davis_square | Single issue voter

You're making the extremely optimistic assumption that public schools do much in the way of educating.

Better than no school, if only because it keeps most of the kids corralled for several hours a day.

Great, let's all pay for lukewarm education and a holding pen.

Lukewarm or not, it's still better than no school at all.

Eh, I could do better.

Then do.

And until you're done re-forming society in your own image, realize that everything around you was built by people who received the benefits of child-related tax breaks when they were children.

Or you could go off and live in the woods!

This outlandish and entirely unsubstantiated comment has really opened my eyes.

Forgive me, the painkillers I'm currently on have reduced my language skillz.

I'm reading further through the comments, and it seems you have understandable gripes that I still mostly don't agree with. The most important thing I'm taking away from what you're writing is that you don't like the way we spend money on children, while having no problem with doing it if the money is spent the way you like.

If that's true, then you're making a very different argument from other people whom I've seen/heard use the word "breeders."

Re: ;-)

two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 21:50 (UTC) - Expand

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veek.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 21:53 (UTC) - Expand

No thanks, I think I'd like you to stay away from any of the children I know.

Public schools CAN be good. Mine was. They do need public support and community engagement to be good, though. And money. Those things are harder to find in cities than in suburbs, yeah, but I don't think giving up altogether on the idea of public education is a good one. I think it's possible to improve the bad ones.

lol. Yeah, let's burn more money at the altar of public school instead of privatizing and doing it smart.

Would this be like, err....School vouchers?

Federal mandate requiring schooling (promoting general welfare). Federal mandate outlining basic curriculum, so we don't wind up with "the earth is 6,000 years old" high school graduates. Extremely affordable loans, custom tailored to every parent who has a child to send to school. Not a penny due until said child turns 18 or 22. No one, no matter how poor, would be denied an education loan. The best part is, parents don't get to be lazy and just throw their kids in public school like crackers in soup. They'd have to direct their attention, be good parents and choose the school they like best based on teaching method and a whole host of other variables.

That way, people who choose to have kids can pay for their own kids, and not ask me to do it!

So what happens to the kids if the parents are lazy?

What do you mean?

Your model gives the parents a certain onus of responsibility for seeing to it that their children are properly educated. What sort of education would the kids in your system end up with if their parents are both, say, alcoholic drug addicts that are totally unavailable to their children to do anything?

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 19:45 (UTC) - Expand

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m00n.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 19:58 (UTC) - Expand

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:08 (UTC) - Expand

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m00n.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:22 (UTC) - Expand

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:25 (UTC) - Expand

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m00n.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:31 (UTC) - Expand

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:33 (UTC) - Expand

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m00n.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:36 (UTC) - Expand

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on-reserve.livejournal.com - 2008-09-16 12:43 (UTC) - Expand

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-16 13:35 (UTC) - Expand

Or they might just end up picking the cheapest school and dumping their kids in it, or dumping them in any school and then defaulting on the loans.

Or they might just end up picking the cheapest school and dumping their kids in it

Sort of like how they do it now...

and then defaulting on the loans.

And their credit scores will suffer.

So, if the end result with the bad parents is the same as it is now except with worse credit scores, how do their kids end up better?

Re: ;-)

two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:15 (UTC) - Expand

because privatizing the regulation of an industry worked wonders for mortgages and banking.

And energy.

Because the federal reserve didn't cause the great depression...

Because it functioned as a real reserve bank, right?
It maintained enough funds on hand to cover all the claims that could be made on it, in gold?

Wait, are you asking or claiming?

asking.

basically we can go back and forth on this all day showing how regulation worked or failed.

The most recent examples show that it mostly works.