being the same, i.e., the economic environment as it stands today, which is hardly appropriate for a situation in which all schools were private. apples and oranges.

 

taks

 

I'm confused (and I did skip a few pages of this thread, so maybe I missed something.) What are we doing to change the economic environment of the country? How is a place like downtown LA going to give educational opportunities on par with Beverly Hills (not that they are perfectly equal today, but at least the funding is similar and the teachers are supposed to have the same qualifications)?

[taks]

I'm confused (and I did skip a few pages of this thread, so maybe I missed something.) What are we doing to change the economic environment of the country? How is a place like downtown LA going to give educational opportunities on par with Beverly Hills (not that they are perfectly equal today, but at least the funding is similar and the teachers are supposed to have the same qualifications)?

i'm not saying we are. you commented about how private schools would be bad for a place like compton, which would seem to have come from some statements i made earlier about how private schools would be much more affordable than they are now if the economic situation were different. it doesn't make sense to say that "folks in compton couldn't afford private schools" because the situation would be completely different if private schools were all that existed.

 

taks

[Cycloneman]

Put more simply, either extreme wouldn't work any more than any other extreme form of society, whether it be political, theological or economical extremism.

Golden mean fallacy.

[Gorth]

Put more simply, either extreme wouldn't work any more than any other extreme form of society, whether it be political, theological or economical extremism.

Golden mean fallacy.

Show me a society which adopted an extreme form, that demonstrated enduring stability

[Cycloneman]

Put more simply, either extreme wouldn't work any more than any other extreme form of society, whether it be political, theological or economical extremism.

Golden mean fallacy.

Show me a society which adopted an extreme form, that demonstrated enduring stability

Show me a society which demonstrated enduring stability.

[Trenitay]

Society itself is enduring stability.

Edited October 26, 2008 by awsomeness

[Gorth]

Put more simply, either extreme wouldn't work any more than any other extreme form of society, whether it be political, theological or economical extremism.

Golden mean fallacy.

Show me a society which adopted an extreme form, that demonstrated enduring stability

Show me a society which demonstrated enduring stability.

I can't, because they all eventually drift towards some kind of extreme and collapse

[Killian Kalthorne]

In all things, moderation is needed for stability.

[jaguars4ever]

Palin

Airlock08

A global solution in these troubled times

"So say we all"

[Walsingham]

I had nearly forgotten how uncanny the link is to BG. *shudder*

[Hildegard]

So, I guess everybody are fed up with these elections since nobody is writing here any more.

 

One day to go, expecting John McCain in office.

Edited November 3, 2008 by Hildegard

[Gorth]

So, I guess everybody are fed up with these elections since nobody is writing here any more.

Maybe people are more worried about world economy than who coincidentally happens to be president in a country somewhere far away?

 

You know, problems closer to home and all that...

[Trenitay]

Yo. I live here and this election is very important to me. Gobama