Political Roundtable - Part VI

[Zonkerbl]

Hey Zonk, isn't the best way to go to let the current school systems do what they do but then also let parents choose if they want to go to their public school or to the local Charter School? Wouldn't that be the best way to foster competition?

I would think that the local schools would improve quickly if they knew that they had competition.

I also think that charter schools have a better chance of not being racist - but I have no metrics to back this up.

Ok, let me describe the "jail school" approach.

Allow full mobility of teachers and students between schools. IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. E.g. if your student is a poor performer, they get sent to a lower tier school. If a teacher is a poor performer, they get sent to a lower tier school. Teachers and students that are good get an opportunity to move up.

The end result is that certain schools become "jail schools," where all the malcontents and incompetents go.

It's kind of the way the system works now, except instead of calling the crap schools "jail schools," they call the good schools "magnet schools." And you can only move up, not down.

Now imagine a privatized system where student mobility is determined by parents' wealth rather than actual school performance. Now the "jail schools" are where all the poor kids go, instead of the dumb kids (or kids with unmotivated parents). Pretty much any amount of "competition" between the current system and a voucher system would result in wealthy parents pulling kids out of public school, leaving public schools as the place where peasants go to school.

No, I don't think vouchers are the answer. The fact is that some schools are going to be better than others. Let's make that transparent and explicit. Let's take advantage of that fact to provide an incentive, for both students and parents, for their kids to perform well. Let's allow mobility between the schools to be determined, at least to some extent, by student performance. If you have a poorly performing student, you have to pay out the nose for private tuition to get to a better school. That's as it should be. But students who perform well should have the opportunity for better education regardless of their parents' wealth. And even though no one is willing to admit it out loud, it's kind of the way the system works now.

Well, at least in Maryland. If you have school age kids in DC you're screwed because DC doesn't have home rule.

[dckingsfan]

Zonk, aren't charter schools - public schools? I think they are publicly funded but independent schools established by teachers, parents, and/or community groups under the terms of a charter with either local or national authority. They just aren't run by the local school boards/teachers unions.

I think you would essentially get a "voucher" to move to one of these other public schools. Generally they start at kindergarden and there is a lottery - it isn't like a magnet school where you have to "earn" your way in.

The question is how to have competition to the current system. I don't think your plan does that, if I am wrong, how so?

I would think you would want as much choice and competition as possible. I think we want to have fierce competition by different school choices to try to break this gridlock - best choice wins.

[DCZards]

Zonk, aren't charter schools - public schools? I think they are publicly funded but independent schools established by teachers, parents, and/or community groups under the terms of a charter with either local or national authority. They just aren't run by the local school boards/teachers unions.

I think you would essentially get a "voucher" to move to one of these other public schools. Generally they start at kindergarden and there is a lottery - it isn't like a magnet school where you have to "earn" your way in.

The question is how to have competition to the current system. I don't think your plan does that, if I am wrong, how so?

I would think you would want as much choice and competition as possible. I think we want to have fierce competition by different school choices to try to break this gridlock - best choice wins.

There's a fascination with charter schools that overlooks the fact that most charter schools are not any better--and are often worse--than the traditional public school when it comes to educating children. And dozens of charters have been shutdown because their "independent" operators were really just crooks who used dissatisfaction with regular public schools to open a charter school solely to get rich off the public trough.

Yes, there are some good charter schools, like the chain of KIPP schools, but far too many are living off the perception that they are "better" than the traditional public schools. Problem is we don't know for sure how well many of these schools are doing because, in many cases, they are "independent" so they don't have to take the same tests or report the results of those tests in the way that the traditional public school does. This is what happens when we decide that regulating schools is a bad thing.

On top of that, when a charter school finds that a kid is a discipline problem or not likely to do well on a standardized test, they simply ship that kid back to their neighborhood school (often just before testing season) and that neighborhood school HAS to take the kid. And, guess what, the charter school gets to keep ALL of the money that the school district gave it to educate that kid, at least that's the case in DC.

I'd also point out that charter school teachers across the country, particularly in places like NYC, LA and Chicago, are increasingly choosing to unionize because they recognize that without union representation they don't have a voice (or leverage) when dealing with management...and teachers not having a voice in what happens in their classrooms is a bad thing for both educators and students.

[dckingsfan]

Hey Zards, do you have any evidence to offer that charter schools are worse or better?

Do you think it is bad that the bad charters are going out of business and only the better charter schools are making it?

Do you have any evidence that charter schools kick kids out at a higher rate than regular schools. Or any evidence that affluence gets you accepted to those schools at a higher rate?

Do you think it costs more or less per capita to educate kids at a charter? Where does the difference go? Does that raise the amount per pupil of regular schools.

And I would point out, the better and more powerful unions are driving those municipalities to bankruptcy? Why? Are you really going to negotiate hard with the ones that got you to office. Always easy to spend other peoples money.

[DCZards]

And I would point out, the better and more powerful unions are driving those municipalities to bankruptcy? Why? Are you really going to negotiate hard with the ones that got you to office. Always easy to spend other peoples money.

Pension costs is what's driving municipalities to bankruptcy. Over the years, unions have negotiated pensions for their members during their contract talks with city and state officials--often in lieu of pay raises. But, instead of setting aside or investing the money needed to pay those pensions down the road, many elected leaders used the money to pay their states/cities bills.

Now, workers are retiring in record numbers and municipalities are screaming they can't afford their pensions. Why? Because governments didn't do the responsible thing and set that money aside when they should have. Or, in some cases, the govt. made bad investments that ended up losing money.

[dckingsfan]

And I would point out, the better and more powerful unions are driving those municipalities to bankruptcy? Why? Are you really going to negotiate hard with the ones that got you to office. Always easy to spend other peoples money.

Pension costs is what's driving municipalities to bankruptcy. Over the years, unions have negotiated pensions for their members during their contract talks with city and state officials--often in lieu of pay raises. But, instead of setting aside or investing the money needed to pay those pensions down the road, many elected leaders used the money to pay their states/cities bills.

Now, workers are retiring in record numbers and municipalities are screaming they can't afford their pensions. Why? Because governments didn't do the responsible thing and set that money aside when they should have. Or, in some cases, the govt. made bad investments that ended up losing money.

Agreed, and in many cases they also just didn't have the money. Period. And they took out bonds to pay for it.

Pensions for government workers is a bad idea unless there is a federal law and federal monitoring. I guess that is like having the fox guard the henhouse though.

Either way, this is one of the big reasons that we have kept the poor down. Doing the same thing will result in the Baltimores, Detroits, etc. -- we need to change.

[nate33]

Thomas Sowell breaks down the problems with the black underclass using actual facts and data:

The “legacy of slavery” argument is not just an excuse for inexcusable behavior in the ghettos. In a larger sense, it is an evasion of responsibility for the disastrous consequences of the prevailing social vision of our times, and the political policies based on that vision, over the past half century.

Anyone who is serious about evidence need only compare black communities as they evolved in the first 100 years after slavery with black communities as they evolved in the first 50 years after the explosive growth of the welfare state, beginning in the 1960s.

You would be hard-pressed to find as many ghetto riots prior to the 1960s as we have seen just in the past year, much less in the 50 years since a wave of such riots swept across the country in 1965.

We are told that such riots are a result of black poverty and white racism.

But in fact — for those who still have some respect for facts — black poverty was far worse, and white racism was far worse, prior to 1960. But violent crime within black ghettos was far less.

Murder rates among black males were going down — repeat, DOWN — during the much lamented 1950s, while it went up after the much celebrated 1960s, reaching levels more than double what they had been before. Most black children were raised in two-parent families prior to the 1960s. But today the great majority of black children are raised in one-parent families.

Such trends are not unique to blacks, nor even to the United States. The welfare state has led to remarkably similar trends among the white underclass in England over the same period. Just read “Life at the Bottom,” by Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician who worked in a hospital in a white slum neighborhood.

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.

Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state — and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves.

One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994. Behavior matters and facts matter, more than the prevailing social visions or political empires built on those visions.

[FreeBalling]

And I would point out, the better and more powerful unions are driving those municipalities to bankruptcy? Why? Are you really going to negotiate hard with the ones that got you to office. Always easy to spend other peoples money.

Pension costs is what's driving municipalities to bankruptcy. Over the years, unions have negotiated pensions for their members during their contract talks with city and state officials--often in lieu of pay raises. But, instead of setting aside or investing the money needed to pay those pensions down the road, many elected leaders used the money to pay their states/cities bills.

Now, workers are retiring in record numbers and municipalities are screaming they can't afford their pensions. Why? Because governments didn't do the responsible thing and set that money aside when they should have. Or, in some cases, the govt. made bad investments that ended up losing money.

I think the Unions make up less than 4% of the civil workforce. Lets not forget the Unions built the U.S. and got kids back in school. Family values were a lot different when one parent could stay home and raise their children.

[Induveca]

Unions also killed the entire manufacturing industry

[DCZards]

Unions also killed the entire manufacturing industry

How? By asking for decent wages so that workers could have a middle-class lifestyle or insisting on workplace safety rules so that workers weren't putting their lives in jeopardy?

What killed the manufacturing industry were greedy capitalists who found cheaper workers overseas. Many of whom could care less about their fellow Americans.

[dckingsfan]

And I would point out, the better and more powerful unions are driving those municipalities to bankruptcy? Why? Are you really going to negotiate hard with the ones that got you to office. Always easy to spend other peoples money.

Pension costs is what's driving municipalities to bankruptcy. Over the years, unions have negotiated pensions for their members during their contract talks with city and state officials--often in lieu of pay raises. But, instead of setting aside or investing the money needed to pay those pensions down the road, many elected leaders used the money to pay their states/cities bills.

Now, workers are retiring in record numbers and municipalities are screaming they can't afford their pensions. Why? Because governments didn't do the responsible thing and set that money aside when they should have. Or, in some cases, the govt. made bad investments that ended up losing money.

I think the Unions make up less than 4% of the civil workforce. Lets not forget the Unions built the U.S. and got kids back in school. Family values were a lot different when one parent could stay home and raise their children.

Agreed - there was a great need for unions in our history.

But that is different than the issues I outlined. Now public unions are aligned with politicians who reward them for their help with contracts that aren't affordable. Ds with the teachers unions and Rs with the police unions (that is a bit of an overstatement, but not by much). And now those same unions are hurting the least among us with their actions.

[nate33]

I have no objection to private unions. There is an inherent balance between ownership and union reps. If unions push too far for concessions, they all go out of business and nobody wins.

I don't believe governments should permit unionization of their employees. In that scenario, the government bureaucrat and the union rep are at the same side of the table, negotiating against the taxpayer who isn't even represented in the negotiation.

The only way I'd permit government unions is if the municipality/city/state was completely debt free and all financial negotiations were made using present dollars and not future debt. At least then, the taxpayers would feel the immediate pain of bad deals and be able to punish the politicians appropriately.

[Zonkerbl]

Unions also killed the entire manufacturing industry

How? By asking for decent wages so that workers could have a middle-class lifestyle or insisting on workplace safety rules so that workers weren't putting their lives in jeopardy?

What killed the manufacturing industry were greedy capitalists who found cheaper workers overseas. Many of whom could care less about their fellow Americans.

Well, ok, it wasn't the greedy capitalists. It was the availability of cheaper labor overseas.

I don't think unions killed the manufacturing industry, I don't look at it that way. Unions created the middle class in this country by taking advantage of a temporary situation during the industrial revolution when the ability to take advantage of cheap labor overseas was limited by extremely limiting trade agreements and lack of effective logistics technology. During this time the lack of competition from overseas allowed unions to exercise monopsony power to extract a share of economic rent from the owners of capital, thus creating a middle class.

As an economist I don't judge this as a good or a bad thing, it's just a thing that happened. It's a historical fact. That situation doesn't hold anymore because there's too much competition from overseas labor. But now we have an economy that allows poor people who develop their technical (or entrepreneurial) skills to leapfrog the middle class and earn six figures and above, just by being good at programming (or running a business). Revenge of the nerds in effect.

[TheSecretWeapon]

Thomas Sowell breaks down the problems with the black underclass using actual facts and data:

The “legacy of slavery” argument is not just an excuse for inexcusable behavior in the ghettos. In a larger sense, it is an evasion of responsibility for the disastrous consequences of the prevailing social vision of our times, and the political policies based on that vision, over the past half century.

Anyone who is serious about evidence need only compare black communities as they evolved in the first 100 years after slavery with black communities as they evolved in the first 50 years after the explosive growth of the welfare state, beginning in the 1960s.

You would be hard-pressed to find as many ghetto riots prior to the 1960s as we have seen just in the past year, much less in the 50 years since a wave of such riots swept across the country in 1965.

We are told that such riots are a result of black poverty and white racism.

But in fact — for those who still have some respect for facts — black poverty was far worse, and white racism was far worse, prior to 1960. But violent crime within black ghettos was far less.

Murder rates among black males were going down — repeat, DOWN — during the much lamented 1950s, while it went up after the much celebrated 1960s, reaching levels more than double what they had been before. Most black children were raised in two-parent families prior to the 1960s. But today the great majority of black children are raised in one-parent families.

Such trends are not unique to blacks, nor even to the United States. The welfare state has led to remarkably similar trends among the white underclass in England over the same period. Just read “Life at the Bottom,” by Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician who worked in a hospital in a white slum neighborhood.

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.

Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state — and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves.

One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994. Behavior matters and facts matter, more than the prevailing social visions or political empires built on those visions.

I've found Sowell's commentary interesting, but I'm usually left with questions. Like, if life was so great for blacks (and women) leading up to the 1960s, why was there a mass movement demanding better treatment?

In considering poverty levels before the 1950s, how does he account for things like two World Wars and the Great Depression? What are his thoughts on the historical impact of white terrorism of blacks like lynchings or white riots that targeted blacks or the KKK or minstrel shows?

I wonder how he would address the kind of stuff in my last post here, which identifies very real discrimination blacks face in employment, education and the criminal justice system.

I wonder what he would say to my African American wife, for example, who is highly educated, quite beautiful, dresses very well, and is a high achiever in any sense you want to talk about, but who got followed around a convenience store when stopped on a road trip yesterday -- to the point where an employee trailed her into the bathroom and stood outside the stall while she used it. Or any of the other "minor" behaviors whites do that communicate their fear of blacks. "Minor" in this case meant to distinguish between an interpersonal indignity vs. say a beating or an outright insult.

I think he makes good points about the welfare system. My view is there should be a safety net for those who truly cannot provide for themselves, but that people who CAN provide for themselves ought to do so. Making that distinction is a challenge, though.

[Induveca]

Unions also killed the entire manufacturing industry

How? By asking for decent wages so that workers could have a middle-class lifestyle or insisting on workplace safety rules so that workers weren't putting their lives in jeopardy?

What killed the manufacturing industry were greedy capitalists who found cheaper workers overseas. Many of whom could care less about their fellow Americans.

It's a global economy. Most american factories were no longer competitive due to high cost, speed and other inefficiencies. Unrealistic Union demands, and a general refusal to accept global economic variables had a lot to do with that.

[penbeast0]

And I would point out, the better and more powerful unions are driving those municipalities to bankruptcy? Why? Are you really going to negotiate hard with the ones that got you to office. Always easy to spend other peoples money.

Pension costs is what's driving municipalities to bankruptcy. Over the years, unions have negotiated pensions for their members during their contract talks with city and state officials--often in lieu of pay raises. But, instead of setting aside or investing the money needed to pay those pensions down the road, many elected leaders used the money to pay their states/cities bills.

Now, workers are retiring in record numbers and municipalities are screaming they can't afford their pensions. Why? Because governments didn't do the responsible thing and set that money aside when they should have. Or, in some cases, the govt. made bad investments that ended up losing money.

I'm sorry but what in the entire history of government spending since the human race began led anyone to believe that politicians would not put short term benefits ahead of long term fiscal health?

It's not just pensions; the US government is piling up ridiculous deficits as well, spending appreciably more than they are taking in. There is a reason politicians have both low approval ratings as a class (long term needs of the country) while enjoying extremely high reelection rates(short term benefits for their districts).

[nate33]

I've found Sowell's commentary interesting, but I'm usually left with questions. Like, if life was so great for blacks (and women) leading up to the 1960s, why was there a mass movement demanding better treatment?

I don't want to speak for Mr. Sowell, but I suspect his answer would be that life was not great for blacks in the 1950's and additional social change was indeed necessary. Unfortunately, the type of social change that was actually implemented ultimately resulted in things getting much worse for blacks.

In considering poverty levels before the 1950s, how does he account for things like two World Wars and the Great Depression? What are his thoughts on the historical impact of white terrorism of blacks like lynchings or white riots that targeted blacks or the KKK or minstrel shows?

I'm not sure how one can account for the wars and depression. At best, you can establish a baseline of performance during those time periods from whites, and then compare how blacks did relative to them.

Regarding lynching, it's worth noting that the entire subject has undergone a historical distortion to fit the current narrative. The Tuskegee Institute recorded that 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites were lynched between 1882 and 1968. So about 5000 people over the course of 85 years. First of all, that's really not a lot give the mores of the time. Vigilante justice was much more common then with a less well-developed police force and law enforcement system. Secondly, there was a 2.5 to 1 ratio of black lynchings versus white lynchings in a South that was roughly 35% black at the time. The Narrative suggests that lynching was solely a means of terrorism committed by whites against blacks. Reality is that lynching was a means of vigilante justice designed to deter criminals of all races. Blacks were lynched about 5 times more often relative to their population, but did they commit crimes at a greater rate? (I don't know the answer to that question, but it's a question that should be asked.)

I wonder how he would address the kind of stuff in my last post here, which identifies very real discrimination blacks face in employment, education and the criminal justice system.

There is very real discrimination, but is not some of it justified? Jesse Jackson himself once said that "there is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." It seems that the current Social Justice mantra is that whites should stop expecting blacks to act like criminals and then maybe they will indeed stop. I submit that they've got the order backwards.

I wonder what he would say to my African American wife, for example, who is highly educated, quite beautiful, dresses very well, and is a high achiever in any sense you want to talk about, but who got followed around a convenience store when stopped on a road trip yesterday -- to the point where an employee trailed her into the bathroom and stood outside the stall while she used it. Or any of the other "minor" behaviors whites do that communicate their fear of blacks. "Minor" in this case meant to distinguish between an interpersonal indignity vs. say a beating or an outright insult.

I sympathize with your wife and I think that it's totally unfair. In my personal dealings, I try very hard to get to know anyone as an individual and then treat them accordingly, regardless of race. But at the same time, when I lack any information about another, and I am forced to "pre-judge" them based on limited information, I find myself taking the same approach as Jesse Jackson. I will let my 8th grade and 6th grade daughters go trick-or-treating without escort in my upper middle class, mostly white suburban neighborhood. I would not let them do so in the streets of Baltimore, or Detroit, or Newark. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but we all have to make decisions with limited information. I'm going to go with the odds.

[TGW]

Hey Nate—I'm scared to go to movie theatres because I'm afraid some white kid is going to shoot up the theatre. I'm also going to advise that my daughter that she goes to an HBCU because predominantly white colleges have high incidents of date rape and druggings.

Is this a fair conclusion to make?

[nate33]

Hey Nate—I'm scared to go to movie theatres because I'm afraid some white kid is going to shoot up the theatre. I'm also going to advise that my daughter that she goes to an HBCU because predominantly white colleges have high incidents of date rape and druggings.

Is this a fair conclusion to make?

Perhaps. Do you have any data on these issues?

[TheSecretWeapon]

There is very real discrimination, but is not some of it justified? Jesse Jackson himself once said that "there is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." It seems that the current Social Justice mantra is that whites should stop expecting blacks to act like criminals and then maybe they will indeed stop. I submit that they've got the order backwards.

I understand the feeling Jackson mentions, although I really don't experience it myself. The last time being attacked or the victim of a robbery was a concern, I was worried about white "townies" in Waynesboro, VA who didn't like the uniform from the military school I was in, and didn't like the black guys/girls I was walking around with.

But, I think that attitude Jackson describes is prejudice, not necessarily discrimination. One of the experiments I mentioned indicated that whites WITH a criminal record have about the same chance of getting a job as blacks WITHOUT a criminal record. Which doesn't make a damn bit of sense -- employers have time to make a decision, and their collective reasoning (at least in that study) was that (with identical credentials) they're just as likely to pick a white person with a criminal past as a black person without a criminal past.

I think the distinction I'm trying to make is that prejudice is the attitude -- the knee jerk reaction. That is what it is. Discrimination is the action that comes from the attitude.

Maybe when we're dead an in an afterlife we'll be able to see the precise causes and effects. It would interest me a lot to see how much of the current situation is a matter of personal choices? How much are the long-term impacts of slavery, segregation, and discrimination? How much is the persistent portrayal in media of blacks as stupid, lazy and criminal? How much is the result of receiving "special attention" from police? How much is the result of an ill-conceived welfare system? And so on.