Coert,
First, I want to compliment you on a well-written response.
You are focusing on the economic policies.
Yes, that's because it is primarily economic policies which separate liberals from other the other political groupings (libertarians and conservatives).
I try to focus on liberals and conservatives, since the politicians who supposedly represent them (Democrats and Republicans) tend to be less ideologically pure and often adopt (e.g. Bush) or at least attempt to emulate (e.g. Kerry) some of the other party's ideas and stances.
However, the benefits of Republican policies for the economy are short-term and do not consider the social and economic issues that we will deal with far in the future.
I'd like to see some examples of this, as it looks the exact opposite to me. The next case doesn't seem to be an illustration of such...
For example, the way that education is handled in America is not going to work for much longer. It's hanging on by its last thread and we need federal interferance on the local level because too many schools are going down the tubes because parents aren't willing to invest in their children's futures by paying some extra property taxes.
First, you seem to think that the way education is being done in America is according to "Republican" policy. It is not -- public education in the US is largely socialism, has huge government involvement, and educational policy is largely dictated by teacher's unions.
In contrast, the favored conservative policy has been vouchers and school choice. Whether you agree with that or not, you'll note it is certainly not what is being done at present.
Second, you seem to think the the reason we have poor quality education in America is a lack of government funding. I would respectfully submit that you are deeply mistaken.
NYC, for example, spends about $11,500 per child annually and achieves horrible results. DC spends about $16,000 per child to achieve the worst results in the country. The current national average is an amazing $10,000 per pupil.
(In contrast, the national average private school tuition is was about $4,700 per student in 2000 (with many charging less than half that!) -- and yet they outscore public schools in every state -- with particular differences (27 points!) in DC! Can you imagine what great educations our kids would get if they could all get $10k/year to spend on any private school they'd want?)
Yet look at any graph of education funding, and you'll see the numbers have risen MANY MANY times faster than inflation -- the Federal Department of Education's support for primary and secondary education, for one example, has more than doubled from $13.5 billion in 1993 to $37 billion this year (not even including extra funds available through NCLB) -- that's risen far faster than costs.
In contrast, I've read the schoolbooks used a hundred or more years ago in the US. I have one such book I consider to be precious: it is short, concise, focused on the core skills, and tough. Let me tell you: They got a lot better education then -- modern HS graduates couldn't answer one of their 7th-grade problems. And you can bet it was much cheaper.
To me, it seems you're reversing the problem and solution. To me, it seems you think the solution is throwing more money at an educational monopoly beholden to unions and run increasingly by distant, unaccountable bureaucrats. I see that as the problem. I see the solution as less federal money and involvement, and more local choices.
(There is nothing "magic" about federal money. It doesn't rain from the sky. Every penny of it is taken from the states it is then returned to. With a huge cut wasted somewhere in the middle.)
Yet clearly, the problem is not money. The problem is that the methods being used to teach children simply don't work very well. (That's why "hooked on phonics" is making a killing. The success of that product should be telling you something.) The enabling factor is a lack of pressure or incentives to do better.
So, again, our educational policy looks to me like our educational status quo is yet another liberal policy which is robbing children of the ability to compete well in a global future.
And once again, it is poor children who are hurt the most by this liberal policy, since wealthier families can afford other alternatives.
On the economic front, Ron Reagan was a great politician, but his foreign policy ended the cold war leaving Russia in the worst state he could have short of going to war.
We can discuss it later, but note that the liberal view (post-Reagan, of course, hindsight always being so clear) is that the USSR would have died anyway, eventually.
Socialism is inherantly unstable and unsustainable. There is no way for it to go gently into the night -- it damages not only economy, but people's thinking for generations to come. Whether it collapsed under Bush (not Reagan) or anyone else it would have left a mess behind. It was just a matter of timing.
Could we have done more to help? Perhaps there are lessons to be learned. You're welcomed to make specific suggestions. But as we'd never seen a global collapse of communism before, it's understandable the free world in general wasn't quite sure how to react.
Right now, Ron Reagan is not in the White House, George Bush, however, is, and he is no Ronald Reagan.
That's for sure: He's basicly an old-school Democrat, not a conservative. Which is why I find the left's opposition to his various policies so hilarious: Many are formerly things they themselves have advocated.
I'm sad he's not usually a conservative, but it still gives me some enjoyment to watch the hypocritical spectacle unfold.
(In contrast, when Clinton did semi-conservative things, like cut spending, I, as a becoming-conservative praised him, as did many other conservatives (though they often did so grudgingly). We didn't flip policies 180-degrees to follow a path of blind oppositionalism.)
There's not a whole lot you could screw up following Jimmy Carter.
Amen! What a horrible time that was.
I was just a kid then, but even then I remember that the economic pundits were astounded that Carter had somehow managed to combine both economic stagnation and inflation. Before, they'd been assumed to be mutually exclusive. His policies created a new term: "Stagflation."
I was, by the way, a huge Jimmy Carter fan, and was aghast when Reagan won the election. :-)
I am young so I don't know a whole lot concerning Reagan's policies about social security, but I do know what George Bush's idea for social security is and though I am no visionary and I cannot come up with great ideas, I can spot a bad idea and Bush's plans are terrible.
No, actually, Bush's Soc Sec. plans are the best thing I've seen out there. They're not perfect (nothing is), but they're, as far as I can see, much less-bad than all the other options people are considering.
The major asset of social security is that regardless of financial mistakes you made earlier in life, you will still be taken care of to some extent.
No, that's where you're wrong. The guarantee you seem to think exists does not, for two reasons: (a) the funds simply aren't there, and (b) there's no protection for returned benefits, as Congress can take away or reduce benefits with a single vote. They've done it before, and there's nothing to stop them from doing it again.
Regarding (a), it's dishonest to talk about something as a guarantee when it's not even funded. This is so perverse, I have trouble giving an analogy, but I'll try:
A family, cut off from civilization, has enough cans of food to only last halfway through the winter. They're consuming food at a level generally agreed upon to sustain health. Dad suggests reducing (it's an imperfect analogy, since there's no immediate reduction here) consumption to last the winter. The teenage son screams that the higher level of consumption was *guaranteed* to be healthier. Yeah, if you had enough food for the whole winter! Otherwise, it's only healthier until you starve.
Regarding (b): Do you remember the Gore campaign? Remember where he talked about the crisis coming for SocSec and the need for a "lockbox"? This danger (Congressional foibles) was what he was talking about. The problem was, and I noticed it, that he never did come up with a description of how the "lockbox" would work.
Individual accounts serve just such a purpose. The government can't mis-spend people's future retirement funds if they can't get their hands on them.
Is it possible that the people could invest badly? It's possible, but highly unlikely: they're probably* only going to be given the choice of a number of mutual funds... the same kinds of things a 401K or similar gov't package offers.
Is it possible these could tank? Yes, possible, but verrrry unlikely. But even if so, I'd bet (a) the "tanked" benefits are still higher than the current SS returns, and (b) if such a tanking did occur, we'd have much bigger problem: the collapse of the economy. In such a case, FDR's SocSec redistribution scheme fails also due to declining gov't returns.
(It worked back then because you had -- what -- at 20 to 1 young-to-old ratio? Now it's getting close to 1-to-1, so that trick won't work in bad economic conditions.)
Regarding "probably*": The funny thing about this debate is that Democrats don't really know the specifics of the Bush plan since he's said he's open to all options -- including whatever the Democrats want to suggest.
So it's funny to hear the problems in "the new system" since nothing's been decided yet and, last I heard, all options were still on the table. Works as a nice lie-detector, I think -- just check to see who's saying the specifics are wrong.
(Even individual accounts are not a done deal yet -- and I hear rumors that Bush may give up. That would be very bad -- he'd be hurting people in order to please liberals, again.)
In a sense, by being so open-minded, he's hammered his critics: almost all of them are on record as saying individual SS accounts are a good thing. And there's a reason for that -- they are, and they didn't mind saying so when a Democratic President (Clinton) was toying with the same idea.
Again, blind, unprincipled oppositionalism nails you every time.
Rush Limbaugh criticized the current system saying that it was like a welfare system for old people...
I ignore Rush.
Bush's "individual accounts" replacement would also be like a welfare system, since the old system would still be available as an option. And even if it wasn't (which it will be, as he's said so, and he generally does what he says), I expect, given Bush's liberal tendancies, it would include a safety net of some sort.
Conservaties don't disagree that the old (including the elderly poor) need to be taken care of -- that's a liberal parody of our views. Instead the debate is simply whether putting a monpolistic goverment in charge of the task is the best way of achieving that goal.
Another way in which social security is NOT a welfare system is that there are no means-testing: it pays even wealthy oldsters. I don't see what interest the government has in taking money from poor young families and giving it to wealthy old people -- that's the bizarrest form of socialism I've ever seen.
Yet another way in which SS is not a safety net is that your benefits are based on your pay-in, not your needs. If your pay-in is small, so comes the pay-out as being small.
The problem of this new system is that not everyone makes enough money in their regular jobs to live a normal life and save enough money to live on during their retirements.
What new system? ;-)
Of course, you mean individual accounts: No, I beg to differ. If you look at the total tax burden on the average person, it's about 50% of the money he'll make. After those kinds of losses, some have trouble saving enough to even invest in their 401k.
Look at that 20% or so going to SS. Every paycheck, I stare at that thing, and think of how much better I could invest it than the government. I'm going to get what back, a few hundred a month for that huge loss? By then, that kind of money will only buy me a pack of Oreos each month. :-)
(Goverment created that problem. And then some leftist will claim the solution is still more government! And eventually we end up living in the USSR: a beautiful country with smart people and immense natural resources which is starving its people to death through socialist foolishness.)
Imagine if everyone set aside 20% of their salary. Even if the law simply required them to do so. They'd be filthy rich by the time most retired.
And what is happening to that SS money in the mean time? The gov't isn't investing it. They're not even burying it the yard, with no interest. No, they're doing worse still: spending it on stupid things art like projects, fraudulent medicare claims, less-than-critical research, and pork projects in some Senator's home state. And Bush's stupid, expensive, prescription plan for the elderly -- including those who are already well-off. (Again, he's a big-gov't liberal. Liberals didn't dare make too much of this mistake of his, because it hits much too close to home.)
Again, what you think of as the solution (huge government) I see as the problem. And it seems to me the evidence is strongly on my side here.
On top of all that, not everyone has both the sense or the time to play the stock market with their retirements.
Who have you been listening to? You don't "play the stock market". Even if you do nothing, you end up being under the existing pay-as-you-go system, which will remain in place. Have you not been paying attention? Or have the liberals been lying to you again, sonny? (I'm only in my 30s, but that sounds fun to say.)
For those who don't have the "time", they end up with the same system we have now. Bush said that plainly.
But otherwise, you don't "play the market". It's probably going to be simpler than my 401K, where you just can just pick a mutual fund at random if you want in but don't want to do research. That takes all of a few minutes, and you can leave it that way as long as you want.
Wait: Do you even know what a mutual fund is? I don't say this to insult you, but it sounds like you're not even aware of how these things work, since you apparently think they're like "playing the stock market."
A team of investors collect a huge number of stocks from many different companies and industries into one huge bundle. When one company starts to tank, they sell it off and get something better. They watch it for you. It works very well -- these things are very hard to bring down. Basicly, the whole market has to tank to bring one down significantly.
You can just leave it there. Even if you don't pay attention, competition for the other customers (those who do try to spot the best funds) will ensure your mutual fund company is doing the best they can to keep their hand in the game.
Most people who retire rich do so just this way. Putting aside and investing in mutual funds.
Is it perfect? Of course not. But it's better than every other option, and that's what matters.
Bush is trying to make social security work for the upper class, which, right now, it does not work for them...
What are you talking about? Who is feeding you this hogwash? It's completely wrong.
Social security already works very well for the upper class. In the first place, as I mention, SS payouts are proportional to pay-ins -- so the rich get bigger SS checks returned. Next, the wealthy generally live longer, so they're likely to collect more than their fair share of benefits. So in essence, you have a system which disproporationately takes wealth from poor, short-lived people and gives it to the wealthy!
I'm against socialism (e.g. government-run wealth redistribution), and even more against it when it takes from the poor and gives to the rich! It's stupid enough the other way, but SS takes the cake. I'm entirely for means testing, and I expect to see not a whit of it myself.
(In fact, I'd give my entire expected portion someone else if we could get rid of this stupid, wasteful mess.)
Remember: Every time you pass a dollar through a politican's hand, most of it disappears rather than going to do what it was supposed to. Use government as a last resort, not a first choice.
... I enjoy civil debates a great deal.
I do too. Your civility is rare among those who oppose me here. Sorry if I expected less initially. Sadly, your liberalism probably won't last long if you keep that up and remain intellectually honest, as you come across as being.
I know. I wasn't always a conservative.
If you can lay off stereotyping me as a crybaby, whiney, treehugging liberal, then I will refrain from reciprocating that.
It's not my typical tactic. I tend more to focus on how liberal policies hurt so many vulnerable people, and how so few liberals seem to care about those effects.
I don't see how democratic policies hurt people. The reason we say we don't have to listen to this is because we don't have to listen to lies. This is the reason we don't like to watch Fox News.
Posted by: Coert on March 4, 2005 04:09 PM