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Ryan, I completely disagree. I am surprised that you would think that the society benefits more from the education than the individual. According to me, if I ha

Ryan, I completely disagree. I am surprised that you would think that the society benefits more from the education than the individual. According to me, if I have higher education, I get a better job, better salary, more respect in social circle. Compared to this, what does society get if I am educated? And looking at how tuition fees are at all time high and people are still paying them, I would not say that people are under investing in education. EDIT 1: For some reason, I am not able to reply to some of the replies to my comment, so let me clarify. What is society made of? Individuals. Obviously, if individuals are better off then society will automatically be better off. Isn't it? So if you think by providing education to an individual, society becomes better, why don't we provide good healthy food for all the individuals and we will solve the obesity problem and end up with a really healthy society? How about providing free access to a high quality gym and personal instructor? I see that you are disagreeing and you would say, one has to draw line somewhere. And in my opinion, if you think that Government should be not be responsible for good healthy food (the most important thing for an individual, even more than education), I don't understand how you can say that Government should provide public education. EDIT 2: And here's why I am not in favor of government programs. A bureaucrat has no incentive what so ever to please their customers (i.e. taxpayers). [Quick, tell me, how many government agencies do a good job in your opinion?] By nature, government will try to find a one-size-fits-all solution to education, which does not work. As someone else said, I am all in favor of voucher system which gives control back to people who care about education and let market place offer variety of solutions for people's education needs.

alanthonyc 17y ago
Are you kidding? An educated citizenry is one of the most important things a society can have. The "better job, better salay, more respect" to which you refer are all functions of the value that you provide to the community.
- solutionyogi 17y ago
  Excuse me, but why do you have the notion that Educated people are somehow better than uneducated people?
  - timwiseman 17y ago
    Better in a moral sense or some abstract notion of the word? They very well may not be, the connection is murky certainly. Better in the sense of being more valuable to society? That is often obvious. While a brick layer may be a fine and noble man who truly contributes to society, I think it is safe to say that the doctor's contribution is more valuable. Also, when talking about a democracy, the people are meant to play a role in the governance. An educated populus will play that role better and make better choice in who they elect for leadership and what ballot measures to support. On average, an educated person will contribute more to the governance and more to the economy than a less educated person. This does not make them morally better or better in the eyes of God, but it does make them more valuable citizens.
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Imagine you are an employer. Do you want to hire your employees from a pool of uneducated or educated prospects?
papercrane 17y ago
You're misrepresenting Ryan's statement. His argument is not that public education benefits society more than the individual. His argument is that public education is a net benefit for society.
- solutionyogi 17y ago
  And my point is, anything which benefits an individual (as long as it's not illegal) automatically benefits the society, as society itself is made of individuals. Is there any case where individual is better off but society is not?
  - Retric 17y ago
    Diminishing returns. The USSR overeducated much of it's population to the point where society would have been better off if they had spent more time working and less time learning. Diminished public good. Copywrite that never expires. Graft. Often public resources are sold to individuals at less than market cost.
  - papercrane 17y ago
    Not everything that benefits an individual benefits society. Reallocation from the general public to an individual can benefit an individual, but be detrimental to society. Also some things may benefit an individual, but only provide marginal benefits for society.
    - solutionyogi 17y ago
      "Reallocation from the general public to an individual can benefit an individual, but be detrimental to society" I am not sure if I am following the above example. Could you clarify? "Also some things may benefit an individual, but only provide marginal benefits for society." So you prefer society over individuals. Seems like it's 1922 again and USSR called!
      - papercrane 17y ago
geebee 17y ago
Ryan didn't claim that society benefits more than the individual, he just said that society benefits "as well as the individual". This is an important distinction, because I think a big part of the disagreement here is how big a gap you'd need to see to call something a "public good" and accept some degree of government regulation. In my intro economics textbook, on the section about externalities, the authors used the typical example of pollution as a negative externality. For a positive one, they wrote (paraphrasing) "economists have long recognized that certain professions, such as science and engineering, produce benefits to society that greatly exceed the immediate rewards that the practitioners are able to recoup..." So it really is a question of degree. The people who did the original research that led to the creation of the internet or decoding the genome have contributed vastly more to the general wealth than people who lobby for the extension of copyrights that were set to expire (who probably profit personally but destroy wealth), but I bet they earned a lot less. I'm not opposed to a government that provides incentives through grants to the researchers. Unless you're an extremist, the principles are the same, it's just where you draw the line. I'd call myself a moderate fiscal conservative - in general, I'd prefer market solutions, but I'm not a small government zealot. P One quick thing about public health care - I got an interesting perspective from a physician who worked in an emergency room. He said that people who are broke and have no health care still get their health care paid for by the taxpayer. They just wait until problems become so awful that they have to crowd the emergency room, where treatment is at its most expensive. They're on the hook for the money, but you can't get blood out of a turnip, so the hospital is never reimbursed, and private emergency rooms transfer the patient to the county (taxpayer supported) hospital asap. Unless you're prepared to deny people with extremely bad health conditions access to the emergency room, you, as the taxpayer, are going to pay for the "emergency room public health clinic". So would you rather pay early, when it's cheap, or later, when it's extremely expensive?
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  the hospital is never reimbursed, and private emergency rooms transfer the patient to the county This is not the case. Hospitals (including private ones) get some reimbursement from Medicare for bad debt cases. My wife manages the department responsible for this reimbursement at a local hospital, and we've had endless discussions about this. And in a conversation with their CFO over a friendly ping-pong game, I was told that contrary to public wisdom, the ER is actually profitable -- and this is an urban hospital with a high "disproportionate share" of bad debt.
AndrewDucker 17y ago
Society gets an educated worker, who can produce far more, over their lifespan, than an uneducated one.
btilly 17y ago
Ryan, I completely disagree. I am surprised that you would think that the society benefits more from the education than the individual. According to me, if I have higher education, I get a better job, better salary, more respect in social circle. Compared to this, what does society get if I am educated? He never said more goes to society. He just said some of the benefit cannot be captured by the individual. This is trivially true. Employers pay an individual somewhere between nothing and the value that individual contributes. If an educated individual contributes more than an uneducated one, then the educated individual is likely to get more salary than the uneducated one AND the employer has a larger gap between salary paid and value captured. (Incidentally there is typically a gap between the value provided by the employer and the revenue collected, which provides yet another layer of more broadly spread societal benefit that is not seen by the individual.) That excess value is captured by private companies that may or may not even have existed at the time that the individual was being educated. That is value going to society that is not captured by the individual, and hence which can't be recouped through any kind of student loan program.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  What you are describing are simply the gains from trade. They exist for any good or service which is voluntarily traded. Therefore, if we favor subsidies for education, we should also favor subsidies for purchasing industrial machines, computers to automate labor, or any other investment.
  - btilly 17y ago
    Not any other investment, by a long shot. Because while there is a potential benefit to government assistance, there are also potential costs in terms of distorting markets, inefficient allocation, and creating oversupply. There is a trade-off, and finding the right one can be difficult. That said, historically we've gotten surprisingly good returns from subsidies on research, transportation, and certain areas of telecom. (The early Internet is a shining example.) However a certain amount of caution needs to be maintained because once a precedent has been set then regulatory capture sets in and the long term result of those unintended consequences tends to be very bad.
antester 17y ago
Ryan, I completely disagree. I am surprised that you would think that the society benefits more from the education than the individual. According to me, if I have higher education, I get a better job, better salary, more respect in social circle. Compared to this, what does society get if I am educated? I don't know if this outweighs what the individual gets, but society certainly benefits from educated individuals. Shiny new iphones, better health, more entrepreneurs, better research... I could make a huge list of things that people smarter than me have done to make my life better. EDIT 1: <snip> why don't we provide good healthy food for all the individuals Some countries are doing just that, in schools, or other places. Most countries monitor their citizens health and provides incentives to get healthier.

alanthonyc 17y ago

Are you kidding? An educated citizenry is one of the most important things a society can have. The "better job, better salay, more respect" to which you refer are all functions of the value that you provide to the community.

solutionyogi 17y ago
Excuse me, but why do you have the notion that Educated people are somehow better than uneducated people?
- timwiseman 17y ago
  Better in a moral sense or some abstract notion of the word? They very well may not be, the connection is murky certainly. Better in the sense of being more valuable to society? That is often obvious. While a brick layer may be a fine and noble man who truly contributes to society, I think it is safe to say that the doctor's contribution is more valuable. Also, when talking about a democracy, the people are meant to play a role in the governance. An educated populus will play that role better and make better choice in who they elect for leadership and what ballot measures to support. On average, an educated person will contribute more to the governance and more to the economy than a less educated person. This does not make them morally better or better in the eyes of God, but it does make them more valuable citizens.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

Imagine you are an employer. Do you want to hire your employees from a pool of uneducated or educated prospects?

papercrane 17y ago

You're misrepresenting Ryan's statement. His argument is not that public education benefits society more than the individual. His argument is that public education is a net benefit for society.

solutionyogi 17y ago
And my point is, anything which benefits an individual (as long as it's not illegal) automatically benefits the society, as society itself is made of individuals. Is there any case where individual is better off but society is not?
- Retric 17y ago
  Diminishing returns. The USSR overeducated much of it's population to the point where society would have been better off if they had spent more time working and less time learning. Diminished public good. Copywrite that never expires. Graft. Often public resources are sold to individuals at less than market cost.
- papercrane 17y ago
  Not everything that benefits an individual benefits society. Reallocation from the general public to an individual can benefit an individual, but be detrimental to society. Also some things may benefit an individual, but only provide marginal benefits for society.
  - solutionyogi 17y ago
    "Reallocation from the general public to an individual can benefit an individual, but be detrimental to society" I am not sure if I am following the above example. Could you clarify? "Also some things may benefit an individual, but only provide marginal benefits for society." So you prefer society over individuals. Seems like it's 1922 again and USSR called!
    - papercrane 17y ago

geebee 17y ago

Ryan didn't claim that society benefits more than the individual, he just said that society benefits "as well as the individual". This is an important distinction, because I think a big part of the disagreement here is how big a gap you'd need to see to call something a "public good" and accept some degree of government regulation. In my intro economics textbook, on the section about externalities, the authors used the typical example of pollution as a negative externality. For a positive one, they wrote (paraphrasing) "economists have long recognized that certain professions, such as science and engineering, produce benefits to society that greatly exceed the immediate rewards that the practitioners are able to recoup..." So it really is a question of degree. The people who did the original research that led to the creation of the internet or decoding the genome have contributed vastly more to the general wealth than people who lobby for the extension of copyrights that were set to expire (who probably profit personally but destroy wealth), but I bet they earned a lot less. I'm not opposed to a government that provides incentives through grants to the researchers. Unless you're an extremist, the principles are the same, it's just where you draw the line. I'd call myself a moderate fiscal conservative - in general, I'd prefer market solutions, but I'm not a small government zealot. P One quick thing about public health care - I got an interesting perspective from a physician who worked in an emergency room. He said that people who are broke and have no health care still get their health care paid for by the taxpayer. They just wait until problems become so awful that they have to crowd the emergency room, where treatment is at its most expensive. They're on the hook for the money, but you can't get blood out of a turnip, so the hospital is never reimbursed, and private emergency rooms transfer the patient to the county (taxpayer supported) hospital asap. Unless you're prepared to deny people with extremely bad health conditions access to the emergency room, you, as the taxpayer, are going to pay for the "emergency room public health clinic". So would you rather pay early, when it's cheap, or later, when it's extremely expensive?

CWuestefeld 17y ago
the hospital is never reimbursed, and private emergency rooms transfer the patient to the county This is not the case. Hospitals (including private ones) get some reimbursement from Medicare for bad debt cases. My wife manages the department responsible for this reimbursement at a local hospital, and we've had endless discussions about this. And in a conversation with their CFO over a friendly ping-pong game, I was told that contrary to public wisdom, the ER is actually profitable -- and this is an urban hospital with a high "disproportionate share" of bad debt.

AndrewDucker 17y ago

Society gets an educated worker, who can produce far more, over their lifespan, than an uneducated one.

btilly 17y ago

yummyfajitas 17y ago
What you are describing are simply the gains from trade. They exist for any good or service which is voluntarily traded. Therefore, if we favor subsidies for education, we should also favor subsidies for purchasing industrial machines, computers to automate labor, or any other investment.
- btilly 17y ago
  Not any other investment, by a long shot. Because while there is a potential benefit to government assistance, there are also potential costs in terms of distorting markets, inefficient allocation, and creating oversupply. There is a trade-off, and finding the right one can be difficult. That said, historically we've gotten surprisingly good returns from subsidies on research, transportation, and certain areas of telecom. (The early Internet is a shining example.) However a certain amount of caution needs to be maintained because once a precedent has been set then regulatory capture sets in and the long term result of those unintended consequences tends to be very bad.

antester 17y ago