Political Roundtable - Part VII

[DCZards]

I need to call bull on discrimination. I went through one hell of a battle today in a tech licensing meeting with a Cantonese guy, Pakistani, Caucasian, Latino and Eastern European.

Education is key. My cousins/family continue to "rep the Bronx", and get nowhere in life. There will always be those that get left behind. Government programs lead to little more than dependence for the vast majority of recipients.

Education the key. Couldn't agree more. But we have to address the discrimination/inequities in education where some schools, mostly those in the upper class urban neighborhoods or in the suburbs, have the best teachers, facilities, programs, parental support, etc. Kids in those schools also get off to a better start in school because their parents are able to afford to send them to the best early childhood ed programs.

We have to work on leveling the playing field there....and money alone is not the answer. For example, we have to figure out how do we get our best teachers and administrators to work in schools serving disadvantaged kids, because right now that's a real problem. Students in low-income schools are typically taught by the most inexperienced, least effective educators.

[dobrojim]

Agree on education but would point out that kids aren't stupid and it's an unfortunate aspect of human
nature that motivation, a huge factor in success, can be difficult to sustain when it's clear that opportunities
are so hard to come by. I'm not trying to excuse lack of motivation but I do understand how it can happen
when these kids can see so clearly that the deck is stacked against them. My argument to them in favor
of achievement would be what other choice do you realistically have?

[dckingsfan]

I think there is another view of what is going on...

3) Our welfare programs haven't been efficient in the past, why would we think this would change going forward. Edit: and the spending is out of whack with the overall government outlays and revenues.

3- IDK, because if people of goodwill get together and examine the problems, they can probably
develop ways that could improve things? Not always, but the conclusion that things can not possibly
change for the better is pretty pessimistic.

This is one of the top issues of our time. Our Greece (although not the same since we can devalue our own currency) moment if you will. Do we wait and let entitlements continue to grow (25% in the 80s to over 50% now)?

I don't much like most of the policies in the House. But they are 100% right on the sequester, IMO - as long as they don't do a side run on defense. It illustrates the point perfectly. Entitlements continue to grow squeezing out other programs that lead to growth. Until eventually you end up with defense (although this has shrunk as well) and entitlements.

Until baseline spending is addressed - we are going to be very stagnant. And who does this discriminate against the most? The poorest among us...

I will post this again - it illustrates the point perfectly.

[dckingsfan]

Agree on education but would point out that kids aren't stupid and it's an unfortunate aspect of human
nature that motivation, a huge factor in success, can be difficult to sustain when it's clear that opportunities
are so hard to come by. I'm not trying to excuse lack of motivation but I do understand how it can happen
when these kids can see so clearly that the deck is stacked against them. My argument to them in favor
of achievement would be what other choice do you realistically have?

And that goes back against 3 - fairly directly. Less growth, less opportunity, less motivation... get the federal government investing in the country and much of this will disappear.

It is estimated that there was a 14,000 Percent Return on Public Investment in Human Genome Project alone.

[dckingsfan]

I need to call bull on discrimination. I went through one hell of a battle today in a tech licensing meeting with a Cantonese guy, Pakistani, Caucasian, Latino and Eastern European.

Education is key. My cousins/family continue to "rep the Bronx", and get nowhere in life. There will always be those that get left behind. Government programs lead to little more than dependence for the vast majority of recipients.

Education the key. Couldn't agree more. But we have to address the discrimination/inequities in education where some schools, mostly those in the upper class urban neighborhoods or in the suburbs, have the best teachers, facilities, programs, parental support, etc. Kids in those schools also get off to a better start in school because their parents are able to afford to send them to the best early childhood ed programs.

We have to work on leveling the playing field there....and money alone is not the answer. For example, we have to figure out how do we get our best teachers and administrators to work in schools serving disadvantaged kids, because right now that's a real problem. Students in low-income schools are typically taught by the most inexperienced, least effective educators.

The best experiences have been vouchers - letting the parents choose what schools they attend. Charters, again competition worked there. You want the best teachers - create an environment they want to go to... competition among schools is the friend low-income kids have...

[dobrojim]

Gotta disagree. The data on charters has not shown that, controlled for other factors,
they significantly outperform regular public schools.

[dobrojim]

I will post this again - it illustrates the point perfectly.

When I look at this, it seems to me that SS is relatively flat, medicare up slightly
but the biggest rate of increase (2015-forward) appears to my eye to be in net
interest and DoD (and ACA/chips/medicaid).

I say again, a relatively modest increase in the cap on earnings subject to SS tax
would essentially solve the demographic bomb. And this is the solution favored
by a large majority of voters (~80%).

[DCZards]

I disagree on vouchers. There isn't any evidence that they work. Plus, while they might provide improve the educational outcomes of some children (the handful who get vouchers) the goal should be to provide all children with a quality ed.

NYC has close to 1 million schoolchildren. If we close the public schools and give them all vouchers where would they go to school? I'm for fixing and improving our public schools.

[dckingsfan]

I will post this again - it illustrates the point perfectly.

When I look at this, it seems to me that SS is relatively flat, medicare up slightly
but the biggest rate of increase (2015-forward) appears to my eye to be in net
interest and DoD (and ACA/chips/medicaid).

I say again, a relatively modest increase in the cap on earnings subject to SS tax
would essentially solve the demographic bomb. And this is the solution favored
by a large majority of voters (~80%).

I think you might be misreading the chart and the point - entitlement spending has gone from 25% of the outlays to over 50% since 1980 (which is a pretty short window). Net interest has increased slightly as well. Medicare, Medicaid have roughly tripled.

We need to address the percentages of where we put the outlays - when you put over 50% of your outlays into entitlements you aren't going to have the growth. If you don't have the growth, you don't create the opportunities to move up the ladder.

Increasing taxes on SS wouldn't answer the squeeze - band aid on a bullet hole.

[dckingsfan]

I disagree on vouchers. There isn't any evidence that they work. Plus, while they might provide improve the educational outcomes of some children (the handful who get vouchers) the goal should be to provide all children with a quality ed.

NYC has close to 1 million schoolchildren. If we close the public schools and give them all vouchers where would they go to school? I'm for fixing and improving our public schools.

Wait, who said anything about closing the public schools? Having a combination of vouchers, charters and other schools doesn't mean you shut down public schools. There are a lot of terrific public schools - why would we shut them down?

What we should do is allow those who are going to terrible public schools a choice. It is regressive in nature to force low-income individuals to go to under-performing public schools. There are lots of examples where those school choices have worked out terrifically.

Why can't we close/end bad programs and institutions? When something isn't working or has failed - why not move on? Kind of like having to carry around a 10 lb. cell phone (okay, I am dating myself), let's move to the iPhone of school choices.

[dobrojim]

I will post this again - it illustrates the point perfectly.

When I look at this, it seems to me that SS is relatively flat, medicare up slightly
but the biggest rate of increase (2015-forward) appears to my eye to be in net
interest and DoD/discretionary (and ACA/chips/medicaid).

I say again, a relatively modest increase in the cap on earnings subject to SS tax
would essentially solve the demographic bomb. And this is the solution favored
by a large majority of voters (~80%).

I think you might be misreading the chart and the point - entitlement spending has gone from 25% of the outlays to over 50% since 1980 (which is a pretty short window). Net interest has increased slightly as well. Medicare, Medicaid have roughly tripled.

We need to address the percentages of where we put the outlays - when you put over 50% of your outlays into entitlements you aren't going to have the growth. If you don't have the growth, you don't create the opportunities to move up the ladder.

Increasing taxes on SS wouldn't answer the squeeze - band aid on a bullet hole.

I'm looking at the slope of the lines on the chart along the right edge, for years 2015 onward.
The slope for SS is relatively flat. The slope for DoD/discretionary is not nearly so.

Re spending, retirees, especially those at the lower end of the scale, are going to be cashing
in that money they receive and spending it. Seems to me that would be at least a modest
driver of growth or econ activity. The question becomes, what will the entitlement recipients
be buying with the money they receive?

[pineappleheadindc]

Off Topic:

I was just watching Jeb Bush deliver a speech at the National Urban League live on C-SPAN. He was warmly welcomed and received by the moderator and, seemingly, the audience -- though hard to tell via a C-SPAN broadcast.

Unfiltered speeches, town hall meetings, etc are so much more meaningful to me. I get things that are completely different than when I read news articles or watch TV/cable news. Good speech. The NUL guys wanted his thoughts on black entrepreneurship and access to capital as one of their top 2 or three issues. Good stuff.

[nate33]

On the contrary, you're the one comparing stocks to flows. Yikes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_and_flow

No. I'm comparing flow to flow. Population is a flow too. People keep getting born.

Actually, I'm not even comparing anything to population. Population is merely used for context. I'm comparing abduction rate to death rates. Population is going to be based on birth rate minus death rate, and both are variable.

Oh snap.

Not only are you comparing a stock to a flow but you are doing it intentionally to deceitfully claim a number is less significant than it actually is. It's straight out of "how to lie with statistics." It's hard to imagine how you could use statistics in a less scientific way.

Let's apply your logic to malaria:

Malaria killed 90 million Africans in the same timespan between 1500 and 1800. There were only 60 million Africans in 1600. Therefore, the continent is now uninhabited!

[DCZards]

You're right dckingsfan. You didn't say anything about closing all public schools. But I'm still not a fan of vouchers. I worry that in order to accommodate kids with vouchers we'll get a whole lot of fly-by-night operators opening schools who see an opportunity to feed at the public trough. And those vouchers schools will likely be no better than the schools those kids attend now.

[nate33]

in the highlighted quote you question the conclusion that slavery was the cause of africa's inability to keep up with the world, however in ur post above u talk about population loss. not the same thing.

Then I must not have explained myself clearly. This whole tangent on the slavery topic came up because TSW postulated that the constant drain of able young people from Africa due to the slave trade would have severely impacted their ability to grow and develop as a people. I merely tried to put the magnitude of the population loss in context.

[closg00]

I've never seen group outrage like this in years, re: the Killing of Cecil the lion. Walter Palmer is the personification of the worst kind of entitled, sick , rich bastards who kill beautiful animals for their personal enjoyment. Sick, sick sick what went down to kill this animal.

[nate33]

Education the key. Couldn't agree more. But we have to address the discrimination/inequities in education where some schools, mostly those in the upper class urban neighborhoods or in the suburbs, have the best teachers, facilities, programs, parental support, etc. Kids in those schools also get off to a better start in school because their parents are able to afford to send them to the best early childhood ed programs.

We have to work on leveling the playing field there....and money alone is not the answer. For example, we have to figure out how do we get our best teachers and administrators to work in schools serving disadvantaged kids, because right now that's a real problem. Students in low-income schools are typically taught by the most inexperienced, least effective educators.

I challenge this notion that discrimination in education is the cause. Money alone may not be the answer, but it's a good proxy for the level of effort that government is utilizing to address the education issue. You can't argue that we're not trying.

One of the more rigorous reports on funding disparities was published by the Urban Institute.[11] The authors of the study combined district-level spending data with the racial and ethnic composition of schools within districts. They found that spending on minority students eclipsed spending on white students in the early 1980s and remained slightly higher through 2002, the most recent year in their study.

This paper employs a similar methodology, using 2006–2007 datasets from the U.S. Department of Education to examine school funding at both the national and regional levels. In addition, the paper adjusts spending figures to account for cost-of-living differences across districts.

link

[dckingsfan]

You're right dckingsfan. You didn't say anything about closing all public schools. But I'm still not a fan of vouchers. I worry that in order to accommodate kids with vouchers we'll get a whole lot of fly-by-night operators opening schools who see an opportunity to feed at the public trough. And those vouchers schools will likely be no better than the schools those kids attend now.

You might be right, you might be wrong. But we can't argue that some of the schools are failing and we should try something. We have thrown huge money at those schools (see nate's argument). And what about publically funded and run charter schools.

Either way, offering choice out of the failing schools is about the only way forward. Throwing more good money after bad is not the way forward - unless it is just to support the teacher's union.

[dobrojim]

the problem with some many? failing schools is as much about the populations they serve
as it is about the schools or the teachers/admins in those schools.
Lower socio-econ status correlates strongly with poor students. Before anyone says anything
I need to say I think students from these groups could potentially perform just as well as
students from other groups. I don't think they are inherently different on a population basis.
We just have not figured out how to get them to realize their potential. It's complicated.

[DCZards]

You might be right, you might be wrong. But we can't argue that some of the schools are failing and we should try something. We have thrown huge money at those schools (see nate's argument). And what about publically funded and run charter schools.

The reality is that we don't know how well most charter schools are doing. Because they are typically not required to provide test, attendance, suspension, etc. data like traditional public schools are required to do.

Case in point: about 2 months ago a group of independent researchers released a report on the results of 7 years of mayoral control of DC schools. Throughout the report they note that they were not given access to data on charter schools.

Btw, charter school teachers are increasingly joining teacher unions. They are weary of the low pay, arbitrary decisions by administrators, job insecurity and lack of voice/input that often goes along with teaching in a charter school.