Have any political ads changed your mind?

[muse]

Let's approach this from the viewpoint of a couple sending their kids to school. Let's say they had kids at 30, when they're 34 their kid's off to kindergarten and they'll begin shelling out let's say, $8000 a year. Doesn't sound like much but it's a lot for a couple in their mid 30's, they're still not in their peak earning years and mom is working part-time or maybe even quit work altogether to care for her child. They have a mortgage to pay off, maybe car loans too plus all the insurance, taxes, & associated costs to go along with it. And of course they have to start saving for the kid's post secondary education. With all these expenses, it's going to be a bitch to come up with $8000 a year, even if both parents have relatively well paying jobs.

Over the child's 14 year stay in the education system, that adds up to $112,000, and that's assuming everything goes smoothly and they don't raise prices. If the child is hospitalized for whatever reason, and chances are good he will be at some point, that's a good 5-10k gone, the education fund for the year's just been wiped out. If the family car breaks down a year or two early, oops, there it goes again. Maybe the fridge died or your roof sprung a leak. What now?

And that's with one child, average is 2.2 kids IIRC, round it off to 2 and you've just doubled your problems. Got $16,000 a year in spare change? Probably not, unless you're rich. My family can afford it, with some room to spare, but for reference purposes our last home sold for almost a million bucks so it's pretty safe to say that most people would be fucked. With 3 kids like my family, even a pretty high income family such as ours will be feeling the squeeze.

What public education effectively does is spread out the cost over a much longer time, making it far more affordable. You start paying your taxes around age 20 or so until you die, with the majority of the taxes being paid between the ages of 25-65. Let's say you live to be 80, that's 60 years of tax contributions. At our $2000/year for education, that eventually works out to $120k, about what it costs to send a kid through school under an $8000/year private system. But you're paying the money out over time so that if you get hit with a one-time financial shortfall you are not screwed. And if you have more than one kid, all you have to pay for are his living expenses and college fund.

[Keevan_Colton]

Ebeneezer Scrooge would have made the perfect candidate for BlkBrry it seems...

"Are there no work houses? No prisons?"

[Lilith]

Privatization of the education is a horrid idea and it will not in any way solve the education problem because the schools will become beholden to private donations and those donors give with the whim of their feelings, the economy (which cannot be relied upon for perpetual growth) family, divorce, etc. Even with economic incentive (tax deduction), dependence on corporations or charitable donations is the most ineffective way to educate.

I teach at a private college and we are completely dependent on our endowment (which was reduced by a third with the last stockmarket drop) for funding. When the stock market dropped so did our donations. It costs around $25000 to educate one student per year (this by the way is on the lower side of actual cost of teaching a student. It is higher at bigger institutions and it is lower at the secondary level). Tuition is $15000 and 99% of the students don't pay that entire amount due to scholarships and grants. The remainder come from donations from corporations and alumni.

Before you think the faculty are swimming in money, our college pays on average $15000 less than comparable schools and we are at the second lowest tier in pay in the country. We have gutted everything down to a minimum--we fired or laid-off dozens of people and we have had no salary increase in three years and have lost all benefits for the last two years.

As for those donors, they think education is a great thing but unless their name is going to go on a building, they're not all that interested in forking over money for scholarlships. Further, when they do give us money, they determine where the money goes. I want new desks to replace the ones from the 1950s, I want a digital map collection for lectures, get rid of the chalk board and replace it with a white board--but donors want to pay for a clock tower. We have NO say in this.

Right now, we've got a bunch of donors who are rallying around starting a football team at the college (we have 800 students). Best of all, they are willing to donate the estimated $10-$20 million starting cost and to give $2 million a year to support such a program. We couldn't convince these people to give us $100,000 for scholarships but they are willing to give millions for a football team! That is the reality of reliance on private funding.

There are schools all over the US that has pretty buildings with names of donors blazened across but they don't have the staff to teach in those buildings or to even clean the damn things.

Privatization will create competition but not in the way that draw students. It will be a competition to draw donors. Guess what? Donors prefer their money go to a high powered, big named school for the prestige of it. What do we do with rural, remote, or poorer schools that cater to a smaller population and no one has heard of them?

As several have already noted, private education will not provide univeral education. Public schools by law are obligated to accept and educate students regardless of their economic postion, race, gender, physical or mental handicaps, and learning disabilities. Private schools are under no such obligation.

Why are some private schools more "successful" in regards to higher scores and higher graduation rates? Private schools can be selective about who they accept and they can also more easily expel students for a variety of things. They have generally smaller class sizes. Hell, if public schools could do that, we'd see similar outcomes.

Of course public schools have problems but privatizing is the worst idea for resolving it. And society benefits from an educated public--less crime, more skilled workers, educated voting population, and so on. The benefit may not show with a dollar amount but that's a pretty narrow defiition of what "benefit" means.

[kojikun]

aerius: short term, you're right, gas can be increased in price with little impact o sales. but there are two things to consider with gas, first is that gas in the US is undervalued significantly so even doubling the price is only market normalization rather than price hiking. second is that as we've seen recently, increasing gas prices lead to an increase in the popularity of fuel efficient vehicles, and the development of non-gasoline based vehicles, and so while gas prices can indeed increase significantly, it doesn't cause a huge impact. thats a third thing, tho, gas is inelastic because of its low cost. if gas started to cost 10 dollars per gallon you better believe that normal, elastic market forces would take control. right now gasoline is like cigarettes or bread, its not a significant chunk of your income. now, electricity is different. thats government granted monopolies, and i cant really speak for the market forces acting upon it.

you're right, tho, that private education costs can get pretty damn high. im not saying that all education should be privatized, no, thats silly. but i do think that money spent on educating your child privately should be tax exempt. i would also support more private education, because they're notoriously higher quality, but i don't think it should be forced. the public education system as it presently is could stand to be a bit segregated, put more into a public trust with governmental oversight, like the fed or something, definitely. give them more freedom to be educators and not legislative pawns.

and if the canadian people are spending $8k a year on their kids, thats alot of money that could be used privately. not necessarilly that they'd be able to find a school, but if they did, they should be allowed to tax exempt that 8k for their childs education.

[Wicked Pilot]

http://workingforchange.speedera.net/ww ... -07-04.gif

I credit this with my decision to vote FOR Kerry!

Now that is funny. In my weaker moments, that would have caused me to go out and register Democrat.