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Not to mention that private schools get huge amounts of government funding on top of tuition fees so can poach all the top teachers from public schools. Educati

Not to mention that private schools get huge amounts of government funding on top of tuition fees so can poach all the top teachers from public schools. Education system is worrying here for a parent of a 3 year old.

alvah 4y ago
Do the parents of children at private schools not pay tax? Why shouldn't some of that tax go towards their child's education?
- lll-o-lll 4y ago
  If the point of tax was to evenly redistribute it back to those who paid it, what would be the point of taxing in the first place? No, the point of tax is to forceable take money to redistribute in the best interests of society at large. Ideally. In practice it’s so inefficient and the corruption and everything makes it a horrible system. I like the Swiss Canton system, at least on paper. More distributed government. I want that bastard who’s misusing my tax money to live next door! Centralisation of power is the entropy of democracy.
  - alvah 4y ago
    "No, the point of tax is to forceable take money to redistribute in the best interests of society at large." That's not how (federal) tax works in a fiat money environment (i.e. in Western countries for at least the last 50 years), despite what the textbooks, media and political parties tell us. Taxes (and other measures) are used to control the level of spending in the economy. Government expenditure is funded by money created by government-controlled and / or government-adjacent agencies.
    - lll-o-lll 4y ago
      Sounds complicated. Can this be decentralised within a federal system or does its very nature imply that power is coalesced to federal gov + these agencies to which you refer? Also, why does there appear to be a correlation between countries that tax more and higher public services (like the Nordic countries vs US). Is it actually just an artificial correlation? Also, when you say spending, is this gov spending or private spending? Obviously if my tax goes up, I’m spending less. Sorry for all the Q’s, genuinely curious.
      - alvah 4y ago
        Modern Monetary Theory covers some of the basics. I believe Monetary Realism (https://www.pragcap.com/monetary-realism/ https://www.pragcap.com/monetary-realism/) is a much better attempt to explain the roles of government, banks, taxation and spending in the modern-day fiat currency environment (though it does contradict some of my simplifications above).
      - alvah 4y ago
        "Also, when you say spending, is this gov spending or private spending?" Private spending, though the theory is coupled with the idea that government spending should increase to take up the slack when private spending declines.
        lll-o-lll 4y ago
        Thanks for all this. Looks like I have some reading to do. On a side topic, is there much hope for devolution of power in our current political systems in the West in your opinion? I’m Australian, but would be interested in your take on any western country.
        alvah 4y ago
        I'm Aussie too, but I'm not optimistic about the political direction in any Western country.
      - alvah 4y ago
        "Can this be decentralised within a federal system" Money creation is central to the concept, and I don't believe there is currently an advanced economy where money creation is devolved to the state level.
  - alvah 4y ago
    "Centralisation of power is the entropy of democracy." Absolutely.
- siquick 4y ago
  Not if it tilts the education system even more in favour of the wealthy. Education is one of the few options less wealthy families have to level the playing field. We cant take this away by letting private organisations poaching the best teachers with huge financial incentives
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    > Education is one of the few options less wealthy families have to level the playing field. Teachers have very small effects on student learning within the normal range of competence. We can’t even be sure school effects exist outside teacher and student effects. > Educational gain will be best predicted by student abilities (up to r = 0.95) and much less by teachers’ skill (up to r = 0.32). I argue that seemingly immutable education will not change until we fully understand students and particularly human intelligence. Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains. This evidence is reviewed. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-psychology/article/abs/education-and-intelligence-pity-the-poor-teacher-because-student-characteristics-are-more-significant-than-teachers-or-schools/F73D9839D7E1398C33A117CB37E084E8 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-p...
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      We can be pretty sure, because there are outliers. There is a math teacher in my city that thaught 170 kids a year for 20 years and none of them ever failed the ministerial exams (the average fail rate is 15 percent). The problem with these kinds of statistics is that when you are comparing performance relative to the population, low variance in teacher performance leads to the statistical artifact that they have low correlation. This isn't because teachers have little impact, it's because the variance in the quality of teachers is much lower than the variance of other factors. This shouldn't be surprising given the fact that the average student will go through 30-40 teachers, each having their impact. The variance in performance of any individual teacher will be severely blunted. This effect is actually fairly widespread in intelligence research, it's why adopted twin IQ studies greatly overstate the inheritance - by putting the cohorts of kids in standardized environments, you inadvertently control for everything but what is inherited, thus increasing the relative variance of the latter.
- chii 4y ago
  That's the point of private vs public - if you go private, you are actively foregoing the tax dollars you contributed for the public system. I dont think the private system _should_ be able to get funding from the public system.
  - alvah 4y ago
    So the parents, being generally towards the wealthier end of the scale, get to pay more income tax dollars than the average individual, and also don’t get to benefit from the education portion of said tax dollars at all? Doesn’t seem particularly, what’s the word, egalitarian? I understand the arguments re: taxing the middle / upper middle class to pay for hospitals, police etc; everyone benefits from these services, including those carrying the majority of the tax burden. But you want to tax them for education, and not give them any of the benefit, because they choose to pay extra to go private?
    - chii 4y ago
      > get to pay more income tax ... don’t get to benefit from the education portion of said tax dollars at all? but they can! they can enroll in the public system. They would have a choice. Nobody is forcing the private system onto them in this scenario. > because they choose to pay extra to go private? yes, this is what it _should_ mean to go private.
      - alvah 4y ago
        Yeah there’s nothing to be gained here, you’re determined not to get the point.

alvah 4y ago

Do the parents of children at private schools not pay tax? Why shouldn't some of that tax go towards their child's education?

lll-o-lll 4y ago
If the point of tax was to evenly redistribute it back to those who paid it, what would be the point of taxing in the first place? No, the point of tax is to forceable take money to redistribute in the best interests of society at large. Ideally. In practice it’s so inefficient and the corruption and everything makes it a horrible system. I like the Swiss Canton system, at least on paper. More distributed government. I want that bastard who’s misusing my tax money to live next door! Centralisation of power is the entropy of democracy.
- alvah 4y ago
  "No, the point of tax is to forceable take money to redistribute in the best interests of society at large." That's not how (federal) tax works in a fiat money environment (i.e. in Western countries for at least the last 50 years), despite what the textbooks, media and political parties tell us. Taxes (and other measures) are used to control the level of spending in the economy. Government expenditure is funded by money created by government-controlled and / or government-adjacent agencies.
  - lll-o-lll 4y ago
    Sounds complicated. Can this be decentralised within a federal system or does its very nature imply that power is coalesced to federal gov + these agencies to which you refer? Also, why does there appear to be a correlation between countries that tax more and higher public services (like the Nordic countries vs US). Is it actually just an artificial correlation? Also, when you say spending, is this gov spending or private spending? Obviously if my tax goes up, I’m spending less. Sorry for all the Q’s, genuinely curious.
    - alvah 4y ago
      Modern Monetary Theory covers some of the basics. I believe Monetary Realism (https://www.pragcap.com/monetary-realism/ https://www.pragcap.com/monetary-realism/) is a much better attempt to explain the roles of government, banks, taxation and spending in the modern-day fiat currency environment (though it does contradict some of my simplifications above).
    - alvah 4y ago
      "Also, when you say spending, is this gov spending or private spending?" Private spending, though the theory is coupled with the idea that government spending should increase to take up the slack when private spending declines.
      - lll-o-lll 4y ago
        Thanks for all this. Looks like I have some reading to do. On a side topic, is there much hope for devolution of power in our current political systems in the West in your opinion? I’m Australian, but would be interested in your take on any western country.
        alvah 4y ago
        I'm Aussie too, but I'm not optimistic about the political direction in any Western country.
    - alvah 4y ago
      "Can this be decentralised within a federal system" Money creation is central to the concept, and I don't believe there is currently an advanced economy where money creation is devolved to the state level.
- alvah 4y ago
  "Centralisation of power is the entropy of democracy." Absolutely.
siquick 4y ago
Not if it tilts the education system even more in favour of the wealthy. Education is one of the few options less wealthy families have to level the playing field. We cant take this away by letting private organisations poaching the best teachers with huge financial incentives
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > Education is one of the few options less wealthy families have to level the playing field. Teachers have very small effects on student learning within the normal range of competence. We can’t even be sure school effects exist outside teacher and student effects. > Educational gain will be best predicted by student abilities (up to r = 0.95) and much less by teachers’ skill (up to r = 0.32). I argue that seemingly immutable education will not change until we fully understand students and particularly human intelligence. Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains. This evidence is reviewed. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-psychology/article/abs/education-and-intelligence-pity-the-poor-teacher-because-student-characteristics-are-more-significant-than-teachers-or-schools/F73D9839D7E1398C33A117CB37E084E8 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-p...
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    We can be pretty sure, because there are outliers. There is a math teacher in my city that thaught 170 kids a year for 20 years and none of them ever failed the ministerial exams (the average fail rate is 15 percent). The problem with these kinds of statistics is that when you are comparing performance relative to the population, low variance in teacher performance leads to the statistical artifact that they have low correlation. This isn't because teachers have little impact, it's because the variance in the quality of teachers is much lower than the variance of other factors. This shouldn't be surprising given the fact that the average student will go through 30-40 teachers, each having their impact. The variance in performance of any individual teacher will be severely blunted. This effect is actually fairly widespread in intelligence research, it's why adopted twin IQ studies greatly overstate the inheritance - by putting the cohorts of kids in standardized environments, you inadvertently control for everything but what is inherited, thus increasing the relative variance of the latter.
chii 4y ago
That's the point of private vs public - if you go private, you are actively foregoing the tax dollars you contributed for the public system. I dont think the private system _should_ be able to get funding from the public system.
- alvah 4y ago
  So the parents, being generally towards the wealthier end of the scale, get to pay more income tax dollars than the average individual, and also don’t get to benefit from the education portion of said tax dollars at all? Doesn’t seem particularly, what’s the word, egalitarian? I understand the arguments re: taxing the middle / upper middle class to pay for hospitals, police etc; everyone benefits from these services, including those carrying the majority of the tax burden. But you want to tax them for education, and not give them any of the benefit, because they choose to pay extra to go private?
  - chii 4y ago
    > get to pay more income tax ... don’t get to benefit from the education portion of said tax dollars at all? but they can! they can enroll in the public system. They would have a choice. Nobody is forcing the private system onto them in this scenario. > because they choose to pay extra to go private? yes, this is what it _should_ mean to go private.
    - alvah 4y ago
      Yeah there’s nothing to be gained here, you’re determined not to get the point.