The Republican case for the Universal Basic IncomeFollow

Well that was nice(?) of them at least.

My private K-8 didn't have anything, people were responsible for getting their own kids there and back. Some of them would drive in from an hour or so out of town. Which sounds like a lot, but they were driving a hour for about everything at that point, living in the backwoods and stuff, so what's one more trip?

We were lucky(?) enough to be 4 minutes from the school.

Edited, Jan 22nd 2014 11:26am by someproteinguy

I learned most of life's important lessons at the bus stop.

...and on the playground.

Well, that wasn't terribly hard to disprove

You're free to disagree with the argument, but trying to claim that the argument itself was just invented in the last couple decades as a means to deny gay folks the "right to marry" is absurd. Want to try again?

"Nit pick"? The entire purpose is education. The criteria should be education. If the school is collecting the most students through any means other than education, it's a failure not a "nit pick".

Of course, your goal here is more akin to conservative social engineering than it is to educating children so it's no surprise you'd wave away any criticism of how for-profit schools collect their money as "nit picking".

You're missing my point. We can't agree today on what metrics to use to determine whether an education is good or bad, or what curriculum will be most successful, or even how to measure success. It's why our policies keep shifting over time. Given we can't do this even close to consistently, perhaps the solution is to not have a big bureaucratic government organization try to figure out what will result in the "best education" for every child, and instead let schools try different things, and let parents use their vouchers to choose the ones that they think are the most successful.

You're progressing from the false assumption that our existing system can even remotely determine and implement the "best education" for our kids. I think that's laughable. The free market has a vastly better track record at producing good outcomes that the masses want. Government has a really poor track record of this. So why on earth put education in the hands of government? Fund it with government? Sure. If we must. But actually having government employees run the system? That's insane!



It doesn't matter what my goal is. Parents will pick what criteria they use to decide which school to send their kids to. Not you, and not me. So while I suppose parents could choose which ideologies they want their children exposed to (if such a thing were high on their list of criteria), but at least that has the virtue of them deciding rather than some government authority. So isn't it really that you fear a loss of the power to impose liberal social engineering? We conservatives can't control what sorts of schools crop up anymore than you liberals can. So it's strange that you assume they'd all be chock full of conservative indoctrination.

You're missing my point. We can't agree today on what metrics to use to determine whether an education is good or bad, or what curriculum will be most successful, or even how to measure success. It's why our policies keep shifting over time. Given we can't do this even close to consistently, perhaps the solution is to not have a big bureaucratic government organization try to figure out what will result in the "best education" for every child, and instead let schools try different things, and let parents use their vouchers to choose the ones that they think are the most successful.


Been tried. Fails miserably. MISERABLY. Basically the reason charter schools became "a thing" was that "school choice" was such an abject failure that it was impossible to even attempt to spin it as valid, so instead of "let the parents choose the best school" the argument became "let's build better schools for parents to choose".

All of it is thinly veiled attacks on public employee unions. That's all it's about, it's not a mystery or a debate. Teachers unions vote for Democrats, so Republicans want to destroy teachers unions, all done, that's the whole story. No alternative has been demonstrated to be better for the entire demographic of children than....existing public schools. Shockingly, the places full of experts in educating children do that as well as possible. If you want to spend 4 times as much per student, you can educate the entire demographic more effectively and comprehensively. If you want to spend the same amount, squeeze out a profit by paying "teachers" close to minimum wage, and expel all of the kids who seem like they won't test well, AMAZINGLY, that doesn't seem to benefit the kids.



Edited, Jan 22nd 2014 8:36pm by Smasharoo

When? Do you have a source supporting your claim that we have ever adopted a program in which the public education dollars which would otherwise be funneled directly to K-12 public schools were instead divided up evenly among all parents of school age children so they could choose to spend them on any school they like. I would love to see you support this claim.



For the set of all failures caused by never trying in the first place.



It was only ever tried, much less abjectly failed, in the fertile imaginations of public education advocates so as to sidestep the idea entirely. You can't defend the current system, so you pretend that we already tried the alternative and it just didn't work. Kinda pathetic, but there you have it.



I think you've got the directionality reversed. Teachers unions vote for Democrats, so Democrats oppose any changes to education which might threaten this cozy arrangement. I do find it interesting that just like Joph, you fear the free choices of the people because you assume it would tip some kind of political balance in favor of the Right. What does it say about our two "sides" that mine is perfectly willing to create a system in which every single parent is free to choose how their education dollars are spent, while your side is not? Why do both of you assume that this change would benefit conservatives? If teachers unions really are the best way to ensure a quality education for students (as is often claimed) then you should not fear this change at all. Parents should choose to send their kids to the unionized schools, right?

I mean, if the odds of my child getting a quality education which will lead to a successful career is greater in schools run by unions, and the cost is otherwise identical, I'm going to choose to send my kid to the union school. Right? Why wouldn't I?


So... doesn't the very fact that you're making the argument suggest that you really believe that unions aren't the best way to educate kids and you know that the only way to force folks to send their kids to union run schools is if you take away their choices. Right? I mean, you've admitted that you see vouchers and free choice as a threat to unions, so it's not like this is a stretch or anything.

I always suspected Economics is a goddess.

I think you've got the directionality reversed. Teachers unions vote for Democrats, so Democrats oppose any changes to education which might threaten this cozy arrangement.

Right, because the first step to new ideas for schools is, amazingly, always, always, always, always, eliminating unions. Vat a twist!

Edited, Jan 22nd 2014 10:21pm by Smasharoo

Edited, Jan 22nd 2014 10:22pm by Smasharoo

Try to prove something that's already proven conclusively? Well, I guess that would be your fall further behind line. Much easier than actually thinking about other people's arguments that you pretend are your own.

Because there's not a lot of money in it?

Take out the higher education and vocational schools, remove the gifted children who have parents with extra motivation to fund them, take out those with enough income to afford premium services, and you're left with a bunch of mediocre students who have little ambition to compete in a game they can't win, and parents who aren't going to throw much needed family funds down that sinkhole.

I'm sure you can make money on the leftovers, hey we have shows like Storage Wars where people eek out a meager living buying and selling the refuse, but given the low margins limited chance for success who in their right mind would invest heavily in it? The last 50 years or so have been nothing if not a mixed bag. I mean if you have the money and are eager to invest in education or something you're more likely to have luck writing Christian textbooks aimed at home-schoolers and private schools.