9 ms·

They implemented a great component of those ideas. Seems like cause for at least some celebration, right? :)

by ajju 3y ago

xmddmx 3y ago
I'm an educator, and a social democrat (approximately) so "yes"? What saddens me is that grand (and simple) plan "free education for all" gets watered down and chipped away to "free education for those who have money or connections" and later attempts to shore it up offten amount to "free education for $special_group". While I don't deny $special_group should get free education, what gets me is all the special-pleading going on. In OOM programming terms, it's like we had a universal principle which was easy to implement, and this has now been replaced by a bunch of switch/case statements...
- lisper 3y ago
  I'm approximately a social democrat too, but I'm also a pragmatist. Asking for "free education" is like a child asking for a pony. Education, like everything, costs money, and we can't just wave a magic wand and change that. The only question is who pays for it: the student, or someone else. "Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea. But I really wish we'd stop calling it something that it's not.
  - xmddmx 3y ago
    "social democrat" - are you sure? the point remains: some services are social goods and should be treated as such, so that "nobody lacks for inability to pay". That's not literally "free" but has the same meaning in practice.
    - lisper 3y ago
      > "social democrat" - are you sure? Pretty sure, yes. Why do you doubt it? > some services are social goods and should be treated as such I'm not disputing that. I'm just taking issue with the marketing strategy. I don't like selling it as "free education" because that's a lie, and I don't like lying because it catches up with you eventually. I think it should be called what it is: government-subsidized education. (I also think it should be means-tested. I see no reason for society to pick up the tab for rich people's kids.)
      - ROTMetro 3y ago
        Should we call all grocery stores 'government subsidized food stores' since American AG receives a huge amount of government subsidies? Gas stations 'government subsidized gas stations' or maybe 'government owned' since a large amount of US oilfields are on US government owned land via leases? Should anything that is government subsidized should have some pejorative prefix added to it or just free education?
        lisper 3y ago
        Are the grocery stores in your area advertised as “free”? Mine aren’t.
    - jonhohle 3y ago
      Something is not free if someone else is forced to pay for it. It’s really easy to be generous with other people’s resources.
      - nxx788 3y ago
        That's not how the language works. We have long ago decided that "free", when used in the context of social services, is correct enough to be understood. Do you think that definition is bad? If so, maybe you'll catch more nibbles by trying to engage in a dialog?
        NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        Who is "we"? I've seen a lot of terms used for social services: subsidized, covered, available by grant, available to those who qualify. But I don't always see those social services tossing around the word "free". Sure, sometimes there are "free haircuts for the homeless" or "free medical services for the needy", or "free help to apply for benefits", but generally in the context of entitlements, we're not freely bandying this word around.
        nxx788 3y ago
        Free public schools, free health care, toll free roads, free housing. It's not the only way we refer to these things, but it's an accepted one.
        NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        Well of course voters accept this vernacular, slang usage! It works great! March into the principal's office, slam your fist down on the desk, and demand your free public schools for your kid. Stagger into the E.R., slam your fist down on the triage nurse's desk, and demand your free health care! It works great at the ballot box too! "Vote now for your free stuff! Everybody gets more free stuff when they vote for me! Support the bill for free stuff!" Because if you called it "using other people's money", then the Ghost of Margaret Thatcher would arise and invade Puerto Rico. While you're voting, consider whether you're in that hacker demographic that gets a chuckle out of the meme that says "The Cloud Is Just Someone Else's Computer."
    - nxx788 3y ago
      I'm a leftist, left of democratic socialist and definitely left of social democrat. But can we please not point fingers and question people's motives? If someone says they are X, then we should believe them until there's a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      Here's what he said. >"Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea. Like, he's no longer allowed to be a social democrat if he understands bsaic economics? Why am I not surprised? > some services are social goods and should be treated as such, Perhaps. But how is higher education that? It's true that not as many people as you would like have 4 year degrees, but many do, and those people serve me overpriced coffees while whining about unionization. Where is the social good in their degrees? Like, even if they had gotten those for free and there was no student debt, how did their degrees help either society at large, or them personally? It is apparently very easy for this to not be a social good.
  - okaram 3y ago
    Of course! Basically everything is paid by somebody (TANSTAAFL). Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society. OTOH, it is a much cooler slogan than 'education paid by society at large :)
    - lisper 3y ago
      > Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society. That is far from clear. There are crazy people on the left just like there are crazy people on the right, and I think some of them really don't understand how the world actually works, and that you really can somehow magically make education "free for everyone". Even if it's not true, it provides ammunition for the opposition to say that it's true. One way or another, I think using misleading terminology is generally not a net win.
      - Clubber 3y ago
        Many young people have no concept of money. It's not their fault, their parents paid for everything and it's not really taught. My first car loan out of college floored me at how much the monthly payment was at 60 months and it was a reasonably priced demo (cheaper than new). Of course, not many people have the concept of money at the government scale either. What does $75B to Ukraine really mean?
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        Oh come on. Literally no one believes that teacher salaries are going to pay for themselves. When leftists say that something like public healthcare would be literally free what they mean is that the net cost compared to the alternative is null or negative, not literally that nothing is being spent. If you want to give me a link of someone who literally thinks that free college means that no one has to pay anything for the college itself or it's staff, I'm willing to take a look. Otherwise, it's just an argument that the net cost to society is negligible or negative, which is a valid use of the word too.
        3y ago
  - titzer 3y ago
    We could call it what it really is, which is an investment in the future of the country.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - krainboltgreene 3y ago
    > Asking for "free education" is like a child asking for a pony it's kinda crazy that poorer countries than ours seem to get the pony.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I understand and empathize, but you also realize that college in the 60's and in the 2020's are completely different beasts no, right? The genie is out of the lamp, but we literally don't have the room to stuff it back in. CA's population has tripled in 60 years, and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). There are more students competing for university today than there were people in 60's california. Thankfully not all of them are trying to apply specifically to UCLA or even in state, but the numbers are staggering.
  - xmddmx 3y ago
    > CA's population has tripled in 60 years and so has the tax base and # of teachers. This is a non-issue. Society scales. > and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). Not necessarily : see my comment below.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      Even if teachers have (which I'm not convinced of to begin with), Universities and land haven't. Its no secret that we've had an overpopulation crisis for the past few decades as is, so We haven't fully solved that issue as of now. And I'm equally unsure if taxes have tripled, between increasing poverty on the bottom and more and more tax evasion on top.
      - rdevsrex 3y ago
        I'm sure if we built new universities, there would be plenty of applicants to teach it in, given how fierce the competition for academic positions already is. If capacity at existing colleges is the problem, we could start new ones.
        User23 3y ago
        Where exactly would you propose building them? A competitive university is going to require around 2,000 acres of land. Where are you going to find that in today's California? No doubt there is plenty of open space left, but it's not in very desirable areas.
- ajju 3y ago
  A few loosely coupled thoughts on the subject - mostly to flesh out my own thinking (tldr - in which I conclude that we agree on the goal but disagree on “which was easy to implement”, after thinking through my own educational / economical history at some length ;)) I benefited from: * a nearly free and (luckily) high quality school education from kindergarten through 12th grade - most schools were not that great in my time, I lucked out (with parents who strived / persisted until they got me into the right one) * a nearly free but terrible education for my bachelors in engineering in India * a largely discounted and excellent post-graduate education in the US, paid for by my work as a research assistant, which I had to compete for, and that paid the equivalent of $375/month after taxes for working 20 hours a week with a full course load from which I paid my living expenses (in the early oughts - so i was poor :)), but came with a tuition waiver. Here’s how it has led me to approach this subject: * I definitely agree that the ideal of nearly free education for everyone that wants it is the right one for a richer society like America to strive for, but subject to some basic rules(eg maintain non-abysmal grades that reflect at least basic effort) * Free just means someone else is paying for it - and that has its limits. In a free / subsidized college world, major states in India had (have?) so few engineering colleges that if you got less than 99%, you couldn’t study technology - at all! Barring a stroke of luck (family moving to another state where I at least got into a pretty bad engineering college) , I would have had to study economics instead of engineering. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/delhi-university-cut-off-for-btech-is-99-per-cent/articleshow/20794757.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/delhi-uni... * Around the time of the article above (maybe a few years before) India started allowing private colleges to charge more. This has made education a lot more expensive in India on average, although I believe a similar number of “free seats” still exist, but the number of “seats” to study popular fields has gone up by on order of magnitude, and that has enabled a LOT more people to study what they want, but incomes have grown a lot too for white collar workers. For many (not all) fields, folks are able to take a loan and pay it back. * If, for instance, the US government paid for just “degree granting post-secondary institutions” expenses, it would instantly become the #2 budget category just below social security and above health, medicare, “income security” and defense. * It seems that 65% of US adults over 25 do not have a bachelors degree. It seems likely many of them will not support using their tax dollars to create a new #2 budget liability - despite the “chicken-or-egg” dynamic - that if the education was free, many of them would have a degree, and might support it.

They implemented a great component of those ideas. Seems like cause for at least some celebration, right? :)

by ajju 3y ago

They implemented a great component of those ideas. Seems like cause for at least some celebration, right? :)

I'm an educator, and a social democrat (approximately) so "yes"? What saddens me is that grand (and simple) plan "free education for all" gets watered down and chipped away to "free education for those who have money or connections" and later attempts to shore it up offten amount to "free education for $special_group". While I don't deny $special_group should get free education, what gets me is all the special-pleading going on. In OOM programming terms, it's like we had a universal principle which was easy to implement, and this has now been replaced by a bunch of switch/case statements...

lisper 3y ago
I'm approximately a social democrat too, but I'm also a pragmatist. Asking for "free education" is like a child asking for a pony. Education, like everything, costs money, and we can't just wave a magic wand and change that. The only question is who pays for it: the student, or someone else. "Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea. But I really wish we'd stop calling it something that it's not.
- xmddmx 3y ago
  "social democrat" - are you sure? the point remains: some services are social goods and should be treated as such, so that "nobody lacks for inability to pay". That's not literally "free" but has the same meaning in practice.
  - lisper 3y ago
    > "social democrat" - are you sure? Pretty sure, yes. Why do you doubt it? > some services are social goods and should be treated as such I'm not disputing that. I'm just taking issue with the marketing strategy. I don't like selling it as "free education" because that's a lie, and I don't like lying because it catches up with you eventually. I think it should be called what it is: government-subsidized education. (I also think it should be means-tested. I see no reason for society to pick up the tab for rich people's kids.)
    - ROTMetro 3y ago
      Should we call all grocery stores 'government subsidized food stores' since American AG receives a huge amount of government subsidies? Gas stations 'government subsidized gas stations' or maybe 'government owned' since a large amount of US oilfields are on US government owned land via leases? Should anything that is government subsidized should have some pejorative prefix added to it or just free education?
      - lisper 3y ago
        Are the grocery stores in your area advertised as “free”? Mine aren’t.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    Something is not free if someone else is forced to pay for it. It’s really easy to be generous with other people’s resources.
    - nxx788 3y ago
      That's not how the language works. We have long ago decided that "free", when used in the context of social services, is correct enough to be understood. Do you think that definition is bad? If so, maybe you'll catch more nibbles by trying to engage in a dialog?
      - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        Who is "we"? I've seen a lot of terms used for social services: subsidized, covered, available by grant, available to those who qualify. But I don't always see those social services tossing around the word "free". Sure, sometimes there are "free haircuts for the homeless" or "free medical services for the needy", or "free help to apply for benefits", but generally in the context of entitlements, we're not freely bandying this word around.
        nxx788 3y ago
        Free public schools, free health care, toll free roads, free housing. It's not the only way we refer to these things, but it's an accepted one.
        NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        Well of course voters accept this vernacular, slang usage! It works great! March into the principal's office, slam your fist down on the desk, and demand your free public schools for your kid. Stagger into the E.R., slam your fist down on the triage nurse's desk, and demand your free health care! It works great at the ballot box too! "Vote now for your free stuff! Everybody gets more free stuff when they vote for me! Support the bill for free stuff!" Because if you called it "using other people's money", then the Ghost of Margaret Thatcher would arise and invade Puerto Rico. While you're voting, consider whether you're in that hacker demographic that gets a chuckle out of the meme that says "The Cloud Is Just Someone Else's Computer."
  - nxx788 3y ago
    I'm a leftist, left of democratic socialist and definitely left of social democrat. But can we please not point fingers and question people's motives? If someone says they are X, then we should believe them until there's a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Here's what he said. >"Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea. Like, he's no longer allowed to be a social democrat if he understands bsaic economics? Why am I not surprised? > some services are social goods and should be treated as such, Perhaps. But how is higher education that? It's true that not as many people as you would like have 4 year degrees, but many do, and those people serve me overpriced coffees while whining about unionization. Where is the social good in their degrees? Like, even if they had gotten those for free and there was no student debt, how did their degrees help either society at large, or them personally? It is apparently very easy for this to not be a social good.
- okaram 3y ago
  Of course! Basically everything is paid by somebody (TANSTAAFL). Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society. OTOH, it is a much cooler slogan than 'education paid by society at large :)
  - lisper 3y ago
    > Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society. That is far from clear. There are crazy people on the left just like there are crazy people on the right, and I think some of them really don't understand how the world actually works, and that you really can somehow magically make education "free for everyone". Even if it's not true, it provides ammunition for the opposition to say that it's true. One way or another, I think using misleading terminology is generally not a net win.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      Many young people have no concept of money. It's not their fault, their parents paid for everything and it's not really taught. My first car loan out of college floored me at how much the monthly payment was at 60 months and it was a reasonably priced demo (cheaper than new). Of course, not many people have the concept of money at the government scale either. What does $75B to Ukraine really mean?
    - sudosysgen 3y ago
      Oh come on. Literally no one believes that teacher salaries are going to pay for themselves. When leftists say that something like public healthcare would be literally free what they mean is that the net cost compared to the alternative is null or negative, not literally that nothing is being spent. If you want to give me a link of someone who literally thinks that free college means that no one has to pay anything for the college itself or it's staff, I'm willing to take a look. Otherwise, it's just an argument that the net cost to society is negligible or negative, which is a valid use of the word too.
      - 3y ago
- titzer 3y ago
  We could call it what it really is, which is an investment in the future of the country.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- krainboltgreene 3y ago
  > Asking for "free education" is like a child asking for a pony it's kinda crazy that poorer countries than ours seem to get the pony.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
I understand and empathize, but you also realize that college in the 60's and in the 2020's are completely different beasts no, right? The genie is out of the lamp, but we literally don't have the room to stuff it back in. CA's population has tripled in 60 years, and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). There are more students competing for university today than there were people in 60's california. Thankfully not all of them are trying to apply specifically to UCLA or even in state, but the numbers are staggering.
- xmddmx 3y ago
  > CA's population has tripled in 60 years and so has the tax base and # of teachers. This is a non-issue. Society scales. > and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). Not necessarily : see my comment below.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Even if teachers have (which I'm not convinced of to begin with), Universities and land haven't. Its no secret that we've had an overpopulation crisis for the past few decades as is, so We haven't fully solved that issue as of now. And I'm equally unsure if taxes have tripled, between increasing poverty on the bottom and more and more tax evasion on top.
    - rdevsrex 3y ago
      I'm sure if we built new universities, there would be plenty of applicants to teach it in, given how fierce the competition for academic positions already is. If capacity at existing colleges is the problem, we could start new ones.
      - User23 3y ago
        Where exactly would you propose building them? A competitive university is going to require around 2,000 acres of land. Where are you going to find that in today's California? No doubt there is plenty of open space left, but it's not in very desirable areas.
ajju 3y ago
A few loosely coupled thoughts on the subject - mostly to flesh out my own thinking (tldr - in which I conclude that we agree on the goal but disagree on “which was easy to implement”, after thinking through my own educational / economical history at some length ;)) I benefited from: * a nearly free and (luckily) high quality school education from kindergarten through 12th grade - most schools were not that great in my time, I lucked out (with parents who strived / persisted until they got me into the right one) * a nearly free but terrible education for my bachelors in engineering in India * a largely discounted and excellent post-graduate education in the US, paid for by my work as a research assistant, which I had to compete for, and that paid the equivalent of $375/month after taxes for working 20 hours a week with a full course load from which I paid my living expenses (in the early oughts - so i was poor :)), but came with a tuition waiver. Here’s how it has led me to approach this subject: * I definitely agree that the ideal of nearly free education for everyone that wants it is the right one for a richer society like America to strive for, but subject to some basic rules(eg maintain non-abysmal grades that reflect at least basic effort) * Free just means someone else is paying for it - and that has its limits. In a free / subsidized college world, major states in India had (have?) so few engineering colleges that if you got less than 99%, you couldn’t study technology - at all! Barring a stroke of luck (family moving to another state where I at least got into a pretty bad engineering college) , I would have had to study economics instead of engineering. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/delhi-university-cut-off-for-btech-is-99-per-cent/articleshow/20794757.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/delhi-uni... * Around the time of the article above (maybe a few years before) India started allowing private colleges to charge more. This has made education a lot more expensive in India on average, although I believe a similar number of “free seats” still exist, but the number of “seats” to study popular fields has gone up by on order of magnitude, and that has enabled a LOT more people to study what they want, but incomes have grown a lot too for white collar workers. For many (not all) fields, folks are able to take a loan and pay it back. * If, for instance, the US government paid for just “degree granting post-secondary institutions” expenses, it would instantly become the #2 budget category just below social security and above health, medicare, “income security” and defense. * It seems that 65% of US adults over 25 do not have a bachelors degree. It seems likely many of them will not support using their tax dollars to create a new #2 budget liability - despite the “chicken-or-egg” dynamic - that if the education was free, many of them would have a degree, and might support it.