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#102 Jan 21 2014 at 6:57 PM Rating: Default
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Smasharoo wrote:

Assuming it's the same number of dollars, then how is funneling it from taxpayers to private businesses worse than funneling it from taxpayers into government? The conservative argument is that there will be many private players in the education market competing for those dollars, with the result being a better overall product.


Privately administered schools that aren't allowed to handpick students, that is, charters that have to accept the same populations as public schools accept are a complete abject failure by every measure, including cost per student.


Sure. Which is why we shouldn't do that.. Um... duh.

Why do you assume that schools will only compete for voucher dollars for the best and brightest students? Money is money, right? If I think I can run a school for ESL kids better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars. If I think I can run a school catered to kids with disabilities better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars.

Your mistake is assuming that the same education snobbery we see among advocates of public education would drive those involved in free market education. In the free market, the dollars of the troubled kid from the ghetto spends just as well as the dollars from the college bound middle class kid.


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So that was a fun practical test of your idea for the last 20 years. Failed. Miserable failure.


You do understand that you've just argued that our existing public school model is a miserable failure, right?

Edited, Jan 21st 2014 4:58pm by gbaji
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#103 Jan 21 2014 at 7:20 PM Rating: Default
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gbaji wrote:


Why do you assume that schools will only compete for voucher dollars for the best and brightest students? Money is money, right? If I think I can run a school for ESL kids better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars. If I think I can run a school catered to kids with disabilities better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars.



Because brightest students are a low hanging fruit? Because they need little resources to be spent on them? Because they hardly need any time investment?

Now, compare that too a troubled teen in the ghetto and I think you walked right into answer why.
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#104 Jan 21 2014 at 7:31 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Um... You get that it's kinda not possible for me to miss the point about my own argument.

And yet here we are.
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I do find it really interesting how consistently liberals attempt to argue that they know better what conservative positions should be than conservatives

Swing and another miss! Too bad this isn't baseball or this thread could be over.
gbaji wrote:
Why do you assume that schools will only compete for voucher dollars for the best and brightest students?

Because "Our schools perform sort of adequately and don't really do much worse than the public school your kids are in now" doesn't flow well on a sales brochure.

Edited, Jan 21st 2014 7:36pm by Jophiel
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#105 Jan 21 2014 at 7:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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You do understand that you've just argued that our existing public school model is a miserable failure, right?

This comment amuses me, in an idle sort way, because it's the sort of argument my 8 year old would offer. I haven't, you know this. Or maybe not, Hannah would know it if she tried this, maybe you're stupider than a child, it's difficult to judge.

Why do you assume that schools will only compete for voucher dollars for the best and brightest students? Money is money, right? If I think I can run a school for ESL kids better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars. If I think I can run a school catered to kids with disabilities better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars.


No, no you definitely won't because those sorts of schools fail at even greater rate. It's not specialization that allows charters to succeed, it's cherry picking the best students from bad districts. Even then, charters *still* by and large fail when compared to public magnets or exam schools.
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#106 Jan 21 2014 at 9:12 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
You get that it's kinda not possible for me to miss the point about my own argument.
Yet still a common occurrence.
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#107 Jan 21 2014 at 9:14 PM Rating: Default
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Smasharoo wrote:
.
I actually learned and retained a lot through those years. Then again, I took advanced courses that covered more "new" material rather than recycling the same garbage from elementary school.

Assume I made some sort of joke about black people reaching sexual maturity faster or something in this space, or alternately, a valid argument about your anecdote not weighing heavily in the aggregate data. I learned a lot during that time, as well, but I'm a fucking genius and deriving education policy from my personal experience would likely not scale well when applied to people with the misfortune to not be me.


Smiley: rolleyes

You should try to be less defensive.

1. My reference to the courses that I took was giving credit to your point, not lauding my knowledge. In other words, if it weren't for me taking those classes, then I would have probably been the very said victim of a 3 year void of learning. That gives credit to your argument that the current infrastructure is flawed.

My counter was to fill that void with useful information and potentially cut the later years short as opposed to cutting out the middle school years, just to come back to school as a teenager to learn in high school. I'm sure that break in education would cause more harm than good. I argue that it's better to finish your education continuously as opposed to being fragmented.

2. My proposed policy is not purely based off of personal anecdotes, but the research that I did on the subject, which I mentioned. I used my personal experience as an example.

#108 Jan 21 2014 at 9:33 PM Rating: Default
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You don't have to buy my argument, it's already sold. The top welfare states are red states. No matter how much you want to spin the facts, nobody is enforcing anyone to take government subsidies, just like Republican governors denied the medicaid expansion. If only poor Democrats were taking government subsidies, we would be spending a whole lot less money on subsidies.


And? That doesn't support the claim that conservatives don't really believe in small government. That's the disconnect I have a problem with. Does it occur to you that maybe those states lean right precisely because they have a higher ratio of welfare recipients to taxpayers and they see that this is more harmful than helpful? Your argument rests on the assumption that the same people who make up the welfare population in a red state are also the same people who make that state a red state. Which is a pretty ridiculous assumption to make.

To be labeled a "red state" simply means that a majority of voters in that state voted Republican in the last election. Unless a majority of the population in a state are on welfare then this doesn't mean there's any statistical intersection at all.

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You're a victim of your own critique. I purposely used the word "assumption" because your claim lacks validity without it. You stated "the only way to win is to convince the people that the other guy holds the same ones." Well, you can't WIN an argument, debate, discussion, etc., unless you are right and you can't be right unless there is a correct answer, i.e. "correct side". All you have done was ignore my point and conjure a fallacious tangent to avoid a proper response.


*cough* I was talking about winning elections (which kinda does have a lot more to do with a position being "popular" versus being objectively "correct"). You're really stretching with the word manipulations here.

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I'm not sure who you (and other conservatives) think you are fooling, but its blatantly obvious that the attack against young people signing up has absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the aforesaid group, but everything to do with the fact that Obamacare will implode without them.


I find it telling that you feel the need to label the act of telling people not to throw their money away an "attack" against that group of people.

This is not speculation. Young people who sign up for Obmacare are getting the shaft. That's the whole point. The law needs young healthy people to pay for insurance they don't need, so that they can make it more affordable for all the older sick people. I don't see how cluing those young people into the fact that they're being used is a bad thing to do.

Perhaps if the Dems hadn't written a law which requires ******** over young people and then lying to them about it, maybe we wouldn't be in this dilemma?


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The same way why the "concern" for the website's security is just another way to scare people from signing up.


And yet, both of those things are actually "true". Which means that your "side" more or less relies on people not knowing the truth. Put another way, you have to lie to people to get them to do what you want. Which perhaps should be your first clue that maybe what you're doing isn't such a great idea in the first place.

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Your implication that the Republicans are actively assisting in Obamacare (or any other program that fundamentally opposes the GOP's philosophy) is inane.


Um... No you idiot! I'm talking about how young people paying for insurance they don't need is required to make Obamacare "work". You need them to actively do something to make the health care law work. This is analogous to the car requiring someone to keep fixing it in order for it to keep working. You reversed the analogy though, and decided that me telling someone that they're being used to make something work amounts to "breaking the car".


That's not the truth though. The law only works *if* a whole group of people do something that is harmful/costly to themselves for which they gain no benefit. If I tell them this and they decide not to waste money on insurance that they don't need, and this results in Obamacare being underfunded and failing, this isn't me "breaking the car". It was already broken. I just pointed out to the guy you were relying on fixing it for free that he's being used.


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If the Republicans chose the strategy of "letting program x naturally implode", there wouldn't be much discussion on the matter.


This is obviously not true, or you wouldn't be complaining about Republicans merely informing people of the facts about the law. Unless by "naturally" you mean "a state where people are lied to in order to get them to do something they would not otherwise do", that is. Because "naturally", an informed population will not make the decisions which the law requires them to do in order to meet its cost goals. All we need to do is tell people this truth.

I'll point out again that when your political agenda relies completely on lying to people in order to trick them into doing things that are not in their best interest, maybe you should stop and assess what you're doing.
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#109 Jan 21 2014 at 9:51 PM Rating: Default
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angrymnk wrote:
gbaji wrote:


Why do you assume that schools will only compete for voucher dollars for the best and brightest students? Money is money, right? If I think I can run a school for ESL kids better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars. If I think I can run a school catered to kids with disabilities better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars.


Because brightest students are a low hanging fruit? Because they need little resources to be spent on them? Because they hardly need any time investment?


I disagree. I think that both require time and money investments, but they require different investments. Where our schools fail is that they attempt to cater to both, and thus fail at both and end out costing a ton more than they should. It's precisely because our public school system actually requires that kids of a wide assortment of needs all be placed into the same school based solely on geography that they fail so badly. The fact is that special needs kids need special attention. Attention which is far far more expensive per child when it's spread out among the rest of the kids via "mainstreaming".

Put kids with similar needs in one school and you can provide for those needs far more efficiently. Those needs could be "super geniuses bored with standard curriculum", or "kids with behavioral problems", or "kids with physical handicaps", or anything. The point is that if we allow schools to cater to those needs, they'll do a better job of it.


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Now, compare that too a troubled teen in the ghetto and I think you walked right into answer why.


Not seeing your point. As I said, they both require attention and cost. Do you disagree? Do you honestly think it's inexpensive to provide challenging curriculum and activities for the brightest students? The focus is different when you're providing an education to kids who are looking at the best odds of getting into a top university versus kids who you just want to not join a gang and end out in prison, but both are still going to cost similar amounts of money. Sure. One school might have more fences and security guards and the other more paid speakers in top fields, but the point is that you can much more efficiently provide the needed education environment *if* you're allowed to tailor the education to the students needs. And you can do that far better if you have a voucher system with parents able to apply to have their kid attend any of a list of schools in the area, and the schools being able to choose who they accept.


I think those who argue against this really have a failure of imagination when it comes to education. They assume there's just one axis of quality and assume therefore that if you allow the "best students" to go to the "best schools", that this means that other students will be stuck in "bad schools". But I disagree that schools are "good" or "bad" based solely on the academic level of the students. Schools should be judged based on how well they provide for the education needs of their students. And I believe that this can best be achieved when schools can specialize with regards to the kind of education they provide and the kinds of students they serve. Our current public school system is "one size fits all" and ultimately does a poor job for everyone. So yeah, I think radically changing how we educate our populace is not just a good idea, it's increasingly becoming a necessary idea.

Edited, Jan 21st 2014 8:09pm by gbaji
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#110 Jan 21 2014 at 10:04 PM Rating: Default
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Smasharoo wrote:
Why do you assume that schools will only compete for voucher dollars for the best and brightest students? Money is money, right? If I think I can run a school for ESL kids better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars. If I think I can run a school catered to kids with disabilities better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars.


No, no you definitely won't because those sorts of schools fail at even greater rate. It's not specialization that allows charters to succeed, it's cherry picking the best students from bad districts. Even then, charters *still* by and large fail when compared to public magnets or exam schools.


I'm not going to argue with you about the reasons behind success/failure rates for charter schools Smash. I'm not arguing about charter schools. The kind of voucher program I'm advocating is nothing like the charter school idea. So why do you keep bringing up charter schools?
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#111 Jan 21 2014 at 10:10 PM Rating: Default
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gbaji wrote:
angrymnk wrote:
gbaji wrote:


Why do you assume that schools will only compete for voucher dollars for the best and brightest students? Money is money, right? If I think I can run a school for ESL kids better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars. If I think I can run a school catered to kids with disabilities better than someone else, I'll compete for those dollars.


Because brightest students are a low hanging fruit? Because they need little resources to be spent on them? Because they hardly need any time investment?


I disagree. I think that both require time and money investments, but they require different investments. Where our schools fail is that they attempt to cater to both, and thus fail at both and end out costing a ton more than they should. It's precisely because our public school system actually requires that kids of a wide assortment of needs all be placed into the same school based solely on geography that they fail so badly. The fact is that special needs kids need special attention. Attention which is far far more expensive per child when it's spread out among the rest of the kids via "mainstreaming".

Put kids with similar needs in one school and you can provide for those needs far more efficiently. Those needs could be "super geniuses bored with standard curriculum", or "kids with behavioral problems", or "kids with physical handicaps", or anything. The point is that if we allow schools to cater to those needs, they'll do a better job of it.


Quote:
Now, compare that too a troubled teen in the ghetto and I think you walked right into answer why.


Not seeing your point. As I said, they both require attention and cost. Do you disagree? Do you honestly think it's inexpensive to provide challenging curriculum and activities for the brightest students? The focus is different when you're providing an education to kids who are looking at the best odds of getting into a top university versus kids who you just want to not join a gang and end out in prison, but both are still going to cost similar amounts of money. Sure. One school might have more fences and security guards and the other more paid speakers in top fields, but the point is that you can much more efficiently provide the needed education environment *if* you're allowed to tailor the education to the students needs. And you can do that far better if you have a voucher system with parents able to apply to have their kid attend any of a list of schools in the area, and the schools being able to choose who they accept.


I think those who argue against this really have a failure of imagination when it comes to education. They assume there's just one axis of quality and assume therefor that if you allow the "best students" to go to the "best schools", that this means that other students will be stuck in "bad school". But I disagree that schools are "good or bad" based solely on the academic level of the students. Schools should be judged based on how well they provide for the education needs of their students. And I believe that this can best be achieved when schools can specialize with regards to the kind of education they provide and the kinds of students they serve. Our current public school system is "one size fits all" and ultimately does a poor job for everyone. So yeah, I think radically changing how we educate our populace is not just a good idea, it's increasingly becoming a necessary idea.

Edited, Jan 21st 2014 7:53pm by gbaji


Real question; I am not baiting you. What kind of a metric would you propose for this vision?
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#112 Jan 21 2014 at 10:13 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
paraphrased, gbaji wrote:
Small government would not care which consenting adult married which consenting adult. That's something "big government" would do.


Sure. But as I said earlier, it's not about absolutes, but degrees. Minimizing the amount of meddling can include the case where if the government is going to meddle, it should do so to the least degree necessary to accomplish whatever goal it has set and/or accomplish said goal in the most cost effective and least liberty infringing way possible.
Missed this earlier.

Please tell me the "goal" set by the GOP vis-a-vis blocking SSM. Other than "just because".
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#113 Jan 21 2014 at 10:35 PM Rating: Default
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angrymnk wrote:
Real question; I am not baiting you. What kind of a metric would you propose for this vision?


Huh? I'm proposing a free market solution (well, free from the consumer point of view). The metric is that people will choose to spend their vouchers on the education that they believe will be best for their children, and schools will compete for those voucher dollars.


Your question itself assumes a mindset that I'm arguing we should move away from. What metric do we use to determine the best way to develop new computer games? We don't have a bunch of government bureaucrats sit in a room and decide which games are "best", do we? We let consumers make that determination by allowing them to spend their money where they want. Same thought here. You let parents choose where to spend the vouchers and schools will compete for those vouchers. As long as schools are free to accept the students they want, then they're free to tailor their education to the kinds of students they want to focus on.


The common (but IMO incorrect) assumption about this is that no one would choose to teach the "bad students". But this is a hold out from our current education system where we fund schools in a manner which does not encourage the schools themselves to change to match the students, but rather attempts universally to force all students to comply with a single standard. It's a really stupid way of doing things, but that's our public school system in a nutshell. I have every confidence that if there's money to be made, people will build schools focused to every single type of student imaginable. Right now there is not only no incentive for schools to resolve problem/needy students, and arguably lots of incentive for them to make the problems for those students *worse* (your school qualifies for increased funding the more "special needs" students you have, so think about it.

If funding is a straight per-student thing, and schools are free to choose who they accept, and parents free to choose where to spend the dollars, you don't have to come up with a solution. The solution will just happen. That's what free markets excel at. Schools that suck will not make money. Those that do a good job will. Over time, the best solutions will be the ones that are financially successful because it's the parents who are directly making that decision rather than some group of people who think their current theory will work this time around.


Oh, and I completely acknowledge that this idea would be incredibly disruptive at first. It's an idea of the direction I think education should go. I'm not claiming I have all the answers for every possible problem that might occur along the way. My point is that if we could move to this sort of education, it would result in better outcomes for a larger percentage of the population than our current system. It would just be really painful getting there is all.

Edited, Jan 21st 2014 8:42pm by gbaji
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#114 Jan 21 2014 at 10:39 PM Rating: Default
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
paraphrased, gbaji wrote:
Small government would not care which consenting adult married which consenting adult. That's something "big government" would do.


Sure. But as I said earlier, it's not about absolutes, but degrees. Minimizing the amount of meddling can include the case where if the government is going to meddle, it should do so to the least degree necessary to accomplish whatever goal it has set and/or accomplish said goal in the most cost effective and least liberty infringing way possible.
Missed this earlier.

Please tell me the "goal" set by the GOP vis-a-vis blocking SSM. Other than "just because".


Do you think that marriage statuses (and the attendant benefits) were created to "block same sex marriage"? (the answer is no, btw). Then that's clearly not the goal, right?

I have already stated what I believe that goal is numerous times in numerous threads (something about encouraging couples who might produce children together to do so whilst bound to a marriage contract in which the state sets the terms and is a party). But how about you try to noodle out one that makes sense and we'll go from there? If you can think of one beyond the silly rhetorical one you tossed out above.

Edited, Jan 21st 2014 8:39pm by gbaji
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#115 Jan 21 2014 at 11:04 PM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:
The solution will just happen.




I will admit that I was tempted to simply post something along the lines of "I love children; so full of hope.",but I do not think it will do justice here.

There is a reason I asked for a specific metric by which you would consider the new system better than the previous ( current ) one . In other words, how will you know that the money spent is spent wisely? How would you define a, god I hate myself right now, desired outcome?

Market gods can't be everywhere you know.
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#116 Jan 21 2014 at 11:17 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Schools that suck will not make money.

Schools that suck at making money won't make money. That you think making money will be tied to actual academic results is adorable and all but not terribly realistic.
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#117 Jan 22 2014 at 3:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
But how about you try to noodle out one that makes sense and we'll go from there?
You're still pretending the "marriage is about procreation" line makes sense? Kind of hard to take serious when that particular line is less than a decade old. More difficult when the only place, anywhere, at any time that line comes up is in relation to keepin' the gays from marrying each other.

But hey, how many more times do you need to repeat that spoofed rhetoric be for it becomes fact? I mean for us, its kind of clear you bought it without a first thought the first time you heard Santorum say it.
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#118 Jan 22 2014 at 4:53 AM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
And? That doesn't support the claim that conservatives don't really believe in small government. That's the disconnect I have a problem with. Does it occur to you that maybe those states lean right precisely because they have a higher ratio of welfare recipients to taxpayers and they see that this is more harmful than helpful? Your argument rests on the assumption that the same people who make up the welfare population in a red state are also the same people who make that state a red state. Which is a pretty ridiculous assumption to make.

To be labeled a "red state" simply means that a majority of voters in that state voted Republican in the last election. Unless a majority of the population in a state are on welfare then this doesn't mean there's any statistical intersection at all.
The fact that the simple majority of the voting population turns a state either red or blue is a common denominator. As a result, it doesn't add any value to your argument. Secondly, my argument was that not all republicans believe in small government for the same reasons. Just because you fundamentally support a small government, doesn't mean that you fundamentally disagree with welfare. With that being said, the people who VOLUNTEERED to accept welfare do not have a problem with welfare. If they do, then they are hypocrites.

Gbaji wrote:
*cough* I was talking about winning elections (which kinda does have a lot more to do with a position being "popular" versus being objectively "correct"). You're really stretching with the word manipulations here.

Nice try, but you also said the following, "Every time someone says that the Republicans are no better than the Democrats when it comes to big government, that's a "win" for the Democrats, right?" Are you implying that simply saying that sentence "wins" elections as opposed to arguments?

Gbaji wrote:
I find it telling that you feel the need to label the act of telling people not to throw their money away an "attack" against that group of people.

This is not speculation. Young people who sign up for Obmacare are getting the shaft. That's the whole point. The law needs young healthy people to pay for insurance they don't need, so that they can make it more affordable for all the older sick people. I don't see how cluing those young people into the fact that they're being used is a bad thing to do.

Perhaps if the Dems hadn't written a law which requires ******** over young people and then lying to them about it, maybe we wouldn't be in this dilemma?
Maybe you don't understand how insurance works. You are basically "throwing away your money" until something happens, in which you don't want to happen. This is no different than car insurance, phone insurance, cable/satellite provider insurance or any other type of insurance. If you do the math, you will almost certainly always end up losing money. That's how insurance companies make their money, with you losing yours. Yet, I don't see Republicans acting out against insurance in general. The biggest difference is, I can live a life and not ever need to use car insurance, phone insurance, etc., the same isn't true for health insurance. YOU WILL eventually get sick, old and die.

Gbaji wrote:
And yet, both of those things are actually "true". Which means that your "side" more or less relies on people not knowing the truth. Put another way, you have to lie to people to get them to do what you want. Which perhaps should be your first clue that maybe what you're doing isn't such a great idea in the first place.

Millions of people were compromised from Target and the Republicans are concerned about Healthcare.gov which has not reported any incidents? The point, in which you are trying to avoid, is that this is all about politics. The fact that you conveniently didn't reply to my Christie comment proves that you understand the point and are merely trolling.

Gbaji wrote:
Um... No you idiot! I'm talking about how young people paying for insurance they don't need is required to make Obamacare "work". You need them to actively do something to make the health care law work. This is analogous to the car requiring someone to keep fixing it in order for it to keep working. You reversed the analogy though, and decided that me telling someone that they're being used to make something work amounts to "breaking the car".


That's not the truth though. The law only works *if* a whole group of people do something that is harmful/costly to themselves for which they gain no benefit. If I tell them this and they decide not to waste money on insurance that they don't need, and this results in Obamacare being underfunded and failing, this isn't me "breaking the car". It was already broken. I just pointed out to the guy you were relying on fixing it for free that he's being used.
Le sigh. Of course the ACA needs young people in order to work, that's why the conservatives are primarily concerned with persuading them. The ACA doesn't need ALL of them, just a certain percentage and even if that percentage isn't met, getting close to that number would suffice. Now, if you take away from that bare minimum percentage, it will for sure fail. That's precisely what the Republicans are trying to do, siphon out just enough oil, gas, etc. from the car to make you breakdown going to work, when in reality, you probably could have made it to the gas station.

Gbaji wrote:
This is obviously not true, or you wouldn't be complaining about Republicans merely informing people of the facts about the law. Unless by "naturally" you mean "a state where people are lied to in order to get them to do something they would not otherwise do", that is. Because "naturally", an informed population will not make the decisions which the law requires them to do in order to meet its cost goals. All we need to do is tell people this truth.

I'll point out again that when your political agenda relies completely on lying to people in order to trick them into doing things that are not in their best interest, maybe you should stop and assess what you're doing.
You are assuming that the youthful population (and everyone who willingly signed up) are stupid and ignorant and that only Republicans know the truth!Smiley: rolleyes The power of campaigning is to PERSUADE people to act a certain way even with the facts. Conservatives know this and that's why they lied about having uncle Sam looking in your ****** and your ****. That's why they lied about the death panels and no coverage for babies. That's why Boehner lied about how long it took him to sign up on the exchange and why Rand Paul (more than likely) lied about his son getting medicaid.



Edited, Jan 22nd 2014 12:59pm by Almalieque
#119 Jan 22 2014 at 7:39 AM Rating: Good
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#120 Jan 22 2014 at 10:39 AM Rating: Excellent
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Elinda wrote:
angrymnk wrote:


Market goddesses can't be everywhere you know.
They avoid the men's locker room; PURGE IT WITH FIRE! [:pitchfork:]

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#121 Jan 22 2014 at 11:49 AM Rating: Excellent
Failed charter schools don't have to give back the funds they took from taxpayers when they shut their doors, unfortunately. It's not considered a business loan, but rather a pre-payment for services to be rendered. The school shuts down halfway through the term, and the charter school isn't obligated to give back the next semester's cash under the current rules.

Since we brought up vouchers, here is my issue with them: They only create the illusion of choice. Say you are in a rural area. There are three elementary schools. Two are public schools and they are doing okay. They're on opposite sides of the county, a good 45 minute drive from one another. There is a smaller private school that is doing exceptionally well. The county issues vouchers for the parents who want to send their kids to the private school. Unfortunately, the private school has reached capped enrollment and not everyone gets to send their kids there. It'll take a year before they can expand for more capacity, and even then they're going to only be able to add room for another 120 students - not the 1200 that the other two schools handle.

So for all that voucher work the county did, it's benefited maybe a dozen kids and the rest are still stuck going to their locally zoned elementary school anyway because their parents can't afford to drive them 45 minutes to go to the other equally performing school. It's not worth the gasoline and the time, and the county can't afford the bus service for carting kids back and forth since the vouchers only cover school tuition and not transportation.

Wouldn't the money spent setting up the voucher program have been better spent on improving the original two public schools? That way, 1200 kids benefit, not just 12.
#122 Jan 22 2014 at 12:07 PM Rating: Excellent
Liberal Conspiracy
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TILT
Study after study after study has shown that private schools and charter schools don't perform better when given the same student mixes as public schools. There's no mystery to this. Likewise, there's no mystery to which nations are outperforming the US in education and what their schools are like. There's no mystery to whether their schools are public or private or how they work student choice or any of those other factors.

This isn't important to Gbaji because none of them give the answer "Break apart public unions", "Allocate funding as block grants" or the other conservative goals that push "Educate students" to the back seat when discussing the issue. This isn't to say that we can wave a magic wand and turn the US education system into Norway's but looking at successful systems and trying to emulate them makes a hell of a lot more sense than chasing ideological pipe dreams.
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Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#123 Jan 22 2014 at 12:15 PM Rating: Excellent
Meat Popsicle
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13,666 posts
Yeah no surprise there. A market doesn't work if you don't have enough choices, and it does seem to have played out with those programs. Maybe if we ever figure out how to get the distance learning kind of thing to work better it'll be a better option. Smiley: rolleyes
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That monster in the mirror, he just might be you. -Grover
#124 Jan 22 2014 at 12:20 PM Rating: Excellent
So far the distance learning kids are doing even worse than the physical building charter school kids. I don't believe any student is capable of proper distance learning until they've hit college. And even then, not all of them have the maturity and the discipline to handle it, since so much self direction and motivation is required.
#125 Jan 22 2014 at 12:30 PM Rating: Excellent
Meat Popsicle
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13,666 posts
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me either. Still I don't see another way you get passed the transportation barrier and actually give parents/children options to which school to attend.

Then again, I'd imagine for some people the inability to go 1/2 hour out of their way for their kids education is probably a symptom of the problem rather than the cause. If your work/economics/whatever makes it so the extra time and money isn't an option you're probably limited in what you can do for better your kids lot in life anyway. Those kinds of problems aren't so easy to solve though. Smiley: frown
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That monster in the mirror, he just might be you. -Grover
#126 Jan 22 2014 at 12:37 PM Rating: Good
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2,010 posts
Quote:
Does it occur to you that maybe those states lean right precisely because they have a higher ratio of welfare recipients to taxpayers and they see that this is more harmful than helpful?


Ok higher ratio of welfare recipients to taxpayers, check.

Quote:
Your argument rests on the assumption that the same people who make up the welfare population in a red state are also the same people who make that state a red state. Which is a pretty ridiculous assumption to make.


Ok, I guess so. So we can pretty much assume that it's only the working people who are voting republican? Because they hate the lazy, welfare-receiving people (who are also outnumber them???) who are voting democrat? Check.

Quote:
To be labeled a "red state" simply means that a majority of voters in that state voted Republican in the last election. Unless a majority of the population in a state are on welfare then this doesn't mean there's any statistical intersection at all.


Didn't you just say that states may lean right because of...

I really only have a 1 paragraph gbaji threshold and this... this is why. Nothing you say makes sense.
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