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Neither. The first is far too expensive, the second involves coercing people to pay for the education of others.

by duncan_bayne 11y ago

semi-extrinsic 11y ago
So, how do you propose we pay for educating the people who are going to run the country tomorrow?
- duncan_bayne 11y ago
  I'd suggest a few approaches: - solicit money from rich donors (as seems to be the case here) - adopt policies to drive down the cost of quality education, instead of making it more expensive as has been the case for the past many years - establish charitable scholarships, funded by donations, sponsorships, etc. - establish non-profit mutual societies to lend money to students at cost price There are many options that don't involve holding a gun to people to demand they pay for the education of others.
logfromblammo 11y ago
The value of one education to future productivity grows with the number of educated people. So the more people you can educate, the more valuable each educated person is. This is because innovation more commonly occurs with collaboration than without. The U.S. has already reaped significant windfalls from all the excellent foreign students attending its universities. Create an environment with a high density of trained thinkers, and innovations result. And there may be no limit to the benefits. If we (as a species) could educate everybody up to the limit of their intelligence and imagination, rather than to the depth of their pockets, even a professional futurist would be hard pressed to predict the consequences. This is one situation where it is very clear how a cartel enforcer can provide an overall benefit to the cartel by enforcing a certain mode of behavior. But the problem with levying taxes for public schooling is that there is much more to education than just the amount of money you spend on schools.
- solomatov 11y ago
  >The value of one education to future productivity grows with the number of educated people. It's highly dependent on the kind of education a person receives. For example, we will get much more productivity growth from a typical engineering graduate than philosophy graduate (though we still need some philosophy graduates).
- duncan_bayne 11y ago
  "But the problem with levying taxes for public schooling is that there is much more to education than just the amount of money you spend on schools." That, and the fact that you're funding a supposedly benevolent institution by threatening people with jail or death should they choose not to pay for it.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    That's just one of the many relevant things that government officials do not consider when deciding to increase their budgets for operating schools. It is a side effect of electing politicians that were never taught to consider the potential consequences of their own actions from the perspective of someone else who may be affected by them. To them, taxes magically appear from happy munchkins who sing about how great it is to pool their resources for the common good, and the only worry is about how to get the politicians from the evil other party to go along with spending the money to do something useful and good this time. Since public schools rarely teach that there is no such thing as a free lunch, those who are fully schooled are still incompletely educated. I recall being taught in high school that Keynesian macroeconomics were superior to classical macroeconomics, and left without an inkling that Chicago or Austrian macroeconomics even existed. Who would have thought that a government-funded school might teach me that deficit spending is good for the economy? I wonder if that teacher was paid out of the pocket of someone who didn't want higher taxes, or if he was paid out of the state's credit account? But that's beside the point. In the transition from a worker-based to a robot-based economy, unskilled labor no longer has any role. Everyone has to, at minimum, be able to design, build, program, repair, or maintain the robots. If you can't train everyone up to the minimum requirements for the jobs that will exist, or remove their absolute need to have a job, you are abandoning them to lives of crime or rent-seeking. Whether you choose to spend the money on education, basic income, or hordes of useless middlemen or criminals, you just can't redesign an economy such that the lifeblood never manages to flow through any of the capillaries. Poor people not only have to eat, but they also have to feel like their lives have meaning.

Neither. The first is far too expensive, the second involves coercing people to pay for the education of others.

semi-extrinsic 11y ago

So, how do you propose we pay for educating the people who are going to run the country tomorrow?

duncan_bayne 11y ago
I'd suggest a few approaches: - solicit money from rich donors (as seems to be the case here) - adopt policies to drive down the cost of quality education, instead of making it more expensive as has been the case for the past many years - establish charitable scholarships, funded by donations, sponsorships, etc. - establish non-profit mutual societies to lend money to students at cost price There are many options that don't involve holding a gun to people to demand they pay for the education of others.

logfromblammo 11y ago

The value of one education to future productivity grows with the number of educated people. So the more people you can educate, the more valuable each educated person is. This is because innovation more commonly occurs with collaboration than without. The U.S. has already reaped significant windfalls from all the excellent foreign students attending its universities. Create an environment with a high density of trained thinkers, and innovations result. And there may be no limit to the benefits. If we (as a species) could educate everybody up to the limit of their intelligence and imagination, rather than to the depth of their pockets, even a professional futurist would be hard pressed to predict the consequences. This is one situation where it is very clear how a cartel enforcer can provide an overall benefit to the cartel by enforcing a certain mode of behavior. But the problem with levying taxes for public schooling is that there is much more to education than just the amount of money you spend on schools.

solomatov 11y ago
>The value of one education to future productivity grows with the number of educated people. It's highly dependent on the kind of education a person receives. For example, we will get much more productivity growth from a typical engineering graduate than philosophy graduate (though we still need some philosophy graduates).
duncan_bayne 11y ago
"But the problem with levying taxes for public schooling is that there is much more to education than just the amount of money you spend on schools." That, and the fact that you're funding a supposedly benevolent institution by threatening people with jail or death should they choose not to pay for it.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  That's just one of the many relevant things that government officials do not consider when deciding to increase their budgets for operating schools. It is a side effect of electing politicians that were never taught to consider the potential consequences of their own actions from the perspective of someone else who may be affected by them. To them, taxes magically appear from happy munchkins who sing about how great it is to pool their resources for the common good, and the only worry is about how to get the politicians from the evil other party to go along with spending the money to do something useful and good this time. Since public schools rarely teach that there is no such thing as a free lunch, those who are fully schooled are still incompletely educated. I recall being taught in high school that Keynesian macroeconomics were superior to classical macroeconomics, and left without an inkling that Chicago or Austrian macroeconomics even existed. Who would have thought that a government-funded school might teach me that deficit spending is good for the economy? I wonder if that teacher was paid out of the pocket of someone who didn't want higher taxes, or if he was paid out of the state's credit account? But that's beside the point. In the transition from a worker-based to a robot-based economy, unskilled labor no longer has any role. Everyone has to, at minimum, be able to design, build, program, repair, or maintain the robots. If you can't train everyone up to the minimum requirements for the jobs that will exist, or remove their absolute need to have a job, you are abandoning them to lives of crime or rent-seeking. Whether you choose to spend the money on education, basic income, or hordes of useless middlemen or criminals, you just can't redesign an economy such that the lifeblood never manages to flow through any of the capillaries. Poor people not only have to eat, but they also have to feel like their lives have meaning.