Originally posted by: pudge

Originally posted by:the norseman

i'm sure you're going to come up with some ridiculous way of explaining how any of this is "theft."

All taxation that is not voluntarily given is theft.

maybe that's true in libertarian fantasy world (which i too occasionally live in), but in america, it's not theft in any legal sense whatsoever.

as to your other points, i agree that national sales tax can be a great idea, but not as the sole tax income for the government. i still think high tax rates for the top earners in the country is an inescapable need at government-level spending. all the business sense in the world and all the fat-trimming imaginable cannot make running a country like the u.s. on sales tax alone, unless it was an ungodly high amount, which hurts the poorest people the most.

Originally posted by: WhiskeyForBreakfast

Originally posted by:pudge

Heh... bumper sticker slogans, Whiskey? That's a substitute for debate now?

not a bumper sticker; that's a bit condescending. sometimes the truth just fits into one sentence and doesn't require the laborious, long-winded mental masturbation that some people think is 'debate'.

and i stand by what i said: ignorance costs this country a LOT more than nationalized education would.

bingo. we boast non-stop about how good our engineers and doctors are - too bad a lot of those people aren't americans, and quite a bit choose to go back to their countries after getting their education here. math and science in america are not being pushed forward, and this hurts our global competitiveness. i don't even need to give examples, you've all seen the reports about how bad our students do.

however, like i said pages ago, this debate is getting a bit off topic - nationalized education already exists at the primary and secondary level. even though states set a lot of standards, it's all publicly funded and some national standards do exist. so nationalizing education only refers to the college-level, and increasing the prominence of math and science need to happen at the lower levels, which is education reform, not nationalization.

Originally posted by:the norseman

however, like i said pages ago, this debate is getting a bit off topic - nationalized education already exists at the primary and secondary level. even though states set a lot of standards, it's all publicly funded and some national standards do exist. so nationalizing education only refers to the college-level, and increasing the prominence of math and science need to happen at the lower levels, which is education reform, not nationalization.

i think the original topic was advocating nationalization at the higher levels as well, college and graduate school. i think reform is needed also, at all levels, to produce more qualified students for college, but it would be nice if the ones qualified right now didn't slip through the cracks for lack of money to study at a decent school.
so, i don't think it's gone off track at all, as that seems germane to any discussion of either reform or nationalization, or both.

i see your point, but i was just trying to point out that any tax increase (if an increase was even needed, versus cutting from other wasteful programs) would only be used to nationalize post-secondary education, which, across the board, requires a lot less money than funding k-18 at a national (not county) level would.

i completely agree with that.

i think we would also see the reform of education on all levels as a consequence of nationalizing college tuition, as better educated, trained, and knowledgeable people would start to cycle back through the system as educators, administrators, etc.
like someone else pointed out, i don't see any downside to this whole idea.

this is sort of out of nowhere, but since we're on education in america in general -

the system of county-level funding for schools is actually alright, in my book. schools in wealthy areas get more money because the residents pay more money, but that doesn't necessarily mean better education. schools in poor counties often lack peripherals, like after-school programs and the newest/enough technology, but that doesn't automatically make for bad TEACHERS. new teachers can get their entire loan debt waived if they teach for poorer school districts, and a lot of programs in education departments at universities stress teaching for these schools more than the wealthy districts (which does bring results).

i find it interesting that talk of primary and secondary education reform always goes back to a rich vs. poor mentality. the truth is that computers in every classroom aren't going to boost test scores and comprehension - good teachers and smart curriculum programs are.

right, but throwing money at those schools isn't going to stop the communities problems, either. pouring money into high schools is pouring money down the drain unless you do it the right way, by getting teachers and programs that can influence kids.

shiny new textbooks and computers (which is what they want the money for) aren't going to do it.

Originally posted by:WhiskeyForBreakfast

not a bumper sticker; that's a bit condescending.

Wasn't trying to be condescending, it *is* a bumper sticker that reads, "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance". Great sentiment, one which I agree with. Unfortunately, when you say that you're against teachers' unions and wasteful public spending, you get painted as some kind of anti-child monster.

sometimes the truth just fits into one sentence and doesn't require the laborious, long-winded mental masturbation that some people think is 'debate'.

Right, I mean, why discuss the merits and drawbacks when a small, trite slogan is so much easier?

and i stand by what i said: ignorance costs this country a LOT more than nationalized education would.

We already have nationalized education in grades K through 12. We also have hundreds of financial aid programs for students who can't afford college- grants, loans, scholarships, all private and publically subsidized. There's no need to create more government, more bureaucracy, more waste, fraud, and inefficiency just to provide college educations free to people who are sufficiently unmotivated enough to grab all the easy money that already exists.

Originally posted by:the norseman

maybe that's true in libertarian fantasy world (which i too occasionally live in), but in america, it's not theft in any legal sense whatsoever.

Like I said, it is, in fact, legal, but that doesn't make it any less theft.

as to your other points, i agree that national sales tax can be a great idea, but not as the sole tax income for the government. i still think high tax rates for the top earners in the country is an inescapable need at government-level spending.

The Fair Tax was crafted with our current budget in mind, but here's a radical idea... cut. government. spending. That's always the elephant in the room nobody talks about. Why not cut back spending? Why should the government be allowed to spend money at will with no thought or care that we, the people, will end up paying for it either via higher taxes or by passing the debt to future generations?

all the business sense in the world and all the fat-trimming imaginable cannot make running a country like the u.s. on sales tax alone, unless it was an ungodly high amount, which hurts the poorest people the most.

The Fair Tax has a prebate built in, so that each person receives a subsidy check that is meant to cover the tax on the basic necessities like food and clothing. Besides, people won't be paying any more for goods and services than they already do, but they will not have money withheld from their paychecks. So they not only keep all the money they earn, they get a prebate from the government.

www.fairtax.org

"do you have any idea the kind of nightmarishly frustrating, kafkaesque bureaucratic hydra the financial aid system in this country is?"

cosigned

Originally posted by:WhiskeyForBreakfast
do you have any idea the kind of nightmarishly frustrating, kafkaesque bureaucratic hydra the financial aid system in this country is? you said earlier that you didn't go to college, so i don't think you do.
but it's ironic that you think it could possibly be doing a better job than a single, unified program.

I know it's not easy- no bureaucracy is easy to navigate. The funny thing is that you think by EXPANDING it, that it will suddenly change and become more user-friendly. The truth is- it won't. It will get worse. It will end up underfunded, inefficient, and poorly run and we will all end up paying far more than it should cost.

i think something said earlier is fundamental in understanding the differences of opinion on this: ignorant people tend to see a college education as a luxury, while the educated and the wealthy view it as a necessity. the countries that have already nationalized higher education also see it as a necessity: japan, germany and other european nations, all of which have very high standards of living, higher productivity with fewer resources than us, and it is often the case that they surpass us in expertise in various fields. i don't exactly see their economies collapsing under the weight of it; on the contrary i see their economies prospering as a result of it, being continually nourished at the base by an influx of the most literate, qualified populations possible.

meanwhile, back here in jerry springerland, we have toothless 400 pound mothers making mayonaise sandwiches on food bank bread for the five filthy helions they are "home-schooling" who will, in turn, repeat the cycle with their own kids, generation after generation, after generation, living like it's 1930 while the rest of the 1st world lunges into the next century.

That's a bit generalizing, to say the least. These Jerry Springer-ites you speak of wouldn't take a college education even if it was free. And, if college suddenly becomes an entitlement, then you have to lower the bar so everyone who wants to can attend.

But, I am not opposed to a test run. We should pick a state, try it on the state level, see if it works. I am betting it won't, but if it does, then I would have no problem with this being done at the STATE level. Federalizing it, though, I'm not a fan of.

"It will end up underfunded, inefficient, and poorly run and we will all end up paying far more than it should cost. "

that is the u.s. experience, but it doesn't have to be that way. americans fear socializing or nationalizing anything to the extent that most don't actually know about all of the countries that have such systems and benefit from them.

the truth is that the publicly funded universities in most of europe are far more financially accessible than american universities. free tuition actually means cutting bureaucracy away from the financial aid system because if you are a student, you just take classes (instead of receiving money to pay your tuition with).

Originally posted by:WhiskeyForBreakfast

do you think germany 'lowered the bar'? do you think japan 'lowered the bar'?

No, but you're comparing apples and oranges. I can promise you, if you start taxing people to pay for free college there will be lawsuits DEMANDING that some students get in to some schools, and they will SCREAM discrimination if they don't. It already happens now under our current system. And, as I pointed out before, Japan and Germany have far less of a population to deal with. Let's not even start about what would happen once illegal immigrants start taking advantage of this social entitlement.

dummies still couldn't make it into harvard. in fact, the good schools would get their bars raised because of the increase in competition and influx of low income applicants for admission.

Of course, private colleges would set their own entry criteria and standards. I was more talking about state colleges.

let me illustrate the point with a reallife example since you think the system is humming along efficiently, and not crushing people beneath the wheel.
my aunt was a gifted student and a physics major at the undergraduate level. she applied and was accepted to graduate school at duke, for a masters tracked into a ph.d, but the hitch here is that she was born poor and had been taking out the maximum in student loans to go to school since she had graduated from high school, in addition to working a job at a local sandwich shop.
now she started the program, for which she also had to take out loans to finance, but she still had to get an outside job at a restaurant, this in addition to the job she already had as a teaching assistant, in addition to her own classes and research projects.

- now keep in mind that all this time, right along side her, students from wealthy families had no second job, lived in nice apartments or houses, and lived and breathed their studies only - which was still really fucking hard at a school as competitive as this.

so, about 2/3 the way to her masters, my uncle dies, and the tiny stipend she was receiving from him stops. she can no longer make ends meet and has to take a second job [third, really after the t.a. position], and this results in her having to take fewer classes. this results in her losing her t.a. position. now that she is no longer going to school full time, her loans start coming due. she continues to try to do academic work, but at some point she needs to take some time off, hoping to put away money for tuition. she's barely scraping by in the college town she's living in, and is completely unable to keep up on her student loan payments which are now in default. thinking that it might be better to move back home and get a job there, she does so, except now, the background/credit check prospective employers run on her show a massive five digit debt and collection agencies all over her ass, so they don't want to hire her, even though she's probably more qualified than most applicants at any job, especially for teaching any grade or high school science. [it also keeps her from getting leases for apartments]

she finally gets a job working at the same sandwich shop she worked at in undergraduate college, back when she still had dreams and any glimmer of hope in her life.
20 years later, she's now the manager there. my aunt has since become an invalid and she takes care of her in the house she grew up in on the spare wages. she doesn't talk much physics anymore.
and oh yeah, she still gets a few messages on her answering machine every week from c