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Saturday, September 18, 2010
Quote of the day--on our previous--and next?--financial collapse
From Andrew Ross Sorkin today, this morning, on NPR's Weekend Edition: "I think about this all the time and I dont want to ever have to write a sequel to this book. But what I worry about, actually, is not Wall Street but what worries me now is that too big to fail is now being applied to countries and states like California and Greece and Italy and Portugal. And the same problem that Lehman Brothers had, this idea that other banks weren't going to trade with them because all of a sudden they weren't confident enough that they were going to be able to pay back the money, that that's what's going to happen to a state like California and that's what's going to happen to this country, that in the future countries are going to have this problem, that people are just going to decide, you know what, we dont trust these guys, we're not confident that they're ever going to be able to pay us back. And that's what worries me the most." Me? Personally? I KNOW we need government. We need government to create schools and pave the streets and build and maintain our infrastructure. And we need it to police the corporations. We need them to protect us. Too many Americans haven't come to this realization, in spite of the last decade and our near-collapse.
Link to original post: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129953853
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7 comments:
We need roads, and the government is probably the best place to maintain them--but mostly at a lower level, with more local and less federal involvement.
We need elementary schools, but I don't know that we need tenured, unionized kindergarten teachers--I think there are cheaper ways to teach children as well or even better than we do now.
We don't need subsidies for college--Prices increase to take up all available financial aid, and the middle class can no longer pay for their own college unless they are obedient to bureaucrats.
We don't need and cannot afford first time home buyer subsidies, crush a big car and buy an import subsidies, most housing subsidies, farm subsidies, war subsidies, tobacco subsidies, corporate training subsidies, and, and...We need to reduce government to its core functions and insist it do them well--not all this other bullshit that has been tacked on, or been moved from local to federal control over the years.
First, we wouldn't even have our necessary coast-to-coast highway system if we didn't have Federal Government involvement from Washington.
Second, tenure and unionization of kindergarten teachers has nothing to do with the necessity of government to have and run schools.
Third, we absolutely need subsidies for colleges because we have, again, turned over these schools to private industry and capitalism, which have totally, utterly milked the system to, once again, make it ridiculously, absurdly expensive here in the States--because they can. Consequently, we are pricing ourselves, out students and future generations out of education and so, our country's future out of suture improvements in our society, out of further successes and growth.
Actually, what we need is to take back the colleges and universities and put them back in the government sphere, totally, and keep the costs down, just as we should have done this year with health care but didn't, in spite of your protests otherwise.
We'll never see eye-to-eye on these points, let's own up to that right now.
mr
Major between-state highways are a legitimate place for federal funding. Mostly local roads should not get federal money--instead, don't take that money from the local people in the first place.
Publicly funded education is not the same as government run schools. We could pay parents and let them choose the school--set standards, but if the students meet the standards, don't worry about how they get there.
Philip Greenspun is an MIT professor and internet pioneer, also runs a private, capitalist helicopter flight school. Tuition at his school is about half of what it is at the nearby university--but because of subsidies only available to a degree granting,non-capitalist institution, students actually pay less out of their own pocket at the university.
How is that a good use of tax dollars?
I'm not sure what you mean by putting colleges back in the government sphere--most of them still are, and even so called private schools have massive federal involvement. Are you saying Harvard should be put more fully under government control, or are you talking ITT tech or Devry type places? Or Ohio State?
You can't compare an anamoly--Mr. Greenspun's school or anthying else--to regular, more normal situations that take advantage of students and /or their parents. Anyone would salute his school, if what you say is true but the fact is, it's not the norm. Too many companies take advantage of students, book prices, semester fees, etc.
Anytime you educate people--young, old or whatever age--to be productive, it benefits the nation-state.
mr
If education has to be a monopoly or near monopoly, it should be state run. That may be the case in some very small towns for primary education.
But where there is room for several schools, parents should have the option of using the money that would have been spent on their kids used for private schools instead. When costs are passed on to the people making the choice, economy and quality matters more.
Not everyone benefits from a degree--Somehow we have lost the idea that hands-on trades and physical work is worthwhile, while complaining at the same time about jobs lost to foreign countries.
You still haven't clarified what you mean by take back the schools and colleges.
I couldn't agree more about trades and educating some people for them. We need the electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc., etc. and they seem to get short shrift in our society. Also, assuming all students can and should be proficient at everything, the way we do in our schools is crazy. Not all students can even read well if even one of them has a reading disorder, as one example.
More than anything, I mean capping costs on students education. The best example is how buyers of books get ripped-off so extremely. That's an easy and obvious case.
mr
I also want to reduce costs for education--but caps are not likely to find the optimum level, and too little is probably worse than too much.
Textbooks may be worse than you think--Dad was in charge of textbooks for his division--he could have made a couple thousand dollars per semester in not quite technically bribes if he had selected certain books. Nothing new here-The Nobel Prize winning physicist had similar stories from the 60's, when he was on the committee that selected textbooks for LA County public schools.
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
If you are not familiar with Feynman, you should be-not just a genius in physics, but a great teacher, with a wicked sense of humor.
But the textbooks are just a symptom of the bigger problem--most of the money is not coming from customers, and nobody has enough incentive to sensibly economize. A truly private sector business that ran like that would be run out of business by their competition.
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