I have libertarian leanings at times, but … I’d be quite willing to pay higher taxes to support education - because (I hope!) it would mean that my life would be ruled by an electorate that wasn’t quite as stupid.
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I think that’s a good policy. I am now of the opinion that it should be “free, with consequences,” like you described. Only serious students need apply. If you’re having a problem, go to the dean and work it out. If you do all your work, the state pays.
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I bet a clever person could figure out a way to game the system, but anyone with that level of dedication probably wouldn’t be flaking out of their classes in the first place.
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So, to be clear, you’re opposed to any taxpayer-funded public education? Just post-secondary or also K-12? Or is the issue the purported “double-taxing” aspect of this particular scheme?
I’ve built a few companies (please, hold the applause and adulation for my Galt-like accomplishments). I could not have done so without collaborators who I considered more than “cogs in my machine.” Though they were technically my employees, any one of them (including the admin assistants) were far better at their specific jobs than I might have been based on my skills or motivation to do them. When I worked corporate gigs as an employee myself I was never treated like a cog, which I’m sure contributed to how I treated my teams.
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That was my definition of “self made man”, not my argument.
Most schools have policies about things like financial aid and what it means to be a full-time student that mean attendance has to be monitored to see if the student is just showing until they get their financial aid eligibility established. How much pressure there is on faculty to enforce this depends on the campus.
In general, the number of people who abuse the system – not just the financial aid system, but also food stamps, voting regulations, and all the other things that cause the knickers of reactionaries to bunch up – is marginal, and it costs more to strictly enforce regulations than to just watch out for egregious violations and not worry about the rest.
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No, the Florida voluntary tax that funds education is just about perfect. It’s called the Lottery. Furthermore, if the taxes were used more intelligently and at a higher rate to actually educate children instead of feed twelve layers of bureaucratic management then I would be much more agreeable to the scheme.
I am sure you and your employees were and are treated nicely. You and they are still cogs in someone else’s machine, just well oiled and not abused cogs. I did not mean to say that being an employee is bad, I was once an employee and learned quite a bit from it. I am saying that being self made does not mean that you have no assistance from others as the straw man argument suggested, but rather than you work to cut your own path instead of just riding other’s wake.
Thay’s funny, 'cause inheritance is also a lottery (for the inheritors), you know, metaphysically.
Hey! if we can agree that that first layer to go is bullshit “accountability testing” and pour that into facilities and teacher prep and ongoing professional development, we might be finding some solid common ground!
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I suppose they de-emphasise math and critical reasoning in Florida schools, lest the entire school system goes broke. Fantastic system.
Application of funds is a separate issue. I agree that there’s far too much bureaucracy, but all I see from conservatives of all stripes are complaints about “greedy” unionised teachers while they insist on NCLB teach-to-the-test policies that only encourage more bureaucracy.
We all ride in others’ wakes, even as we set our own courses. In learning from your own supervisors as an employee you did that, too. I would not consider you or anyone else a cog of any sort for doing that, and would not call anyone a cog or any other object since that kind of attitude is poisonous to effective and productive management. Taylorism (in its earliest sense) applied in the modern business environment generally results in spending money to set up nets under the balconies and rooftops of your plant.
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And by amazing coincidence it’s one of the few forms of taxation paid almost exclusively by poor people.
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Oh my, the old American exeptionalism argument, very popular also in general health insurance discussions…
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It’s also remarkably strange how the American exceptionalism these days seems to be all about “Yeah, that may work everywhere else in the first world, but it can’t work in America!”
Ie., America is a shitty second-rate society that can’t do what Europeans or Japanese or Canadians or whomever can, so you shouldn’t even try. Why do these people hate America, again?
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Well, I’m pretty sure that saying that America is more complex and diverse than more socialist countries is a dog-whistle-y way of saying that other countries don’t have the unique burden of providing social services for an overwhelming quantity of lazy, shifty minorities/immigrants. Usually with a caveat of “It’s not me, but I know my hardworking, nice-guy republican neighbor will never vote for this…”
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Gun control, too. A lot of these arguments are wrapped up in a nasty critique of “diversity”. For example, I once asked a gun nut why he thought that the Swiss were able to keep fully automatic weapons in their homes but didn’t have close to the number of mass shootings or gun deaths we do in the U.S. His answer was that it was a more “ethnically homogeneous” society (pretty amusing saying that about Switzerland). Anything to avoid actually addressing an issue, including giving an answer that’s wrong on multiple levels.
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My kids don’t do a single standardized test. They write their name, put their pencil down and then read a book. My issue is not spending money on education, my issue is wasting money on education and that is what we do in the majority of our education system. I refuse to give them more money to waste.
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I am an individual with the ability to think of each and every issue with critical thought without deciding based on herd or joiner mentality. If you must label people as “Libertarian”, “Liberal”, “Conservative”, to then apply prejudices to them then that is fine but at least with me, this technique is highly inaccurate. If you cant fire someone because they are bad at their job then we have a problem. I believe Unions have a place in our economic process but they have grown beyond their initial and in my opinion valid intent into something much more perverse and often counter productive. As far as the standardized tests and teaching to the test, I could not agree with you more. It was a half assed attempt at measuring teachers that had the unintended consequence of just allowing them to game the system to the detriment of their students.
When I use the word Cog I am not using it as derogatory but as a literal part in someone else’s machine. The machine will not work without it but its still not your machine. As far as the nets are concerned, look to nets in the US when these children run through our education system starts producing unstable, disfunction, little databases that have been crammed with copious amounts of “education” along the lines of what we see in China. Kindergarten kids having to cram for 1hr log SAT tests instead of playing in the playground and learning to be a human so that mommy can brag about how her five year old can regurgitate the multiplication tables at 5yo. My kids are getting to be children for as long as possible and will never be warehoused in the current education system that produces balcony jumpers.
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It is voluntary. Nobody is telling them that if they do not buy a ticket they will be arrested and if they resit arrest they will be killed. I don’t believe it gets more democratic than that.
Gero. Read my statement again and this time, try to be open minded and not introduce your own prejudices into my words. Actually read the words. My statement was not about American exceptionalism but rather about how the US has a larger population, is more socially diverse and that their models would not work here as the us is DIFFERENT. I don’t mind arguing my points, but I do mind arguing someone else’s warped understanding of my points.
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Nobody is telling billionaires they have to buy property in California either.
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You don’t believe that ethnic homogeneity has an effect on how people react to one an other? Or did you just reject that person’s argument because they did not belong to your incestuous amplification echo chamber?
