Speaking of "stupid," how far beyond your means are you living that 5-7k a year requires a loan for the whole amount? And if, as a parent, you can't be responsible enough to look out for your childrens' future, why the fuck should the rest of us, and what makes you think anyone will?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
and there be the cycle I was referring to. Thanks :up:
That stupid people have stupid children and raise them stupidly?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Yeah, that's not an argument against the free market... if anything, it's kind of an argument for eugenics.
What's the difference?
This is kind of what I meant with the ignorance bit; I am vaguely aware of your (libertarians as a group) ideological hang-ups, but it helps to have them spelt out in detail for the sake of conversation. Anyhoo;Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch the Red
I would've assumed that libertarians, for the most part, recognize the need for 1) a standing army for defence and 2) some kind of internal police force (I am assuming most also understand why it's a bad idea to combine the two) + judicial system and someone to draw up laws. Beyond that, it seems (from a limited, Internet-provided perspective!) that anything else is up for grabs, or should I say up to be thrown under the bus. So I hazarded a guess that public schools should be discarded simply because they restrict freedoms to educate (or indoctrinate) your children with whatever you yourself choose. It also seems to me, from a very economics-ignorant view-point, that it would be very hard to finance public schooling for all without the poorest people essentially paying tax from their income as there's precious little else they do economically. But this brings up a question, are sales taxes more or less abhorrent to libertarians than income taxes? Especially given that societies tend to opt to tax vices heavier than perceived virtues. (I am also assuming state-mandated income transfers are abhorrent to libertarians, which would distance them from the idea of funding public education mainly through the taxes of the wealthiest.)
Another choice mostly restricted to the wealthy or/and tightly knit communities (the latter need not always be a bad thing, admittedly). And if you'll permit me some shenanigans, it again seems to me that libertarians wouldn't enjoy very diverse communities forming those local boards, as submitting to a majority ruling that goes against one's personal ideas (or ideals) is the lesser option compared to making a curriculum of one's own choice. (Presumably the children being schooled are too young to be considered capable of forming their own curricula.) But that's fairly academic, schools have to be run somehow to maintain civilization.Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch the Red
Again, I must invoke a conversation-killer and fall back on the fortune (mis?) of my birth; private schools are a very rare thing here, and while I am not certain it is my impression that the rich do not send their children abroad into private institutions even for higher learning. But I readily admit I have not availed myself to any statistics on Finnish youths going to foreign universities, their backgrounds and motivations. And while there are some elite (yet public) senior secondaries (high school equivalents but a bit brainier), they're not in a wealthy area as much as they simply have such high admission standards that they attract the best from a large area around them. I do not know if there are any super-star vocational schools, I would assume no. (Although I do think rural schools get the short end of the stick as ostensibly a larger segment of the finest teaching materiel would elect to live closer to a city region. Again, I don't have statistics either way.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch the Red
I am dimly aware of the vast problems in the US educational system, and certainly it's an example of a government-run (almost wrote state-run there!) system gone horribly awry.
The parents would also need to out-source or research for themselves the specifics of each schooling-providing company, given that there'd be (or would there be?) standards mandated from above. Would some institutions of higher learning only permit students who've bought their basic education from a certain service provider? Should that be made illegal?Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
If you played that poverty game Minx posted in the funny forum some time ago, being in a situation where you have to budget pretty tightly to finance that 10 to 14 grand a year for Tommy and Tina plus all the externalities that went along with that, it doesn't take a very big disaster before Tina or Tommy has to skip a semester (or whatever the billing season would be) to pay for a broken car component or a new pair of glasses. Or a drinking binge; you seem to have a fairly high opinion of humanity sometimes.
Why can't there being a private accrediting institution? The ones we have now (for universities) are private...Then it's your decision whether to send your kid to an accredited institution or not. Again, I don't actually support this policy, but I think it's an exaggeration to say that most people wouldn't be able to afford/obtain a decent education.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
You do realize that if there were no government services, that would also mean people wouldn't have to pay taxes to pay for those services, which means they'd have more money left over, right? It might not be enough to completely offset the cost of education for the poor, but it would take care of a decent portion of it.
I am not convinced this is actually true. Maybe out of ignorance? :oQuote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Can't be arsed to play devil's advocate against evil accrediting institutions and dumb parents right now :(
you still need to define most, and now whatever the hell a decent number means. You at least admit that the money saved (if that ever happened), isn't enough (obviously because the current system spreads the cost across everyone regardless of the number of children), so parents will be footing the bill more than the current system. Not to mention that the poor have more children, and the average for families with children is close to 2 per household, doubling all the figures you have thus presented. Which goes back to the original problem you're ignoring, this concept puts the children of these families in a damaging cycle thats hard to break, and something they never had any control in changing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
This just means poor people should have less children, in order to finance better. Right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
I was hoping Loki would eventually make the connection with that and the original rebuttal that his wording made his position irrevelent, because it all comes down to the parents not being willing to sign away enough in order to fit whatever he considers "most" to be.
I need a better way to express this :(
Oh. Sorry :(
Erm, but your whole argument is premised on libertarians not wanting to pay taxes...Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
I think I missed a beat somewhere. (And it's unfair to say my argument is based on that, I'm trying to have a conversation with Enoch where I, perhaps unwittingly too strong-wordedly?, hope to clear some of my personal confusion.) But why wouldn't the employers just reduce the wages offered by the amount of the tax cut? Assuming the parents are paying income taxes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
The reason they're paying the current wages is because those wages are the market price for a given type of labor. It's not like firms are giving the current wages out of niceness. If anything, lower taxes would mean businesses have more money available, which means they'd either hire more workers or try to attract a higher caliber of workers. We certainly didn't see wages decrease as a result of any recent tax cuts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
No, but despite low taxes, the job creators aren't, if we're to look at unemployment figures. And what I meant was, if the employer has to give amount X to attract a worker (remember, we're talking mostly about the people who've trouble keeping Tommy and Tina in school), so when the income tax goes pooh...What's exactly to stop the employer from thinking that amount is now X - N, where N = former amount of tax? The parents with Tommy and Tina are making the same real wage still, and it's not like they have a lot of bargaining power to go on over to the next employer and ask whether they'd be willing to part with N as well. And while the business would have more money available, where would that go? Hiring more mommies and daddies having trouble scraping 5 to 7 k a year together, or bigger CEO bonuses?Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
About half of the unemployment is a function of people's skills being obsolete and people moving between jobs (i.e. even if there were jobs for anyone capable of doing them, we'd still have an unemployment rate of ~4.5%). Much of the rest could be attributed to us being at the bottom part of the economic cycle, minimum wage laws, and various other regulations making it costly to hire and/or fire workers. Liberalization of labor laws leads to more employment, not less.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
I don't think you realize what percentage of revenue are eaten up by CEO salaries/bonuses. If Wal-Mart was to pay $10 billion less in taxes, do you think it would raise executive compensation by anywhere near $10 billion? If this was true, companies would never expand.
Now it's possible that in the short run, lower taxes would lead to somewhat lower wages (though people would still have more after-tax income). But again, companies would have additional money left over, and that money needs to be used for something, whether more workers, better workers, or more/better equipment (which has to be operated by someone).
Isn't part of the problem right now that the money isn't being spent on anything, it's just being sat on, given that there's no inflationary incentive to spend money?
Inflation is only part of the reason why people spend money (and if people spend money purely because of inflation, that's not incredibly efficient). Companies are sitting on money due to uncertainty over future economic conditions. Why invest money today into something that won't earn you anything for several years when you have no idea whether there will still be demand for your products after those several years?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
I don't suppose nationalism is an acceptable answer :D
So you have companies invest money when they shouldn't, those investments don't pay off, and they have no choice but fire workers in a few years (or go bankrupt). Mission accomplished?
*shrug* It's your system, I just live in it. It's not like communism didn't have to break a few eggs along the way, either.
Communism had a similar problem: if everyone has a job in old industries, how do you get workers in new industries (in fact, how do you get new industries at all)?
What kind of new industries do you propose hire the parents of Tommy and Tina? How do you purport their employers pay them if their only employment options, after massive industrialization that maximizes efficiency, are caring for poor old people or hawking produce at dubious buyers? If labour is no longer needed, what do you do with the population that should be working?
The same ones that are hiring unskilled labor today?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
Labor is always needed. At each stage of industrialization, unskilled labor is replaced by machines, which have to be created and maintained by an ever-more skilled group of workers. The problem we're facing now is not that machines are displacing jobs, but rather that ~5% of the population is totally unequipped to face the challenges of the modern workplace.
So let's privatize education even more?
I think your conversation is losing focus :(
Yeah, because the current public system is doing a great job (see other thread)...
Too dumb for a job using the brain, there are always going to be jobs for the body. Hooker and scientific test subject come to mind immediately.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
Though, what are you proposing? Halt the course of progress because it will inevitably leave some dumdums behind? :bored: Strikes me as (by far) the least palatable of the options.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011...Amendment.html Not even Mississippi.
Those spheres are certainly widely understood and agreed upon as the primary responsibilities and role of government by most libertarians.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
While there isn't necessarily one clear consensus amongst libertarians on what tax is or isn't abhorrent, (there are probably as many views on this are there are libertarians) generally speaking consumption or usage taxes aren't seen as being nearly as philosophically objectionable as the income tax is. A tax on a good or service you are willingly purchasing in a free market is preferable to a mandatory tax that you incur because the government believes it owns your labor.Quote:
It also seems to me, from a very economics-ignorant view-point, that it would be very hard to finance public schooling for all without the poorest people essentially paying tax from their income as there's precious little else they do economically. But this brings up a question, are sales taxes more or less abhorrent to libertarians than income taxes? Especially given that societies tend to opt to tax vices heavier than perceived virtues. (I am also assuming state-mandated income transfers are abhorrent to libertarians, which would distance them from the idea of funding public education mainly through the taxes of the wealthiest.)
In theory, I would assume there could be schools that are financed charitably, or schools that offer a graduated tuition based off of parent income.
I'm not so sure it is a choice restricted to wealthy/tightly knit communities. Currently most school systems do have school boards, even diverse inner-city school districts, and poor rural ones. Wherever you have concerned parents you'll find a school board, and concern isn't limited to wealthy and/or tightly knit communities.Quote:
Another choice mostly restricted to the wealthy or/and tightly knit communities (the latter need not always be a bad thing, admittedly). And if you'll permit me some shenanigans, it again seems to me that libertarians wouldn't enjoy very diverse communities forming those local boards, as submitting to a majority ruling that goes against one's personal ideas (or ideals) is the lesser option compared to making a curriculum of one's own choice. (Presumably the children being schooled are too young to be considered capable of forming their own curricula.) But that's fairly academic, schools have to be run somehow to maintain civilization.
There are enough similarities in what we expect to be taught, (reading, writing, arithmetic) and for topics where there could be contention, (certain sciences, religion, history) districts could choose the curriculum that best represents their constituency.
More interestingly, schooling can and likely will become more individualized, especially as it pertains to the accepted curriculum with the advent of distance and web based learning. Future schools may adapt to these technologies to become places where students meet and exchange ideas on what they have already learned, and the traditional class room may be seen as a vestigial remnant of a different era. Will the brick and mortar based school education disappear? I doubt it, but it may very well change from education as we know it today.
You wouldn't be wrong in saying state run, as the states also play a large role in education.Quote:
I am dimly aware of the vast problems in the US educational system, and certainly it's an example of a government-run (almost wrote state-run there!) system gone horribly awry.