Understanding the Issues: Education

[FRPLG]

As for education:

The standardized tests suck. They do. They destroy the way our teachers teach and kids suffer. But ultimately we have to have some way to figure out which teachers are doing good jobs and which aren't. Not to burst any bubbles but seeing as my wife went to a college focused on educating future teachers and my father in law is a local school board member I know rather well how a good amount of our teachers are simply bad at their jobs. I'd say roughly ALL of her college friends were education majors and many struggled with basic studies in some form or another. Even in college we always said if we ever had kids she only had two friends she'd let teach them. And many of these same people graduated with decent grades and appeared to be able bodied teachers ready to conquer the world. Most were numbskulls. The teaching profession in this country attracts much of the worst. It does. Can't figure out what you want to do with life? Try teaching. There are always jobs and you can't get fired. Perfect job for the unmotivated and/or dumb. There certainly are a few good teachers out there and then there is a decent amount of adequate teachers but there are a lot of bad teachers and we need a way to find them and make them better or fire them.

Teachers need to get paid more by a lot and need to be rewarded for doing a good job. How we measure that I don't know honestly but the current way isn't much better than not knwoing.

The ones not doing a good job have to go.

[That Guy]

here's some (but not all) the facts on taxes...
McCain vs Obama on taxes - Fact Checker

mccain wants to keep the bush cuts, cut a few more taxes and give 2.5k-5k to individuals for health insurance. big on nuclear plants which lead to cheaper energy (and if someone finally decides to create sane nuclear fuel policy reduces the amount of radioactive waste to nothing and makes it even cheaper, probably not happening short term though).

obama wants to expire the bush cuts (would would be the largest tax increase by value since WWII, but only the 5th largest increase by Gross National Product, which is a better indicator), increase capital gains taxes from 15 to 20%, increase taxes quite a bit on those making over 250k a year, and also offer credits to those needing health insurance. he also wants to decrease costs of health insurance with more/stricter regulation (but i strongly doubt that that happens).


obama is thinking in a much shorter term about fixing income inequality, but in the long term its hard to say that increasing the penalty for investing is a good idea. mccain's increasing tax cuts beyond bush may not be the greatest idea either. both want emission credits for polluters, which definitely isn't perfect, but i guess it's better than nothing (florida already does something like that, at least with eglin afb, where they track all use of hazmats and report it, then pay a fee per year for the total pollution created by the base).

but if you really wanted to save money, you'd increase the military to where it was before BRAC and clinton hit it instead of wasting SOOO much more money on contractors. A contracted termite exterminator makes 120k a year in iraq, an army exterminator makes 25k (closer to 40-50k with all bonuses etc). with what we've spent on contractors over the price of the old bigger military, we could have kept the bigger military for 25 more years and still be ahead. terrible economic decision.

farm subsidies is another economic issue that could easily save money, since so many people with no business in agriculture use it as a tax shelter (celebs, bankers, etc). it's like rich person welfare, only it's a lot more money, and none of the non-farmers (and a lot of corporate farmers) don't actually need it. MUCH smaller scale though than the above.

[SmootSmack]

That Guy, start another thread on the tax debate and I'll throw up a poll there. Let's keep this thread about education

[firstdown]

I agree with what you said on several things except this.

but if you really wanted to save money, you'd increase the military to where it was before BRAC and clinton hit it instead of wasting SOOO much more money on contractors. A contracted termite exterminator makes 120k a year in iraq, an army exterminator makes 25k (closer to 40-50k with all bonuses etc). with what we've spent on contractors over the price of the old bigger military, we could have kept the bigger military for 25 more years and still be

While I agree a contractor makes more money up front than a person in the service the difference is in the benifits. So we pay a contractor 125 k for two years and we are done paying them but a person in the service will receive benifits for a life time making their cost much, much more. I'm not getting into which way is the best but it is much cheaper to use contractors for alot of jobs.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by firstdown

While I agree a contractor makes more money up front than a person in the service the difference is in the benifits. So we pay a contractor 125 k for two years and we are done paying them but a person in the service will receive benifits for a life time making their cost much, much more. I'm not getting into which way is the best but it is much cheaper to use contractors for alot of jobs.

wha?? you mean the life time benefits after TWENTY+ YEARS of making craptacular pay? or are you forgetting the overhead paid to hal etc on top of that 120k salary (admin costs, his employer insurance and benefits, his food and housing over there, and 20% on top of that as the profit portion of the cost + contracts).

it's not cheaper, and it's not even close.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by That Guy

wha?? you mean the life time benefits after TWENTY+ YEARS of making craptacular pay? or are you forgetting the overhead paid to hal etc on top of that 120k salary (admin costs, his employer insurance and benefits, his food and housing over there, and 20% on top of that as the profit portion of the cost + contracts).

it's not cheaper, and it's not even close.

In no way do I have any problems with our servicemans benefits and agree they are way under paid. I was responding to what you where saying about cost and the use of contractors. About a year ago I read a report about the use of contractors and cost v/s having a larger service and its cost. The numbers I read showed in most cases it was cheaper to use contractors because after the contract is up the cost stops. Then it showed the cost to train, house , benefits, (which we agree are not that great) and other cost such as moving them from place to place etc... add up to allot of money. It was not nor am I sugesting doing away with any of our forces and agree we should keep a strong military I was just responding to the cost part.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by firstdown

In no way do I have any problems with our servicemans benefits and agree they are way under paid. I was responding to what you where saying about cost and the use of contractors. About a year ago I read a report about the use of contractors and cost v/s having a larger service and its cost. The numbers I read showed in most cases it was cheaper to use contractors because after the contract is up the cost stops. Then it showed the cost to train, house , benefits, (which we agree are not that great) and other cost such as moving them from place to place etc... add up to allot of money. It was not nor am I sugesting doing away with any of our forces and agree we should keep a strong military I was just responding to the cost part.

but how long was the cost analysis, cause 1 year with contractors vs 10 years of a bigger service is different than the 6+ years of deployed contractors with huge overheads.

when i looked at the numbers, with the amount of time in and the length of time a full contracting force will be over there on our dollar, the numbers for contracting over that span really didn't look very good.


and you've also got a lot of air force members doing army jobs (in lieu of) like sentry, towers, gates, convoys, bomb squad, patrols (cop cars), etc, and the army's not taking them back any time soon, since the army doesn't have enough manpower of its own right now.

[That Guy]

i've gone back and tried to make this easier for you.

Originally Posted by me

talking to our enemies while bombing our allies (iran/pakistan)

that's colored coded, in a former/latter configuration that's actually pretty common in English. so you can put that one to bed.

Originally Posted by me

the japanese have a sorta decent idea (you pay 100% upfront, the gov pays you 80% back

Originally Posted by you

Those covered under Employee Health Insurance pay 20% of their medical costs when hospitalized

Originally Posted by math

what's 100% - 80%?

again, you call it out-of-thin-air, i call it "cause my friends in japan are covered by the system so they probably know how it actually works", but to each his own... way to assume though.

lemme know if there's anything else you're having trouble with...

[saden1]

Originally Posted by That Guy

again, you call it out-of-thin-air, i call it "cause my friends in japan are covered by the system so they probably know how it actually works", but to each his own... way to assume though.

lemme know if there's anything else you're having trouble with...

Your statement implied that everyone pays that 20% which is not true with respect to the elderly and very poor. You neglect the fact that there's is a monthly ceiling for co-payments which means you never pay more than the ceiling in any given month (the cost is capped monthly but if you can't afford the 20% the government will assist you). In 1999 this ceiling was roughly $600 ($330 for those with low income and $1140 for those with significant income). The effective co-payment for the elderly was 7.3%.

Also, contribution to the program is a percentage based on your income (~4%) sorta like social security with everyone getting the same deal. There's government control across the board (drugs prices, profit margins on drugs, procedures prices, private insurance prices, level of interaction between doctors and private insurers, etc, etc). It's a highly complex system to say the least.

This my friend is a full blown socialized health care system. Let's just say I like it and I'm glad you like it too.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by saden1

Your statement implied that everyone pays that 20% which is not true with respect to the elderly and very poor. You neglect the fact that there's is a monthly ceiling for co-payments which means you never pay more than the ceiling in any given month (the cost is capped monthly but if you can't afford the 20% the government will assist you). In 1999 this ceiling was roughly $600 ($330 for those with low income and $1140 for those with significant income). The effective co-payment for the elderly was 7.3%.

Also, contribution to the program is a percentage based on your income (~4%) sorta like social security with everyone getting the same deal. There's government control across the board (drugs prices, profit margins on drugs, procedures prices, private insurance prices, level of interaction between doctors and private insurers, etc, etc). It's a highly complex system to say the least.

This my friend is a full blown socialized health care system. Let's just say I like it and I'm glad you like it too.

that's probably because the point was obama wants full socialized health care eventually and how he'd pay for it without tax increases. the japanese system was a footnote example, not an essay, cause again, that really was tangential to the discussion at hand, so i didn't think it was necessary.

i mean, i could levy the same statement back at you about every rash generalization you've made in this thread, so it seems like a silly thing to say. I'm glad you learned something though, and hopefully some of the baseless mccain crap can be shown the door.

neither one is perfect and neither one is really what i want, but i'll always choose smaller government and less senseless taxing (libertarian).

i'm all for social programs, but only if they can prevent abuse and show a clear economic/social benefit and a sane payment system, which most don't.

i mean, if someone went ahead and said social security is going to be killed off completely, they'd have my vote (since i save and invest and would get an amazingly better return on that money than some crap annuity when i'm 70), but it'll never happen. even if they just gave people the option to opt out and lose whatever they've contributed thusfar, i'd be jumping at it.

tax and legalize prostitution, drill where you can safely drill without massive eco-damage, i mean, there's a lot of small issues that make sense and would be very easy to implement (and added together, you'd get a better economy, less wasteful spending, more tax revenue, cheaper energy, less dependence etc), but there's so much that's verbotten it's stupid.

there was an actual argument over building a 120mill$ bridge to nowhere for a tiny (<100 i think) village... relocation across the water body or private cessna's for every person would have been cheaper, and they actually had to waste time entertaining that kind of crap. honestly the amount of pork in our spending is almost nothing compared to the budget or other nations, but hearing about it just rankles at how wasteful some people can be.

[MTK]

I think your upbringing contributes more to your common sense than you think.

What's basic to you may not be so basic to others.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by Mattyk72

I think your upbringing contributes more to your common sense than you think.

What's basic to you may not be so basic to others.

Othewise why do we have the mortgage issues that we do now?

In some cases, the lenders were actually behaving criminally, which even the most educated person could have fallen victim.

But I think we also have it because people were too afraid to ask the lender enough questions because they didn't want to appear stupid. You don't need an education, you don't need two parents, you don't need a middle class income as a child to understand that if you don't understand how something works, you shouldn't get into it. That to me is basic, not taught, we're born with that.

Everyone has the common sense to make that correct decision. But not everyone got over the fear of asking the questions that may have seemed stupid.

[dmek25]

the mortgage crisis is a bad example. this is something my wife called, almost 20 years ago. times were good, and rates the best ever. lenders were doing anything they could to get people into housing that would make them " house" poor. all but guaranteeing the rates wouldn't creep back up. all the big money players in this got rich, and now the every day Joe's are out. that probably sounds pretty fair to you, schneed. screw the little guy. make him fend for himself. and if he cant, its his problem. this is politics at its worse

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by dmek25

the mortgage crisis is a bad example. this is something my wife called, almost 20 years ago. times were good, and rates the best ever. lenders were doing anything they could to get people into housing that would make them " house" poor. all but guaranteeing the rates wouldn't creep back up. all the big money players in this got rich, and now the every day Joe's are out. that probably sounds pretty fair to you, schneed. screw the little guy. make him fend for himself. and if he cant, its his problem. this is politics at its worse

I can't say I understand what you're saying about a mortgage crisis 20 years ago? Rates were great in the 80s. I'd like to comment further but I can't say I understand what you're talking about.

As for the little guy comment, I perceive myself to be one of the little guys. I'm a guy just like anybody else. I just take responsibility for my actions and do what needs to be done to make good decisions.

[dmek25]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

I can't say I understand what you're saying about a mortgage crisis 20 years ago? Rates were great in the 80s. I'd like to comment further but I can't say I understand what you're talking about.

As for the little guy comment, I perceive myself to be one of the little guys. I'm a guy just like anybody else. I just take responsibility for my actions and do what needs to be done to make good decisions.

my wife called this crisis close to 20 years ago. she knew that there are tons of unethical people doing whatever they could to get people into houses that they just couldn't afford. she has been under writing mortgages for almost 25 years. the people that were the root cause of this will pack up shop, walk away, and open up somewhere else. when you haven't walked in these peoples shoes, your comments come off as snobbish( or shall i use the term, elitist?) right now, there are alot of good people really struggling to make ends meet. living paycheck to paycheck. one wrong decision could pretty much ruin them financially. growing up in an environment of poverty, already starts them off with a strike against them. they can only mimic the choices and decisions they have seen. that's part of the reason it remains a cycle. the other is it takes alot of hard work to break that cycle. some want to, but don't know how. others are just too damn tired to break it. others don't mind going along for the ride. i think that most are good, decent, hard working people. that want a better life, both for their kids, and themselves. but most are also very proud, that would rather do without a hand out. its very hard to separate the needy, into people that want to do the right thing. and people that are generally worthless