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I'm really getting tired of the "underfunded" argument as to why schools are failing in the US. Seriously?

And I'm getting really tired of morons failing to grasp the simple connection, then invoking government conspiracy theories about them damn lib'ruls, as well as made-up statistics, to justify running the education system further into the ground.

Public funding has increased steadily, at a rate faster than inflation.

First of all, without other information this is completely meaningless. If schools were grossly underfunded to begin with, then you would expect spending to increase faster than inflation just to make up the deficit. How do we stand on education spending? As a percentage of GDP, 37th in the world (source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp). What country is first? Cuba. Is this correlated with educational quality? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the country with the world's highest literacy rate? Also Cuba (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate).
Second, your claim that this increase has been steady is false. ( http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1980_2010&view=1&expand=&units=b&fy=fy10&chart=20-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=) True, most years the increase is more than inflation, but certainly not all, and in a few years it was as low as 1.8% when inflation was around 3%.

This is not just nationally, but also at the local level through property taxes.

I don't know where you live, but where I grew up (a village in southern Wisconsin) the school budget declined every year for the entire time I attended middle and high school, to the point that there was a toilet paper shortage, since it "wasn't in the budget" to buy a few dozen more rolls toward the end of the year, all because every year local conservatives whined more and more about property taxes. In the time since I've graduated funding has gotten even lower; a friend who now teaches at the school has reported that school lunch is now down to a couple slices of white bread, a slab of meat, and an apple. At least when I was there, we still got two vegetable choices and pizza day twice a month.

Also, the funding argument is easily dissuaded simply by pointing out counter-examples: there are many, many private schools which are able to educate students to superior levels in all of the basics. We're talking half as much funding and less.

Do you have documentary evidence of even one private school taking in half as much money as a nearby public school and outperforming it? Comparisons of widely different geographic and demographic areas don't count; that's called cherry-picking your data. While it's certainly true that the average private school outperforms similarly situated public schools, almost all of these private schools take in more funding per pupil AND have the selection bias of families whose parents are more motivated towards education than the local average.

The cause for government school failure in the US is not due to a lack of funding. That's an excuse, and pushes the blame from the cause.

Again, evidence please? In statistical or logical form, not just your assertion.

The cause is that they're government schools, with strict top-down models they must adhere to, and do not take the individual student in mind. Schools have to do well on standardized tests, yad

Then describe it for me. What do they gain?

Lets look at socialism in the United States.

The U.S. spends about 20% of the nations GDP.
85% of the revenue collected by the U.S. government comes from 15% of the population.
Note that that 15% also acquires 85% of the adjusted gross income after basic living expenses.
The U.S. spends that revenue on:
9% Welfare
12% Defense
14% Education
14% Pensions
16% Health
All of which are socialist in nature. The bulk of the expense is covered by 15% of the population but 100% of the population benefits.

In some areas of the economy there are worker unions where the workers acting as one attempt to guarantee better wages and benefits for all. Usually the end result is not only better wages and benefits for union members but also for other areas of employment. And before anyone starts spewing the usual anti union rhetoric I suggest doing some research on the working conditions and wages of industrial workers in the United States prior to unions. And before bringing up GM versus Toyota note that Japan is even more socialist than the United States, their government is spending 30%+ of the GDP, so breaking the unions in the United States to pay for socialism in Japan is ludicrous.

I think any socialist system in which people are free to choose their own work to self-actualize, will suffer from a labour shortage in some sector, and so either people will be forced to work in a job they don't want to in order to compensate

That is communism and I believe you are correct, it doesn't work and it creates more problems than it solves.

Communism != Socialism

They are not the same thing. Socialism is practised at varying levels in virtually every industrialized western nation. People need to get over the propaganda they've been fed for decades. You can have socialism and still have private ownership of production, free market competition, compensation based on effort, skill and knowledge, etc. I know this to be true because its being done today.

Ah, the old "capitalism is exploitation" chestnut. Contrary to popular opinion, many people actually enjoy their jobs and are not being "exploited".

Ah the old "I don't agree with this guy so I'll try some simple labels to suggest they fit in some culturally negative stereotype, communist should work."

In 1980 the average CEO compensation was 42 times the average worker compensation, today its 319 times.
That is over 600% increase in compensation.

Median household income from 1980 to 2008 in 2008 dollars increased 14%, converted to current dollars for an accurate comparison thats a 173% increase.

From 1980 to 2008 the United States GDP grew over 400%

And yet here we are in the United States arguing over basic health care for the public because 1) as a nation we can afford it and anyone who says we can't is either a liar, in denial or hasn't bothered to actually look at the numbers and 2) because we have many cases where even individuals who have health insurance end up denied coverage which sometimes results in death.

Health insurance coverage sponsored by employers has continually dropped.
From over 68% of employees covered in 200 to under 60% in 2008.

By its nature capitalism is exploitation, I know that word has negative connotations but only because in some cases exploitation can turn into victimization.

When wages of 95% of the work force are suppressed to

Try more like 14% to education in fiscal 2009 and 13% to defense. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/index.php#usgs302a

You fail to lump total spending together, because, you know, the states pay nearly all of the education expenses. For instance, here in MN, K-12 gets ~25% of the state budget.

You can massage numbers many ways, and only using the federal spending on education tells a very different story from how much is actually spent when you factor in state, local, and federal money.
 

Yet another /. moron who doesn't know how to read. I spoke of deficit as a percentage of GDP, which is the only proper way to measure debt. If you don't understand why that is, then you not only need more reading comprehension but you also need to learn math. My statement about Carter was correct as well. You ranting about oil lines and disco clubs is pointless and retarded when talking about national debt. Oh and FYI...the only Republican president to ever reduce the deficit in the 20th or 21st centuries was Eisenhower (by 2% of GDP). If you doubt my numbers, you can check them yourself here: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com./ Unlike you, who talks out his ass, I actually studied the data.

Which other countries were a better place than the US to start a company in the 1950s? It was just after WWII and most countries were rebuilding.

Which countries are a better place than the US to start a business in 2009? And in 2011 when the taxes start kicking in? And what about the years after that? There are lots of countries that won't be capping their carbon emissions, for example.

Also, government as a percentage of GDP was about half as large in the 1950s. And the regulatory burden was much lower.

I'm sorry, was the US so incredibly uncivilized for the 150+ years before the government started spending over 30% of our GDP? We're getting close to the portion of our total output that we spent to fight world war II.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html

That was actually easier than I thought

The US spends approximately 3.4% of its GDP on public primary and secondary education

I've heard numbers like this a few times, and was just wondering where it comes from. At the risk of doing a [citation needed] type post, would you mind providing a link to where you are getting this number? I'll buy that it might be the US Federal Government input into education funding, but that is very misleading. Most of the US Education spending is done at the State level.

Since I was willing to JFGI, it seems your claim is either out of date or downright wrong. The wikipedia page on Government Spending puts the Percent GDP spent on Education at 6%. Their citation comes from usgovernmentspending.com which, puts total government spending in 2006 on education at $786.8 Billion, or about 5.88% of the 2006 GDP (13.06 Trillion, number from Google). That site claims to have aggregated the data from the US Federal GPO report and US Census data. Quite frankly, I'm not willing to chase the numbers back that far and am willing to accept the aggregator's claim, unless a problem can be demonstrated.

In short, the idea that US spending on education is lacking is a myth. Yes, Federal spending on education is lacking, that is because education is not a Federal function, its a State function.

The US also has one of the worst student to teacher ratios in the world, averaging out to 16, but in lower income schools averaging over 35.

Ok, I found the first number you mentioned in the PDF you linked to presented as:

In 1999, the United States had the second-lowest student/teacher ratio of the countries presented in primary education - 16 students per teacher. [http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003026.pdf page 28 (44 according to Adobe reader)]

That's a good thing. The lower the student to teacher ratio, the fewer students each teacher has to deal with and the more time which they can devote to each student. As for the lower income number, you're gonna have to give me a page number, I went through the PDF trying to find it and came up empty.

In all, I'm not trying to say we couldn't do more as a country, but it bugs the hell out of me to hear people claim that we are failing our students, when it seems like we are putting quite a bit of money into the system already. While I do think that the No Child Left Behind act may have missed the mark, we do need to start finding ways of getting useful metrics out of the education system. At just shy of 6% of our GDP, and close to 17% of our total government expenditures (assuming the Wikipedia numbers), we're putting a lot of money into it, and yet we're being asked for more every year. It's time for the system to start providing some sort of methodology to review and measure performance, so that we can make better decisions on how money is spent and if we actually need to spend more. Maybe we do, maybe if we just provided a little more money, everything would magically work right. But it's time we had some good numbers to support that.

The same old idiotic and baseless talking point, straight out of the right-wing think-tanks.

I guess in all of of those years of education noone taught you logical fallacies

There's this little thing called INFLATION. Sure, in the 1890s, teachers would be ecstatic to get $1/hour. These days, that's peanuts.

Hmm. Quick search. From 1980 to 2008 the rate of inflation was 161% The government spending on education went up 551%

Did you go to a private college? If so, I bet you paid a hell of a LOT more than $12,000 per year.

I thought we were talking about public education here?

Maybe if you had halfway decent teachers, you'd know that by now.

I had excellent teachers. That is why I know what an Ad hominem attack is. Once again, attacking the positions of the teachers union is not the same as attacking the teachers. One can disagree with dismissal policies and not "hate all teachers".

The infrastructure developed from the New Deal provided a tangible product which could be openly used by other segments of the economy and benefited far more. Roads affected the Automotive Industry and eventually the suburban sprawl and housing.

It should be noted that the Interstate Highway System was not started until 1956.

The CCC improved roads in public parks. The WPA did pave or repair 300,000 miles of road, but keep in mind the US currently has 3.9 million miles of highway.

New Deal spending is actually a lot less than people generally think. Federal spending peaked at 8% of GDP during 1933-1941, whereas today it is over double that number (20%) while both state and local spending are both themselves are today over 8% of GDP.

The New Deal was more about dollar devaluation and regulation rather than spending.

All those centrally planned economies that have historically been so prosperous give the lie to the very idea that free markets are the best way to go.

Like the centrally planned U.S. economy during WWII, which defeated Hitler and put a final end to the Great Depression? Government spending exceeded 50% of GDP during WWII, that's a planned economy. (It's very interesting to look at that table and notice the trend in government spending by GDP in Republican vs. Democratic administrations. So much for the "Republicans favor smaller government!" myth.)

Look, I'm generally a free-marketer. (Not a capitalist, mind you, but a free marketer.) But 1) the presence of economic propaganda - regardless of its correctness - on a test that's purportedly about civic government, stinks; and 2) the question of centrally planned economies versus free markets is hardly black and white. For example, calling the USSR's planned economy a "failure" when it took a nation devastated by the sequence of a civil war, WWI, and WWII, and made it the first spacefaring nation and a major world power, is overly simplistic.

Sorry I missed this... wage slavery is constantly getting in the way of brain time.

...nay, a government that takes people's money and gives it to other people...

Taxes are one of the two undeniable realities of modern life.

and those same people who have freely and voluntarily entered into a community wherein they lovingly and willingly give of their possessions/wealth to help one another? Really? You don't see a difference? It ain't charity if I go to jail for not participating (by paying taxes). This sort of help is vastly different from welfare.

There is a difference, but local governments have to have two things: police power and money to operate. You're not going to get around it, unless you believe in some kind of unrealistic utopia. It's up to that locally operated community as to how far they would like to take social services, and I wouldn't even mind a "free" community existing that didn't pay into the government, as long as they were not allowed to use a single government provided resource.

God has specifically abrogated the Old Testament laws regarding food prohibitions (among other things). Read Acts 10:9-16 (read the rest of the chapter if you want to know the much greater application of this change).

Yes... I've read the New Testament, and I understand why the Roman Empire included certain books and excluded others in order to try and unify their empire. Which Bible do you read? Catholic? Mormon? Protestant? Gnostic? Which translation? Depending on which of these you've picked, Mary was a young girl or a virgin, and Judas was either a wicked betrayer or the only person who received the truth of Jesus' teachings... the devil is in the details, so to speak.

From where do you get this information? Are you adding in all the money that states and cities/townships spend on education? Are you aware that the vast majority of spending on public education is local and not from the federal government? If you are just looking at the federal government's budget, you would have a point. That is an inaccurate picture, though.

890 Billion is spent on warfare - federal budget only, including discretionary funds, not including tax breaks for Boeing, Lockheed, Blackwater, Halliburton... and education spending including municipal, state and federal budget and discretionary funds is 795 billion for FY 2007. Had the links somewhere, but lost over the past few days. (One of them was http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/index.php#usgs302)

There are many who want pastors who will tell them for whom to vote and never dig into the Scriptures to find out what God wants. I don't do this and get angry when I hear of other pastors who do.

And yet you both have made the same mistake, which is assuming that the Bible is the word of God in the first place.

That's really the foundational fault of American thought: an inability to engage in a critical analysis that goes beyond scraping the surface of accepted dogma. You may argue how to interpret the Bible as the word of God, but you are unable to consider the possibility that it may be the Qu'ran, or the Bhagavad Gita, or the oral traditions of the Iroquois...

Because I'm lazy. I couldn't find a convenient chart to average that went further back than Wikipedia's. But if you'd like to see more info, I spent some more time digging and found a chart of the national debt back to 1951, a graph of government spending, and a chart of GDP change.

Also, here is a list of the US unemployment rate month-by-month.

It is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are the big spenders.

While it is true that the GOP has done little to reduce spending, keep in mind they are now in the minority in Congress, yet FY 2008 Federal spending will be at least $200 billion more than FY 2007 spending, a 7% increase. Or in other terms, FY 2007 Federal Spending was 19.976% of GDP, and FY 2008 spending will be 20.482% of GDP.

I'm sure Democrats will raise taxes when possible. I doubt they will reduce spending.

For more info, see US Government Spending.com

to summarize: only 21.6% went to the protection of the U.S. whereas well over 60% went to social programs

That's only the Federal side, this site tracks spending by Federal, State, and Local govenments.

Actual FY2007 defense spending was $655 billion, on government spending (at all levels) of $4.9 trillion, or 13.4% of spending by all US governments.

Of course, I'd still prefer defense spending to be less, but clearly the biggest outlays of US governments are Pensions (mainly Social Security), Health Care, and Education, in that order.

If you include Federal, state, and local government spending NASA is more like 0.3% of all government outlays, or 0.1% of total US GDP.

Are you American? If so, write to your representatives and let them know that you prioritize NASA.

"NASA's current FY 2008 budget of $17.318 billion represents about 0.6% of the $2.9 trillion United States federal budget."

If you include Federal, state, and local government spending NASA is more like 0.3% of all government outlays, or 0.1% of total US GDP.

Actually, if you include the entire US government (not just the federal government), defense spending (including war spending and veteran spending) is 14.3% of the total budget:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

Get back to me when the government puts a decent size fraction of what they spend on the military into energy research, healthcare, education and career retraining.

They already do spend a "decent size fraction" on the things you mention:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

* Military spending: $730.8 billion
* Education spending: $848.2 billion
* Health care spending: $925.0 billion