US Gov't budget problem

the way I see it its not capitalism thats the problem. It's corpretism. As in the government supporting these corpret interests with subsidies and free money from the Fed. This insures that said corperations will always stand and therefore are not accountable for their actions.

We must survive, all of us. The blood of a human for me, a cooked bird for you. Where is the difference?

I'll grant you that unrestrained capitalism is better than unrestrained fascism, and that we're much closer to the latter than the former.

I'd prefer socialism to capitalism, but I think that is a false dichotomy to begin with.

Well I'm rather socialist but as you can see those views don't really conflict with market based solutions to economic problems. I'm more of a "If it is a natural monopoly or otherwise untenable situation for a market solution, go with a state controlled measure".

Vouchers are a bad idea when it comes to improving education quality. It basically amounts to government giving subsidies to private academic institutions and will increase your education costs in your state. All tax dollars, for maximum efficiency, should only head toward public schools. There is no private primary education institution in the world that ever worked.

As for Tom's comment about the Ivy Leagues. Yep, they're the best in the world. How many Americans graduate from them? As said by others here, having the best isn't the same as you receiving the best. The vast majority of Americans have to make due with subpar medical care, subpar education and yet pay taxes very similar to Canadians.

And as for comments (not yours Tom) about college education being overvalued, I think it is being misused is the issue. People treat it as a filter, or talk about whether it is a privilege or a right. It should be seen as nothing more than a productivity enhancement of human resources (from an economic standpoint). There's plenty of people who only received a few weeks of specialised training and then get the job, at a much reduced pay in comparison to degree holders, they also suck total balls. (I can't tell you how aggravating it is... argh no, this is anecdotal, never mind)

University education background doesn't guarantee that you're an awesome worker but it certainly puts you a grade above those who do not possess it. The number of American candidates that somehow believe that their awesome "self-learning" somehow compares to 4 years of grueling study at a good Canadian/American university are just fooling themselves into some weird sense of entitlement. Nobody is going to waste the time to look at those candidates. You know interview at good tech companies last 2-6 hours and/or multi day events over several weeks. You really think they are ever going to blow time on a guy without a degree? So, Americans are just going to have to live with the fact that information age jobs require college education and the quality of that college education is what matters now, not the possession of it as a boolean value.

American budget should focus on economic stability and steady long-term expansion, with an outlook on future technology and jobs. Will America just protect itself, via tariffs and punitive trade policies against EU, China, India and everyone else combined? In fifty years of such economic management, where will you stand when those countries become global trading powers? This is the primary reason why I eschew military spending over education, research and infrastructure. Every dollar spent into the military does not expand the economy and for the most part is a negative effect (statistically speaking because I really don't care about how the military spun off a technology here or there when you could have easily gotten the same through civilian spending. Case in point; Where did Canada develop insulin? At a university doing government funded research).

edited 16th Mar '11 12:03:22 PM by breadloaf

Let's add nation wide standardized tests to college, that should help a bit with the whole subpar colleges thing.

Fight smart, not fair.

^ Standardized tests are quite likely the worst thing to happen to public schooling. Let's not make that mistake at the collegiate level.

Why is the worst thing? Teachers then design their curricula entirely around the standardized test, not actual learning not the subject of the course.

Nnnrghhh, yes I agree with Tom.

You know, it's okay to agree with others once in awhile.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

It's a good way to show that somebody knows stuff. Just hoping that somebody who shows up to class learns things and the teacher is actually teaching doesn't make a lot of sense.

Fight smart, not fair.

^ Yeah it's a good way to show that people know stuff....the stuff on the test and no further.

And? That's why you have a broad subject area. Or just make the test longer. Four hours is probably most peoples limit though.

Fight smart, not fair.

When you train someone to prepare for just a test, they don't ever find the answers on their own.

Ever heard now-cliched phrase "think outside the box"? Preparing for just a test is about as boxing as you can get in terms of thought processes. It's canned, rehashed and regurgitated. You don't actually know it, or know why or know how to arrive at the same solution in a better or more creative manner.

Longer tests are not the answer. Standardized tests are not the answer.

Which is why I keep saying No Child Left Behind was nothing more than a glorified scam. The fact that Neil Bush got rich from it was merely a bonus.

—R.J.

Hence why it's good for testing knowledge.

Fight smart, not fair.

And in the business world that kind of knowledge quickly falls by the wayside in favor of people who know solutions instead of test answers. Ya know like the times where the boss says you need to find out how to account for and correct for money that wasn't supposed to be on a balance sheet because of an accounting typo that happened 3 months earlier and fucked over all the totals. There's no test answer for that beyond the generic. In the business realm that situation becomes solve it or your fired. If you just know the tests from school and don't actually know how to solve an accounting error of that type (or worse, just knew the answers for the figures and can't actually add numbers), you don't know it at all.

I'm fine with knowledge tests. But they can't be the end-all and be-all of tests. You need tests that ask you to put that knowledge to use, in a hypothetical situaion or something.

So - keep education a priority.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

And when you can come up with a way to implement tests for those skills on a large scale while the test results remain entirely objective, you let me know.

edited 16th Mar '11 3:53:07 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

Deboss, do you think schools should be teaching things that are impossible to test for? Or do you think it's pointless, since there's no way of proving they're doing any good?

A brighter future for a darker age.

Probably the second. How you're supposed to gauge something you can't test is beyond me.

Edit for elaboration: It's not that teaching skills that are difficult to test for, such as learning strategies, is pointless, it's that I don't think there's any way to say they're useful.

For an example, let's say I'm going into welding  ^*

. Is a company supposed to trust me when I say "I know how to weld" or trust that whatever podunk public school, or would they trust a standardized test where they can look up the results?

edited 16th Mar '11 4:23:48 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

Deboss, you might have misunderstood. No, I don't have any idea how to devise a test that attempts to measure how well someone can problem solve, as that's not my area of expertise. But I think such a test is possible - a test that doesn't rely on rote memorization of key bits of information.

Using the DIKW model, something that measures the ability to infer knowledge from information. Need not apply to all subjects, though.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I never said they were, although for the population as a whole there's a great many people stuck with them as a lifelong career. My point is that if middle and upper middle class salaries keep falling, hours worked and productivity keep rising without pay or benefits, and debt becomes endemic, living “the good life” as a reward for being one of America's most important workers will become impossible. Anything that deflates salaries is one more step along the road to serfdom.

Again, things aren't as rosy in the shiny new cyber economy as some would have you believe. Here's a look inside Microsoft, being run with labor practices straight from the Carnegie Steel playbook. This is absolutely typical of policies all across the industry. Regardless of how good things are now, since they're getting worse, you have to think about these jobs sinking below the middle class lifestyle in the future.

I admit I'm hardly familiar with the topic, but this bulletin indicates E-B2 visas (anyone with an MS degree and up) for countries other than China and India have no backlog. From my nebulous understanding of our English embassy site for instance, it appears a job offer, around $1k in fees, and 6 months of bureaucratic rigmarole are all that's needed to work here. Also, of course, you can visit for up to 3 months without a visa to look for work or whatever, though without actually being able to accept work until you get a visa of some kind.

Bingo! That is, in fact, the only thing. Though I don't think it's fair to lump Canada with India and China among America's quasicolonies, we aren't that mean to you guys.

If most immigrants were brought here for reasons other than purely to undercut American pay, they couldn't be mistreated at all, nothing will change otherwise. Protectionism protects foreigners from the depredations of Americans, too.

Unlike the USA, Canada doesn't share a land border with the 3rd world (well, depending on how bad the USA gets.)

Yeah, tying universal human rights to local taxes is stupid, my favorite solution: All local property taxes destined for schools are pooled by the state (or better, federal) government, these funds are then sent back down to local districts based on student population. Problem solved.

The thing about education is that you can't simply consume it like food or a new car, you ENDURE it, making you a more valuable asset to your nation in the process. For this reason, making education an all-you-can-eat proposition has no real financial risk, since anyone who successfully consumes (say) 6 years of insanely expensive higher education is de facto worthy of the investment, while lesser mortals burn out, settle for a lower degree, and cease consuming public funds. You can't overconsume education, just like (as Tomu notes) you can't overconsume healthcare, so making it free for all is a no-brainer.

The problem with vouchers is that they allow the system to become segregated, as even with vouchers the best schools would be out of reach for most students (changing nothing,) while the wealthy would get to subsidize their rich-only schools with vouchers. In this light, I would support vouchers on one, and only one condition: In order to be eligible for vouchers, a private institution must shun ALL OTHER SOURCES OF REVENUE.

Eric,

edited 16th Mar '11 7:14:59 PM by EricDVH

A standardized test is one in which the answer is standardized so that you have a comparative analysis of how much somebody knows/can do. Would you call an algebra standardized test one that can be answered with rote memorization.

Fight smart, not fair.

Look, standardized tests are not the same thing as taking a legal exam, or studying to fix cars.

Harold Bloom was at the forefront of the Testing movement in the nineties. His solution was to march students through a set curriculum of books, facts and "great thoughts" by elite white guys throughout history, with the inevitable result that the kids will end up knowing absolutely nothing.

Any student (and teacher) knows that rigid testing has the opposite effect of what's intended; you memorize the facts, regurgitate them, and then forget all about them. No amount of discipline enforcement, or teacher accountability, or stamps of approval is going to change this. Classwork is about making students care about the curriculum — making it relevant to the current environment and makeup of the class.

edited 16th Mar '11 10:22:55 PM by johnnyfog

I'm a skeptical squirrel

Amen Johnnyfog I may not agree with you most of the tuimne but you are right on the money here.

We must survive, all of us. The blood of a human for me, a cooked bird for you. Where is the difference?

I agree.

"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"

Here's a look inside Microsoft, being run with labor practices straight from the Carnegie Steel playbook.

Ouch. Apparently MS is in the union busting biz. Isn't there some law or other that the former employees who were trying to organize can use to sue them for boatloads of cash? If there's not, (I strongly suspect there is) I, as a zany libertarian, would support such a law.

edited 17th Mar '11 12:21:03 AM by Roman

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