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Obama Wants Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus
damn_registrars writes "President-elect Barack Obama announced in his radio address that his administration's economic stimulus package will include investing in computers and broadband for education. 'To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.'
He also said it is 'unacceptable' that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption." No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.
Yeah, sure will provide a ton of jobs to the Chinese who manufacture these things.
Not that I believe investing in education is bad, but passing it off as an economic stimulus is disingenuous.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Was that really necessary to get the story across?
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
It is a fallacy that you need computers in schools. Teach the kids reading, writing and math skills, the rest can come later. Computers are a drain on schools with already tight budgets. We went to moon with engineers and scientists who did not have computers.
Conservative, mod down for violating
"To help our children compete in a 21st century economy"
It's bad enough that I have to compete with cheap "offshore" labor, now I gotta compete against someone willing to work for pokemon cards??
It would be great if the local cable or phone company could run their lines just 1 block further from my nearest neighbor so I could get broadband.
Maybe Obama can make it happen!
You're nothing; like me.
He also wants to use broadband for health care facilities.
Since I know that most of you don't RTFA and the summary is lacking that point, I figured I'd point it out.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Well... you are on /. after all.
Computers are a huge distractions and in many cases reduce productivity.
love is just extroverted narcissism
In grade school, we had a handful of Apple IIs (for AppleWorks, Oregeon Trail, Reader rabbit, and a few other educational titles). In high school, the library had a couple computers for the card catalog and CD-ROM encyclopedia, and there were a couple GW Basic/word processing rooms. So why do students need the internet for learning? Wikipedia is nice, but most schools are (rightfully) banning it. Instead of teaching math, should they just give out calculators and provide training for how to press the buttons on a McRegister? If people are graduating high school with a 6th grade level education, all the broadband in the world won't help them.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.
Slashdot: News For Nerds (That Can Never Be Happy About Anything)
I thought he was going to keep our taxes low. Bring the troops home, like you said you would. THEN we'll talk about some big government spending.
Punch drunk, and without bail.
I saw an interview on CSPAN this morning with a representative of the Entertainment Software Association. Aside from the predictable anti-piracy, DRM stuff one thing he was calling for surprised me--increased broadband deployment. But the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense. Deploying software via broadband instead of old-fashioned discs means that you not only have something theat's more piracy resistant, but also can't be resold (eliminating the secondary market completely, long the dream of the various entertainment industries).
So I'm a little wary of the true motivations of Obama's call here. After all, some of his biggest fundraisers were from the Hollywood studios. I would hate to see increased broadband merely serve as a precursor to the end of physical media sales, where to consumer no longer "owns" their movies/music/software.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The only problem with this is that according to the OECD ratings on where the best 21st Century Schools are its mainly around Finland and Scandinavia, South Korea and Japan none of which leave education in the hands of back-water local folks who can dictate "no evolution" or its ilk.
Education isn't a federal problem and giving people laptops won't solve it. Unless Obama is planning on shifting to Federal control of education then this really is just lipstick on a pig. Broadband adoption is at least some way federally regulated via the FCC but throwing money at the Cable Cabal won't mean better competition an thus better value it will just mean better profits.
Fix the basics, then throw the money.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
How many people here are truly opposed to some sort of filtering in computers in school? While the idea of some sort of imposed filter on my internet connection at home is very bothersome to me, I don't have a problem with attempts to keep inappropriate material off of computers in schools.
My biggest concern about it would be that generally the filtering systems aren't that hard to work around, so hopefully the school systems won't waste money buying into a really expensive product that ends up not working any better than a cheaper alternative.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
1. Take a bunch of money out of the economy.
2. Shuffle it though an inefficient bureaucracy .
3. Put what remains back into the economy.
4. ???
5. Economic recovery.
This is the same argument folks in the US use to justify the lack of public transport.
The fact is that the US is 80% urban and suburban, so getting decent services to those folks (in both broadband and public transport) shouldn't be a problem. What is the problem, with internet connectivity anyway, is the deeply entrenched telecoms companies with their local monopolies.
exactly. but i remember hearing a story in the late 90s about the guy who founded Qwest was heir to a railroad company or something. basically, he sold off all the land around the tracks except for a certain number of feet on either side of the tracks. the trains were then outfitted with something that would automatically lay fiber.
this could be total crap, but i don't know.
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
I think its a good idea to bring it up. You can bet any company that gets a contract to provide these services will try to sneak it in. Make it an issue before they start rolling it out.
... government dollars come with government strings attached.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Well, despite being an Obama supporter (as am I), Taco is being pragmatic. Eric Holden could be his Attorney General, and he's all for net censorship. Plus this is the Democrats we're talking about; the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
The goal should be to give one computer to each and every student and have a free network full of free information. China is not an excuse to avoid that. The economics of the result will be tremendous and dwarf the pety costs involved. It will create greater cultural wealth for everyone, greater oportunities and greater ability to exploit those oportunities.
Such goals can only be achieved in freedom. Indiana shows that free software is cheaper and a free network is also required for knowledge to really flow. Napster showed that we can have any piece of culture available for the trivial cost of allowing people to share. Wikipedia and the internet archive show that people are ready, willing and able to create works and share them without the "protection" of copyright.
I work with lots of good Chinese and Indian software engineers. Most never saw a computer before University. They did have a rigorous and old-fashioned education, with lots of math and logic.
I also know talented hackers who got into programming as kids/teenagers, and benefited from the fast dev cycle of Apples, TRS-80s, etc.
But giving kids the latest and greatest computers is not going to help anything. The important stuff can be learned on a 486.
Chinese and Indian schools value the academic achievers, while American schools value the funny, the athletic and the socially gifted. That is why those countries are beating us.
I would have to say that it is a nice turn around to start stimulating the economy in terms of creating more jobs rather than just throwing money at everyone. Connecting more schools, libraries, and hospitals to the internet will surely create more jobs. How will net neutrality opponents factor into this? Will there be more protection if the government forges its way into connecting everyone?
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - Nietzche
1. You got the wrong guy, that's Bush Jr.
2. You forgot to post anon.
3. WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR MOVIE!*
* In order of least-caring first:
1. It's Filipino (why should I care? reverse racism?)
2. in NYC (why does the location matter for such a film?
3. Low Budget (why on earth would you advertise that?)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Your a idiot.
Hoover tried protectionism. Look up the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. It wasn't increased spending... it was protectionism and the dustbowl that made the Global recession so bad.
We have this thing called a brain. It helps us decide how to apply our resources (our time, money, etc) to what we value. Sometimes we're good at applying our resources and sometimes we aren't. Sometimes we are a little wasteful.
We have this thing called a government. It's notoriously wasteful when applying our resources. And it is more and more defining the things that we should value for us. How about we get to keep our money and decide what is good or not good for our own families?
Use that money to give cash payouts to the teachers (not the schools) whose kids have the greatest degree of improvement in their region, with "improvement" defined as a conrete metric. Here in Baltimore, for example, the city has a graduation rate of approximately 40%, and our literacy rate is also very low. Stupid investments in "broadband" and "computers" won't help these kids, but highly incented teachers just might. The teachers' unions would never stand for it (in fact they'd label it discriminatory), but you need highly skilled, motivated people to reach these kids on a one-on-one basis. If cash can attract the best folks for the job, I say go for it. They've tried everything else here for decades, including paying the students themselves for good grades, and nothing has worked.
Have them log into Monster.com, et al, and see what the salaries are for various fields, including jobs for those with a "mere diploma", and they will become more interested in College Prep and getting good grades.
So, we go from a guy who cuts taxes and then over-spends to a guy who won't cut taxes but still over-spends. Time will tell, but I have a feeling that Obama's spending will exceed Bush's, just as George "Smaller Government" Bush's exceeded Clinton's. I have a feeling Obama's will be roughly in proportion to the difference in their tax policies. I suppose this is an improvement. Kinda.
What will it take for the electorate to become too ashamed (or at least angry) to keep voting for these people? To paraphrase Penn Jillette, if we keep voting for the lesser of two evils and we're just going to keep getting evil.
-Peter
No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.
I analyze water flow patterns as it relates to insurance risk for a living... a mathematical job to be sure. When calculating the trajectory of a projected river overflow, I grab my scientific calculator, and I think back in sympathy for my 4th grade self, who was tortured by moronic ciriculum focused on creating mindless times table memorization, which I could not do...
The main advantage humans have over other animals is that our history and our technology make it possible to learn in one lifetime what could not otherwise be possible in a hundred lifetimes. "Back to basics" is how humanity self-destructs. Give them a pile of computers, have them teach the teacher.
To be honest, *private* school didn't help me. (I don't think I'm qualified to speak for everyone else who attended my school. I'm not that familiar with how the rest of their lives worked out for them.)
I attended a private school between 7th. grade and sophmore year of high school. Today, looking back, I can safely say those were 4 of the worst years of my life. The combination of faculty who insisted on running things in a fascist military style, while often doing a questionable job of teaching the material, plus the abundance of "spoiled, rich kids" did nothing for me. Switching to a public school, after MUCH begging and pleading to my parents, was the BEST move I made.
The school systems DO waste a lot of people's time and money. I just don't think it's always fair to single out "public schools" as the only problems. Private schools currently have the ability to make themselves look good "on paper" by refusing or kicking out anyone who doesn't help them keep an artificially good image. They also tend to hide behind their religious affiliations. (EG. "Come on now, Johnny. Your school can't be THAT bad! You're being taught by Catholic brothers!")
Was that really necessary to get the story across?
Probably not. I was thinking the same thing. What, did subby vote for McCain? :p
A student's diet and sleeping habits are much more important than having a computer with broadband. Can we get a stimulus that promises a well-balanced diet and a Posturepedic bed for all??
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
There is nothing in here that will help anyone. The failure has only begun.
Hoover Dam, anyone? You may want to check out The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. She lists in detail with quotes the big spending projects of Hoover and FDR meant to stimulate the economy, and the result these projects had on the economy.
When Obama announced that he was going to start the largest public works program since the Interstate system, I thought he might be talking about an interstate high speed rail network.
Though, after looking through his proposal, I don't see anything about high speed trains. I think a train network would kill many birds with one stone:
- it would provide a fast alternative to flying, which I hate.
- it would cut down on carbon emissions since trains are much more efficient than cars or planes.
- it could do for the country what the interstate system did in the last half of the last century.
- it would create lots of jobs spread out across the country
Until the FCC changes the definition of "broadband" to at the very least 100mbits; it won't matter how many billions we throw at the problem. By doing that; I can imagine you'd see companies like comcast rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 exponentially faster than they are doing now. Verizon as well would be forced to turn it up; or be forced to drop the all powerful "Broadband/High Speed Internet" from their marketing.
If this was a story about Bush no one would be complaining. But Messiah Obama, on the other hand... he's untouchable.
He also said it is "unacceptable" that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption.
Why, because it hurts our ego? How come he isn't asking why we are 15th in broadband adoption? Is there an untapped market out there where the broadband companies are too stupid to realize the cost-benefit analysis says they should expand?
And where are we getting the money for this, again?
You replied to the wrong guy. I'm O('_')O_BUSH. You meant to send that reply to CTS (circletimessquare) who is a notorious troll here and on other sites.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Not sure about trains outfitted with automatic fiber laying machinery, but I know about specially made train cars that lay fiber. The nice thing about railroads and fiber is that at the turn of last century, railroads were giving large swaths of right of way for running tracks from town to town. So the railroads usually connect towns together, the same towns that are perhaps wanting digital connectivity. Also, many lines used to have multi track routes, and these have been reduced to reduce maintenane and then you have wide areas where you can lay fiber without much fear of running into many obstacles. This allows easier connections of towns by running cables along the railroad right of way.
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
No, I believe you basically heard correctly. I remember that being one of Qwest's competitive advantages at the time they got started. When everyone else was stuck negotiating for rights to use other people's land to place their fiber cabling, Qwest could usually just use the "right of way" land along the sides of the train tracks instead.
I think in the end though, it didn't change much of anything for the "end user/customer". Eventually, the big telcos all found ways to get things cabled up where they wanted to cable them up. Qwest might have gotten it done for less money initially, but they all have similar costs of operation and pricing models today.
The problem in US schools is engagement. Computers will not magically solve that.
That's engagement by both students and parents, BTW.
It might inspire some to continue education and work harder, but, quite honestly, most of the students won't even care. They will think (in typical human thought patterns), "I'm different. I *do* deserve to get paid more than all those other schmucks." Or, in a typical (irresponsible) pattern of your average high school student, they'll think, "Meh. It doesn't matter. I'll be fine. It always works out."
Either way, I don't think your idea will work as well as it would appear at first glance.
Did you miss the (rather conspicuous) use of the word "broadband"? Our network infrastructure sucks quite badly, and if he's talking about upgrading it, that's a lot of domestic blue-collar jobs.
If POBE is really serious, he'll look at giving us real broadband, like the premises fibre that Korean consumers enjoy. If he does that, Corning will have to de-mothball a factory or two, and a lot of people will be needed to dig ditches and pull cable. Sounds pretty stimulating to me.
Growing up, I was greatly helped by the teachers in my public school. My third grade teacher for noticing how I aced the reading test and decided to give me the advanced reading test. I aced that one also. I credit her for putting me on a track where I enjoyed learning instead of being frustrated in school. It is quite possible that all of my success in life could be traced back to her in some form.
Since public school helped me, I guess your "never helped anybody" claim is false.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Oh my Gosh. Here I am the most right wing guy on slashdot and I'm about to go and defend Obama's proposals for infrastructure spending in general, and national broadband and school computing in particular.
a. ubiquity creates new industries. If broadband is something nearly everyone has in the USA, then, you have a much easier time making a business case for a new kind of service. The USA has built railroads with federal help before, knowing that putting railroads would pump the economy, and it did. Then, roads did the same thing. Broadband won't be any different.
b. computers in schools works. Yes, a lot of kids play games on school computers but there will be those kids who are not as well off but interested in learning to program that will use them. I know I'm grateful to all the computer stores and schools back in the 1980s that let me learn programming in the lab and I think that there's other kids like me out there.
Note that I wouldn't restrict this to just computers. I would like to see schools have shop classes with real presses, CNC machines, and other tools of the art so that kids can get some hands on real things prior to joining the real world.
c. My stock retort to other conservatives that would oppose this government spending would be, you had no problem spending 2.5T on building schools and broadband in Iraq, but why can't you support that in the USA?
d. Hands on experience in computing and manufacturing is a national security issue. The USA needs to know how to manufacture its own goods. I would offer as exhibit A, World War II. It's handy for national security when you have a ton of manufacturing centers that can be quickly converted to produce for wartime needs. Indeed, has the USA had a better manufacturing base, maybe we wouldn't have had to wait for five years and four thousand dead to get decent armoured vehicles into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By extension, those who pine for the old cold war days with Russian and for a stronger NATO should also be reminded that a part of our military obligation to our alliance partners is to have an economy capable of sustaining manufacturing in the event our allied economies are destroyed. It benefits Europe if the USA is capable of manufacturing its own products as that know-how can be shared with the continent.
So yeah, I think Obama's on the right track with a big infrastructure stimulus. I think Republicans would be better suited to argue what to build, rather than not to build at all, given that they already blew several times Obama's figure on rebuilding Iraq.
This is my sig.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883617.html
Please shut up. You have no clue what you're talking about. It's almost like you need an education. While education is part of the doctrinal system, the reality is that you have more chance of success at whatever you're doing whether the degree gets you a foot in the door or if you meet other people in your field and develop relationships. Even without all that, you typically make more money with a higher education. These facts escape you because you are too lazy to learn before speaking.
Almost every single technological breakthrough has occurred where? In government or university research labs funded by the state. You would not be typing on a computer and sending a message through the internet without it. The Human Genome Project was a government research program. Every time you take a flight you're riding in a modified bomber, researched with government funds.
So with all due respect, shut the fuck up. Really. Your ignorance is the problem, not spending money on education.
Actually teach kids about business and how to balance their checkbooks and that credit cards =! income. Make business math a requirement in high school, not something you relegate the dumb kids to who cannot do calculus and need a credit. If we want our kids to learn how to compete in the 21st century economy, we have to teach them on what "compete" and "economy" mean.
My guess is that this initiative, should Obama get it enacted, will help pad the bottom lines of the current broadband monopolists (hey! Now they get their own government bailout!), but will have little effect otherwise.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Public school never helped anybody.
Ridiculous. You honestly think that every single person who went through the public school system is no better off than if they had received no education at all?
I went to a private elementary school, public high school, and public university. The public university was by far the most useful of the three. The other two are on roughly equal footing as "somewhat decent". They both wasted enormous amounts of time but they did provide some useful things in return.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
My wife is a HS English teacher in Washington state. If Obama want to seriously help schools, priority 1 should be to put a bullet in Bush's collossal screw up that is "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). It's too flawed to "fix" other than flat out removal. Bush has been too stupid to admit it's a failure and correct it (just like everything else he's done), so this is the only option.
Next, in Washington state there's a bill called the Becca bill that requires the little monsters to be contained by the state in schools up until age 18 because some stupid brat ran away from school and got herself killed. Unfortunately, this also means that kids that would rather quit and go jockey a McRegister between times passing the bong are instead required to stay in school and suck up resources they don't care about. Get rid of this in Washington state (and similar laws in other states) and teachers can look the kids in the eye and tell them to leave and come back when (if) they care about learning something.
Then, get back to helping the kids that are going to do something with themselves.
Last but not least, get rid of the stupid state teaching certificates in all 50 flavors. There's a shockingly fantastic National Board Certification (federal gov't too... go figure!) program that uses a peer evaluation system to focus teachers on becoming good teachers IN PRACTICE in their own environment. My wife did this certification and is now contributing to the mentoring portion. Interestingly enough, teachers who can't "reach these keeds" don't cut it in these programs because it requires them to learn, grow, and be self-reflective about how they teach and continue to grow, unlike the the rubber stamp Master's degree (a.k.a "Masters in Ed.") programs that set teachers up for either a check-mark in the "has masters" box and unwarranted pay raise or a future as yet another worthless administrator (and a MUCH greater unwarranted pay raise).
Bottom line, schools need more funding to train and retain good teachers. "Education" has a latin root word "educare" meaning "to bring out". It's not about throwing stuff at kids and hoping it sticks. It's about bringing out the best. You've never needed broadband or computers to do that.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area that had solid public schools. I learned plenty from them, and generally had a positive experience.
And then I guess I was lucky with my high school private school experience as well. While they were certainly more strict when someone got out of line, and there were a handful of the snobbish rich kids, overall I look back pretty fondly on the experience. I had decent teachers, including some who I think really genuinely cared about me as a student and a person, students were given an amount of personal freedom well beyond anything I ever had in public school(although to be fair, I never attended a public high school, so maybe it's more about age).
I think the important point is that there are good schools and bad schools, and neither private nor public have a monopoly on any level of quality. One way or the other is not the solution.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Ok, so we're low on the list of the best educated. What are those high on the list doing? I'd really like to see where and how technology is entering the schools in other countries that are doing better than us. I know that social values count a lot towards a student's education and, frankly, ours sucks. We also need to get the parents involved again. Does this take the place of technology in the school room?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not sold on technology in the classroom. We never had computers in each classroom when I went to school (I'm a 1991 HS graduate) but I had one at home and I learned tons more from my home computing than my schooling. But I also think that was a mark of the times. I honestly don't know if that would work today.
As for broadband? I see Obama's interest in getting broadband to everyone as a gateway to the government getting their fingers into every broadband connection nation wide. If there will be government money spent on the project that means that they will have some level of oversight. And with oversight comes the likelihood of the government writing in some clauses from which they will benefit in some fashion. Keep their actions on the radar if Obama does get a footing for this kind of thing on his budget and in the legislature.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
No, my parent is CTS. Rendering bug?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I agree that private schools often can also be very badly run. I attended private school from k-7th grade. It was fairly decent until 7th grade in which I felt like everyone else was a year behind me. I then switched to public in 8th and it returned to a much better experience. It seems regardless of the type (public/private) it all depends on the particular teachers and somewhat how a school is run. So summarily assuming public schools are worse can always be shown to not always be true.
Installing advanced broadband in schools and hospitals is similar to a plan being implemented in Canada for rolling out advanced broadband nationwide. (By advanced broadband, I mean gigabit or better, bidirectional.)
Connecting public facilities provides an infrastructure that can later be extended to homes and small businesses. New York State, under a project that involved Cornell University, either studied or actually implemented a multi-school-district network that allows enriched and advanced courses to be taught remotely that could not be justified for an individual school.
Broadband installation in hospitals enables telemedicine, in which expert remote consultation is available for difficult cases, and lays the groundwork for installing an advanced hospital information system network. Such a network would cut costs and improve performance in medicine. I've been told there are two excellent hospital information systems in existence, one developed by Kaiser and the other developed by the Veterans Administration and available as open source software.
Finally, someone is listening to what has been discussed for many years and is working to get it done.
No, YOU'RE an idiot :-)
What software exists to provide good computerized education?
I'm talking about software that does more than just replace pen and paper. Scantron-on-computer is -not- computerized education.
As an idea of what I'm talking about, iKnow.co.jp provides Japanese vocabulary (plus English to Japanese, and other languages as well) in a format that would not work well with just pen and paper. It -could- be done with notecards and some strict rules about how to use them, but would take more time to organize and maintain. The scheduling of when to study would also be tricky on paper.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
...why don't you give us teachers:
--Money for books and basic school supplies (paper, binders, text books).
--Salary budgets so we can have more than one specialist (Gym, Music, Art, reading) per 4 elementary schools. These specialists spend their lives going from one school to the next
--Librarians. Most in our district were 'let go' due to budgetary reasons and now parents/volunteers are doing the work. Parents/volunteers are no replacement for someone with 20yrs of experience as a librarian.
--Raises so we can live within 30miles of our school (same goes for Firefighters and Police officers).
I don't need computers when I'm teaching YOUR kids how to read and write, when I barely have enough for books and have to buy school supplies (dry erase markers, paper, binders) out of my own pocket.
Obama is talking about broadband because it's "Sexy". It wouldn't get any attention if he said, "I'm going to make sure all of our teachers have enough textbooks, paper and supplies to teach our kids how to read, write and do arithmetic." Why doesn't he say this, because schools are funded at the state level.... and the towns/states referendums for tax increases to pay for this equipment (books/pencils) are voted down, year after year. The only schools around here that have sufficient supplies are in the higher income towns because the parents are willing to donate $5000....
So y'all quit your yapping.
Or does free government broadband smell and taste like free government cheese?
Ick.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Is there a school in the country that doesn't have computers and internet access?
Do you really think that there's a public school somewhere that has one old 486 that the whole class crowds around to access the internet via a 1200 baud modem?
I call BULLSHIT!
WTF? Over?
"Eric Holden could be his Attorney General"
One assumes you mean Eric Holder, and short of finding pictures of him fucking his dog, he's in.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Yeah, everyone always has a double standard. It's human. I do totally agree with you and I don't think your comment should be labeled as troll, Obama supporters are insecure.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
Well, there was that whole thing about illegal wiretapping of US citizens bit... So it wouldn't be so much as a complaint but more of a "What? Again?!" would it?
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
So let the government lay down lots of "last mile" high-speed fiber connections to every home and business in the country and put multiplexers into the ground at street level (the most costly and diffuse part of the network). Existing telcos can then take care of traffic to and from those multiplexers.
Oh yes, and let the government connect every last village and county to the data-communication grid by optical fiber. No matter how remote. How about being no. 1 again instead of no. 15?
I think this would be one of the more worthwhile stimulation packages.
Schools teach more that just math, reading and writing... ...
Schools needs to teach how to use computers too... Schools educates kids how to interact as a part of society. I think adults who can type on a keyboard, have bigger issues, than those who can't write an entire sentence grammatically correct...
Today, you can't even get a monkey job at a factory unless you can count and type the number of totally identical items you've produced any given day
Well, viewed generously, not until fairly late in the 1929-1933 recession, in the immediate wake of the 1929 crash he didn't do much, in 1930 he favored fairly moderate federal stimulus while asking state and local government to provide more stimulus, later he tried more significant stimulus (though still focussed on direct aid to capital with some public works), but the recession that started in 1929 didn't turn around until after Roosevelt began truly massive stimulus combined with more aggressive bank regulation to restore confidence in institutions. (Though, at least arguably, the more significant stimulus of the Hoover attempted toward the end, did play a big role, since the trough wasn't far into Roosevelt's efforts.)
One might expect that people now would prefer not to have a four year recession that even another four subsequent years of strong top-line growth will still leave overall conditions so bad that it'll be called a "depression".
They will probably never learn that because nothing so simple is true. Whether government spending has a stimulative effect or not depends on whether the spending is in an area where the funds will have a higher velocity in the domestic economy than wherever the funds were taken from (whether taxed, borrowed, or transferred from other government spending.)
If wealthy Americans have a low marginal propensity to spend, and are investing largely overseas, then taxing them and spending on labor intensive projects in the domestic economy that have their own economic utility and where most of the workforce will have a high marginal propensity to spend on goods that are supplied domestically (at least in the immediate sense, e.g., at retail) is likely to have a stimulative effect. Even more stimulative, if economic conditions have driven down direct foreign investment in US private capital markets, is borrowing money from abroad for the same purpose.
OTOH, taxing people with a higher marginal propensity to spend and transferring funds to Americans with a lower marginal proposenity to spend (as, in effect, the massive bank bailouts with little control on use have done) is exactly the opposite of stimulative.
And this accomplishes what, exactly, for education? Have all the computers thrown at education in the past accomplished anything? What does the broadband do for the students? Am I the only one asking these questions?
Computers in schools have been a colossal waste of money.
Perhaps the stimulus needs to be geared toward proper teachers because it's the curriculum that is important. One can learn critical thinking skills by learning programming algorithms with a BASIC language (pun intended), and typing proficiency rather than a particular word processor.
As for computers, even as a CS major we used shared computer labs. Most schools today already have enough PCs spread around classrooms to make a substantial computer lab or two, and any PC older than 5 years old is perfectly good for both tasks, and are being given away for free everywhere.
The Hoover Dam was first proposed, by Hoover, granted, in 1922. His predecessor as President, Calvin Coolidge, signed the bill authorizing it in 1928; it was never a depression recovery project per se, the money had already been allocated before there was a Depression.
Contra Amity "You're all a bunch of whiners" Shlaes, who's work has been effectively discredited by anyone who cared to think about it for five minutes.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
who's work has been effectively discredited by anyone who cared to think about it for five minutes.
And I can say the same for Paul "Have Your Cake And Eat It Too" Krugman.
Most? Really? I don't think so... An immigrant construction worker I read about recently (in Economist, I think), was making $1000 per week, sending $600 per month to his wife and children back home. Hardly "most".
(Because of the economic downturn, according to the article, the guy's last transfer was only $100.)
Would you be able to substantiate your statement? Thanks...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It would be wrong to assume that in the absence of public schools, you would fail to interact with adults. Of course, most of my positive role-models came from the BSA, and I am thankful for that. Only a couple of my teachers helped me (and they were a big help) but those people would be working with kids anyway.
And the public school system burns these well-meaning people out very quickly, because they are there to help people and make a difference, but the school bureaucracy and teachers unions and administration and parent groups get in the way and make it (mostly) impossible.
What I should have said is the institution of public school never helped anybody. You can still have a positive experience in public school, as long as the school doesn't get in the way.
Haircuts? A chicken in every pot? Forty acres for every father? Since you're already giving the country away, why stop there?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'd be happy if Obama kept to his word. People voted him in on the premise that he would do certain things.
I guess I shouldn't have expected any different from a politician.
Neither you nor Taco provided any citation for this outlandish claim.
Perhaps they assumed you read this when it was originally posted?
I though the election was over?? Wait, never mind, he has already starting running for 2012.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Then again there is that whole thing about leaving babies to die that somehow survived abortion....
I know which one I think is worse.
Now to be back on topic.
HOW THE HELL CAN WE AFFORD THIS? This isn't the time to have more social programs? Does anyone here think that forcing this upon our kids and having the government run broadband is a good idea? Lets see, what operating system do you think they will all run? Think Apple, Linux LOL! So much for selection. This smells bad of payoffs.
Last time I checked Obama has voted for a massive bailout of the banking system and now will "probably" vote to bailout the auto industry. So NOW he wants to start another social program? Do we really want to saddle ourselves with more debt? This looks like a solution in search of a problem. We do have massive problems with some of our public schools but throwing laptops at them isn't going to help them at all.
I hope and pray Obama isn't that stupid to think that this idea would work, however I get the feeling this is only the beginning of bad ideas to come.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
So people are compelled to pay for schools that may or may not work? I don't want to throw my money away, much less use it to send children to schools which are actually damaging to them.
we cant even seem to do that right... BTW basics include reading, math, history, and civics...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
It was weird. I read that and thought I had stumbled on to Fox News by mistake. My bad.
I will agree that good teachers tend to get burned out quickly. My wife is/was a teacher and she saw plenty of good first year teachers dropping out of the teaching profession in their second year. She's a stay at home mom now because we figured that her salary minus daycare for our two boys would mean she'd be taking home less than $4K per year. And for that $4K, she would need to work 10 hours per day, take work home with her (grading, lesson planning, etc) and would need to deal with administrators and parents making her life a living hell. Which is a shame because she was one of the good teachers. It just wasn't worth it financially for her to continue. She's have earned more per hour worked flipping burgers at McDonald's.
For the record, she was in a private school. An all-girl's Catholic middle school. A year after she left (after our second son was born), she heard that a long-time teacher left the school. Then, during a visit, she heard some parents patting themselves on the back for forcing that teacher out and planning the next one to target. She concluded that she had left at just the right time.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Of course. With only one small, relatively unobtrusive ad at the top of the page, it takes all of the trolling and flaming elicited by that baiting for /. to rake in the ad revenue. ;)
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Who pays?
But the quotations & essays R 3x more than what he actually promised & what he promised hasn't happened.
Thank God we can go back to the 90s when my money was taken from me and given to the administration's cronies 'for the children' - I've gotten so tired of the 00s and 'fight the terrorists'. Maybe we should go retro back to the 80s and 'the war on drugs' ...
That has nothing to do with it being public, and everything to do with it being a university.
I never said otherwise. I am not claiming that "public" is somehow magically good, merely that it is not automatically bad.
Do you think it was worth all the time and money you spent?
Yes, absolutely. I learned a great deal that I never would have on my own.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Switching to a public school, after MUCH begging and pleading to my parents, was the BEST move I made.
I'm glad that you were able to have a good experience in one of America's public schools. Maybe you should tell your story to the president elect. Guess where he is sending (and has always sent) his kids?
And before anyone screams "Security!" at the top of your lungs, I can't imagine the security problems in the D.C. public schools are any worse than the University of Texas, and both Bush girls graduated from there.
I attended Catholic elementary schoo and was lucky enough to get a chance to to attendrom the top public high school in the country by some measures. It was a governor's school and there were admittance requirements so I was not guaranteed to get in. If I didn't, I would have went to the Catholic high school. I am obviously glad I made it in the governor's school.
But my experience is probably exceptional. In many locations, the public schools are simply abysmal and no sane parent is going to send their kids there. The New Orleans area is particular example. And if you ask our president elect, I'm sure he would add Chicago and D.C. to that list. At least in hushed, private conversation.
But, but, but throwing more money and computers will magically fix the system, won't it? You mean all those administrators and unions who never seemed to give a shit about the students before will not suddenly start caring because Obama waved his +5 Charisma wand across the arc of the moral universe? The deuce you say!
Having a computer in the classroom adds nothing and makes things much more labour intensive than it simplifies. The only real task its suited for in lower classes is repetetive practice like geography, simple math and learning words for some languages. For languages with many different ways of bending words its utter useless. Its also a pretty expensive library if you add add up the cost of the computers for the whole school.
In sweden many computers is nothing more than very expensive typewriters and libraries. Some old worn out applications for tutoring exists but they are very old and written mainly for win 3.11 and such fancy modern systems.
The problem as i see it is that nobody has written anything even remotely able to substitute a good teacher in any field. As of today a computer can only be a tool for students once they already master pen and paper and other basic skills.
The sad part is that nobody has done any extensive study in a computer aided classrooms and really found out if there infact are any benefits. Its a huge gamble with generations of kids without anyone knowing what they are doing.
My view is that computers should come last on every list. In no way should computers be more important than good teachers, good study materials and a nice calm enviroment for the kids.
HTTP/1.1 400
They really do.
The overhead of private health insurers averages 35%. The overhead of Medicare is 3%.
The median tuition for their member private day schools in 2005-2006 in the United States was close to $14,000 for grades 1 to 3, $15,000 for grades 6 to 8 and $16,600 for grades 9 to 12. Public schools average cost per student is $13340, and they take everyone, including the very expensive special-needs kids.
The problem with government run programs is not that they're inefficient. They're nearly always more efficient, because they don't have to make profit, and culturally it's unacceptable for the chief officers to self-deal like US CEOs do.
The real problem with government programs is that they're inflexible and rarely innovative. Which means they should only be used for industries for which there is a known, steady, need: Libraries, Schools, Roads, Bridges, Power, Healthcare, a bare-minimum forced retirement savings program (Social Security). Everything else should be done privately.
Oh, I know. Taco did his snark, and you were modded +5 Insightful, because of the Republican/Libertarian cult of the CEO. But just remember that if you're ideology actually worked, Obama wouldn't have to be working so hard to bail us out of the economic mess you got us into.
Look, this isn't like a degree in science or
engineering. If extremely lucky, you might get
that for the undergraduate, but generally it's
something lame.
The "master's degree" is some wanking bullshit
that involves teaching theory dogma, much of
which has actually been proven wrong in proper
scientific study.
Teachers generally struggle to do something as
simple as the addition of fractions with
different denominators. A decent number of
them are also unable to write properly.
Teachers are the people who sucked too much to
get good jobs. Thus they teach, which is a
fairly bad job. (when your workplace has people
who curse you and threaten you, it's NOT good)
Short answer: We can't. We can't really afford anything at this juncture.
Long answer: We can. There are certain things that private industry absolutely sucks at doing. This is simply the federal government stepping in to do for itself what it should've done a long time ago.
I agree that the bailout sucks, though it seems like a necessary evil at this point. (If the banking system fails, we're really fucked.) Instead, try blaming the people who made the whole thing necessary in the first place.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Yea, I think so. :)
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Maybe you should talk to your administration and union before asking ME for more money.
Why, in addition to my property taxes, do I have to provide a mandatory school supply list designed to keep the teacher in chalk AND kids who can't afford to buy their own crap? I give to charity in church. "charity" in public school is just a hidden tax.
Four years ago when my local school board was crying for more money, I attended one of their open hearings. I asked quite simply, have you done any auditing internal or external of current spending. The answer was 'no'. The referendum didn't pass. Yet, the darn fire department got their first new truck in 20 years (ok, 18, but still).
In exchange for higher pay, are you willing to work 8 hours a day doing community service in the summer? The union screamed high holy murder when this was suggested.
In summary, look in before out. You might find a more receptive crowd around election time if you can demonstrate real belt tightening and real reform efforts aimed at the primary mission of educating children instead of bureaucracy growing and union power building.
Of course, I know you specifically are not the root of evil, but as a poster child simply asking for more money is NOT the way to go.
Didn't we already give large wads of cash to the private sector for a backbone that never materialized?
The big problem is that states are allowed to
set the testing content and standards. That's
a giant hole. States can choose tests that are
way too easy, and many have done exactly that.
States can also choose tests that are unrelated
to what kids need to learn.
With proper tests, teaching to the test is
equivalent to the best teaching. It's also
measurable, allowing us to discard teachers
who do a terrible job. (might also require
making the union contracts invalid by law;
firing a bad teacher is nearly impossible)
that leaves American workers free to, you know, do the thinking that's required to make these products
The flaw in your line of reasoning is that, you assume that somehow the American worker can think better than his Chinese counterpart. It's the height of hubris to build America into this "knowledge" economy and let manufacturing go to do it, because, Chinese people are just as smart as we are.
when in fact government can only redistribute wealth from productive uses to unproductive ones
That's actually not true. The government establishes an infrastructure which allows for wealth to be created. Microsoft could not exist without copyright law as applied to software, and it is the government that created that. Nor could Microsoft exist without a knowledgeable work force to build on... public education is also something government does, and, the government has, since the 1940s, supported the university system as part of a need to beat the germans and then the russians at the tech game. Government is the arteries on which the capillaries of commerce flow.
This is my sig.
we'd probably save billions on tech support costs just a few short years down the line. I dread to think how much money is wasted on trivial calls to the Tech support line that could have been avoided with some simple, basic knowledge such as this.
Isn't it bad enough that our economy is struggling? Just think of all the phone engineers who won't have jobs if no one calls! Oh uh I guess most of them live in India so never mind.
I thought the "Gore tax" on telco land lines was supposed to be spent on computers and broadband for education?
[Insert pithy quote here]
Score:5, Insightful
Here's an idea how to. [tax reductions to everybody]
People not sunken in debt can spend...people in trouble with mortgages can pay them off, etc. Hell, people could invest in the mkt again.
Interesting.
I have an idea. Economics is a science. Come up with different action(able) plans [currently we have yours and Obama's]. Investigate, in a scientific way, what the outcomes of each plan are likely to be. Look at what evidence and theory suggests. Pick the one that, based on evidence and theory, would maximize public benefit. Let ideology be the tiebreaker.
We're geeks, right? We understand science and the value of approaching things scientifically---in particular the value of following the evidence. Let us not let ideology overrule that.
.
Let's hope this plan has the same unlikely happy result.
You know... for kids.
The cost savings associated with a move to Linux in schools should compel interest and acceptance by all levels of education. The monopoly that M$ and Apple have on education is a false and restricting clamp on the dollars and minds of our schools and students.
Now for a game of point-counterpoint:
The economics of the result will be tremendous and dwarf the petty costs involved. It will create [...].
Really? Based in which economic theory and/or evidence do you state this?
Such goals can only be achieved in freedom.
Which freedoms are necessary? Freedom to trade however you like, or freedom from the formation of monopolies? Freedom to route customer packets however you like, or freedom of information?
Napster showed that we can have any piece of culture available for the trivial cost of allowing people to share.
Common sense argues that if we all stop paying musicians and actors, they'll get some other day jobs. A few will do their old job as a hobby, with hobbyist results.
Wikipedia and the internet archive show that people are ready, willing and able to create works and share them without the "protection" of copyright.
Would you be happy with only the works available under a license allowing their redistribution? Would they satisfy your needs?
I want Guitar Hero. I want The Hobbit. I want The Grudge. I want Disturbed. I want a flash plug-in and fast video drivers.
If you hadn't noticed, the original submission implied that Obama would use this for illegal wiretapping. The person I responded to implied that if the same accusation was made of the Bush administration, no one would complain.
First: If that accusation was made of the Bush administration, it would have some basis.
Second: There has been a lot of complaining about it.
Now, about your post. The EVERYBODY PANIC! is much better when you use all caps. If you bother to RTFA:
Obama's plan will include funds to make public buildings more energy efficient, repair roads and bridges and modernize schools. His plan for schools is to repair aging buildings, make them energy efficient and install new computers in classrooms, he said. "To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools,"
You ask how can we afford this and I ask you how can we not? You imply that more social programs will be made but from that statement it seems that he wants to bolster current programs to bring them up-to-date. From what part of that do you draw an conclusion that the money used will have more social programs rather than go to existing programs that already serve the purposes covered in the address? From what part of the address do you come to the conclusion that the government is going to run broadband?
The address in question: President-elect Barack Obama lays out key parts of Economic Recovery Plan.
This looks like a solution in search of a problem. We do have massive problems with some of our public schools
So, do we or do we not have a problem?
but throwing laptops at them isn't going to help them at all.
So, how does "His plan for schools is to repair aging buildings, make them energy efficient and install new computers in classrooms" get morphed into "throwing laptops at them"?
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Spoken like a person who has never driven across the United States. There are regions where you can drive for miles and never see anything except a couple random cows grazing. Comparing this 2500-mile wide federation versus a small country no bigger than Delaware makes ZERO sense. It's like comparing a pumpkin versus a pea... totally illogical.
First, I have driven many times across the US, and while there are huge regions where there's nothing, that's a complete and total red herring with regards to broadband deployment. The only thing those empty regions need is a big fat backbone crossing them to connect the population centers on either side. And our backbone is fine. A lot of it is lying dark simply because it isn't needed, so there's extra capacity there in case we ever fix the situation in the population centers. So the issue of us being a 2500-mile-wide federation is already solved.
Second, we do have sections of the country where the area is as small and the density as high as whatever country you're thinking of, so then what's the excuse? Look at New York City. Here we have 20,000,000 people close enough together that the "wide federation" argument is completely irrelevant, yet still solely considering NYC broadband is pathetic compared to other countries. How could that possibly not be a big enough market? How could the size of the United States possibly be a reason for anemic broadband in New York? Or LA? Or Houston, Dallas, Chicago, and so on and so on.
No. Country size or overall density is not the reason our broadband sucks. Because even when all those factors are resolved, it still sucks.
The enemies of Democracy are
now I gotta compete against someone willing to work for pokemon cards??
Dammit! I thought Black Lotus was a safe investment.
Yeah, I can fabricate a few IRC logs as well...
Boy, you really got them now! Don't like the Microsoft bashing? You have some money on them or something? I don't understand why someone would dedicate so much time to making all this stuff up or tracking all this down to discredit a few accounts unless they had a financial stake in it. It's simply not worth the time.
But go on, waste your time, hide behind the coward's mark... Eventually (we hope) you'll get sick and tired of it and grow up.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Sniff...I'm so proud of you, stork. But you do realize you're going to have to give up your wingnut merit badge for being rational, right?
I'll keep the wingnut merit badge. I actually wrote a letter to National Review entitled "Obama is more conservative than you are." The best tell tale proof of this is to go have a look at Reagan's 196x speech to the RNC, or even his 1980 convention speech, as compared to Obama's victory speech, and honestly, you'd find that they aren't really saying anything differently.
Conservatism is supposed to about rationality and let you liberals get all dreamy eyed about the rosy world of the future. But, my friends in the conservative movement are married to a model of enterprise and trade that has, by any reasonably -conservative- standard of assessment, have failed. How can you defend the idea of global investment and free trade when it has so obviously failed, not once, but repeatedly, over the last few decades. This bank bailout is not the first the USA has had to do... remember RTC?
I mean, the whole point of conservatism is a sort of a nationalism in disguise, but how can you be a nationalist when you favor an economic policy that leaves our cities torched so that you can drive a slightly better kind of imported car. Can't see the family values in families unemployed, can't see the patriotism in supporting the rights of foreign companies over american ones. Don't see the community in an economic policy that leaves communities devastated at the whims of investment banks.
It's like, the most ridiculous thing I saw at the NRO was something to the effect of "free trade is the american way, so therefor, I will buy a japanese car and let detroit fend for itself."... like, woah... last time I checked, and i don't mean to pick on the japanese, but, its salient, that the UAW membership is far more likely to have Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than the fraternity of MBA graduates on Wall Street. Like, I don't get how union guys get such a beating for asking for, gasp, $17/hour and health care, and that's the reason the USA is in trouble?
If you are going to wave the flag, wave it for everyone in the land. That's what I say.
This is my sig.
Spending on technology as a stimulus is a poor idea because it does not employ enough local people and sends too much money overseas. The stimulus programs of the 1930s did things like build dams and bridges - using huge amounts of labor and American made materials and machinery. That kick-started manufacturing, mining and other activitities. This caused earning and spending throughout the economy. Installing fibre into every school will involve far fewer people and send vast amounts of money overseas. Of course, the stuff could be built in USA, but that needs huge ramp ups in factory building and us a pointless exercise unless USA intends to restart its domestic electronic manufacturing industry and keep it producing for 10 to 20 years.
Of course that's a dream. As soon as the economy stabilises it will be back to the old ways - sending the manufacturing to China or wherever.
Measuring a country by broadband adoption is pointless. It is what people do with that broadband that is more important. If a country is just using their broadband for entertainment that's hardly building a strong economy.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It would seem to me that all government spending must enrich somebody and thus in their opponents' eyes is going to be "pork" Maybe it would be best to note that not all pork is bad--bacon is delicious and so is all the subsidized farm produce in my state.
Saying that broadband internet access will help kids get smarter is like saying that giving money to over-leveraged banks and other companies will help America get richer or that eating nothing but fat and protein will make you healthier and skinnier.
Want to be skinny and stay healthy? Eat a balanced diet of lean meats, whole grains and fresh vegetables. That's not the latest diet book, people have know that for centuries. No carbs is just starvation.
What a stronger economy? Let those who made bad bets fail and make more useful products and services for less cost. More money in the system will just eventually devalue the dollar. Of course the banks haven't lent out Paulson's $350b. Who are they going to lend it to? Who's making stuff better for cheaper such that they can pay it back with interest?
Want to make kids smarter? Get better teacher and parents who are involved in their kids' education. Leaving them to "learn" from the Internet instead of a real person will result in short attention spans and a gullible population that believes all the crap the read on the internet. Just look at me, I'm wasting my time ranting here on /.
Consumers? Maybe you mean the lenders, who didn't want their money back, they wanted the interest payments on the coupon and in their passbooks, because FDR was out BEGGING people to put their money back into banks so that the banks could put the money into paper to help re-liquify the economy. If you want a liquidity crisis and deflationary spiral, by all means stop government spending. In order for your argument to make sense you'd have to establish that the burden of the cost of the Boulder Dam was upon people who were in a position to consume more than the construction of the dam would have, and then furthermore that they would have indeed consumed, instead of simply hoarding the cash. With prices dropping throughout the country, and people hoarding cash due to the collapsing banking system, this is dubious.
I prefer eating the cake and paying for it later, which is what we did in the '30s, to eating the Iraq, er, cake and expecting the Chinese to loan us out of it because "Deficits don't matter", without considering what would happen if we actually DID need to borrow money for fiscal stimulus at some point.
The Krugman/Keynesian argument is that you have deficits when you need to stimulate the economy, and that you pay them back with higher taxes during cyclical upswings. For the last 8 years, while we were relatively flush, we haven't been paying back our debts, so now when we really need to borrow we're screwed.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Make a product in the US and get 20 years of patent protection. Export the job and only get 10 years.
There's still the "continuous improvement"
problem. Where schools with 98% testing and
content standards have no way to improve more and face funding cuts because they haven't shown year over year improvement. How the hell that bit of logic made it in the originally, I'll never understand..
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I am absolutely amazed at the number of posts that suggest that public education does not need improvement. Or rather, I am in awe of the nerve required to stand up and categorically state "Of course edumacation is importance! We all need to lern stuff! I went to [public|private] school, and I'm more smarter than most poeple! Spellering is irreverent to the subjex at hand!"
If you're going to argue that you don't need to be more intelligent than you already are, please try not to provide proof to the contrary in the same diatribe. I am not specifically attacking you, scientus, your post just happens to be the most recent one I've read that pushed the "I don't need no skoolin - I'm are to smarting already!" button, forcing me to finally say something about the trend I'm seeing.
Again, please don't take this as a personal attack. I am simply boggled by an entire subset of posts on this subject that categorically disprove themselves by simply existing.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.
I like how Obama hasn't even taken office or done much of anything, and already people are complaining about "nanny-state" policies.
The Krugman/Keynesian argument is that you have deficits when you need to stimulate the economy
Unfortunately their plan for how to stimulate the economy has the exact opposite effect.
Do you have any substantive response to the arguments? Can you demonstrate that their plan has "the opposite effect," and what does that mean? Does their plan cause deflation, because in general it's meant to intentionally induce inflation, and historically it succeeded. Does it cause an increase in unemployment, or decrease in real wages, or a decrease in liquidity, or interest rates, because none of these things happened historically.
I was thinking, if this whole mess had happened in 2002, and Bush had kept the Clinton budgets until that time, the war would probably make a lot of sense in strictly economic terms. Big outlay of cash, put people to work, borrow against future gains in resource control in the middle east. Woulda rocked, and Bush would have been lauded as a sort of genius that saved the economy, just like FDR. Being a spendy politician can pay off if you time it right, and being a austere one can too, as Clinton discovered.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I went to both types of school, the private school was an overpaid babysitter, and horrible babysitter at that.
I learned all about shooting spitballs, throwing spit-grenades and "racking" people up (think triangle hit in football, smashing victim between three bodies and a wall) at private school. We also learned a bunch of creationism in religion class. The "academic" subjects were roughly 3 grades behind where I was when I left public school.
After one year of that I begged my parents to let me go back to public school. My mom couldn't believe it, my dad was more than happy to shed the expense and get me away from the catholic brainwashing.
In public high school I learned algebra(geometry, II, trig), biology, chemistry, literature, English, Spanish, furthered my music training (started in public school, unavailable in private school), athletics, got into a lot less fights (outside of the bus ride home), and learned a lot more.
It depends on what schools you are talking about. There are some great public schools and really crappy private schools.
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
by the top bank executives, they all make out like banksters. Sorry. Bandits.
Deleted
My spelling has nothing to do with schooling. I got great grades in school (2250/1570 SAT, etc) and was largely unchallenged but i was never good at spelling, just something i never liked, mainly because i don't memorize things. When i took German the spelling was easy. (although confusing English spelling) English spelling has no order and therefore i have never really liked to fallow it, i can spell if i want, and it was certainly jammed down my throat, but English spelling is certainly a waste of brain cycles and memory, and by corrupting the characters by having no rules, and having our names for our letter have no correlation to their sounds---and having vowels even spoken as diphthongs i.e. a= ae, e= ei, i= ai it just makes the characters meaningless. No other western language does this as much as English.
Anyways that isn't much of an excuse but don't blame it on the education system, its not their fault.
It depends on what schools you are talking about. There are some great public schools and really crappy private schools.
Yep, that's exactly it. "Public" doesn't automatically mean it's crap and "private" doesn't automatically mean it's great. There may be a better average for private schools, but that doesn't mean all public schools are terrible.
I actually had a decent private school, although I was ill-suited for school in general. My public school was terrible, but still gave me a lot anyway.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
First on supplies: Do you think that every kid should have to supply their own paints/crayons etc for art class? Do you think that every kid should have to bring in their own basketball/kickball? Should a elementary/middle/high school make kids pay for their own books every year just like students do in college?
Also, do you think that while the cost of goods purchased has increased, AND the numbers of students attending our schools have increased, that by having us cutback on funding; we'll somehow people able to find sufficient money? Also, while I will complain about the salaries of administration, their salaries come out of a completely different budget than either my salary OR those used to pay for supplies and books?
If you can read this, thank a teacher.
the war would probably make a lot of sense in strictly economic terms.
Ahh, yes, the old fallacy that destruction brings prosperity. As for your questions, see the two links in my original post.
I've read the screed you linked to, it's bizarre, like timecube bizarre. It's just a bunch of assertions about how people behave when X and Y happen, without ever citing an example of it actually happening. It's all in his head, and utterly truthy and moralistic and "common sensical" without once dirtying itself with evidence.
Example: The argument that taxation and government spending decreases production depends on the assumption the the US tax system, in aggregate, is on the right side of the peak of the Laffer curve, which is what Hazlitt is essentially arguing in so many words, but at no time does he offer evidence that people are slacking in their production at higher rates of taxation. Obviously people will eventually, but where, and how is this affected by marginal tax rates? The highest earners were taxed over 90% on their highest bracket through the 1950s, and there was no "Atlas Shrugged" style revolt of investors and economic elites.
You also have to consider the opportunity cost; gobs of that money was going to Europe under the Marshall plan. If we didn't spend that money, would we have had a Soviet France, and Germany, and Italy threatening Britain? So many things to take into account, but no, Taxes are Evil and nothing could justify them.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I did, and you can see my response above. He makes a bunch of claims, but nowhere does he show anything actually happening. If taxation lowers productivity, show me the chart, with real numbers of real people making real transactions.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The counterintuitive but economically sound answer is yes.
An economic downturn is precisely the wrong time to be balancing the federal budget. On a personal level, yes, right now individuals should absolutely be preparing for difficult times to come. But as a matter of government policy, the government should spend during bad times, to buffer the effects of a sluggish economy. The time to save (pay down the debt) is when things are going well in the private sector. (And if recession-era spending is done wisely -- for example, investing in infrastructure -- then the benefits will carry into later boom times without new money being spent.)
It would be a little easier to stomach spending now if our current president had been following this advice and running surpluses during the boom (like his predecessor did). But that doesn't change the fact that balancing the federal budget right now will make things worse.
If taxation lowers productivity, show me the chart, with real numbers of real people making real transactions.
Of course no such chart could ever be produced. It would be like asking me to draw you a picture of "consciousness" using nothing but neurons. This is part of the appeal of your heroes' arguments. They assume that things will work themselves out in the end so long as something is done immediately. What is not seen, what cannot be charted, is the economic growth that *did not happen* because of increased taxation. They would have us continually struggling to survive a recession, and pay it back during prosperity, with the implicit assumption that the end result is a better economy. But they have nothing to compare to. Meanwhile, Hazlitt's argument makes sense in theory. Krugman wants you to panic. Hazlitt says there's nothing to worry about.
Stop spending money on nonsense!! Kids will learn how to use computers just fine in public schools!
OTOH, the guy isn't even in office yet. I'm adopting the same wait-and-see attitude I did with Bush and Romney (I'm from MA). Bush-- well, he blew it pretty quickly; Romney-- he didn't actually do anything, so in some sense, he was the ideal politician.
If POBE is really serious, he'll look at giving us real broadband, like the premises fibre that Korean consumers enjoy.
Korea had a much easier job. Virtually all of the population lives in giant apartment buildings, big enough to have their own telephone exchange in the basement utility rooms. When the "last mile" is a few hundred feet of indoor conduit and every building has enough customers to rate its own carrier-grade switch it's trivial to string fiber to every home.
The US, on the other hand, is VERY spread out. There are states with counties bigger than many European countries. There are areas - with non-trivial population - where you never pass a gas station without filling up, because the next one may be more than half-a-tank away. There are places where nearly everybody is armed for their own defense (against both human and furry hazards) because the nearest lawman or Animal Control department may be a 5 hour drive away - in PERFECT weather - days if it's just snowed.
Wiring an old city involves digging up a LOT of expensive stuff to get a FEW customers per building. Wiring a suburb requires strings a LOT of cable to get ONE customer per building. Wiring a rural area - where the houses are far enough apart that the phone lines were subsidized by ratepayers in cities - may cost far more than could ever be recovered by subscriptions (which is what WISPs are about.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There are lots of important techs that were developed without government funds.
Here we go.
The steam engine
James Watt studied in London and settled at the University of Glasgow. He developed the steam engine at his leisure while at the University, which was founded at the request of King James II of Scotland.
the internal combustion engine
Credited to Benz. Who also studied mechanical engineering at a public University.
iron, steel
The refinement of iron manufacturing has been going on for thousands of years, mostly driven by warfare, which is usually paid for by the government.
powered flight
One exception, though the money to fund further development since then and until today continues to be from government coffers.
guns
Quite broad. The most difficult problems of firing naval guns were entirely solved by government investment, just like the development of early computers was entirely geared towards artillery math. The invention of the gun in China was probably done for war, paid by government. I hope you're seeing a pattern.
electric power transmission
Tesla studied at Technische Universitat Graz, a public university, though he didn't finish. You'll notice that almost everyone you read about in the history books went to some sort of university. The obvious exception would be art.
the light bulb
Humphrey Davy had the earliest lightbulb. He was a professor. Edison made it commercially viable.
most modern materials
NASA
most modern advances in computer hardware and software.
Really? Give me one. Be specific.
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a lot more.
I'm sure that you haven't studied the subject, and you're full of shit.
And furthermore, just because technologies were developed with government money doesn't mean they couldn't have been developed with different funding. Also, I can't think of a single major commercial airframe in use today that was originally designed for military use (not so say there isn't one
You would not have any modern commercial airframes today without government subsidy, period. It takes an incredible amount of money and time and man hours to perfect jet engines and subsonic flight, money that no private company would dare spend without being a welfare client of a state.
but certainly none of the Boeing 7X7 lines or the airbus A3X0 lines were
Totally and completely false. Check the article above.
Meeting people and getting your foot in the door does not require an education. You can meet people in the field.
Sure, sure. And I can win the lottery too, or get rear ended by a millionaire. You want our next generation to have a good chance of success, not a crap shoot, right?
Degrees serve primarily as a barrier to entry, since employers use them to weed out potential candidates. You will not be prepared for your job by your degree, and you will likely use less than 10% of what you learn (much less what you crammed before the test and promptly forgot afterward).
I believe a good education in the basics of your field are essential in addition to apprenticeship. We have no formal apprenteceship program in the US, but for every job where you can ruin someone's life - doctor, lawyer, plumber, electrician, architect - there is required apprenticeship and required degrees for very, very good reasons. I'm not saying you need an EE degree to wire a house. But you do need one to build a datacenter.
First on supplies: Do you think that every kid should have to supply their own paints/crayons etc for art class?
Whether I believe it or not does not change the fact that this is the reality in my district.
Do you think that every kid should have to bring in their own basketball/kickball?
The school board cut gym (PE outside the midwest) in their tit for tat spat when the referendum failed. Somehow that jeopardized some funding and it had to come back. In the interim, yes, there was a parent run physical activity program immediately after school.
Should a elementary/middle/high school make kids pay for their own books every year just like students do in college?
I pay a book rental fee which is actually quite reasonable. But this is still in addition to my taxes. I pay for the book, then pay for the upkeep of the stable with an additional 'hidden' tax.
Also, do you think that while the cost of goods purchased has increased, AND the numbers of students attending our schools have increased, that by having us cutback on funding; we'll somehow people able to find sufficient money?
Growing student population implies population growth in general, hence additional tax revenue.
Cost of goods go up with inflation, but so do the property taxes. Point being there are a lot of things that can be done to remediate inflation like a buyer's consortium, or direct negotiation with vendors. Some school districts do very well in these matters.
Traditionally, however, school districts suck at saving money because their capital and operations budgets have been turned into patronage by pols and apathetic/unknowledgeable constituency.
Also, while I will complain about the salaries of administration, their salaries come out of a completely different budget than either my salary OR those used to pay for supplies and books?
A 'budget' is just an arbitrary classification in an accounting system. The source of the money does not change depending on what column you put it in. There are specific exceptions that vary with geography, but they are usually well known. For instance, in my area new housing impact fees must go into a building fund that the districts cannot use for operations.
Throwing money at problems does not solve them. Most private schools do a lot better with fewer dollars spent per child. They do this by putting the money directly 'into' the students. Public school can't model this directly because they do not have the option to cherry pick students and parents. What can be done is mimicking their penchant to cut out Stupid Stuff and focus on education.
Computers in classrooms are fairly useless except for attendance, and solitaire during planning periods. Student access to computers and structured time with them is beneficial, but only as an adjunct to and in furtherance of the fundamentals of the three R's.
...this part here: "New DSL standards can extend the reach of DSL into more rural areas and...." What information do you have on that? What standards, where is it being done, and by whom, and what is this new longer distance DSL? I live a mile too far from the box, and with just a few homes down this line, they are NEVER going to run anything better that would allow DSL, and cable is also a no-go for the same reason and fiber is way out there in flying car land. At least I can get dialup, but that's it, and looks to be it forever..I mean forever, all the wireless broadband is line of sight to the towers, any hill in the way, tough luck, nogettum, already tried it here with the wireless guys, no signal, too many hills.. So what is this thing I never heard of with new DSL standards, would you have a link or two reference? Thanks in advance!
Last time I checked Obama has voted for a massive bailout of the banking system and now will "probably" vote to bailout the auto industry
Wish people would call it what it is. It has a name. It's called a "loan." The auto industry is asking for large, low interest loans to allow them time to restructure. The banking system, on the other hand, is nothing but a hand out to the people who should be in jail. Yet, since these people are the uber wealthy of the US, these criminals will receive the largest transfer of wealth the planet has ever seen.
I work as a computer tech in a School District
... And you make me ashamed to be in the same industry. You have no spelling, grammar, or punctuation skills, nor can you effectively communicate your own ideas, and yet you will cheerfully spew your opinion of how the education system that so obviously failed you should be the standard everyone should hold themselves to.
I'm not saying you're stupid, but the comment you left on the internet certainly makes it appear that way. Come back when you can spell, or at least finish a sentence properly - maybe then I'll consider something you have to say about the education system with more than disgusted contempt... at the moment, all I want to do is find out who you are so I can get you fired. Your position as part of our school system appears to me to be part of the problem, not the solution. Your apparent lack of education makes you appear more suited to be "the janitor" than "the IT guy".
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
The chart has Tax rate on the X-Axis and Productivity on the Y-Axis. These are both empirically determinable. Sample a bunch of people paying different tax rates and determine their productivity. The Congressional Budget Office has done studies like this one where the effect of a tax cut is assumed, and then all the economic feedbacks are accounted for based on current productivity and trends. You can't read the future, but if you can't even make forecasts, there is no such thing as economics.
The problem with your hero's argument is that he has no evidence to back up his claims. Show me that people work less when taxed at a certain rate. The fact is, there isn't very much evidence that this happens; it seems like common sense that it would, but it also is common sense that the sun travels around the Earth. History is full of examples where a country turned to austerity and all of the metric we measure an economy by went down. I give you history, Hazllitt gives you homilies.
It's telling that at no time does Hazlitt even claim that New Deal programs have hurt the economy. He says that they should, and that they can in ways that are, essentially, impossible to know. This is not science, this is gnosticism. This is religion.
Aside from the US economy during the 1950s and 1960s, when America used its vast investments in assets like bridges, highways, dams and a secure Europe to exploit new markets and drive economic growth.
That isn't enough.
I guess my point is that economic decisions have to be evidence-based and if you think action A will cost money, you have to be able to say how much and why. You do it when you get a mortgage, and governments do it when they raise revenue. That's what economists do. Economics in One Lesson only works if you accept that economics is mainly moral or philosophical, and that decisions regarding taxation, borrowing and spending must be informed by the way a certain small-L liberal value system regards property rights, and the ordering of a man's estate.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
In exchange for higher pay, are you willing to work 8 hours a day doing community service in the summer? The union screamed high holy murder when this was suggested.
That wouldn't be a bad idea, if you could reduce the hours that teachers have to work during the school year. As it is, teachers are severely overworked, and two months off in the summer is the only thing that keeps them from completely losing their minds.
I don't mean that teachers are doing too much work relative to the money they're paid. Raising salaries won't fix the problem. Teachers are getting burned out because they have insufficient time to prepare lessons, insufficient classroom supplies (many teachers choose to pay for supplies out-of-pocket, because the school won't buy them), and insufficient support staff (the original poster mentioned that librarians are gone; custodians have also been replaced by janitors who barely speak English and know nothing about building maintenance).
Often teachers get stuck teaching subjects they know little about; hiring someone who knows what they're doing would cost too much so you end up with the social studies teacher trying to teach a computer class. Many of us have seen how well that works.
I completely agree, throwing more money at the problem is not the answer, but more money is definitely part of the solution. Adding more money without changing how we spend it won't make things better, but we can't fix the problems if there's no money available. So, the problems don't get fixed, because there's no money, because everyone knows if there were more money, the problems wouldn't get fixed.
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History is full of examples where a country turned to austerity and all of the metric we measure an economy by went down. I give you history, Hazllitt gives you homilies.
Your second link didn't work, but the first one points to the results of a manipulated economy, in which the government induces a bubble, is suddenly popped. What is your point? The bubble would not have existed in the first place without government intervention. Your assumptions are that the bubble could have been sustained without further government intervention.
This is not science, this is gnosticism. This is religion.
There is no theory in science? Enough with the drama please.
economic decisions have to be evidence-based and if you think action A will cost money, you have to be able to say how much and why.
I agree that they should be evidence-based, but in economics it's difficult to be sure that the evidence is in support of theory X or opposing theory Y. There is no shortage of people claiming to have evidence supporting their theories, and there is no shortage of fanboys such as yourself accepting those claims at face value.
For me, the underlying concern is individual rights. So long as the government intervenes in the economy, rights are violated. No matter how commonplace rights violations become, they still occur nonetheless. Krugman and like-minded economists have not shown the cause for concern that justifies rights violations. It's just assumed that something must be done, and that the only solution involves the government.
There is absolutely no reason why any computer-education program should not be using computer setup with Edubuntu or some other GNU/Linux variant with all the open source education software pre-loaded. It's cheaper and there's massive amounts of free information for learning how to run it, keep it running, and even make it run better. Students who learn this stuff and use the same system to learn more and more and it's all free and fully accessible to them.
Then, there's the various ways the systems can be implemented. There's LTSP for thin clients, there's standalone, networked fat clients, and there are multi-head single Chassis system feeding multiple users on the minimum additional hardware of an LCD, a keyboard, and a mouse.
And learning the basics and not teaching an application means they know what a spreadsheet is, they know what a filesystem is, a wordprocessor, and they can know far far more about the system and software than other systems will let them.
So, where can we kindly suggest to Obama that his people look long and hard at Edubutu and/or GNU/Linux and open source software?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Generally I agree that kids should aspire to the highest levels, but let's not pretend that the value of a high school diploma was undervalued by the existence of people going to college.
It was devalued in the workforce by the slipping level of education attained by the end of high school, and the relative ease-of-access to colleges and universities.
I have a college degree, and did well in school. But I can tell you that my grandfather had nothing more than a high school diploma and did quite well as a machinist and later a shop manager. In fact, adjusted for inflation, he made significantly more WITHOUT a college education than I do with one. A college degree these days is like the high school diploma of 4-6 decades ago. It will qualify you for a bit more than an $40,000-year entry level job in cubedom. Thankfully, I no longer work in cubedom.
We have lost nearly all the well-paying (admittedly, mostly trade) jobs that one used to get out of high school, and replaced them with under-paying consumer services (retail) jobs that anyone with an IQ greater than their own shoe size can tackle.
Couple that with having high schoolers performing at middle school levels and colleges that have gone to 'vocational education' en masse, and you have a recipe for the pie we're presently learning to digest.
Pass the pepto, please.
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you willing to work 8 hours a day doing community service in the summer
Really... You are forgetting that children are hard to deal with. I would say that teachers need to have 1 month per year for academic improvement and 2 months of daily psychologist visits after what those brats do every day in school.
Remember, that children are only pearls in their own parents' eyes.
Yeah, I just don't believe in that. I primarily don't believe that a holding in government-issued currency constitutes "property" in the same sense as a house, or capital. "Dollars" are just a service provided by the government by fiat in order to facilitate transactions. If you keep them as cash, or use their numerical value to determine your "wealth," you're ultimately abusing their purpose. Thus...
I suspect, my good fellow, that there is no evidence of any kind, than any person could produce, that would justify the taking of a right by your lights. And that's probably as it should be; rights should not be bought. I believe in a iron right to property, but "Dollars" are not property in the sense that this computer is, or my house is. They're a mechanism by which the government provides people with the service of buying and selling; they have zero intrinsic value, and thus the government isn't really taking anything tangible when they relieve you of them. Clearly, if they take too many you won't bother working for them, and if the government doesn't give you enough when you build a bridge for dollars, you won't want to use dollars, so its important to keep a balanced monetary policy and currency market, where people can come to an agreement on what a dollar is worth openly. But, since the US left the gold standard, money qua money is worthless. If you want to know what you have, ask your self "What of mine can I lay my hands on?," don't look at your balance sheet-- it's a fiction.
The existence of currency is a profound intrusion of the government into the private sector-- they'll shoot you for stealing little pieces of green cloth. But without it, chaos, unless you want to go back to a gold standard, but even then, all you have is a note that can be exchanged for gold, a metal that is merely rare, and not very useful in general, except in barter for goods and services.
So, yeah, I think taxation is justified because I live in a free, first-world nation state where my house or food cannot be stolen by armed thugs, and where I can go on a computer and interact with people thousands of miles away without having to worry about conveying specie to my phone company every month. They may tax me, but as long as we all bear the burden and we all enjoy the fruits, and as long as I'm free to call the system garbage and demand it changed if I see fit to complain, and as long as I receive a just wage for hard work, what's the big deal? If you think the principle is profoundly unfair, you may leave it, but I think you're better off with us, and we with you. I would personally concern myself more with those among us who benefit from what we as a people have created, but don't put in their fair share.
Now, if they took away my life savings in order to build an Obama monument, I'd be pissed and would demand action. But, of course, they propose no such thing. If they use this stimulus to build the LACTMA Expo Line to pass by my house, it will save me more in gasoline than the total tax probably ever would, ten times over.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
"and teachers can look the kids in the eye and tell them to leave and come back when (if) they care about learning something."
Dumb people cost society a tremendous amount of money. Far more than it would have cost to educate them.
Perhaps stronger discipline is required, or more motivated teachers, or fines on parents. But education to a certain level has to be mandatory.
Look up some studies. There are tons to pick from that will show that education, especially early edu, is the cheapest way to support a person in a society.
That's sorta risible on its face isn't it? Since real property and money are fungible. Hmm... must think more.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The bottom line is, you want to do something useful in any field, history has shown that the only places where a person is allowed to do real research is a university or government lab. By advising anyone to stay away from college, you are advising them to choose to have a disadvantage just because you didn't like college.
Stop giving out that bad advice, unless you can bring me some interesting counter examples to what I wrote above.
More to the point...
My point is that a deflationary economy was hobbled in both cases by contracting government spending, and you haven't demonstrated that the outcome would have been any different.
There is theory, but nobody took Einstein very seriously until Special relativity was proved with experimental evidence. You can say that reducing government spending produces better economic outcomes for a country, and offer a lot of really good reasons why, but you have to show it happen, too, before you can expect policy makers (at least the incoming batch) to take you seriously.
This statement is a solipsism. You should be able to define a proposition in such a way that it's provable true or false, otherwise there is no science here. Does expansion in government spending stop deflation, "yes." Does it create employment, "yes." Does it do these things as well as spending contraction? No. Would the outcome be different 10 years down the line? Gotta do cost-benefit analysis, byt the question is answerable. I guess the rub is, What is the proposition that we're trying to prove? I say that expanding government spending increases employment and liquidity in the near term and ultimately shortens the length of a recessionary cycle.
Don't call me a fanboy, we have an honest disagreement.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The problem with your hero's argument is that he has no evidence to back up his claims. Show me that people work less when taxed at a certain rate.
My wife quit a part-time job simply because our combined income meant she'd be working at a miserable effective hourly rate after taxes. It just wasn't worth it to her.
Sure, it's a personal example, but she can't be the only one.
A lot of the money ends up going to other countries, including China, via materials. China produces approximately 35% of the world's steel, for example; the U.S. produces around 7%. Fixtures? Windows? Siding? Tiles? All mostly made abroad. Even elevators, a sort of high-end specialty thing, are imported from Germany more often than they're made in the U.S.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I have many relatives in southern Europe, who are somewhat surprised by our high standards of living when it comes to materialism, which seem vaguely wasteful to them. Things like running A/C at 72 when you live in a climate that's typically 90s in the summer, living in homes that are on average 2350 square feet (all of which has to be air-conditions or heated, of course), driving inefficient cars, owning strangely large numbers of gigantic televisions, etc.
When it comes to the things you mentioned, though, they're actually ahead. They work fewer hours on average than Americans, get better health care, much more vacation, more stringently policed working conditions, etc.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This does happen, but is the action taken by your wife consequence of your famiy's rate of taxation, or the fact that two married people are taxed as one entity? It's really about the iniquity of a marriage penalty. And also, in order to really answer this question, we'd have to figure out what her productivity at home is, and if that isn't actually more than on the job -- considering a homemaker's work can be valued in the 6 figures, this isn't so ridiculous, and she might be more productive in the home than at a bad job.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
People don't need computers or broadband from the government. They need to make the decision to learn how things are done and what NOT to do.
Yeah, but what's really 'unacceptable' is that, 10 years after the last failure of an administration's dumping millions of dollars into 'computers for the schools,' we STILL have teachers who either (a) are positively disinclined to use said computers and/or (b) haven't the foggiest of idea of what to do with them because all they know how to do is surf the web, send email, and use PowerPoint, that oh-so-useful K-12 app.
What's idiotic is when somebody swallows some mantra he/she heard on AM talk radio and figures it means something. Gubbmint is always bad, ain't it!?!?
The government does not have the solution. It is the problem.
Baw ha ha ha ha HAW! That old saw again! Hello Ditto-head! What scares me is how many people have bought this neocon crap that's been crammed down their throats who VOTE based on this idiocy.
Yep, because some 10-15 years of deregulation have done us WONDER AFTER WONDER, hasn't it? Rules? Schmoolz! Let "the marketplace" deal with it! As it has done... right into the crapper.
Economy is a product of government. Think about it: who prints the money? Who regulates what banks can do with it? Who determines its general value? Who determines what's legal to sell and what's not? Who/what passes laws to protect consumers from predatory marketing? Who busts monopolies that might distort the "free" marketplace?
Far from being self-stabilizing, a free marketplace is a fiction, and keeping a marketplace in balance so it's "free" and liquid so that the laws of supply and demand can work is damned hard work! Be thankful that you've lived in an environment where we've had this gift, and thank your forefathers for being smart enough to put this whole system in place!
You have, as a United States citizen, almost $500,000 in infrastructure already set aside JUST FOR YOU, (total value of infrastructure divided by citizen population) on which the average return on investment is about 8%. Investors tend to get excited by anything at/above 10%, so the numbers hold up pretty nicely...
In the old days, back before the introduction of the Federal Reserve, stock market crashes happened on a regular basis, but nobody ran around for the next decade crying about it. The market just purged itself of bad assets and risky practices and recovered in a few months
Oh, you mean the DECADES LONG DEPRESSION in the latter half of the 1800's? Or was that them good old days? Maybe they were later, say, the early 20th century? Oh, yeah, the decade-long 'great depression' happened then... Eh, when were these 'good old days' of which you speak?
I'm reminded of a song:
"The good old days weren't always so good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems, yeah yeah" - Keeping the Faith by Billy Joel...
Nowadays, we make it far, far worse by trying to prevent the bad assets and insolvent businesses from failing by sucking solvent (good) assets out of the economy to prop up the insolvent (bad). The real solution is to simply let them fail. The Big Three auto mfgs. are in an impossible situation.
Yeah. Like how in the early 1980s, the US Gubbmint lent a hand to Chrysler Corp which then went ballistic with their extremely popular "k-series" cars? Providing tax revenue on income to the US Gubbmint FAR in excess of the loan amount?
Damned if I don't remember being driven around in a Dodge Caravan minivan for most of my childhood... we were one of the lucky ones, they were so popular that they had trouble keeping up with demand... SARCASM Yeah, that was good money thrown after bad, wasn't it? /SARCASM
God, how could they have screwed up any more on that one? Or perhaps when they bailed out Lockheed in the early 1970's? To this day, damned fine employment for the GOBS of highly qualified aerospace engineers (many of them readers of /.!) that owe their employment to the fact that the "always the problem" gubbmint gave a 1.4 BILLION dollar contract to Lockheed...
If you want a better economy, get the government off of it. We used to have the best economy in the world. Somehow we've come to think that government as god is better. It isn't, and it never will be. Even if someone hopes we can.
Yeah, that great economy built largely in the 1950s and 1960s,
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/badmeat.asp
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Believe it or not, at my high school we had a "Career Center" that each english class would visit 1-2 times each year and pretty much do exactly that: research prospective careers, and find out what that career entailed, what the average pay was, and what kind of academic prep we would need. Outside that they'd give out information on ROP classes and other neat career building stuff.
Good grief, Slashdotters, grow up already.
Not long ago all I saw was people whining and grumbling that the government didn't develop broadband access and technology. Now Obama talks about addressing that very issue - and, by golly, suddenly everybody hates him for that. Do you guys actually know what you want? I mean, other than complain?
Whatever else you may think and feel about the new president, he almost certainly wasn't behind the policies that have lead to all American manufacturers outsourcing to India and China. He has to play the hand he was dealt - we all have; let him at least make the attempt, since he has actually been elected, OK?
We in the West simply aren't in a position to compete with China or India on prices for manufacturing; so investing in education and infrastructure is a very good idea. I mean, propping up the car manufacturers may save jobs in the short term, but they will be lost in the long term, because 1) India and China can do it cheaper and will soon do it better than us, and 2) energy shortage and climate change means that the traditional car industry will never actuallly recover, at least in the form it has now.
What we need is innovation - and innovation very often mean that something will "die" to make room for something better. If previous governments had had the foresight, they could have helped this innovation happen in time, but they didn't, because they have always favoured the oil and car industry. And of course the same holds true for the other business sectors that are now foundering; and thus we now have to regroup in a somewhat desperate situation. We will get through eventually, but I suspect a lot of things will have changed when we emerge at the other end.
The stats:
The best part is that the town put up fiber because none of the local telcos would provide service... now they're climbing over each other to get to our last mile. So much so that they lobbied for laws to be passed to make sure that towns can't do this kind of thing. Kutztown was grandfathered in after the law passed and now towns have to give the telcos 18 months to service them before they start their own projects.
BTW, the entire infrastructure was paid for with 30 year bonds. We even generate our own electricity, too. Since the town provides everything the town needs and the community pays a reasonable price for it (economies of scale and all that), taxes haven't been raised in 70 years. Checking the link for hometownu, it appears they're testing 5/8mbit. Love this friggin' town!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Call it investing and it's all good...
Isn't spending beyond one's means how we got into the subprime mess to begin with?
First: If that accusation was made of the Bush administration, it would have some basis.
Second: There has been a lot of complaining about it.
I don't care who made the accusation or who wants this it is still a horrible idea.
You ask how can we afford this and I ask you how can we not?
We can't afford it and it will do NOTHING to actually help children learn. It will also kill any competition in this space. Competition is what drives prices down and brings new and better ideas to market.
Obama's plan will include funds to make public buildings more energy efficient, repair roads and bridges and modernize schools.
Again, how is he going to pay for this? His idea is to make America more of a socialist country because he believes that by creating more government programs will create more jobs at this time. A Capitalist would let the market adjust and would NOT have things like government sponsored entities, (fanny and freddy) and would NOT create more social programs.
So, do we or do we not have a problem?
We do NOT have a problem that requires the Federal government to take the U.S.A. closer to socialism. However, we do have a problem with these types of solutions.
Think about it, and take it to a personal level. You loose your job and then at that time you decide to spend money to put in a new energy efficient heater and buy a new computer. Yes in the long run that will probably save you money but the return on investment will be 10+ years. The additional computer, in all honesty is probably not an investment at all, and your old one (even if it was shared) will get the job done. However, in Obamas case he wants to take this time to increase spending here.
Sorry but we can't afford it. He has mentioned many times before that his view of "high speed internet" is just a utility like service. In that his is yet another right that we should all have.
His views are misguided at best and boarder on insane at worst.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
The site you posted is totally wrong. The best economies and societies to live in have heavy taxation: Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, etc.
I primarily don't believe that a holding in government-issued currency constitutes "property" in the same sense as a house, or capital.
You're claiming that the government has found a loophole in property rights. You'll need some more explanation than "I don't believe that" to back up your claim.
"Dollars" are just a service provided by the government
That has been the case since the government granted itself total control over the currency, and then detached it from any finite standard. Before then that was not the case. What right does the government have to grant itself that control? (be careful not to appeal to authority/tradition here)
But without it, chaos
You'll have to provide some explanation for this.
a metal that is merely rare
Rarity is not the issue. It just makes it easier to measure. The issue is finiteness. The amount of gold (or any other heavy element) is for the most part finite. You can dig and find some more gold, but you'll have to do work to make that happen, and even so you're not bound to affect the value of gold that much. With government fiat, they can spam the economy with as much or as little currency as they want, and suddenly your bank account only exists if the federal government decides it is so.
So, yeah, I think taxation is justified because I live in a free, first-world nation state where my house or food cannot be stolen by armed thugs
And you do not think people would be willing to donate money to the police, courts, and military if they had more of their own money to work with, in this country where so much goes to charity?
If you think the principle is profoundly unfair, you may leave it
Or I could persuade public opinion to shift in my favor to get politicians elected who will uphold individual rights - my purpose here.
I suspect, my good fellow, that there is no evidence of any kind, than any person could produce, that would justify the taking of a right by your lights.
As individual rights are a fundamental principle, that is for the most part correct, however emergency situations may have cause for rights violations (such as disease quarantine).
If they use this stimulus to build the LACTMA Expo Line to pass by my house, it will save me more in gasoline than the total tax probably ever would, ten times over.
Throughout your entire post, all you're saying is that the ends can justify the means, which means we have no basis for an ethical system. How can you ask "what should I do" if you're not 100% sure that the outcome will go as planned? Do you really want to live in a society where you'll be punished for doing what you believed was the right move, if your action inadvertently leads to something worse? This sort of punishment happens all over the world and is a result of the faulty belief that only the ends matter - the belief you are trumpeting in your post.
Think about it, and take it to a personal level. You loose your job and then at that time you decide to spend money to put in a new energy efficient heater and buy a new computer.
That's comparison is a little distorted. The government did not loose it's job. If it did, I'd think we'd have bigger concerns. A more accurate comparison would be that the government had a pay cut. In that case, you look at cutting costs but doing so smartly. That means looking at the ROI. If the overall long term expenditure can be reduced by a initial investment, then doing so is the smart choice.
Since you are using analogy, I think it was in "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett where the character Samuel Vimes, while looking at a hole in his shoe that he constantly fixes with a piece of cardboard, comes to the conclusion that it takes money to save money and not in the obvious way. Vimes knows that if he could invest an expensive pair of shoes that they would last much longer then all the cheap shoes he's been buying and, in the end, he would end up paying less for his shoes and save money.
You may think the our Government is in the same position as the character Samuel Vimes, I do not.
take it to a personal level
I have and my friends have as well. We were all working landscaping. Often rooming together to save on rent and/or went back to live with parents because rent was too expensive. I was driving a clunker ( early 2000's and I'm driving around in a 75 Dodge Dart ). All of us living paycheck to paycheck. Most of the time working part-time jobs as kitchen help in addition to cutting lawns. We all came to the conclusion that it sucked and that the only way we were going to get out of it was investing money in our education.
The surprising thing is this is not any new revelation. I cannot count the number of times this advice was given to me. "Invest in your education". Mostly by teachers in schools that by the general consensus are lacking ( "We do have massive problems with some of our public schools" ). So now a president actually makes this an issue and the response seems to be by some "PANIC! PANIC! Socialism is on the march!"
And to sort of bring this full circle and ask you to do a little self examination, If McCain or Bush addressed the public on the same issues and said the same thing as Obama, verbatim, would you be complaining? Stripped of any association with Obama, would you support this statement alone? "We need to make a substantial investment in our education system to maintain U.S. competitiveness in the world economy."
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Also regarding currency - if money has no value, then why do people exchange objects of value for it? Can't it be said that the value of a dollar is the number of hats, apples, cars, etc that people will agree to exchange for it? That is the whole definition of "value" - how much people want something, and what they're willing to exchange for it.
Thus, if I ask you to give me all that "fictional" money in your bank account, and you seem unwilling to do it, I should not be surprised - your money has value to you and to people who will trade with you for it.
Cost of goods go up with inflation, but so do the property taxes. Point being there are a lot of things that can be done to remediate inflation like a buyer's consortium, or direct negotiation with vendors. Some school districts do very well in these matters.
This is the single biggest problem we've got. You assume that while property values go up, the amount of property tax paid actually increases. However, in many states, hence districts, the owners property taxes are based upon the price they paid for the house when purchased and then can only go up a slight amount every year, if a tax assessor actually visits the house. A rate which does not keep up with inflation. Compare this with if the property is sold, then the property tax paid increased dramatically. I know plenty of people that have lived in their houses 15-20yrs, when the house was worth I pay a book rental fee which is actually quite reasonable. But this is still in addition to my taxes. I pay for the book, then pay for the upkeep of the stable with an additional 'hidden' tax.
So this isn't a problem for those that can afford a "book rental fee" but now we have to set up programs for those that cannot afford it. Might as well add in a "kickball rental fee"; as we create a dichotomy between the haves and have-nots, as public schools are targeted for everyone, now we're going to tax those that want to actually use the public schools even more with additional fees. Are you OK with subsidized breakfasts or lunches for those that cannot afford it?
As our population ages, and they will not have children currently in the public school system, we'll see them starting to vote down academic referendums. As the only people voting to increase taxes aimed at schools will be those that are directly involved in it, teachers or parents of students.
If folks want to get serious about bridging the Digital Divide (putting computer equipment into the hands of those who cannot afford it OR in our education system), some OUTSIDE THE BOX thinking needs to take place, and it needs to take place SOON! Instead of assuming you have to go to Dell or HP or wherever else - these guys need to think like small business owners who have to think where EVERY dime is spent. Organizations like TKOEDucation.com specialize in the sale of professionally refurbished Dell computers (mostly the Dell Optiplex and Dell Latitude lines). These high-quality, computers come loaded with a LEGALLY pre-installed Windows XP PRO (MAR) license (with all the drivers installed). They include brand new Logitech Keyboards and new Optical Mice. Most importantly, they include a 3-year parts replacement warranty. As of December 2008 - for $249ea (http://store.tkopartsandpcs.com/gx21gb40xppr.html), you can get a fully-loaded Dell Optiplex GX260 Pentium 4-2.0GHz Computer with XP PRO (MAR) pre-installed on a 40GB Hard Drive and a full 1GB of DDR Memory is installed. The computer comes with CD and Floppy Drive, brand new keyboard and optical mouse, and a 3-year warranty. The kicker? A 15" DELL LCD Monitor is INCLUDED in the $249 price. *** THE WINDOWS XP PRO (MAR) is for "Eligible Recipients" only as defined by Microsoft. Essentially if the equipment goes to a school, non-profit, library, or a qualified low-income home or family ~ then it allowed. Schwarzenegger says Calif. faces $20 billion budget deficit. Yet the CMAS (California Multiple Award Schedule) contract won't let used Dell dealers compete with Dell. So, essentially, despite the fact that the equipment meets all the minimum standards - AND THE EQUIPMENT IS HALF THE PRICE OF NEW - because the CMAS contract excludes companies like TKOEDucation.com, these schools are essentially FORCED to spend $700 on brand new Dell computer bundles when a $249 solution (as noted above) exists. It is no wonder why our economy - both US and in California is in such trouble. OUTSIDE THE BOX people. OUTSIDE THE BOX!!! As just one example of one of the computer bundles that TKOED sells, expect to pay just $249 ~ that includes the Dell Optiplex computer with Intel Pentium 4 processor, a full 1GB of memory, and XP PRO (MAR) will come installed ~ LEGAllY
> Instead, try blaming the people who made the whole thing necessary in the first place.
We will, as soon as we quit shoveling money at them.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
short of finding pictures of him fucking his dog, he's in.
How much time do we have? Photoshop teams Alpha and Bravo are standing by!
24 hours you say? We're on it.
BEEP...BOOP...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Laptops cost more and have a shorter life span.
Until free software does everything needed by every department there will still be a need to purchase software for each laptop.
1,000 laptops(1 per student) * $1000 = $10,000,000
Laptops cost more not just for the initial hardware, but also for the increased strain on the wireless infrastructure, Shorter lifespan, increased support time, Replacement batteries, dropped, spilled on, etc.
250 desktops * $1000 = $2,500,000
For 10,000 students a savings of 7.5 million sounds pretty good to me. Sure you can buy cheaper computers but then you usually pay more in support costs. Also with Cheaper laptops you will have a lower quality smaller screen which will not work well for those who are visually impaired. Users generally get more work done with a full keyboard and mouse as apposed to a laptop keyboard and touch pad.
There is still the need to manage Software, Antivirus, etc on the laptops that will be on your network. Unpatched laptops can spread viruses. Wireless networks would need to be upgraded. Most access points will not handle a hundred simultaneous connections. Many won't handle more than 16 without dropping packets.
"No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids."
Naturally. How are they supposed to learn to outwit censorship and care about privacy if they take it all for granted?