Concerned about ownership?

But Chris - you just said in the last post that monopoly control is fine for the media market!

I've never said that monopoly control is fine for the media market. It is a far different thing to support media deregulation and to be ok with a level of consolidation than to support media monopolization. But I don't think monopolization is possible. Media is irretrievably diffuse and it is impossible to create a defensible monopoly.

Unlike in education, where we are all forced to pay for state controlled education without any influence over how those resources are spent. We can chose not to consume and not to pay for media we don't like, we can't choose not to pay for education and only the very wealthy have the ability to choose their own schools for their children. The education monopoly is a far more worrying issue than the chimera that media consolidation can become absolute.

Wouldn't more local control for school be a good answer? If you look at some of the debacles that Edison went through, privatization hasn't gone so well thus far.

Also, as long as local property taxes support schools, theres going to be a disparity. If you look at the public schools in Marin they're pretty good. Go to SF and they're not so good...many inner city schools have to deal with kids that have problems. Private schools get to kick problem kids out.

I'm not saying I couldn't support means-tested vouchers but the real cost of education is way more than most voucher proposals give. Catholic schools get subsidies from the church, and they still are pretty cash-poor a lot of the time.

Well it doesn't work to condemn privitazation of schools based on some of the failed attempts--because by that standard you'd have to condemn public control of schools as well which is rife with failure. Some schools fail--parents should have the ability to choose which schools they want their kids to attend.

In terms of money, there is a flawed notion, perpetuated in part by the public school monopolists, that money spent is directly correlated with quality but this is a theory that is not born out by the facts. There are plenty examples of failed schools, such as in Washington DC, where spending per pupil is very high but quality is very low. Private school teachers are paid less than public school teachers, the inverse of quality. Throwing money at a problem just doesn't work when there is no incentive to invest those funds wisely and to align incentives properly. There s no such thing as pay-per-performance in public schools, and virtually no such thing as getting fired. There is also virtually no such thing as a school that will be in mortal peril if it doesn't perform, unlike every private company. These are the things, more than money, that will improve behavior and accountability.

Here is an interesting diagram:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/87billion.gif

Education only gets $53bn...what if we invaded one less country and doubled the education budget instead? Are you positive it wouldn't make a difference? Why is it that things like military budgets and tax cuts are fine targets for throwing money at but not education? Its a fair question.

I've seen inner city schools with tattered textbooks, bathrooms that don't get regularly cleaned, etc. Its not obvious to me that education funding isn't a factor in improving eduation quality. Remember, public schools have to take the "problem" kids that private schools get to kick out.

Well that graphic is not that useful on the issue of education since most education funding comes from the states, not through the federal government (2/3 of the CA state budget, for example, goes to education.) It's a false choice to suggest that the decision is between spending on invading countries and spending on education.

Unquestionably there are many schools that are underfunded and teachers that are under-paid. But there is case study after case study and statistic after statistic that shoes that without fundemental structural change much of these resources are wasted and more money alone won't solve the question.

On military budgets, we need to spend what it takes to defend the country and I am all in favor of ways to make military spending more efficient.

On tax cuts, what a bizarre notion to suggest that the government "throws money" at tax cuts. Where does the government get money in the first place? Tax cuts are not a spending program and taxes aren't a government entitlement. Wealth is not there just for the taking, it needs to be created and it is prudent to foster an environment and create incentives to promote prosperity.

I think the graphic is useful in showing what discretionary budget choices are being made.

What specific fundamental structural change in the schools are you proposing? I haven't read every single study but from personal experience there just doesn't seem to be anything radically different that private schools do...they are just stricter (and can kick out problem kids), have smaller class sizes, and have a more affluent student demographic on the whole. Teaching methods & techniques seem to me to be VERY similar across most private and public schools.

How well have voucher programs worked so far? Haven't there been some trials?

I'd argue our military budgets are too large because we are tied up in Cold War-era commitments such as defending economic rivals like Germany and Japan. Our economic advantage over Europe and Asia isn't going to last forever and I think we risk creating our own demise by letting them free ride by develop their economies while we strangle ours with budget cuts to finance their defense. Its also my personal opinion that invading Iraq has done absolutely nothing to make our country more secure but obviously that is fodder for a whole different thread...

Please explain how eliminating the estate tax created incentives for prosperity?

On education: you can get fired from a private school if you are a bad teacher or administrator and a private school will go out of business if it doesn't do its job well. This is not true with public schools, on the whole. Private schools also tend to care mostly about what the parents, who are paying the bills, think, while publich schools have to contend with powerful teacher unions that have prevented any type of pay-per-performance. When we allow our school system to cater to the special interest of a teacher's union which refuses to live by the basic rules of industry--which is that your compensation and career success should correspond to your quality--we are choosing to value teachers over kids. I personally think that teachers, most of them, should be paid more and treated better. But there needs to be a system in which incentives are properly arranged. Pay them more but pay the good ones better than the bad ones. We have an education monopoly in which the powerful special interests are looking out for the employees of the system, not the customers (ie the kids.) I won't say that any one private schools will always be better than any one public school--that is not the case. But as a system-wide level there needs to be consequences for failure and rewards for success--and the best way to accomplish this is not to atempt to regulate standards but give the power of choice to parents so that they can decide how they want their children educated.

On the estate tax, this is an easy one. If my estate will go to my kids then I am more likely to want to invest in and build that estate, for their benefit. I will want to put those resources to their most productive use. However, if my estate will simply go to the government then I will most likely spend it on my--use it or lose it--without must thought about how productively those resources are being used. There are many small, family owned businesses that get destroyed because instead of being passed on they have to be liquidated in order to pay taxes--a second time. The estate tax, which was invented to generate revenue during a war, is simply an immoral tax. You've paid taxes on your income your whole life, you've paid sales taxes on everything you buy and capital gains taxes on assets you sell--if you are wealthy well over 50% of what you earn is taxed away--and then if you don't spend what's left over 60% of it goes to the state, not to your family. What's it all for? Do we really want a society that the only incentive for build and grow is so that you can spend it on yourself? Why does the government want to prevent me from building things for the benefit of my children?

Chad is trying, but let me try a bit harder. no such thing as media monopoly? right. please come out of that neo-liberal fantasy world based on theory. Two examples: the music industry (look at all the crap that gets pushed off as music by the 4 or 5 companies that control distibution, copyrights, etc worldwide) and cable TV (there is no competition in my market and it has been show that cable prices have risen something astronomically higher than inflation over the last few years under the guise of 'upgrades' etc which have proven to be a paper arguement; sorry but i cant remember the report off hand but if you respond to this in any meaningful way, ill look for it). besides, i thought you free-marketers liked competition to its fullest; what level of consolidation denotes monopolization these days anyway?

Education: let me twist your not-so-eloquent arguement about defense spending:

On military budgets, we need to spend what it takes to defend the country and I am all in favor of ways to make military spending more efficient.

what would happen if we replaced your sentence this way: On education budgets, we need to spend what it takes to educate the country (i.e. children) and I am all in favor of ways to make education spending more efficient. . .

As you put it somewhere in your comments, its all about choice and priorities, as i think Chad was refering to in his flippant (but spot on) comment that we might choose to invade one less country and put some of the 87 billion into supporting infrastructure for the citizens of the good ole US of A. Guess i am just showing you my tried and true liberal colors (how did liberal become such a dirty word anyway? used to be that liberal meant you liked and supported free markets; too bad it got twisted along the way by people who didnt really understand the history behind the word)

Anyway, i can predict your responses already, but go ahead and try to convince me that privatizing education (who is going to control/standardize what is being taught anyway? let's think practically about this more rather than staying in the realm of theoretical economics and education markets) is a good thing (besides giving us more 'choice') and that media conglomeration is good given all the crap-ola that passes for music, radio, and TV these days (and yes, i do know i can turn it off and tune it out, but, gee, isnt it becoming harder and harder these days?)