I am willing to argue public education has ruined this country...

[AyeYo]

How odd that all the top scoring nations no only use far more pervasive public schools than the US, but they're also mostly socialist and/or heavily centrally planned.  Communist China actually blew everyone else away.  How ironic.

You mean 'Communist' China which has some of the lowest tax rates (20-25% corporate tax, 20% capital gains) in the world? I assume Hong Kong, which also performed amazingly well, and Singapore come under 'mostly socialist' too? Maybe the reason nobody used that chart is because it shows that market-embracing nations like China and Singapore can outperform socialist monoliths on a fraction of the resource.

Any comparison involving Norway in an economics debate is fundamentally flawed. The country is an anomoly of economics, due mostly to the fact that 20% of its economy comes from petroleum products, and its petroleum exports alone are greater than its entire imports.

Is it fun to alter reality to fit your worldview?

Effective corporate tax rates in the US are 0-10% and capital gains cap out at 15%.  
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/business/economy/02leonhardt.html


So some of the most iron-fist centrally planned economies in the world are now free market because it's convenient for them to be in this discussion?  I don't know how I've resisted turning libertarian for this long.  It makes arguing so much easier.

[Mittlyle]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LKZQT6pv_oU/TP4yfp4qxLI/AAAAAAAABT8/MZhK02vokh4/s1600/Education.jpg
Funny thing about this graph is the high position of Finland. You probably couldn't get more public on schools and more one-size-fits-all in education.

It's those dreaded socialist policies to blame, I told you!

[Reikoku]

How odd that all the top scoring nations no only use far more pervasive public schools than the US, but they're also mostly socialist and/or heavily centrally planned.  Communist China actually blew everyone else away.  How ironic.

You mean 'Communist' China which has some of the lowest tax rates (20-25% corporate tax, 20% capital gains) in the world? I assume Hong Kong, which also performed amazingly well, and Singapore come under 'mostly socialist' too? Maybe the reason nobody used that chart is because it shows that market-embracing nations like China and Singapore can outperform socialist monoliths on a fraction of the resource.

Any comparison involving Norway in an economics debate is fundamentally flawed. The country is an anomoly of economics, due mostly to the fact that 20% of its economy comes from petroleum products, and its petroleum exports alone are greater than its entire imports.

Is it fun to alter reality to fit your worldview?

Effective corporate tax rates in the US are 0-10% and capital gains cap out at 15%.  
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/business/economy/02leonhardt.html


So some of the most iron-fist centrally planned economies in the world are now free market because it's convenient for them to be in this discussion?  I don't know how I've resisted turning libertarian for this long.  It makes arguing so much easier.

China isn't free-market, but it's a lot further from Communist than most of western Europe. You don't have to twist my arguments into a straw-man. Nobody's acting like China is a libertarian paradise, but trying to call it communist when its tax rates are similar to the US is fallacious.

From the article you linked:
"Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poor’s stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate — both federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent"

Your 0-10% corp tax rate applies to 39 of how many companies in the US? Really? Please don't make ridiculous statements, most companies in the US pay far more than 20%, and many smaller corporations end up paying the full 35% whack. If you're going to post a source, read it first.

Well done on avoiding me on Hong Kong and Singapore though.

[AyeYo]

How odd that all the top scoring nations no only use far more pervasive public schools than the US, but they're also mostly socialist and/or heavily centrally planned.  Communist China actually blew everyone else away.  How ironic.

You mean 'Communist' China which has some of the lowest tax rates (20-25% corporate tax, 20% capital gains) in the world? I assume Hong Kong, which also performed amazingly well, and Singapore come under 'mostly socialist' too? Maybe the reason nobody used that chart is because it shows that market-embracing nations like China and Singapore can outperform socialist monoliths on a fraction of the resource.

Any comparison involving Norway in an economics debate is fundamentally flawed. The country is an anomoly of economics, due mostly to the fact that 20% of its economy comes from petroleum products, and its petroleum exports alone are greater than its entire imports.

Is it fun to alter reality to fit your worldview?

Effective corporate tax rates in the US are 0-10% and capital gains cap out at 15%.  
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/business/economy/02leonhardt.html


So some of the most iron-fist centrally planned economies in the world are now free market because it's convenient for them to be in this discussion?  I don't know how I've resisted turning libertarian for this long.  It makes arguing so much easier.

China isn't free-market, but it's a lot further from Communist than most of western Europe. You don't have to twist my arguments into a straw-man. Nobody's acting like China is a libertarian paradise, but trying to call it communist when its tax rates are similar to the US is fallacious.

From the article you linked:
"Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poor’s stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate — both federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent"

Your 0-10% corp tax rate applies to 39 of how many companies in the US? Really? Please don't make ridiculous statements, most companies in the US pay far more than 20%, and many smaller corporations end up paying the full 35% whack. If you're going to post a source, read it first.

Well done on avoiding me on Hong Kong and Singapore though.

So how's that public eduation argument going?  Make a new thread if you want to discuss effective corporate tax rates.  This thread is for us to laugh at the people blaming the government and public education for all the US's problem's.

[LastBattle]

How odd that all the top scoring nations no only use far more pervasive public schools than the US, but they're also mostly socialist and/or heavily centrally planned.  Communist China actually blew everyone else away.  How ironic.

You mean 'Communist' China which has some of the lowest tax rates (20-25% corporate tax, 20% capital gains) in the world? I assume Hong Kong, which also performed amazingly well, and Singapore come under 'mostly socialist' too? Maybe the reason nobody used that chart is because it shows that market-embracing nations like China and Singapore can outperform socialist monoliths on a fraction of the resource.

Any comparison involving Norway in an economics debate is fundamentally flawed. The country is an anomoly of economics, due mostly to the fact that 20% of its economy comes from petroleum products, and its petroleum exports alone are greater than its entire imports.

Is it fun to alter reality to fit your worldview?

Effective corporate tax rates in the US are 0-10% and capital gains cap out at 15%.  
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/business/economy/02leonhardt.html


So some of the most iron-fist centrally planned economies in the world are now free market because it's convenient for them to be in this discussion?  I don't know how I've resisted turning libertarian for this long.  It makes arguing so much easier.

China isn't free-market, but it's a lot further from Communist than most of western Europe. You don't have to twist my arguments into a straw-man. Nobody's acting like China is a libertarian paradise, but trying to call it communist when its tax rates are similar to the US is fallacious.

From the article you linked:
"Of the 500 big companies in the well-known Standard & Poor’s stock index, 115 paid a total corporate tax rate — both federal and otherwise — of less than 20 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of company reports done for The New York Times by Capital IQ, a research firm. Thirty-nine of those companies paid a rate less than 10 percent"

Your 0-10% corp tax rate applies to 39 of how many companies in the US? Really? Please don't make ridiculous statements, most companies in the US pay far more than 20%, and many smaller corporations end up paying the full 35% whack. If you're going to post a source, read it first.

Well done on avoiding me on Hong Kong and Singapore though.

Just a word of warning: Expect a lot of that sort of thing. Especially straw men.

[Anonymous]

I need to know what's on those international tests before I can deduce anything from the score.

[Anonymous]

Atlas - you have not suggested an alternative?

Let the people decide through free-market incentive and desire. Preferably, homeschooling. Parents actually raising their kids for once. It worked for early America and it does work today. Children without structured education are on par --if not-- outpace their schooled peers. At the least, they are actually self-reliant and motivated individuals, that aren't dependent on provisioned self-esteem.

[3phase]

I need to know what's on those international tests before I can deduce anything from the score.

Adding to this:

What does this PISA score have to do with the quality of life that these children will lead? Is there any guarantee that a higher PISA score leads to prosperity and happiness in life? Are there any statistics for this?

Or was it something invented without a real world pressing need, so that academics in the Education Arts would have one more field to write unique peer-reviewed papers about in order to gain or extend their tenure?

I am not dismissing them altogether. I am simply wondering. I've seen far too many statistics and researches of the latter kind and far too few of the former orientation.

[Hawker]

Atlas - you have not suggested an alternative?

Let the people decide through free-market incentive and desire. Preferably, homeschooling. Parents actually raising their kids for once. It worked for early America and it does work today. Children without structured education are on par --if not-- outpace their schooled peers. At the least, they are actually self-reliant and motivated individuals, that aren't dependent on provisioned self-esteem.

I live in England and we have the choice of state or private here.  My kids went to a Montessori school.  The private schools set their own curriculums but they have to make a certain standard in order to charge fees.

Don't you have that in America?  I'm sure you must have.

[Anonymous]

Atlas - you have not suggested an alternative?

Let the people decide through free-market incentive and desire. Preferably, homeschooling. Parents actually raising their kids for once. It worked for early America and it does work today. Children without structured education are on par --if not-- outpace their schooled peers. At the least, they are actually self-reliant and motivated individuals, that aren't dependent on provisioned self-esteem.

I live in England and we have the choice of state or private here.  My kids went to a Montessori school.  The private schools set their own curriculums but they have to make a certain standard in order to charge fees.

Don't you have that in America?  I'm sure you must have.

We do. However, we're still forced to pay for public schooling we don't use; hence, why most feel obligated to send their kids to it.

Otherwise, people would have money in their pockets to pay for their child's education where they please, not an additional amount.

[Hawker]

Atlas - you have not suggested an alternative?

Let the people decide through free-market incentive and desire. Preferably, homeschooling. Parents actually raising their kids for once. It worked for early America and it does work today. Children without structured education are on par --if not-- outpace their schooled peers. At the least, they are actually self-reliant and motivated individuals, that aren't dependent on provisioned self-esteem.

I live in England and we have the choice of state or private here.  My kids went to a Montessori school.  The private schools set their own curriculums but they have to make a certain standard in order to charge fees.

Don't you have that in America?  I'm sure you must have.

We do. However, we're still forced to pay for public schooling we don't use; hence, why most feel obligated to send their kids to it.

Otherwise, people would have money in their pockets to pay for their child's education where they please, not an additional amount.

Think positive.  You choose where your kids get educated.  People who don't give a hoot where their kids get educated are still getting them educated.  Their kids will work for your kids.  Everyone's a winner

[Anonymous]

Atlas - you have not suggested an alternative?

Let the people decide through free-market incentive and desire. Preferably, homeschooling. Parents actually raising their kids for once. It worked for early America and it does work today. Children without structured education are on par --if not-- outpace their schooled peers. At the least, they are actually self-reliant and motivated individuals, that aren't dependent on provisioned self-esteem.

I live in England and we have the choice of state or private here.  My kids went to a Montessori school.  The private schools set their own curriculums but they have to make a certain standard in order to charge fees.

Don't you have that in America?  I'm sure you must have.

We do. However, we're still forced to pay for public schooling we don't use; hence, why most feel obligated to send their kids to it.

Otherwise, people would have money in their pockets to pay for their child's education where they please, not an additional amount.

People who don't give a hoot where their kids get educated are still getting them educated.  

Hardly. From what I have been through, the unneeded anxiety public schools have given me, the limitations.... I feel these schools are more damaging than anything. They break people like cattle to the slaughter.

I have never been more depressed than through my years of being told to sit, do busy work and taught to learn what is only taught for eight hours a day. Then when I had time THAT WAS TO BE ONLY MINE, more needless work was assigned.

My time was monopolized by people that did not deserve it.

This isn't education. It's indoctrination. It is preparation for emotional slavery.

[Hawker]

Sorry to hear that.

At least its over and you can move on now.  Make sure to send your own children to excellent schools.  Its worth every penny.

[myrkul]

Sorry to hear that.

At least its over and you can move on now.  Make sure to send your own children to excellent schools.  Its worth every penny.

Agreed, and If I have to work 4 jobs and sleep when I'm dead, my kid will get the best education I can afford. Not having to pay for other people's kids 'education' would help with that.

[Anonymous]

The best education is right at hand in your own home and with the time you spend with your child. As long as you have a good resource of information (internet anyone?) and the means to facilitate it, learning and education is inherent.

Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.

[Bind]

It's part of their plan.

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf

[Jaime Frontero]

i am willing to point out that i believe you to be completely mistaken.

public education created this country, and all of its wealth.

after our revolution, the only things the federal government paid for were the war debt, and our 'universal' (allowing for the varied bigotries of the day...) education:

The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.

~John Adams (as President)

we achieved the position in the world which we occupy - now declining, obviously - because we were, at one time, the best-educated country on earth.  without any question at all.  the corporatocracy saw this early, and the first attacks on education began in the late 50s:  they are by now almost complete.

we have been eating our educational seed corn since then.

in fifty years less than 1% of the population will be educationally fit to make a distinction between genesis and evolution.

[Hawker]

The best education is right at hand in your own home and with the time you spend with your child. As long as you have a good resource of information (internet anyone?) and the means to facilitate it, learning and education is inherent.

Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.

Those days are long gone.  Modern society has huge sectors who don't care about education and if their child, especially if its a girl, hits 18 as an illiterate, they won't care.  There are also huge numbers of families where both parents work.   Its better that kids have some education regardless of the quality of the home environment and if people vote for the state to provide that education, you have to accept that.

The good news is that you don't have to accept it for your own family.  You can homeschool your kids, or send them to a Montessori school or do whatever.  It doesn't affect you that other parents don't care.

[Anonymous]

The best education is right at hand in your own home and with the time you spend with your child. As long as you have a good resource of information (internet anyone?) and the means to facilitate it, learning and education is inherent.

Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.

Those days are long gone.  Modern society has huge sectors who don't care about education and if their child, especially if its a girl, hits 18 as an illiterate, they won't care.  There are also huge numbers of families where both parents work.   Its better that kids have some education regardless of the quality of the home environment and if people vote for the state to provide that education, you have to accept that.

The good news is that you don't have to accept it for your own family.  You can homeschool your kids, or send them to a Montessori school or do whatever.  It doesn't affect you that other parents don't care.

The reason both parents most work is due to the horrible practices of our overlords. The economy is stagnant. In addition, never in America has a child been left without books and information to consume. Our culture is too information-oriented. Illiteracy just does not happen.

I have to accept paying for this abomination. I have to accept that slavery.

It does effect me when I can't build anything except with an incompetent workforce of over-dependent drones. Luckily the internet attracts the foam that rises from this cesspool.

[Jaime Frontero]

It does effect me when I can't build anything except with an incompetent workforce of over-dependent drones. Luckily the internet attracts the foam that rises from this cesspool.

i offer a small mnemonic, learned in the US public education system of the 1950s...

an affect produces an effect.  the two are in alphabetical order.

"it affects".  "an effect".

an affect essentially refers to an externalality - and is easy to remember due to having the opposite leading vowel.

no offense intended - offered only as a useful memory jog...