so is this thread debating Socialized Education or Socialized Tuition? I still haven't caught which, but they're no the same thing at all.

well i guess it's what you are calling socialized tuition - although i have usually seen the term socialized education used to describe it. jargon aside, the idea is basically no tuition, and access to whatever accredited school you have the grades to get into, without affecting the internal operations of any of the schools.
that may sound crazy to people who aren't used to the idea, but right now the big universities actually get the bulk of their operating costs from endowment grants and things like defense research. [when they build something like a billion dollar cyclotron to study subatomic physics or something, that money isn't coming from tuition.]

and i don't know what the number would be for 'all tuition at a given college for a given year', but i can't help but think it would at least be slightly offset by the elimination of all that bureaucratic financial aid and bursar's office staff. hehehe

but right now your property taxes pay for things like public grade and high schools and roads, and if you don't drive or have kids, this isn't benefiting you personally either, but it does have a long term good effect on everyone's quality of life. getting more people through college would do even more in this direction. right now a lot of kids are left hanging after high school, and wind up just giving up on college. that sucks.

"Your lack of knowledge should have been obvious once you said we dont need govt. interfernce to socialize access to the higher education system. That is the very def. of socialization."

Which of course starts your whole little castles in the sky fantasy world...

What I said was that we need not have government interference in education itself to socialize access.

"Where would our society be without the Edisons, Fords, Gates, etc.? Now where would we be with fewer people at the bottom? They all serve a purpose but lets not get "fantastically hyperbolic" and claim they are all of equal importance."

Gee... good thing I didn't claim that, now isn't it.

"You always fail to say what the riches' "fair share" is."

... possibly because I haven't cared to, or been enough of a crackpot to spend my time writing out my own tax code to post on bulletin boards.

"Also, who do you deem as the "public" and what do you consider "good", when discussing the "public good"??? ""

You act as those concepts are utterly alien to our form of government.

Originally posted by:crunkmoose

"Your lack of knowledge should have been obvious once you said we dont need govt. interfernce to socialize access to the higher education system. That is the very def. of socialization."

Which of course starts your whole little castles in the sky fantasy world...

What I said was that we need not have government interference in education itself to socialize access.

"Where would our society be without the Edisons, Fords, Gates, etc.? Now where would we be with fewer people at the bottom? They all serve a purpose but lets not get "fantastically hyperbolic" and claim they are all of equal importance."

Gee... good thing I didn't claim that, now isn't it.

"You always fail to say what the riches' "fair share" is."

... possibly because I haven't cared to, or been enough of a crackpot to spend my time writing out my own tax code to post on bulletin boards.

"Also, who do you deem as the "public" and what do you consider "good", when discussing the "public good"??? ""

You act as those concepts are utterly alien to our form of government.

I asked you two pages ago how ACCESS to a system can be socialized without any govt. interference. You have yet to explain your empty statement.


You did claim that the Edisons, Fords, and Gates, etc. have benefitted more from others than we have benefitted from them.

You obviously havent spent much time thinking anything out. You only spout off terms such as "the riches fair share" without even considering what that represents.

Good job ducking the question again. As a follow up to the question you dodged: who then is to determine the "public good"??

Maybe before you reply you should really think through what you seem to support.

Originally posted by:kp for life

well i guess it's what you are calling socialized tuition - although i have usually seen the term socialized education used to describe it. jargon aside, the idea is basically no tuition, and access to whatever accredited school you have the grades to get into, without affecting the internal operations of any of the schools.
that may sound crazy to people who aren't used to the idea, but right now the big universities actually get the bulk of their operating costs from endowment grants and things like defense research. [when they build something like a billion dollar cyclotron to study subatomic physics or something, that money isn't coming from tuition.]

and i don't know what the number would be for 'all tuition at a given college for a given year', but i can't help but think it would at least be slightly offset by the elimination of all that bureaucratic financial aid and bursar's office staff. hehehe [joke]

but right now your property taxes pay for things like public grade and high schools and roads, and if you don't drive or have kids, this isn't benefiting you personally either, but it does have a long term good effect on everyone's quality of life. getting more people through college would do even more in this direction. right now a lot of kids are left hanging after high school, and wind up just giving up on college. that sucks.

Alright, that clears things up. Still I think if we're debating this issue without keeping our current social situation in mind than we're really just debating a pipe dream. I do believe it is the duty of a society to ensure the education of it's youth, but I'm discouraged more and more every time my paycheck gets smaller and then I hear the evening news tell me the education system is failing. I hear our classes are over-crowded and our teachers are poorly qualifed or underpaid or too restricted by regulations. That the schools themselves are understaffed and poorly equipped to teach hands-on. Society will never be convinced that it ought to pay for college tuition as well if the government cannot show it can succesfully maintain the lower education system successfully with all the money we give it. Those two aspects of education may not really have a lot to do with each other, but that doesn't matter, people won't make that distinction with their money, and they shouldn't be expected to.

I agree that it would be excellent for our country and it's economy and development if we could provide free tuition for college, but it's a tough sell considering what are money now is doing. Whether it's corruption, misplaced spending, or choked bureaucracy, the efficacy of our currently socialized aspects of education are not going to convince anyone to socialize more of it. As worthwhile as it may be it won't happen unless lower education gets a much-needed overhaul to restore people's confidence in the government ability to operate things successfully. Right now Privates schools receiving no govermnent support are worlds better than public schools, and compared to Alumni donations don't make much from tuition when factoring in operating costs and salaries. There must be something to that, considering just a couple of decades ago most private schools in America paled in comparison to public schools.

"I asked you two pages ago how ACCESS to a system can be socialized without any govt. interference. You have yet to explain your empty statement."

Simple... government pays for tuition for those accepted. Government would need to interfere very little, if at all, into the actual educational structure of universities. If this lacks specifics it is for good reason... as I said before... I'm not sitting around writing out doctrines on things like this in detail just to post on bulletin boards.

"You did claim that the Edisons, Fords, and Gates, etc. have benefitted more from others than we have benefitted from them."

Then why didn't you post it?

"You obviously havent spent much time thinking anything out. You only spout off terms such as "the riches fair share" without even considering what that represents."

hmmm... could be because this is a fucking bulletin board... not the floor of the senate. You may not have better things to do with your time than make up little manifestos and pet projets to discuss with other geeks on the internet... but I do.

" As a follow up to the question you dodged: who then is to determine the "public good"??"

Who determines the public good right now?

"Maybe before you reply you should really think through what you seem to support"

No thanks. I don't really care to discuss what I "seem to support" when such a thing exists only in your fantasy world. I prefer to discuss what I actually support... not what you infer from it, then play chickenlittle over.

"Society will never be convinced that it ought to pay for college tuition as well if the government cannot show it can succesfully maintain the lower education system successfully with all the money we give it. "

The problem is that we actually DON'T spend all that much on education, in comparison to ther things. Education is usually one of the first things cut when there are budget shortfalls. Part of the problem is the disparity of our schools. Some schools have great teachers, great teaching tools, lots of extracurricular programs, etc... while others have few if any of those things.

Originally posted by:YourLastSavior

Alright, that clears things up. Still I think if we're debating this issue without keeping our current social situation in mind than we're really just debating a pipe dream. I do believe it is the duty of a society to ensure the education of it's youth, but I'm discouraged more and more every time my paycheck gets smaller and then I hear the evening news tell me the education system is failing. I hear our classes are over-crowded and our teachers are poorly qualifed or underpaid or too restricted by regulations. That the schools themselves are understaffed and poorly equipped to teach hands-on. Society will never be convinced that it ought to pay for college tuition as well if the government cannot show it can succesfully maintain the lower education system successfully with all the money we give it. Those two aspects of education may not really have a lot to do with each other, but that doesn't matter, people won't make that distinction with their money, and they shouldn't be expected to.

I agree that it would be excellent for our country and it's economy and development if we could provide free tuition for college, but it's a tough sell considering what are money now is doing. Whether it's corruption, misplaced spending, or choked bureaucracy, the efficacy of our currently socialized aspects of education are not going to convince anyone to socialize more of it. As worthwhile as it may be it won't happen unless lower education gets a much-needed overhaul to restore people's confidence in the government ability to operate things successfully...

see, i actually think about it the other way around: why bother teaching kids that well in grade and high school, if you're going to leave them hanging when it comes to finishing their education by going to college? it's almost cruel and unusual punishment to make them so fully aware of what they can never have, when they might be happier as fully ignorant drones working at the chicken factory.

and as far as socialized tuition for college being a pipe dream, it only is so if we refuse to consider it at all. it is not a new idea, and in a capitalist mindframe it can be seen as one of the few sound investments available to us as a society.

the internet is a great example of how unrestricted access to information can change our culture. or to use a more concrete example, think of how much more ignorant we would be without public libraries, and if the only books we could buy were those sold in supermarkets and chain stores.

education is not that different. if, as a society we encouraged learning instead of creating barriers to it, there would be sweeping changes for the better in every other aspect of our lives.
if you can even imagine a situation where everyone could study to the fullest extent of their abilities and interest, you may be able to see what i'm getting at.
and don't worry about the best schools getting overcrowded; the hardest schools would still be the hardest schools [although they might get a lot harder] and that's a good thing. rich kids would no longer get to go to schools like yale after a summer of fucking and sucking trim on south beach or the south of france, just because their daddies went there or dropped an assload of cash on the place. they'd have to actually be able to do the work, and deserve it.

instead, what we do now is make the acquisition of higher learning and expertise prohibitively expensive - the end result of which policy is an institutionalized classism and a nation of gilded amatuers. a civilization which rewards class over merit will always be mediocre and will have to maintain its primacy in the world with force rather than prowess.

^Or better yet... was a Harvard or Yale legacy admission...

Have you ever heard of govt. financial aid, pell grants, etc.?

Just to be clear... you support the rich "paying their fair share" yet you have no idea what that would be. I did not ask for a tax code. Should they pay 60% of each dollar they earn? 70%? 80%? I am just asking for a number.

It is quite dangerous and illogical to support a policy that you have not thought out at all. It is fine if you just want to spout off catch phrases such as "fair share" and "public good" but at least take a little time to consider what you are proposing.

Also what did you think of the Fair Tax Plan. It is very simple so you should be able to comprehend it.

I don't think Bush went to Yale on a Pell Grant, and I doubt he had a work-study job. unless he got paid by the cheer squad or made money from drinking contests.

"Have you ever heard of govt. financial aid, pell grants, etc.? "

Yes, asshole. I've gotten both. I know how much they pay... and it is next to nothing compared to tuition to many good schools.

"It is quite dangerous and illogical to support a policy that you have not thought out at all. It is fine if you just want to spout off catch phrases such as "fair share" and "public good" but at least take a little time to consider what you are proposing."

Gee, you're right... me expressing my opinion on a bboard could be dangerous..

Do you always resort to name calling when your arguments arent based in the realm of logic?

Yes it is dangerous. You also left out illogical.

I am very interested to see if you could handle the complexities of the fair tax plan. I await your very intelligent analysis.

Keep waiting, jackass. I've got a new job and jury duty this week. No time for love, Dr. Jones.

I figured you couldnt handle it anyway. But I am sure you looked over it with a real open mind . Ill leave you to your empty statements and your illogical contradictory arguments