Psychobabbler, November 14 at 6:31 am

Apparently you are aptly named…

Re: By Lafayette, November 13 at 7:40 pm

Lafayette wrote:
“This is a forum for debate, not charm school.

Adversarial debate is the most effective way of arriving at a fuller understanding of whatever the question posed.”
___________________________________________________

Lafayette,
You are NOT DEBATING, but pushing and defending an agenda by repeating the same lies, obfuscations and ommissions, over and over, no matter how much refutations and explanations showing you the error of your logic
For example, you said the banks are now profitable and paid the bail-out money to the Treasury, and I explained to you that they borrowed from the Federal Reserve Bank at almost 0% interest, then they turned around and bought Treasury Bonds that pay about 3% interest and then used the “profits” to pay the Treasury for the bail-out money!!!!.
Nobody know how much money the banks borrowed from the Feds since it is a closely guarded secret! Some economists estimate that it is more than a Trillion dollars.
If this is not pure bullshit then what is!
And you keep repeating that the banks are now “profitable” and have paid the bail-out money to the Treasury.??!!!!

If you could all just explain to the rest of us what would be appropriate for us to to think and say than that would be very much appreciated.

Regards

and the color code revolutions in the Ukraine Georgia have not gone too well iether

Lafayette,

  Intellectual discovery does not exclude social transformation, but Searle’s point is that the exaggerated emphasis on the latter has been detrimental to the former.  Moreover, social transformations, if they are to happen, should be based on a democratic consensus, not planned and ordered from above, from the desks of the ideologues of elite institutions (who most often have corporate interest in mind).

  In Europe the education system as a whole is trying hard to fight parental influence, family traditions, national traditions, etc., starting from kindergarten, until university, and so is the media.  So perhaps university will not change one’s mind radically.  It only trains those journalists/teachers/bureaucrats/etc. who make this possible. 

  Intellectual honesty in academia?  Please….  Pierre Bourdieu once told Searle that to be taken seriously in the humanities in France, about 20% of what one writes has to be incomprehensible.  This, of course fits in with Searle’s analysis: the western rational tradition insisted on clarity, as opposed to obscurity.  Rejection of this tenet is thus manifest.  The recent reception of Noam Chomsky by French Academe also does not display too much intellectual honesty. 
http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone06142010.html

  I believe that what you describe as preferring the collective over individuality, is more the attempt to repress moral and intellectual autonomy as much as possible. 

  I am also delighted that the French are protesting, however.  I do hope, though, that their anger is not misplaced: Sarkozy is not the root of the problem.  The EU as a whole has had the same issues: growing inequality, reduction of social services, concentration of wealth, and Sarkozy/Merkel/Berlusconi have been doing as much in this direction as Jospin/Schroeder/Blair.
http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro11022010.html

Regarding Soros: I find it abhorrent, that one person can have enough power to decide whether the currency of a whole nation (like the UK) can be stable or not.  But it appears that Eastern Europe has been shaking off the Soros yoke: Slovakia has kicked him out when he wanted to build a university type institution there, and in (his native) Hungary, his favoured party did not make it into parliament this last election.

We see things differently and interpret them differently?

Yes, but why should that perturb you? This is a forum for debate, not charm school.

Adversarial debate is the most effective way of arriving at a fuller understanding of whatever the question posed. It’s not a game where there is a winner and therefore a loser.

Mark Twain:

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Alphy:  The Mission of the University: Intellectual Discovery or Social Transformation?

This is indeed an interesting question and I have debated it many a time.

The first was upon my arrival from the US because an “American opinion” was wanted. I was being transferred by an American multinational and the debaters were particularly keen to have a “non-academic opinion”.

I don’t think they (meaning professors at one of the Parisian universities) were prepared for my answer, which hasn’t changed.

Intellectual Discovery does not exclude Social Transformation. Neither does it necessarily include Social Transformation. All depends upon the sort of discovery we make and how we interpret it.

The human being has free will and what s/he decides to make of the information and learning imparted to him/her is part of what the French call their “jardin secret” (secret garden). Meaning the notions or opinions that you have arrived at are a part of your character and you would as easily relinquish them as cut off a hand.

Moreover, there is probably not much that you will learn in university that will change radically your mind, meaning it has already been formed by your parental upbringing. If nothing else, Intellectual Discovery will simply confirm the beliefs you had before embarking upon the journey.

If education in France is in the hands of the Left-leaning teachers, that does not mean that Intellectual Discovery in France will transform one from a Right-leaning person to leaning to the Left. At least, that is not what I have witnessed amongst friends and colleagues that I know well.

As for that period of discovery, when every thought seems somehow new and tantalizing, I don’t believe even the French Left-leaning teachers try to inculcate Leftist principles. They are too intellectually honest.

They will try to impart a notion of collectivity. Meaning the sense that the good of the collective prevails above and beyond the good of the individual. Meaning, they try to teach students not to be selfish and uniquely self-seeking. We could do as well in the US …

I was amazed beyond belief to see the students taking sides with French unions in the recent demonstrations against the lengthening of the French retirement age from 60 to 62. If the age is not extended, then they themselves will be paying higher taxes to supply the retirement fund. This means that they will have a lower standard of living. Now, if socialist belief is that a lower standard of living future progresses the benefit of the people, then they are naively wrong.

But, back to the students demonstrating. Some of us watching them made a reflection to 1968, when the same sort of demonstration worsened into riots that ultimately deposed de Gaulle. In fact, when you look at those students rioting and ask what has become of them … they are for the most part solidly within the establishment today some forty years later. One of them, btw, was a certain Nicholas Sarkozy.

Are they left-leaning? Probably more centrist than either Left or Right, but that depends largely upon the question posed.

There are also think-tanks, most mainstream newspapers, etc. which fall into this elitist system.  The Soros Foundation …

Yes, well there are Think-Tanks on all sides of the political spectrum. It would be nice if they “hatched” some interesting ideas. Most researchers in these tanks simply try to promote the ideology for which they have been hired.

But, I am pleased to see George Soros putting some of his wealth to good deeds, considering the way he earned his first megabucks. In fact, that should read mega-pounds sterling … perhaps like Buffet and Gates he is thinking of his afterlife?

Re: By Lafayette, November 13 at 5:13 pm ,

Lafayatte,

It seems like we are both living in different planets.!
We see things differently and interpret them differently?
What ever the reason for that differences, it is obvious that continuing this discussion will be waste of time and energy, and not to mention raising my blood pressure!. See you in another thread. Bye.

td3: The banks contributed to a massive real estate bubble and a massive construction boom where most of the buildings ,now, are half built or mostly empty due to a lack of tenants, and as a result, the builders, defaulted on the loans.

Yes, you are right - except for the ill-chosen word “contributed”. But, so what?

The banks were servicing their clients in a real-estate bubble, but they were not creating a sub-prime mess (Toxic Waste includes underlying non-performing loans but also the derivatives created based upon them) that led to a seizure of the Credit Mechanism and the bang of an Economic Recession heard-round-the-world.

There are not massive foreclosures that make bank balances “ify”—because the number of foreclosures are within containment level. So, even in Spain, where the realty overhang is massive (meaning newly built properties that are unsold), the largest bank (Bank Santander) reported a profit recently.

Why the difference with the US? First the lax loan rules and secondly the number/value of derivatives created to “insure” the bad loans. But that phenomenon is almost purely American.

People in Europe do not binge on real estate. It cannot be done because of the real hurdles to getting a loan.

You have to have very good credentials (that are substantiated/verified with your employer) in order to obtain residential credits. And most loans require a down-payment (typically 10/20%) made by the buyer—which alone puts off the more foolhardy. Thus, there are far fewer home owners coping out and leaving.

Many banks bought Wall St. Junk bonds that were based on the subprime mortgages. Many of these bonds are almost worthless or worth much less than their nominal values!!

Yes, but this is NOT the reason for the Economic Recession in Europe, per se.

It did help provoke a slowdown and Europe is still growing out of it painfully slowly. But the banks in Europe are making a profit, which they certainly could not do if they had Toxic Waste off-sets to make.

Again, connect the dots. The outlook for European banks is not rosy, mind you, but neither is the present situation a titanic disaster. Europe, with the exception of Germany, is barely chugging along with 0.5 / 1.0 / 1.5% growth rates—when 2.5% is needed to create jobs. Europe, due to inherent economic constraints, always takes a longer time (than the US) to start back onto the up-slope.

But neither do Europeans go binging on cheap money with the wild abandon of “those Yanks”, as they say.

Lafayette,

  The connection between education and power is a multi-faceted question, and I think the discussion (as for example in the article above) often misses some ideological underpinnings.  The problem is that modern western universities (European and American alike) are to varying extents ideological training grounds to produce a class of people who are most likely to help uphold the political status quo.  They are trained to lecture the by now impoverished working/middle classes not to worry, the rising tide lifts all boats, or to see as grey/white what they see as black (losing their jobs, foreclosures, etc.), or to present the anger of the middle class at decreasing living standards as if it was a childish desire for unfair entitlement, racism, etc.  The gap between the disenfranchised and the academics can be seen from the fact that virtually all academics in Europe are pro-“left”, in the U.S. they tend to vote democrat, hence they still speak a language of solidarity with the impoverished, however the impoverished are no longer buying it.  They have been shifting to the right/far-right/tea-party/Berlusconi/etc.  At the same time there are strict taboos: one can blame Sarkozy/Berlusconi, or complain about the tea party ad nauseam, but blaming the EU (which gave many of the directives to Sarkozy/Berlusconi) is virtually taboo (like criticizing Obama in the U.S.).

  To some extent this situation is due to the fact that the western university system more or less broke with the western rational tradition in the last decades.  How this happened is accurately described by philosopher John Searle (The Mission of the University: Intellectual Discovery or Social Transformation?, Academic Questions, 1993). 

  You mention a few examples, and then conclude that one cannot generalize: but there are in reality (in the U.S. and Europe) many more examples.  There are also think-tanks, most mainstream newspapers, etc. which fall into this elitist system.  The Soros Foundation has trained many of the “liberal intellectuals” (“journalists”, “artists”, etc.) of Eastern Europe and to some extent Western Europe, and the political bias of their all their campaings is devastatingly transparent.

Re: By Lafayette, November 13 at 11:37 am
Lafayette wrote:
“If fact, Ireland will ask the EU for the same help given Greece next week, but it has nothing to do with the SubPrime Mess. Ditto Portugal and Spain, and not related to the SubPrime Mess.”
________________________________________________

You are absolutely WRONG.
The crisis in Ireland, Greece, Spain, UK and Portugal etc etc stems from:
1) The banks contributed to a massive real estate bubble and a massive construction boom where most of the buildings ,now, are half built or mostly empty due to a lack of tenants, and as a result, the builders, defaulted on the loans.
2) Many banks bought Wall St. Junk bonds that were based on the subprime mortgages. Many of these bonds are almost worthless or worth much less than their nominal values!!

diamond, November 12 at 11:08 pm

I found your defense almost a retraction, kinda odd that. My criticism was to your blanket condemnation of 37 million and you have yet to apologize for that. What’s next, racial canards? Ehtnic slurs? Lets alienate everyone….oh what fun.

You did post a couple of rather revealing statements here:

“If it isn’t the truth why is California bankrupt? A state with more millionaires and billionaires per square inch than most others has a bankrupt government and everyone knows that the problem is that the very rich simply will not pay their taxes and the voters continually elect politicians who just put their trotters in the trough and carry on with the status quo.”

Huh? How on earth is this voter apathy and indifference any change from our nationwide situation? Perhaps the numbers of billionaires here is a part and parcel of the problem, though many are liberal and contribute generously to liberal causes. In any case California deserves no special insult, nor does your first comment bring you any merit. I wish you understood how silly such statements seem.

” Even the Terminator couldn’t scare them into behaving sensibly.”

Are you freaking serious? The guy who campaigned on the fact that his great wealth would not necessitate seeking special interest money and then, two days after winning the governorship broke a record for collecting such moneys on a trip to NYC. You consider ‘Ahnald’ a part of any solution?

RIGHT & WRONG

TD3: The crisis in Europe stems not from Greece, France etc etc are pushed to what the governments CLAIM to be the “financial brink”, because of the social services expenditures, but from the attempt of the governments to bail-out the banksters and the super-rich on the backs of the middle class and the poor.

You are both right and wrong:
* Wrong: The claims are real, though you infer they are not.
* Wrong: The claims have nothing to do with banking, per se, but
* Right: The financial difficulties are a result of safety-net exhaustion.
* Wrong: About the “backs of the middle-class and poor”, which is exaggerated polemic.

Yes, some European banks did obtain funding. But have since paid it back, with interest.

The matter, as regards European nations, is due not to the SubPrime Mess, but to the Social Safety Nets that were never built to sustain the usage that has become common—but this is due uniquely to economic circumstances (that is, lack of Demand that has crippled industry and provoked considerable unemployment as a result and also resulted in reduced Treasury revenues from taxation).

If fact, Ireland will ask the EU for the same help given Greece next week, but it has nothing to do with the SubPrime Mess. Ditto Portugal and Spain, and not related to the SubPrime Mess.

Once again, let’s not confound “bail-out” with “hand-out”. It is neither the case in the US nor Europe or anywhere else in the world, to my knowledge. All funds loaned to the banks is being returned by the banks with interest payments.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

What pisses us all off is that the same charlatans who produced this SubPrime Mess are the ones receiving bonuses two years later. They should have been prosecuted for professional negligence of their responsibilities. This includes the banksters, the Credit Rating agencies and the realty companies that were all complicit in the scam.

We should have cleaned out the Augean Stables. But nothing prevents a prosecutor today from opening a case for dereliction of duty. One has the right to ask why none have been triggered, however.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

And, finally, nothing will change until (1) we outlaw corporate political contributions (because personal contributions are already capped) of any kind and (2) ask all politicians to make public the origins of the funds they collect before any election and (3) we wake up as a people and vote accordingly.

It is getting very borrrrrrrinnnnngggg to read in this blog the passionated resentment, all well deserved, for what happened. But bleating-in-a-blog will accomplish nothing whatsoever to change the situation.

Get of your duffs and start militating for fundamental reforms of the electoral process, starting first with funding and including gerrymandering.

POWER & EDUCATION & ...

GG: But the power of people who went to “elite” schools is not based on their getting dramatically superior education there (it’s probably better than at State U, but not 10 times better)

What is meant by power? Political power or financial power? They are quite different.

Regardless, power and education are two components of our society that rarely fail to make us think that they are intimately linked. (Key word: intimately)

There is no doubt that education was and is a stepping stone to power without it being the only one. (One can still marry both power and wealth.) Perhaps it is, however, mostly in countries where the level of education is low or non-existent. In America, with one of the highest indexes of university graduated people, it is almost natural that education and political power be related. But, how tightly are they really associated?

There are some classic examples of education and power. The “old boys clique” of English universities (Oxford & Cambridge) who somehow found themselves in charge of both House of Commons and the City of London (its financial district). Or, in France, the Ecole National d’Administration (ENA), that teaches people how to administrate government ministries and agencies.  (As if the Harvard School of Public Administration alumni were running government departments in DC.) But, mysteriously, a lot of ENA-alumni are found heading French industrial companies.

From these examples to a generalization that power is singularly related to either one or several or a class of universities is not supportable by the evidence - at least in the US. We should not base our impressions by what is brought to our attention by the media.

The media could be a passive agent in the process. That is, the media focuses upon those who wish to be focused upon. It is a tool the purpose of which is to generate revenue, and thereby it may not be an adequate reflection of the world that surrounds us. It is just the world brought to our attention, which is a subset of the whole.

HAPPINESS AND INCOME

Is there is a correlation between income and happiness? The way most people lust for the former, one would think so.

Sorry to disappoint, but, yes, academia has studied the question. From a Princeton study:

The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory,” the researchers wrote. “People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities.

If our destiny is, supposedly, the “pursuit of happiness” then it would seem that the “rat race to riches” is a futile expense of energy.

We would do better, I suggest, to concentrate on Income Fairness that is likely to bring more contentment to more people than dreams of idyllic happiness from exaggerated wealth.

And we can build an economic system, by means of selective government policies, to that end. But it will not be like the one in place.

POST SCRIPTUM

And I will only mention in passing the influence of Free Masons. In France, the present President is not a Free Mason but has found a way to surround himself with Free Masons. They have always been at the pinnacle of power in France in one way or another. There are also reports that they they run large industrial segments (for instance, electricity). In England they supposedly suffuse the British police force.

Is this the case in the US? I don’t know, not being a Free Mason. However, I suspect that it is not. I know of one Free Mason who attended Free Mason meetings in the US—and came away thinking that it looked more like the Rotary Club. (Which, I am sure, will please a great many Rotarians.)

NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS

felicity: Spirits and minds of children living in poverty are irrevocably stunted almost from birth.

Well put, the incarceration of poverty is well-known and perhaps more acute today than it has ever before.

The Gini Index is simply a manifestation of the our fixation upon the accumulation of wealth. The rich have become “role models” for a mindless youth that thinks becoming a millionaire is their raison d’être in a consumerist society. (“When ya got it, bump it with a trumpet”)

But, I ask, who taught them these values if not their parents abetted by the media?

Cultural values are at the heart of any nation and for the longest time, going back to the advent of the Industrial Age, America’s fixation on wealth has been one of its principal values. So strong that there is little place left for many other key societal values—for instance, the notion of a Just Society (one of fairness and equal opportunity).

So, to my mind, we must strike a balance between the need to incentivize entrepreneurs and the necessity for the poor to enter upon the Economic Escalator to the Middle-class. That’s a delicate balancing act, but the present system of taxation in American, which favors wholly the accumulation of wealth at the very top, is not the right mechanism to achieve a Just Society.

Of course, there can be no consensus on that objective if it does not originate from the grassroots. Our present political class is far too anchored in the notion that America is the place where one can dream of becoming a millionaire and that dream may come true.

Wrong dream, wrong place. That is not what America needs, I say. Rather, it should be a place for true equal-opportunity - regardless of race, sex or sexual orientation, religion or condition of birth.

No more, no less. And that can happen only by means of selective government policies.

POST SCRIPTUM

In order to achieve that goal, we need nothing less than the establishment of a faction of the present Democrat party that coalesces around Social Democrat objectives. Let the “moderates” and “bluedogs” carry on with their turgid political games.

It is a simple “marketing” exercise called Product Differentiation, that we see on TV advertisements every day. However, that effort would take clever organization and, like any effort, plenty of money to begin with.

With enough votes in both houses, Social Democrats could become the political “king-makers”, just as the Liberals have become in Britain.

Yes, we can ...

But the power of people who went to “elite” schools is not based on their getting dramatically superior education there (it’s probably better than at State U, but not 10 times better). It’s just that the school origins are used as proxies for ability later, or that people develop networks of connections with other people who go on to become influential.

By Fat Freddy, November 12 at 4:06 pm

Fat Freddy wrote:

“truedigger3

Who actually pays corporate taxes? If Wal-Mart’s taxes were raised, along with K-mart and Sears, how would they meet those additional expenditures….”
___________________________________________________

Of course, I was talking about taxing the NET profits that will be distributed to the owners or share holders. And of course taxation wil be progressive.
Some corporations aka struggling restaurant, might pay nothing and it might get a tax break!!
In short, the pigs can still pile pork, but less of it.
With all due honesty and respect, your liberitarian thinking puzzles me tremendously. I can’t believe after all that what said and done, observing the current crisis unfolds, that someone still believes in and defends that liberitarian crap.
I think the liberitarian crap is an ideological and intellectual endeavor to give an excuse for the super rich to run wild, riding rough shod on everyone without any restraint.

Re: By Lafayette, November 12 at 1:16 pm

Lafayette wrote:
“None-the-less, as anywhere, spending on basic social services that hires people to deliver them can be a successful election tool. It worked marvelously well in Europe but bloated government administrations and pushed some countries, like Greece, to the financial brink.”
_____________________________________________________

The crisis in Europe stems not from Greece, France etc etc are pushed to what the governments CLAIM to be the “financial brink”, because of the social services expenditures, but from the attempt of the governments to bail-out the banksters and the super-rich on the backs of the middle class and the poor.
Instead of taxing the super-rich and the banksters , who caused the crisis and benefitted handsomely from it, they want to tax the working class and reduce its wages, pensions and benefits.

Fat Freddy - No corporate taxes?  Great idea given that
the Supremes have identified the corporation as a
‘person,’ would that mean no person should have to pay
taxes?  Frankly, I’d love to see the feckless Supremes
try to deal with that conundrum.

The truth hurts but it is the truth, ardee. If it isn’t the truth why is California bankrupt? A state with more millionaires and billionaires per square inch than most others has a bankrupt government and everyone knows that the problem is that the very rich simply will not pay their taxes and the voters continually elect politicians who just put their trotters in the trough and carry on with the status quo. Even the Terminator couldn’t scare them into behaving sensibly. The voters and the politicians have to share responsibility for their ‘Waiting for Godot’ style of government and however nice Californians are, that’s the cold hard truth.

WriterOnTheStorm, November 12 at 5:08 pm

Thanks for the riposte to Freddy…saved me both time and energy. A pity that his rehashed ideas and ideals have all failed before and would certainly do so again.

One knows when one hits too close to home with him, his responses get slippery until eventually he doesnt respond at all.

For example a State with high property tax rates may have lower sales tax rates, income tax rates, etc.
*************

Hey, it’s New Jersey! We are one of the triple-threat states:  High property taxes, high sales taxes and high income taxes.  We only SEEM easy because we are right next to New York and Connecticut isn’t far.

Calculating tax burden on a State by State basis is complicated because of variables. For example a State with high property tax rates may have lower sales tax rates, income tax rates, etc.

Calculating tax burden by $1000.00 of income seems like a good method to me. New Jersey has a high tax burden, but it only ranks tenth worst by this standard, according to data from 2005-2006.

Personally, I believe that this discussion is off topic as it relates to the article. The issues raised by the article concern fair tax policy, and the distribution of wealth, using education as an example. There is a great difference in the data concerning income and assets. The data concerning income seems unfair to me, but the data concerning assets, liquid and physical, seems criminal to me. I believe a slightly graduated Federal flat tax based on assets rather than income would be the most fair and lead to a more fair distribution of wealth. My proposal for a fair Federal tax system would be no tax burden for those who hold only hold 5% of total assets, and a flat tax for those who hold 95% of assets, liquid and physical. Unless Fat Freddy has a huge stash, he would pay no taxes under my proposal. (I’m well aware that my proposal has zero chance of ever being adopted, I’m just saying…)

Incidentally, Fat Freddy continues to advocate economic policies that have proven themselves to be a total failure, but he attempts to portray those policies in a different light. He offers theoretical suppositions that lead right back to the same failed policies. I’m all for nationalizing the Federal Reserve, but isn’t that a direct contradiction of Fat Freddy’s ideological philosophy? Government control of the flow of money, what are we, a bunch of God damned commies? (Snicker, snicker.)

tedmurphy41, November 12 at 3:42 pm Link to this comment

Why not break the United States into individual, self contained States with no other external responsibility except to themselves.  This would accommodate the Tea Party’s aspiration of smaller Government in one fell swoop, and solve their overburdening tax problem at the same time.

************************

Let’s start simple and kick all Lib’rul Blue States out. Then we can form the United Blue States of America and the others can form the United Red States of America.

Watch how fast the Red states go broke. Virtually ALL of them get back more money from DC than they send in taxes.

Watch how fast the Blue states bounce back, end deficits, create surpluses and prosper. That’s because the Blue states, with few exceptions, pay MORE money to Washington, DC than we get back.  If only the Federal Government would give us in NJ back the $.38 out of every tax dollar we send there, we’d clear up our deficit and be able to fund ALL our programs by the end of 2011.

Of course, states like Mississippi would have to figure where to dig up the $1.02 extra that it will lose, because DC sends Mississippi $2.02 for ever dollar that state sends to Washington.

We Blue states would throw off inflation, recession and unemployment in no time if we didn’t have that giant rock around our neck known as the Red states.

Don’t believe me?  Check out

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/266.html

Fat Freddy,

<<Why did so many Europeans come here between 1860 and 1920?>>

Cheap resources like oil, lumber, and precious minerals (coming from
appropriated Native American land) were the biggest factor. This allowed for a
series of economic bubbles that spurred growth.

<<I want to end Medicare and Social Security by eliminating the need for it.
None of my ancestors, who came here broke, needed it, and neither do you.>>

Life expectancy was 45 years for a male when you ancestors lived. But you’re
right to be proud. They made it through the Darwinian juggernaut that was the
industrial revolution. Millions of others died young from starvation, lack of
proper medical care, labor abuse, etc. We’ve evolved as a society since those
coal-choked days of robber barons and worker exploitation you want to re-
write as some kind of golden era.

CONFISCATORY

FF: What has the distribution of wealth been between ‘96 and now?

Once again, I refer to the only method we have, for better or for worse, to measure Income Distribution and therefore Income Fairness.

It is the Gini Coefficient - which has nothing to do with the Gini in a lamp but was thought up by an Italian statistician called Corrado Gini.

Up to the late 1970s, the coefficient was high but stable in post-war times. Even under the previous regime of high-taxation of marginal income (around 70%). But if one looks at the info-graphic linked above, one sees that in 1980 an inflexion point incurs.

The coefficient then progresses upwards from around around 35/36, where it had been in the late 1950s, to where it is today around 45.

What happened of national significance in 1980? Who got elected PotUS and paid of his political debts to those who funded his election by lowering drastically throughout his tenure marginal income - from 70% to around 27% at first - and capital gains taxes? (The marginal income tax rate is 37% but its “effective rate” is about 5% lower.)

Was he a Rep or a Dem? One guess ...

POST SCRIPTUM

Why are the Replicants happier than a pig-in-sh*t with the last elections? Because they think they have stopped the Obama steamroller that would have, in his second term, raise marginal income taxes.

And given the cupidity of Wall Street financiers as well as our corporate plutocracy, I am convinced that above a certain threshold (maybe 10/15 megabucks per annum) marginal income should become confiscatory.

Isn’t an annual income of 15 megabucks sufficient motivation for any competent person? Maybe even 5 megabucks would do just fine to incentivize our corporate chieftains.

But what fool will never say that in public in the US? Nope, they’d have them gunned down. They figure that money is theirs because they “earned” it.

Well, so did Willie Sutton in the 1930s when he took from various banks $2 million dollars in his 40 years of robbery. After all, that was pretty hard work ... much harder than sitting at a desk watching a forex graph jump up and down.

Lafayette - For a more complete reading of the
standard what’s-wrong-with-education-in-America, the
standard ‘picture’  fails to consider the ‘state’ of
the American child.

As published, one in four American children lives in
poverty.  Poverty directly affects a child’s natural
capacities, it cripples them.  Spirits and minds of
children living in poverty are irrevocably stunted
almost from birth.  These ‘unfortunate’ truths,
however, are seldom if ever addressed.  The product
is only as good as the materials it’s made from.

Lafayette

The one place where NJ is very good in education is the Community College system. I can’t give a citation, but I remember reading that for every dollar invested in community college, 7 are returned. I imagine there is a saturation point, however. I can’t begin to express how successful the community colleges are. These colleges also teach basic skills math and English, and offer GEDs. Much of the funding of these schools comes from the county level. The only problem is the degree requirements set by the State. Many of the departments would like to see less “core” classes, and more specialized classes. There’s a difference between transfer programs, and career oriented programs, and the State needs to recognize that. The more specialized classes that can be offered in the career programs, the more marketable the student can be upon graduation.

truedigger3

Who actually pays corporate taxes? If Wal-Mart’s taxes were raised, along with K-mart and Sears, how would they meet those additional expenditures? They will cut salaries and/or raise prices. There should be no corporate taxes. Corporate profits should be passed through to the shareholders, and the shareholders should be taxed. See: S-corp. Also, if there are no corporate taxes, there can be no favoritism in the form of tax subsidies to specific corporations.

What people don’t seem to understand, is if taxes are raised on the wealthy, the government will just print more money for them. Just look at this graph of the money supply:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Components_of_the_United_States_money_supply2.svg

Seriously, who benefits from increases in the money supply? I’ll give you a hint. The new money goes directly to banks, which is loaned out.

As you can see by the graph, the supply started its almost parabolic increase in 1971. What happened in 1971? How much of a increase in the distribution of wealth to the rich has there been since 1971?

Between ‘92 and ‘95 the supply flattened out. We were in a recession in ‘92. A pretty bad one, IIRC. The supply of money was cut off, or leveled off, and the country began its recovery. (This was partly due to shrinking bank deposits). But then in ‘96, it started a truly parabolic upswing, and continues today. What has the distribution of wealth been between ‘96 and now? One thing to understand. When the Federal reserve artificially lowers interest rates below their normal market values, it is the same as printing more money. More money causes prices to rise. See: Stagflation. Real wages never keep pace with real inflation. Forget about taxes, for now. This is all you really need to know.

As you can see from the lower graph, the percentage of the supply in actual currency has remained fairly constant. The largest growth, as a percentage, is M3, which includes the large institutional deposits and accounts. The Federal Reserve no longer publishes M3 numbers. Why?

The American people are being robbed, and most of them don’t even know it. This is how the “Robber Barons” of today steal your money.

Why not break the United States into individual, self contained States with no other external responsibility except to themselves.  This would accommodate the Tea Party’s aspiration of smaller Government in one fell swoop, and solve their overburdening tax problem at the same time.

C.Curtis.Dillon

There was a time when private businesses did educate their workers here. The problem was, that after they were educated, they would leave and go work for another company for a higher salary. A free labor market works in both directions. Sometimes it benefits the employer, sometimes the worker. During a recession, it benefits the employer. During a boom, it benefits the worker.

kerryrose

$80,000 is double the median income. I own my own business and don’t come near that. The best I did was about $60,000 in gross receipts. Of course, I was growing until this recession hit. I make more or less money depending on the way I run my business. Teachers are entitled to annual raises, regardless of what they do.

Here, look it up for yourself:

http://php.courierpostonline.com/data_public/datauniverse/edstaff/

Inherit The Wind

Another thing Christie is doing is he’s going after the salaries of administrators.

I respectfully disagree with you. I don’t think it is possible to “clean up” the bad districts. The only way to get a bad product off the market, is to offer a better and/or less expensive alternative. Fear of bankruptcy is what is supposed to keep the free market system honest, not bureaucracy. Bureaucracy makes it less efficient. Unfortunately, our government has a way of protecting businesses and institutions that rob, rape and pillage the American people by creating monopolies, and regulations to force out any real competition. In NJ, people have a Constitutional right to education. What is wrong with letting them decide which education is best for them? Let the money follow the student. If a Camden resident can get into a Haddonfield Public school, or a Moorestown Friends School, why should we deny him/her that opportunity?

YES, BUT ...

CCD: In America, the ‘trades’ suffer because neither government nor the private sector spend much on them.

This may be the case, but the facts seem to indicate that the problem is not getting them into tertiary-education but out of tertiary education.

Consider this info-graphic indicating that more than 50% of American students who start a tertiary education leave it without even a first-year degree. (Tertiary education encompasses vocational, college and university schooling.)

So, I suggest that what is needed regardless of the level is some incentive for the students to remain. Now, an article I read recently about getting women to finish high-school in Indonesia comes to mind. They are paid to both attend and finish the school.

If we think that keeping state-school education cheap enough that students will attend AND graduate, then may I suggest that the info-graphic above shows the error of that notion.

There must be some other enticement for them to both go and to remain. As regard the former, I suggest that more intense guidance counseling throughout secondary-schooling could help both students and their parents understand the child’s ability to assimilate learning and, thus, indicate what sort of tertiary education would be best for them.

And such counseling might help in convincing them to actually make the effort, especially if counsel shows clearly what are the lifetime income differences between those that do and do not go on to tertiary education. (They are very substantial.)

Also, it is important to understand that if the failure rate in the above graphic is lower for some European countries, it could be because the financial burden of undertaking the schooling is also very different. There is an enrollment fee but usually no tuition applied.

Yes, tertiary education is the sort of Social Investment that the US can afford to make and is wise to make. Rather than spending even more money on Unemployment Insurance ...

POST SCRIPTUM

Note from the info-graphic that the EU failure-rate is one half that of the US. Might that not be due to the fact that EU tertiary education costs far less?

Note also that vocational schooling in most of Europe is very heavily promoted by the Trade Unions. Is that the case in the US? I would not know.

Lafayette

It is not possible to compare our tax system to the European counties, since many of them have VAT (Value Added Tax) taxes. But don’t worry, we’ll have that here soon. Consumers ultimately pay those types of taxes.

ardee,

Do you know what “[citation needed]” means?

You think an end to regulatory power means an end to Halliburton,

Why do you insist on putting words in my mouth? I said end subsidies, grants and no-bid contracts to companies like Haliburton. Especially, since they are no longer an American company.

We can also eliminate the institution that makes banks so powerful. The institution that runs their printing press. Why do you think banks like Citi, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and BoA got so big and powerful? Deregulation? No. Cheap easy money from the Federal Reserve. Regulations can not be ended until the Fed is ended. That was the mistake that was made. Did you read the book on inflation I linked to?

Education is a “good”. Whether it is a jar of peanut butter, or an automobile. Consumers benefit from choice. Would you like the government to have a monopoly on all of the goods and services that you buy? Can you give me one example where you would like to see only one, government brand of anything on the shelf at your local supermarket?

ardee

What you, and Paul, want is a return to 1860; a lily white nation in which we white folks have all the cash, all the power, and none of the responsibility for those unwashed and needy folks down there at the bottom who prune and pick in your orchards.

No, what we want is opportunity for everyone. Why did so many Europeans come here between 1860 and 1920? My Great Grandparents came here poor and destitute. One of my Great Grandfather came here with his father after the Messina earthquake with nothing more than the shirts on their backs. He became a farmer and owned his own land and home. All they wanted was an opportunity to provide for themselves and their families, not a handout. All of my grandfathers (3), and my great uncles were small business owners, and were successful, and were responsible. My great aunt won awards from the Catholic Church and the Red Cross for her tireless volunteer work. I am a product of their hard work. i also wish to serve my community by offering a quality service at a reasonable price. I do not expect or demand that the government serve me, and I do not wish to serve the government.

I want to end Medicare and Social Security by eliminating the need for it. None of my ancestors, who came here broke, needed it, and neither do you. You would rather use your jealous rage as an excuse to steal from others. The Middle Class pays the bulk of the taxes I this country, and always will, and always have. The average American pays 40% of his salary to various Federal State and local governments. How much more do you wish to steal from the American people? There are not enough rich people to take of all of us.

nor are the decisions made by these same uber wealthy and powerful but , as in a real democratic society , by the majority vote.

What you want is a Totalitarian Democracy.

As Freddy noted Charter Schools I include this portion of the article though I reinforce Wiki’s noting that it is lacking in attribution:

I never said anything about charter schools. I said school choice and vouchers. Just answer me one question, would you rather send your kids to Camden High, or Bishop Eustace, a college prep school? Wouldn’t you at least like to have that choice? When Jews prefer Catholic schools to public schools, there’s something very wrong. I am agnostic and went to Paul VI for a year my Junior year. They didn’t “convert” me. They did, however, give me a much better education, and I lived in a very good school district. Unfortunately, my single Mother couldn’t afford it.

a lily white nation in which we white folks have all the cash

Playing the race card, huh? Nice. +1 internets, for you.

Here’s a good article on why a statist, socialist nation can not work:

http://piie.com/realtime/?p=1813

it seems to me that some [or is it most?] americans don’t want big govt. what
they seem to want is, i suggest, bigger and bigger privately-run governance:
private spies, soldiers, schooling, dissemination of [dis] information, congress,
jurisprudence, etc.
labeling all these aspects of one reality; i.e., system of rule, “govt” is just a
prestidigitation.

actually, army, cia, fbi, police had always been in private hands and if u’r black or
latino, or moslem, u’l soon feel it on own skin. no, no education needed for that!
tnx

GOVERNMENT CAN DO NO GOOD?

Diamond: When you pay taxes you buy civilization. It seems they don’t want or need civilization.

Well put - but, I suspect, way, way over the heads of most people. Especially those who think that private enterprise can do no evil and government can do no good.

Both points-of-view (government-intervention or non-intervention) are largely established as two extremes. Which tricks the debate, because the real truth is somewhere in between. Social Democrats are not Marxist extremists and Conservatives are not all fascists.

Unless, of course, one engenders a polemic that employs either such definition—both of which are wild exaggerations very widely employed in the blogosphere, where such extreme opinions seem to be abundant.

I have lived a long time in Europe, which has been profligate regarding Social Investments. It is a heritage of the Cold War when many Europeans thought that Communism was the way to go and the Communist Party garnered 5/10/15% of the popular vote in some countries.

The present day Communist Party is a shadow of its former self and has even been renamed in some countries. Why? Because Social Democrat governments taxed heavily and spent it on projects of all kinds—mostly, at first, rebuilding shattered European economies. They thus provided the services that were the most important to the population.

America, which won the Cold War, took another direction, vilifying the communists and amalgamating both socialists and communism—as the devil’s handmaidens.

With time, however, European Social Democracy leadership understood those objectives that were primary in the minds of their constituencies - namely, Health Care and Education.

None-the-less, as anywhere, spending on basic social services that hires people to deliver them can be a successful election tool. It worked marvelously well in Europe but bloated government administrations and pushed some countries, like Greece, to the financial brink.

THE THIRD WAY

Rather than government agencies establishing large organizations to deliver the services, they need simply decide the service components (what service, where, who and what price) and ask private enterprise to respond with a cost quotation.

Constant polling of “customer satisfaction” and other QC-methods can help keep the service up to standards yet its delivery assured by private enterprise.

Private enterprise needs to make a profit, but there are profit levels and there are profit levels. The margin achieved on a state-of-the-art military drone brings one level of profit return and the graduation of a young adult from a post-secondary education achieves quite another. There is no comparison.

First, nonetheless, a nation must decide what it wants in terms of Social Investment in Services to the national community. Here’s a good guideline: Social Services should be the most basic that bring the most usefulness to the most people.

If a nation cannot even decide on the most basic of those services, which is Health Care, it is useless to attempt any further effort—which would be futile. The debate becomes partisan and people just want to protect their little patch, whether it be Welfare or Medicare or whatever.

POST SCRIPTUM

Which is why the Replicants saw the Health Care legislation as the “foot in the door” towards a return to the Great Society—and reacted with such vengeance.

It worked—and America is set back perhaps for another decade depending upon whether the existing puerile animosity towards BigGovernment prevails.

diamond, November 12 at 8:40 am

I have read many of your posts and found them enlightening and well parsed. This last example is really,truly and abysmally silly…

FYI: there are almost 37 million people in that State and you have managed to insult them all. Congratulations, a new low. In the same vein I cannot wait for your generalizations about other folks….

Many point to Europe as both a good/bad example of education.  As I live on this side of the pond, let me comment on just a few issues I see ‘over here’

1) The German’s are eating our lunch on almost all fronts and yet, they have a very different system here.  For one, they emphasize ‘trades’ as opposed to formal education.  There are a massive number of trade schools which teach most students a concrete life profession.  Most major companies are also involved in these programs, finding future employees through their very aggressive schools.  As a result, the Germans have a well educated work force at all levels.  In America, the ‘trades’ suffer because neither government nor the private sector spend much on them.  We all want to attend college and get a high paying professional career.  Look what that approach got us.

2) German suffers from a professional shortage.  I constantly hear reports about how the country is short several hundred thousand technical professionals including engineers and skilled technicians.  This is a direct result of 1).  They are talking about how to fix the problem including allowing more immigration and encouraging more students to attend university.  The important part of this statement is “they are talking” meaning they know there is a problem and are working to fix it.  So much different than the hand wringing but no action we see in Washington and Wall Street.

3) Germany is a social democracy meaning they give a damn about their people.  They have a free and functioning education system (including university and trade school), a reasonably functioning healthcare system and a government that seems to actually want to help people.  I hear reports constantly about how they are trying to help the long-term unemployed (they have many who have been on benefits for many years) and how to reintegrate those who have fallen through the cracks.  In America, if you are unemployed, you are considered worthless and thrown under the bus.  And we can all see how effective that approach is.

As for NJ, I lived there a long time ago and was horrified by the taxes being demanded.  I couldn’t understand why it was so expensive there.  I always assumed it was corruption.  There are states that do a much better job managing income and outgo whereas NJ always seemed to blow the money without regard for anything other than everyone stealing money.  I’m intimately familiar with that governing philosophy as I live in Eastern Europe where it has been worked to perfection.

Diamond,

“They are stupid, greedy people who won’t wake up until the last school closes and there are no street lights”

Californians are very generous and that is an ignorant statement.

A good point ITW re the roads. I have to say Californians are the wonder of the world. They appear not to understand that if no one pays taxes it’s impossible to have a government. When you pay taxes you buy civilization. It seems they don’t want or need civilization. They are stupid, greedy people who won’t wake up until the last school closes and there are no street lights. The trick is that they allowed the politicians to pass a law that legislation has to have a two thirds majority or it can’t pass. This means nothing ever gets done: which is fortunate because there’s no money to pay for it.

The call should be to raise taxes,only, on the rich and the corporations and closing all these loopholes and unnecessary deductions and make them pay their fair share.
Just calling for raising taxes without any distinction and elaboration will turn off most people.

On another subject. Yes, people vote against their interests, not because they are stupid, but because they are subjected 24/7 to a very clever sophisticated PR and hype campaign of using wedge issues like gay marriage, abortion, role of religion,etc.., disinformation, misinformation, obfuscation, omissions and outright lies by news media which are owned and controlled by big Money/Business.
Not everyone has the time or energy to dig deeper in the news and issues, since most people are struggling earning a living in these difficult times and raising their kids and worroying about their future in this uncertain unpredictable atmosphere.

TD3:

Of course you are right. I really slipped on that one, leaving out the 900 lb gorilla.

But having 17 admins where you need only 1 isn’t going to help either.

The things that seem to help that are simple: Head Start programs, subsidized school breakfasts and lunches, much of which was federally funded.  Perhaps even having intervention available for abusive homes.

Busing helps but only if you base busing on age, not on ethnicity.  For example, in my town, rather than dividing up MS between East and West, all the 6th graders go to the smaller MS, and the 7th and 8th graders go to the bigger one.  I believe this is called the “Princeton Plan”.

Going further back:
Generally, the kids from the poor neighborhoods who went to the elementary school I went to, which also had middle class kids (strictly based on geography, long before busing) generally have done better in life than the kids who went to to the elementary school where all the kids were from the poor neighborhoods.  I can STILL see how my classmates did on Facebook and Classmates.com.

Re: By Inherit The Wind, November 11 at 5:31 pm

ITW wrote:
“I’m convinced that bad schools are due to badly run school systems…..”
_________________________________________________

That is not true.! Yes, teachers and admnistrators make a difference, but not much, about 10% in grades.
The biggest difference comes from the “quality” of the majority of students and the homes they came from.
If you have a lot of students who are unwilling to learn, disruptive and sometimes violent, who come to the school hungry,  from homes full of strife, instabilit and unpredictability with a lot of drugs and drinking, where nobody cares or paying attention to the education of the kids and whether they are doing their homework or not, or whether they are behaving properly in the school or not, then you will have a bad school regardless.!

What do the elites care if the rest of us go down the tubes?  They
are safe inside their gated communities and probably will soon
start ordering bullet-proof SUVs like the elites in Brazil do.  The
inner city elites are safe with their penthouses with helio-pads.

Fat Freddy

As a teacher, $80,000 a year for 20 years is not exactly raking it in.  I also know that no teacher only teaches one class per year or semester unless they are the Chair of a the Department in which case there are a million Administrative duties.

WriterOnTheStorm, November 11 at 6:14 pm Link to this comment

Since some are intent on turning America into a prolonged episode of Survivor, we
had better learn quick who to vote off the Island.
**************

You make a point.  Many wealthy Californians would rather pay for expensive repairs to their expensive cars than pay far less in taxes to have their roads fixed!

“College degrees will lead us to future happiness, enlightenment, fun, preparation for life, a fulfilling job, as well as national prosperity. At least, that’s what we’ve been told and sold. That’s brochure bullshit! Been to a college lately? Rather than beacons of enlightenment, colleges have become bloated 400 billion dollar a year corporations, islands isolated from the real world, treacherous minefields where free speech and individual liberty often get trampled. And not only that, but going to college offers no sure path to an enriching life… or even a blue-collar job!”

http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/episodes.do?episodeid=123922&ep=306

lasmog said:  “The strangest aspect of our country is the millions of Americans who continually vote against their own best interests.”
  To my way of thinking, not strange at all, considering two vital agencies that should belong to the people, serve the people, and operate with the one overriding aim—to educate and inform the people.
  We have allowed schools to become progressively worse for decades.  Now the entire press is corrupted by advertising money and the internet is in danger of censorshiop and control by a government and corporations fearful of criticism and/or revolt.
  A million things can be done, yet nothing is being done except at the local level, on a necessarily small scale lacking funds for growth, and lacking public support.  Yet if we don’t find out what these local organizations are doing, how to help them do more, and unite them with others to form a huge majority of activists who demand the right to good public education and accurate informtion from media, we are wasting our opportunities.
  For instance, if you don’t like public schools, go to school board meetings or work with P.T.A.s or teachers’ Unions (Yes!That’s all they’ve got between them and crazy school board members, crazy superintendents, crazy parents and—of course—crazy kids.)
  If you don’t like media, get in touch with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (there are other groups as well) or write editors, if local, visit them, and plead with them to do a better job—which they all know how to do.  Help them stand up and get their adveritisers.
  Enough.  There’s plenty to do.

EDUCATIONAL THROUGHPUT

Educational throughput is the ability to graduate high-school students into Tertiary Education, which can consist of college, university or vocational.

The US has made significant strides between 2000 and 2008 (the last year for which data is available) as this info-graphic of OECD data shows. The increase in that 8 year period was a substantial 23 percent—to 65% of all HS-students going on to a higher level of training/education.

In this day and age, with globalization in full swing, it will be important to enhance the general level of work-force skill sets ... or encounter prolonged unemployment. So, our long-term objective should be to get as close to 100% throughput as is humanly possible.

I suggest that such cannot be done without significant investments in ameliorating secondary schooling and also financial assistance for tertiary schooling—the latter being quite possibly a hurdle for many of the lower class families.

Other data, however, from the OECD studies on education are less encouraging. Secondary-school students in America don’t seem to do as well on reasoning tests as others. The OECD study program sample tests students in Reading/Writing, Mathematics, Science and Problem Solving.

Furthermore, I note this from the OECD study regarding total expenditures on Education:

In all but four OECD countries, more than 70% of current expenditure by primary, secondary and post-secondary ... educational institutions is for staff salaries.

(In the US, staff salaries represent 80% of total expenditures. Unfortunately, the data does not distinguish between teaching and non-teaching staff.)

NB: The remaining percentage is in “overhead” expenditures, such as facilities, electricity, supplies, etc.

Would’t you just love to see that face behind bars?

What amuses WriterOnTheStorm is the that so many of the “elites” paying 10-20
thousand dollars a year for private school tuition would be incensed by a $500/yr
increase in their taxes to buttress public schooling.

I wonder how the public schools would do with that extra 10-20 thousand from
every household that could pay for it? But having an equal opportunity for quality
education for everyone is not what it’s about, is it? No, for the elites it’s about
giving your kid the edge, isn’t it? Any way you can.

Since some are intent on turning America into a prolonged episode of Survivor, we
had better learn quick who to vote off the Island.

Got to take issue with the old bugbear, Proposition
13.  We Californians are a relo bunch and every time
we relo our property taxes are based on a percentage
of the price we paid for the house - prices which,
until recently, have gone through the proverbial roof
since the ‘70’s.  Example:  pay $1 million for a
house and your property taxes will be about
$1,000/month.  Not chicken feed.

The only home-owners paying low property taxes are
people who live in the same house they lived in
during the ‘70’s - and those people are few and far-
between.

What Prop 13 really did that ruined our economy was
to reduce/slash corporate taxes in this state.  And
this isn’t unique to California.  GE, for instance,
pays no federal income tax.  Exxon-Mobile pays no
federal income tax to the American government. So why
isn’t anyone talking about the real culprits, the
corporations.  Corporate welfare is a reality which
has been flying under the radar for far too long.

Freddy part duex:

As Freddy noted Charter Schools I include this portion of the article though I reinforce Wiki’s noting that it is lacking in attribution:

Charter schools
Main article: Charter school

“Swedish education is known for being a world leader in free-market education revolution.[17] Sweden introduced education vouchers in 1992, one of the first in the world to do so after the Netherlands. Anyone can establish a for-profit school and the municipality must pay new schools the same amount as municipal schools. For instance, two prominent school chains are Internationella Engelska Skolan and Kunskapsskolan (“Knowledge Schools”), which is the biggest school chain. Kunskapsskolan offers 30 schools and a web-based environment, has 700 employees, and teaches nearly 10,000 pupils. Private schooling is a growing market and over 10% of Swedish pupils were enrolled in private schools in 2008.[17] The system is especially popular among right-wing voters in large cities, and has even expanded overseas.[17][18] Criticism has been expressed that this reform has led to a large number of fundamentalistic religious schools, and that the system results in increased segregation[citation needed]. Some municipal assemblies, for example Täby Municipality, have sold public schools to private persons, for example the head of the school, for a much lower price than what a school chain would have paid on the open market[citation needed]. Several public schools have been closed due to too few pupils, partly as an effect of the increasing number of independent schools.[citation needed]”

Obviously the embolden part is my emphasis not Wiki’s….

Fat Freddy, November 11 at 2:21 pm

Oh where to begin?

Ok here’s a starting point:

Lafayette, November 11 at 3:38 pm

I suggest you read this worthy’s commentary.

Back to the Past…I mean Freddy:

If Ron Paul were elected in 2008, you can bet your ass, our troops would be home. And the government sponsored monopolies, like Haliburton? End their subsidies, grants and no-bid contracts. See how long they last on a level playing field. You are so blinded by your partisan glasses, you can’t see that I want the same things as you.

No you do not,Freddy old aristocrat. What you, and Paul, want is a return to 1860; a lily white nation in which we white folks have all the cash, all the power, and none of the responsibility for those unwashed and needy folks down there at the bottom who prune and pick in your orchards.

You guys want an end to Medicare, I want it reformed and protected, you folks want to end Social Security I want it strengthened and even made available sooner. You think an end to regulatory power means an end to Halliburton, I cannot respond as I am doubled up with hysterical laughter.

What I want is a nation in which most of the money is not in the hands of 2% of the people ( mostly white protestants of course) nor are the decisions made by these same uber wealthy and powerful but , as in a real democratic society , by the majority vote.

As to Sweden’s schools system, since you brought it up:

“Education in Sweden is mandatory for all children aged 7 to 16.[1] The school year in Sweden runs from mid/late August to early/mid June. The Christmas holiday from mid December to early January divides the Swedish school year into two terms.

From the age of one year children can be admitted to pre-school (förskola). Pre-schools both help provide an environment that stimulates children’s development and learning, and enable parents to combine parenthood with work or studies.[2] During the year before children start compulsory school, all children are offered a place in a pre-school class (förskoleklass), which combines the pedagogical methods of the pre-school with those of compulsory school.[3] Between ages 7 and 16, children attend compulsory comprehensive school (grundskola), divided in three stages. The vast majority of schools in Sweden are municipally-run, but there are also autonomous and publicly-funded schools, known as “free schools”. The education in free schools has many objectives in common with the municipal school, but it can have an orientation that differs from that of the municipal schools.[4] A handful of boarding schools, known as “private schools”, are funded by tuitions.

After completing the ninth grade, 63% of students choose to continue studying. For people aged 25 to 34, this figure rises to 76%. Only 19% however, continue studying longer than three years, often in university or university college (högskola). Both upper secondary school and university studies are financed by taxes. Some Swedes go straight to work after secondary school. Along with several other European countries, the government also subsidizes tuition of international students pursuing a degree at Swedish institutions, although there has been talk of this being changed.[5] Swedish 15-years-old pupils have the 22nd highest average score in the PISA assessments, being neither significantly higher nor lower than the OECD average.[1] Only Canada, the United States, and Japan have higher levels of tertiary degree holders.”

FF:

I’m convinced that bad schools are due to badly run school systems.  I once compared notes with my dad on my home town to my current town.  Here’s what we found.  My home town was spending about 40% more per student but there were immense issues with the quality of the school, where my town’s quality was far higher.  But, when I was a kid, there was a Superintendent, and an assistant superintendent, and a bunch of clerks at the B of Ed.  When we compared notes,  in the home town there were now a gazillion assistant supers, all drawing down big salaries, all with secretaries and assistants, and none of ‘em in the classrooms teaching.  The Admin-to-teacher ratio was FAR higher than in my current town.

What’s the obvious answer? Streamline those areas that don’t affect the kids directly.  Get rid of all the bureaucracy that’s grown in since I left the school system over 35 years ago.

So, FF, when you look at Camden, see what their admin-to-teacher ratio is—bet it’s through the roof and far higher than Haddonfield.

Teachers are like drill instructors.  It doesn’t matter how many generals or officers you have. If your drill instructors can’t do their job (for whatever reason) you’ll have a shitty army.

That’s the key.  Get good teachers. Give them first priority on resources.  Clear out the excessive admins.  If we need to, in ordinary towns get rid of:
1) Everyone at the Board of Ed but the Super, one asst Super, a secretary for both, and a minimal number of clerks.  You’ll also need a to keep a grounds staff.
2) Elementary schools will have a principal, a secretary, a nurse, a librarian, small part-time kitchen staff, and 2 or 3 custodians.  The rest are teachers or teachers’ aides.
3) Middle schools will add an assistant principal, another front-office secretary, and 2 more custodians.
4) HS will add to the MS staff: A Boys Dean and a Girls Dean, 1 guidance counselor per grade, 2 more custodians and an additional clerk.

Get rid of just about everyone else…NOW add additional people as you can prove you need them, and not before.

The last thing our schools need is more employees whose job it is to “administer” stuff.

The strangest aspect of our country is the millions of Americans who continually vote against their own best interests.  People who apparently believe in trickle down economics and ‘unregulated markets’ even as these policies steadily impoverish them.  Years ago struggling Americans would have turned to each other and unions and progressive churches to rally against the power of wealth and privilege.  Today, isolated people tune into Beck and Rush and side with their abusers.

What is wrong with you? Glenn Beck? You actually waste brain cells thinking about
what he said. Starting with a Glenn Beck premise the mind will only finish in one place
lunacy.

TAXATION AND INCOME FAIRNESS

rd: Fair and equitable taxes are the price of living in a society if one expects services from ones government. Whether or not those services can be provided at better cost and more efficiently is a different question entirely and one used to wrongly call for lower taxes.

Low taxation, particularly at the higher income levels, is directly attributable as a cause of income distribution unfairness. Meaning that taxation and expenditure on Public Services makes for a better standard of living for more people.

My precept is that taxes should pay for necessary public services. And, looking at the array of Public Services that higher-tax European countries provide, I submit that taxation helps level the playing field.

What is meant by “level the playing field is this:
* Tax revenues are progressive or they should be. But in the US, at around $250K, the effective marginal income tax quickly approaches a flat-tax rate of 31%. (Information from here.)
* Above a $500K level of income, is the rarefied income stratosphere—only 1.7% of the entire population.  (Same source as the above info-graphic.)
* And yet, that tiny privileged class possesses about 50% of the Net Worth of all individuals in the US.

Which prompts the accusation that the US is one of the more unjust developed nations on earth from the point of view of Income Distribution (which, after debt, produces individual Net Worth). That condition is visualized here in an info-graphic depicting the Gini Coefficient, which is a method for calculating Income Fairness—with 0 meaning total income fairness (since everybody gets exactly the same income) and 100 total income unfairness (since only one individual gets all income generated by the economy).

How do other nations on the above Gini Index chart arrive at more fair income distributions? By means of tax and spend on Public Services – namely, Social Investments (Health Care, Nearly free post-secondary education) and Infrastructure Investments (Transportation, Energy, Equipment, etc.)

And if one wants a comparison that is closer to home – just look at the difference between Canada and the US as regards the evolution of the Gini Index. What is it that the Canadians know about Income Fairness that we don’t?

is moshe pulling our leg when he states that taxes on the rich was 91%?
perhaps, but on net income and after all kinds of deductions, loopholes,
depreciation, bonuses, dividends, freebies, gifts, etc??
or 91% on gross income? tnx

Inherit The Wind

Compare Haddonfield to Camden. The average price of a home in Haddonfield is about $450,000. I know, I worked on many of them. They have the best school system in NJ. 5 miles away is Camden. The average price of a home is about $80,000. They have the worst school district in the State. So, it follows that we must give Camden more money, to keep up with Haddonfield, right? Well, thanks to the Abbott rulings, the State has been pumping millions of dollars into Camden for the past 20 years, or so. Has it helped? No. People in Haddonfield must pay high property taxes to send their kids to a good school, plus, they must pay State taxes to send other kids to a “good” school.

I agree that Christie isn’t going to do much. We need radical changes in NJ. Something no one is willing to do. Especially when there are power brokers like George Norcross III, and his lackey Steve Sweeney.

It’s obvious to me, that we need school choice, and a voucher system. Forced busing didn’t work in the 70s. Let all of the public schools compete with each other, and the private schools, and let the best schools win. Consumers benefit the most when there is free and fair competition. Only the Unions win when there is government controlled monopolies.

ardee,

I am not on the right. And yes, I call for an immediate end to the wars. If Ron Paul were elected in 2008, you can bet your ass, our troops would be home. And the government sponsored monopolies, like Haliburton? End their subsidies, grants and no-bid contracts. See how long they last on a level playing field. You are so blinded by your partisan glasses, you can’t see that I want the same things as you. The difference is, you wish to use the power of government to force people to comply, when it is the government that is directly responsible for most of our ills. I believe in the non-aggression axiom. You believe in force and coercion. You believe in violating the sanctity of the private, voluntary contract. You don’t see that it has been the violation of that institution that has caused most of our problems, and is directly responsible for the governemnt sponsored monopolies you say you despise. Wake up.

Yes Europe is much better off than we are with their cradle to grave. Perhaps you need to look at Sweden, and which way they have been moving in the past 20 years. BTW, Sweden has school choice, or vouchers. We don’t have government health care, yet we still ban Happy Meals and trans fat and school bake sales? Are you fucking kidding me? If we did have total government controlled health care, what else would they ban? Perhaps something that you like? No more Veggie Pitas, for you, dear.

I have no problem with “fair and equitable taxes”. Income and property taxes are unfair, and require the use of coercion for compliance. A fair tax system, would be one based entirely on Sales and Use Taxes, and would be more local, than federal. The federal government uses taxes (and inflation) to wage wars.

Well, mostly off topic rant by Freddy notwithstanding, and I say off topic because the subject is income tax which is a percentage of income and not all the other stuff found in that verbal vomit of a post, I think the problem is not taxes per se.

Taxes are a necessary if distasteful duty, and most here understand, I am certain, the uses to which they should be put. That our government is seen as wastefully extravagant with our tax dollars is the usual riposte of more on point voices than he whose cat shites in his slippers. This may or may not be true, dependent, of course, on the particular expenditures in question.

I think that hedge fund managers whose yearly income exceed half a billion dollars and whose tax burden is less a percentage of income than a truck drivers’ may be seen as a problem, but not, I suspect, by the Fat one. When Warren Buffet called the Bush tax cut completely unfair as his personal secretary now paid more in taxes than did he we get a hint of the real problem.

Fair and equitable taxes are the price of living in a society if one expects services from ones government. Whether or not those services can be provided at better cost and more efficiently is a different question entirely and one used to wrongly call for lower taxes. I would remind the ranting Freddy that several nations have a much higher tax rate, one to which few object as it brings much benefit to all the citizens living there. Free education ,including higher degrees, free transportation, free health care for all cradle to grave seems to work for them , and quite nicely too.

Those on the right, like Fat Freddy, seek a nation in which the class distinction widens each year, one in which the haves ( Freddy) are able to live quite comfortably, caring little that far too many of his fellows do not attain that status. I , for one , seek a better place. The rant usually disguises a wish to strangle government and make private enterprise flourish; you know, like the MIC,Halliburton, BP, Enron, AIG, Goldman Sachs et al…..where I wonder is the angst regarding those tax pirates?

If the hypocritical cat lover is so concerned about his burden perhaps he might call for an end to a war that costs us millions each day, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week for more than nine years now.

kerryrose

Over what time period? I don’t have all of the stats here with me, handy. I can tell you the majority of the State’s budget is school aid. Second is Medicare/Medicaid.

I can tell you this. The local paper had a link on their website to look up the salary of any teacher in NJ. In my city, a high school English teacher with 20 years experience makes over $80,000/year, and only teaches one class/year. An English teacher with 2 years experience makes less than $40,000, and teaches 6 classes/year. The “Meritocracy” is based on time alone.

Fat Freddy

Has state aid to public schools districts been slashed by 15% in NJ?

As much as I hate to agree with FF, he’s not far off the mark!

Our property taxes have DOUBLED in a dozen years, but the value of our house, even with massive remodeling, could not command anything close to double the price we paid. 

We didn’t buy in Montclair because back then, even with similar housing prices, taxes were double and you STILL had to send your kids to private school.  Here, at least, the public schools are still good.

But Christie has just killed a major needed infrastructure project, and our roads are falling to pieces.  After-school care is vital to keeping unemployment from rising, especially among the people with the fewest resources, who then fall onto the unemployment or welfare roles.

I’m not a fan of Chris Christie, but NOBODY could work “magic” in NJ.  The mess goes back years, to when Christie Whitman very popularly lowered taxes. Little did we realize she set us up for massive deficits that all her successors, including fellow Republican, Christie, have to cope with.

It all comes down to: Whatchoo gonna cut or who you gonna tax?

Then there’s the unbelievable drain that NJ has worse than any other state: For every tax dollar I or FF sends to Washington, Washington spends $.62 in NJ.  Every other state gets more, and most of the red states get more than they put in.

So…$.38 of every dollar we send DC gets spent helping some other state—like Rand Paul’s and Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky, Jim DeMint’s South Carolina, Coburn’s Oklahoma, Haley Barbour’s Mississippi and almost every other red state.

If we could just even THAT playing field out we’d be far better off.

Still, unlike FF, I’m staying here.  It could be worse: I could be in NY “The Ripoff State” or CT, or “Taxachusetts”...

Raise taxes in NJ? Are you out of your fucking mind? We have the highest property taxes in the country. Plus we have an income tax and a 7% sales tax. On top of that, we have some of the highest insurance premiums in the country across the board. In 1976 we were told we needed an income tax to “fix the schools”, and it was only supposed to last 2 years. Well, we still have it, and it is higher. Has it helped the schools? Perhaps you would like to send your kids to Woodrow Wilson or Camden High. In the town I live in, anybody who can afford it, sends their kids to Sacred Heart Catholic School, even the Jews. We were even tricked into believing that the revenues from the casinos would help lower taxes in NJ. But since day one, all of the casinos have been crying that they are not making any money, yet, they keep building them. The State and Amtrak even started a rail line from Philly to AC called the “Gambler’s Express”, which is heavily subsidized. It was such a failure that Amtrak bailed, and it is now run by New Jersey Transit.

So, take your calls for higher taxes and shove them straight up your ass. I’m out of NJ as soon as I can find a nice apple orchard for sale in New Hampshire, a state with no sales or income taxes. I’m not the only one who wants out of NJ, or has already left, like Campbell’s Soup, and RCA, to name a couple. In fact, the only reason there are any major businesses in NJ is because of the location, or they are heavily subsidized by the State.

It says you are an economist. Perhaps you need to read An Inflation Primer, by Melchior Palyi, if you want to know why there is a redistribution of wealth from the poor and Middle Class to the wealthy. You do know the evils of perpetual creeping monetary inflation, yes?