From the mountains to the valleys, from sea to shining sea, from Oprah to Bill Maher, America is going crazy with excitement over Barack Obama. At Obama rallies people scream and throw themselves in the isle crying. Commentator Arianna Huffington has called Obama “the foundation of our country.” Obama’s appeal doesn’t end at the border, over 70% of French are “very excited” about Obama’s election.
This excitement is terrifying, or at least it should be. It reinforces myth propagated by the American media and political elite: an assumption that all progress comes from Washington. The love struck Boston Globe now urges Obama to take "bold steps to fix our economic crisis." The New York Times suggests the choice is "between a big-bang strategy of pressing aggressively on multiple fronts versus a more pragmatic, step-by-step approach .... " In other words, the choice is between one type of government mandate versus another government mandate. In the same editorial, the Times crows endlessly about how FDR ended the Depression and Obama will do the same.
Now Obama tells the nation, "we don't have a moment to lose," and he and the Democrats insist that government must support trade unions while destroying the worker’s right to a secret ballot and even more tax money needs to be handed out like candy to American industries.
This idea that politicians know best how our money should be spent is arrogance of the highest order. Only within Washington’s cloistered halls could this ideology ferment.
Obama promise "We will change the world ... There is nothing we can't do, nothing we can't accomplish if we are unified". Who is this "we" politicians always invoke?
It certainly isn’t me.
The politicians’ "we" isn't really a group of people. It means big government. The politician’s “we” will take your money by force (because they know best) and tell you what to do and how to do and how long you can do it for. That's no way to create prosperity.
Obama is an extraordinarily talented man. But there is one thing even “the one” can't successfully do: ignore the laws of economics. No one can do that. That's why we call them "laws."
The politicians cannot raise wages or create jobs or eliminate poverty by executive order. We can do so by freeing people to save and invest and accumulate capital. The politicians can't make medical care universal and inexpensive by legislative fiat, and we certainly cannot do it with a single-payer health care system. But we can approach that goal by permitting an unrestricted free market in medicine to work.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Stupid Schools: Public Education is Failing our Children
With a perverse wedding of an entrenched union and an innovation-killing monopoly, American public education is a marriage made in hell. This is why our public education system is failing students all across our nation. The two greatest problems facing our educational leviathan are a payment plan which rewards mediocrity while prohibiting meritocracy, and an outdated, one-size-fits-all educational philosophy which fails to prepare American students for the modern world. The best solution to these problems is an end to the government monopoly on public education.
In town meetings, NEA rallies, and school newsletters across our nation, a dire fallacy is being promoted: the great lie that our public school systems are under funded. This simply isn’t true. In 2004 over 536 billion dollars was spent on public education, a figure far more than in countries which routinely trump America on international tests. With an average national wage of $30.91 an hour, public school teachers make a higher hourly salary than chemists, computer programmers, and nurses. The problems lies not in funding, but in a Byzantine union system and the incredibly illogical salary formulas which it has created. Membership in the American Federation of Teachers is mandatory for almost all public school educators. This organization and its hired lobbyists have created a payment system where teachers are paid not based on results, but simply on the amount of time they’ve been teaching. Motivation for excellence is nonexistent when it is not rewarded. In private industry, salaries are based on results and workers who cannot perform are terminated. Results aren’t taken into account in education. a free-market, good teachers would receive a salary increase. If parents had school choice, they would demand the most skilled teacher for their student. Demand for the good teachers would increase their salaries. In the government monopoly though, teachers are paid the same amount whether they are excellent or dreadful. Onerous procedures turn firing an incompetent teacher into a two year legal battle. This leaves most principals unwilling to try to discipline even the most flagrantly maladroit of educators. Mediocrity is rewarded simply because excellence is ignored. A system which disregards merit to pay equally has been proven to fail again and again. This system is called communism.
Monopolies don’t innovate, and the public school system is no different. Most public school’s start in September and end in June. This is a relic of America’s agrarian roots. In the early 1800s, children needed the summer off to harvest the crops. Very few Americans are farmers, and many nations have year-round schooling. American public schools however have remained impervious to change, with the obsolete and outdated schedule dominating. With this resistance to change, it’s no surprise that public education is failing our students.
Picture the printer aisle at Best Buy. The consumer has an almost infinite number of choices. Printers with scanners, printers with clocks, wireless printers, printers with forty-eight hour batteries, and many other kinds of printers are all available. Best Buy doesn’t offer these myriad options because it likes the consumer. Best Buy offers choices because it needs the consumer’s money. The miracle of competition offers a multitude of choices in almost every aspect of life. From shopping at the supermarket to buying a new automobile, choice is all around the American consumer. This is a miracle unknown in the government monopoly of public schooling, where enrollment in schools is based on an arbitrary district line. With the stroke of a pen, bureaucrats can doom a child to a failing school or deign to send him to a better school. If parents are unsatisfied with the school, it’s their problem. If the school is terrible, and fails to provide an education, the government’s attitude is simply arrogant disinterest. With this system, it is no wonder American students finish in the bottom fifty percent in international math surveys.
From Microsoft Windows, to VEB Sachsenring, to the defunct Ma Bell, monopolies have proven time and time again to fail their customers. Public schooling is no different. While it’s true that parents do have an effect on their student’s educational success, many good parents are being forced to send their children to failing schools. When the government monopoly on public education is broken, parents will have as much choice in their schools as they do in their printers. The best way to give them this choice while maintaining education for all is a voucher system. Vouchers will attach the money to the student rather than the school and give parents choice. With vouchers, private schools would no longer be the domain of the wealthy. There could be schools with uniforms, schools with nontraditional hours, technology schools, schools that graduate students at sixteen and alternate high schools that cater to troubled students. With choice will come student success, because a free-choice public school system will force schools to perform, or lose money. Rather than being stuck in a failing school district, parents with school choice can take their business elsewhere.
America has not always suffered under a public school monopoly. Only in the 1830s did a campaign for centralized, socialistic public education begin. Horace Mann thought that education would eradicate poverty and establish a virtual utopia. He claimed that with public education “over nine-tenths of the penal code will be antiquated.“ These impossible dreams were not realized, and sugarplum delusions of perfection became stood in the way of realistic achievement. Americans only believe in this failed educational system because they know no better. Imagine if the government forced people to get their food the same way students get educated. People would pay heavy taxes and then be assigned to one restaurant where they’d be forced to eat every meal no better how abysmal the food is. This wouldn’t be tolerated, and neither should the monopolistic and socialized public school system.
In town meetings, NEA rallies, and school newsletters across our nation, a dire fallacy is being promoted: the great lie that our public school systems are under funded. This simply isn’t true. In 2004 over 536 billion dollars was spent on public education, a figure far more than in countries which routinely trump America on international tests. With an average national wage of $30.91 an hour, public school teachers make a higher hourly salary than chemists, computer programmers, and nurses. The problems lies not in funding, but in a Byzantine union system and the incredibly illogical salary formulas which it has created. Membership in the American Federation of Teachers is mandatory for almost all public school educators. This organization and its hired lobbyists have created a payment system where teachers are paid not based on results, but simply on the amount of time they’ve been teaching. Motivation for excellence is nonexistent when it is not rewarded. In private industry, salaries are based on results and workers who cannot perform are terminated. Results aren’t taken into account in education. a free-market, good teachers would receive a salary increase. If parents had school choice, they would demand the most skilled teacher for their student. Demand for the good teachers would increase their salaries. In the government monopoly though, teachers are paid the same amount whether they are excellent or dreadful. Onerous procedures turn firing an incompetent teacher into a two year legal battle. This leaves most principals unwilling to try to discipline even the most flagrantly maladroit of educators. Mediocrity is rewarded simply because excellence is ignored. A system which disregards merit to pay equally has been proven to fail again and again. This system is called communism.
Monopolies don’t innovate, and the public school system is no different. Most public school’s start in September and end in June. This is a relic of America’s agrarian roots. In the early 1800s, children needed the summer off to harvest the crops. Very few Americans are farmers, and many nations have year-round schooling. American public schools however have remained impervious to change, with the obsolete and outdated schedule dominating. With this resistance to change, it’s no surprise that public education is failing our students.
Picture the printer aisle at Best Buy. The consumer has an almost infinite number of choices. Printers with scanners, printers with clocks, wireless printers, printers with forty-eight hour batteries, and many other kinds of printers are all available. Best Buy doesn’t offer these myriad options because it likes the consumer. Best Buy offers choices because it needs the consumer’s money. The miracle of competition offers a multitude of choices in almost every aspect of life. From shopping at the supermarket to buying a new automobile, choice is all around the American consumer. This is a miracle unknown in the government monopoly of public schooling, where enrollment in schools is based on an arbitrary district line. With the stroke of a pen, bureaucrats can doom a child to a failing school or deign to send him to a better school. If parents are unsatisfied with the school, it’s their problem. If the school is terrible, and fails to provide an education, the government’s attitude is simply arrogant disinterest. With this system, it is no wonder American students finish in the bottom fifty percent in international math surveys.
From Microsoft Windows, to VEB Sachsenring, to the defunct Ma Bell, monopolies have proven time and time again to fail their customers. Public schooling is no different. While it’s true that parents do have an effect on their student’s educational success, many good parents are being forced to send their children to failing schools. When the government monopoly on public education is broken, parents will have as much choice in their schools as they do in their printers. The best way to give them this choice while maintaining education for all is a voucher system. Vouchers will attach the money to the student rather than the school and give parents choice. With vouchers, private schools would no longer be the domain of the wealthy. There could be schools with uniforms, schools with nontraditional hours, technology schools, schools that graduate students at sixteen and alternate high schools that cater to troubled students. With choice will come student success, because a free-choice public school system will force schools to perform, or lose money. Rather than being stuck in a failing school district, parents with school choice can take their business elsewhere.
America has not always suffered under a public school monopoly. Only in the 1830s did a campaign for centralized, socialistic public education begin. Horace Mann thought that education would eradicate poverty and establish a virtual utopia. He claimed that with public education “over nine-tenths of the penal code will be antiquated.“ These impossible dreams were not realized, and sugarplum delusions of perfection became stood in the way of realistic achievement. Americans only believe in this failed educational system because they know no better. Imagine if the government forced people to get their food the same way students get educated. People would pay heavy taxes and then be assigned to one restaurant where they’d be forced to eat every meal no better how abysmal the food is. This wouldn’t be tolerated, and neither should the monopolistic and socialized public school system.
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