Boston Marathon Explosion - Today's Topics: Public Schools
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I don't think that's true.
We spend over a trillion dollars a year on the military. It's absolutely starving the beast.
You've missed the point. It's still "privatized" even if there's a shitty, defective public alternative. The point is the wealthy will do what it takes to shape a society that produces the best possible outcomes for their kids at the least cost to themselves. That drive can be used to actually repair our social institutions (but that requires not allowing for a private alternative) or we can leave them to rot. I don't see any third path.
I think making it so the rich have some skin in the game when it comes to the most important institutions in our country might spur them to take a more proactive role in everyone's children's educations. I think that's important because of how fucked up our political system is.
hodj
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So you're saying China isn't a developed nation? You don't think its true because facts which run counter to your narrative get ignored by you. China has the world's fastest growing economy, is about to overtake the US economy, its middling sized cities dwarf major US cities like Chicago. Its ridiculous to pretend half of Asia isn't developed at this point, and has far worse economic inequality than the US.
We don't spend on military at the expense of the Education department, if that's the case then we spend on social security at the expense of the education department as well, since according to the 2012 US budget, we actually spent 600 billion on the military, half of what you claim we spend mind, and we spent 800 billion on Social Security, and another 800 billion on medicare/medicaid.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Un...federal_budget
The argument that its either/or military or education department spending, or that because we spend X on the military, we are by definition starving the Education department when we spend Y on it is a conclusion without evidence. The Education Department REQUESTS how much it needs each year. And let me point out, from the link above, the US Department of Education requested 78.9 billion, and was awarded 79.1 billion. So they get MORE than they ask for each year. The funding and money we're spending on education isn't the problem. More money doesn't solve institutional problems. Fuck, everyone in this forum has been in a public school and had a teacher tell them that the school needs to spend all its money this year so they can get more money next year. The whole system is set up to substantially increase Education funding year over year due to this fact alone. As long as they spend all their money each year, school systems are virtually guaranteed an increase the next year. That's how the system works, and we're capable of doing more than one thing at once.
All that said, the military can use some cutting, there's no doubt about that, but that's been happening for 6 going on 7 years now. Claiming we spend on one at the expense of the other when we're literally printing and creating the money to meet our budgetary demands each year is a level of willful ignorance I can barely comprehend.
The "alternative" in our system is the pricey private school education. And these aren't for "rich people". Its mostly middle class and upper middle class people fleeing public schools for private schools because of the failures of the public school system since the 70s to educate their children to a level that they can care for themselves as adults. You have the chicken adn the egg backwards here. The faith of middle class working parents in the system is lost as they watch their little princes and princesses turn from adorable little babies into gang banging drug dealing con artists who can't read or write or do basic mathematics when they graduate at 19 with their degree mill grade high school diploma which is worth less than the paper its printed on. That has nothing to do with evil rich people, and everything to do with our educational system trying too hard to be everything to everyone at all times, being more concerned with maintaining the status quo, which enshrines the Education department as untouchable and sacrosanct, rather than being concerned with fixing problems through proper reforms and churning out good STUDENTS.
We don't spend on military at the expense of the Education department, if that's the case then we spend on social security at the expense of the education department as well, since according to the 2012 US budget, we actually spent 600 billion on the military, half of what you claim we spend mind, and we spent 800 billion on Social Security, and another 800 billion on medicare/medicaid.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Un...federal_budget
The argument that its either/or military or education department spending, or that because we spend X on the military, we are by definition starving the Education department when we spend Y on it is a conclusion without evidence. The Education Department REQUESTS how much it needs each year. And let me point out, from the link above, the US Department of Education requested 78.9 billion, and was awarded 79.1 billion. So they get MORE than they ask for each year. The funding and money we're spending on education isn't the problem. More money doesn't solve institutional problems. Fuck, everyone in this forum has been in a public school and had a teacher tell them that the school needs to spend all its money this year so they can get more money next year. The whole system is set up to substantially increase Education funding year over year due to this fact alone. As long as they spend all their money each year, school systems are virtually guaranteed an increase the next year. That's how the system works, and we're capable of doing more than one thing at once.
All that said, the military can use some cutting, there's no doubt about that, but that's been happening for 6 going on 7 years now. Claiming we spend on one at the expense of the other when we're literally printing and creating the money to meet our budgetary demands each year is a level of willful ignorance I can barely comprehend.
No, its not, and US education doesn't have public school as an "alternative" to private education. Public school is the baseline. You are required to attend, there are schools servicing practically every neighborhood in the nation, with massive quantities spent on bussing the kids outside those areas to get to school, for free. No cost. The taxpayers are taxed at local, state and federal levels to support the education department. The idea that there is some problem with funding and its all evil rich people's fault is a delusion.
The "alternative" in our system is the pricey private school education. And these aren't for "rich people". Its mostly middle class and upper middle class people fleeing public schools for private schools because of the failures of the public school system since the 70s to educate their children to a level that they can care for themselves as adults. You have the chicken adn the egg backwards here. The faith of middle class working parents in the system is lost as they watch their little princes and princesses turn from adorable little babies into gang banging drug dealing con artists who can't read or write or do basic mathematics when they graduate at 19 with their degree mill grade high school diploma which is worth less than the paper its printed on. That has nothing to do with evil rich people, and everything to do with our educational system trying too hard to be everything to everyone at all times, being more concerned with maintaining the status quo, which enshrines the Education department as untouchable and sacrosanct, rather than being concerned with fixing problems through proper reforms and churning out good STUDENTS.
Delly
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Just Robin Hood this shit already. The poor are too dumb, the rich are too greedy.
Money given directly to the middle class working people who deserve it, help them set up some funds they may not know about.
Money given to programs for the poor/homeless to either help them become successful or at least work for their damn money.
Money given directly to the middle class working people who deserve it, help them set up some funds they may not know about.
Money given to programs for the poor/homeless to either help them become successful or at least work for their damn money.
fanaskin
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nah they'll continue the nanny state so we overspend our budget, the federal reserve will skim our yearly budget with the interest on the borrowed money they made up in thin air to supplement the nanny state budget and they'll spend it on corporate wellfare so corporations who long abandoned production as a means of wealth generation can continue to churn that money in the stock market.
Large != developed. They're "developed" in precisely the same sense that the US was during the 17th century. It's basically just a giant slave economy. But don't listen to me. You wouldn't want to get the sense that China is not "developed" in the same sense as Japan and Sweden from my "narrative." You know how it makes me play fast and loose with the facts.
So, setting aside for the moment that social security has an entirely separate funding mechanism from the military...
Right. Social Security is another government program we take seriously. Education is not. Like the military, social security dollars absolutely DO take money away from education (or whatever else we could spend those dollars on). The difference is that our social security spending is justifiable.
1. Your link shows $716 billion, not $600 billion.
2. The general budget doesn't (or at least hasn't) paid for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. That funding (although it looks like last year maybe not?) has come from supplemental appropriations. That $700 billion is (or at least has been) on TOP of the money received to do what we laughably call "defense."
Yeah I'm sure if the Department of Education put in a request for budget that was 10x what it was the year before (and continued to do so every year) for an ambitious program of reforming our schools that the administrators involved with signing off on that totally wouldn't be laughed at and then fired. Come on man, you're talking bullshit here.
More money certainly helps institutional problems. Especially when the real problems are a significant lack of money (and a lack of investment) in specific sorts of schools that pull down averages (not to mention the attenuation of aspiration for the poor bastards who have to go to those schools). I've never had a teacher say something like that to me. I've never EVER been to a school where not being able to spend the money they've been given was a problem. I've heard that said about the military CONSTANTLY. In fact, I know people who have, first hand, watched the Air Force run the afterburners of jets that are on the ground just to use up fuel for precisely the bloated budgetary nonsense you're talking about.
I don't know what this claim is about "literally printing and creating the money to meet our budgetary demands each year." The US does print/create money, but then it lends that money out through a separate institution that absolutely does NOT pay our bills.
You missed what I said. The alternative is public schoolfor the wealthy. Public school isn't their baseline. That's ridiculous. The reason that baseline exists is that it is less expensive for the wealthy than paying the taxes (or shifting funding away from the "defense" subsidization of high technology industries, from which they derive their wealth) that it would take to solve the problem. Iguaranteeyou that if the wealthiest people in this country were forced to send their kids to inner-city schools, there would be some massive fucking improvements. They wouldn't feel as though they were helpless to deal with some institutional problem that couldn't be helped by throwing money at it. That's just ridiculous. And it absolutely doesn't matter some upper-middle class people also can afford to take advantage of private schools. That changes absolutely nothing about what I've just said.
Ugh.
Actually welfare reform was a failure, for reasons that were perfectly obvious to people on the ground:http://www.npc.umich.edu/publication...icybrief28.pdf
hodj
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So Mikhail, your argument is that China is a 17th century slave colony?
Largest, fastest growing, most competitive economy in the world, with a middle class as large as the entire US population, several global financial capitals and a billion and a half citizens and you want to boil down everything that's happening there as the result of 17th century style slavery?
Seems pretty racist. Their achievements aren't really their achievements, they're ours, but only because we enslaved them. That's your argument. Chinese citizens disagree, however. They're pretty proud of whats going on there.
In effect, yes.
lolwut
No, they're enslaving each other. A slave society is a society where slavery is legal. I mean it's not called slavery butyou can look at it and see pretty clearly that it is.
hodj
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No, no I can't, actually, because unlike you I actually interact with Chinese people on a daily basis in the process of pursuing my chemistry degree and my minor in Mandarin, and I've had long discussions with people who have spent 40 and 50 years in China and they remember what shit was like under Mao and during the Cultural Revolution and they see where China is today and they don't perceive themselves to be slaves. At all. So again. Pretty racist bro.
They yellow, obviously they can't be responsible for determining whats in their best interests, they're just too busy ENSLAVING ONE ANOTHER.
They yellow, obviously they can't be responsible for determining whats in their best interests, they're just too busy ENSLAVING ONE ANOTHER.
Delly
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I am not speaking of welfare per say. There are many types of helpful local and state programs that could be funded to help. Though that article does mention that SNAP benefits do help. There is a few local farmer's markets around here that gives you double food stamps for buying fresh fruit and vegetables. Where the fuck are these programs and why are they not EVERYWHERE?
Where is the similar programs for the homeless, the families, the elderly?
My original post was talking about several things, considering there was (retarded) studies done saying taking money from the rich and giving the money to the poor would not help, which I agree with. What they do not say is PROGRAMS to help these people often do help and are underfunded, especially the people who are not trash who 'fell through the cracks'.
And my 'poor are too dumb' comment is a blanket statement that definitely does not include all the poor, maybe I was just feeling racist because I was thinking inner city black people when I made it, but that is a whole different situation.
Oh well since you've talked to some Chinese people I'm sure you have a grasp of what life is like for the vast VAST majority of Chinese who aren't part of that "middle class" and certainly not wealthy enough to come to the US. I'm sure the people that you spoke to definitely don't have their own weird class interests involved in their picture of the world. Does this sort of appeal to nebulous authority usually work?
What the fuck are you talking about? Who said anything about determining whats in their best interests? Who are we talking about here? It's not like people have infinite power to make choices. Look at that link I sent you. The same company that has to set up suicide nets gets longer and longer lines from job applicants every day. Within the universe of choices they actually have (starving or working somewhere that will literally make you want to kill yourself) they've chosen their best interests. That has nothing to do with whether or not the system of constraints around them constitutes slavery. Slaves in America could "choose" (in 100% the same sense) to run away. That didn't make them not-slaves.
I think that they do say that (although maybe not, since they don't tend to refer to segments of the poor as "trash." Probably because they're not horrible human beings.
hodj
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Oh and real quick, Mikhail, I don't know if you're aware, but the NPR article that began all the controversy about Foxconn was pulled for being largely fabricated
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...-apple-factory
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...460/retraction
Which caused the New York Times to have to revise its story on the subject
http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/16/28...e-daisey-op-ed
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...-factory-story
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/17/mik...ology-apology/
So you should probably like, I dunno, realize that Foxconn has a lower suicide rate than the Chinese national average and that events there have been significantly overblown for a long time. Took me a minute to remember the guy's name to search up the links. Have fun.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...-apple-factory
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...460/retraction
Which caused the New York Times to have to revise its story on the subject
http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/16/28...e-daisey-op-ed
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...-factory-story
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/17/mik...ology-apology/
So you should probably like, I dunno, realize that Foxconn has a lower suicide rate than the Chinese national average and that events there have been significantly overblown for a long time. Took me a minute to remember the guy's name to search up the links. Have fun.
hodj
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Your dysphemistic and presumptive conjecture leads you to once again put your foot in your mouth. So let me help you out. One of my professors in Mandarin was from Jinan Province, an employee at Shandong University. She was in her 50s. She came from an extremely poor background. Her parents busted their asses and she busted her ass, and scrimped, and saved, and went to school, and learned English, and got a job, teaching English, to other Chinese people. Neither Wei, nor Fan, were rich people, remotely. The entire reason they were in the US, was to get more experience speaking English, so they could continue to climb the ladder in their society. They were here as paid employees, loaner teachers from one university to another. They were not rich. Not rich remotely. The 25000 dollar salary they were paid while here, was the most money they've seen in their life times. Most of it went to pay for the rent to stay here the 9 months they lived here teaching us. Neither are any of the people learning/teaching in the Chem department. They are middle class for China, and their parents are expending enormous sums to try and give their families a leg up in their society. This is hard for you to comprehend, because you are an imbecile. But this is the facts.
Its 2013 and you still think Foxconn has a higher suicide rate than the Chinese national average. You still think reporting which was demonstrably proven to be falsified and based on lies from several years ago, that was displayed on national news media when it was discredited, is reliable. Get with the times and update your information bro.
TheBeagle
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Perhaps its not 17th century levels of shit, but come on man. Are you seriously defending the human rights record of China? Seriously? Because you know a few Chinese exchange students that were fortunate enough to make it over here, they speak for the one BILLION others that weren't? That's ridiculous. I'm pretty sure if you talked to an American student attending Oxford University in 1834 they would have been pretty proud of what was going on in America as well.
So they have 300 million people in the middle class, what about the other 700 MILLION? If they are the largest, fastest growing, most competitive economy in the world, how do you think they got there? Rainbows and unicorn farts? No, they got there by selling the rest of the world a bunch of cheap junk that was produced by their pool of inexhaustible, cheap labor.
lol
From your own source:
How, exactly, do you think it refutes my claim that China is a slave society to point out that even their places of business with lower-than-average suicide rates have to install suicide nets? The thing that fetters people to companies like FoxConn is the whole rest of the society (which is exactly my point).
I realize that you don't get this because you're retarded, but what you're calling the "middle class" in china is not even close to the middle. That's fucking stupid. Moreover, a picture of what poverty looked like during the 50's is not really a great way to figure out how poverty in China looks now.
hodj
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China's human rights record has vastly improved since the days they let 75 million people starve outside grain barns as they prayed to Mao and the CCP to feed them. Like to even try and compare China in the 50s and 60s to China today is insane. And to call it a slave colony is also insane. Its had just as many fuck ups as the US did during development, but its developed now, and its moving on things like pollution and other issues slowly. Its hard to move OUR government and OUR system and culture, think about how hard it is to move a CONFUSCIAN one, bro.
This is the second time someone has presumptively assumed this. These were exchange professors from a small university, basically a community college in Chinese society, to the US. They looked me straight in the eye and said they were proud that Foxconn existed, that they were proud of how far China has come. To take China today in a vacuum is to miss the point.
I'd say its a pretty good representation of what the common Chinese citizen feels. That things are a lot better today than they were even 20 or 30 years ago. That hard work takes sacrifices.
Yes, god forbid it takes more than 30 years to bring 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE up to US middle class living standards. Now its my turn to say c'mon man.
They got there by being smart enough to realize where their strengths were, and playing to them. They got there by being smart enough to abandon Mao-ist theory the moment he achieved room temperature. They got their by busting their asses and sacrificing hours of their lives and scrimping and saving every penny they could and using it to educate their children so they could have better lives than the lives their parents had. That's how they got there bro. Its basically insulting all that effort and being racist to play down all that hard work as just "an army of peons being enslaved"