Should salaries be capped?

[vern_humphrey]

You do realize of course that your arch-nemesis, Vern, has posted multiple times about voucher systems, right? It is a conservative idea and favored by most Republicans. Democrats and other liberals oppose it. So, for a “polemic against conservative thinking,” you just recommended a very conservative initiative.

Actually what I favor is not a voucher system, it is true choice in education, where the parents choose the school – any school, public, private, non-profit or for-profit – and a standard tuition is paid for each child.

Let the customer, the parent, drive quality, and let good schools flourish and bad ones die.

 

[rlg94086]

Actually what I favor is not a voucher system, it is true choice in education, where the parents choose the school – any school, public, private, non-profit or for-profit – and a standard tuition is paid for each child.

Let the customer, the parent, drive quality, and let good schools flourish and bad ones die.

Sounds good. How is it different than a voucher system?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Sounds good. How is it different than a voucher system?

Vouchers are not universal – all kids don’t get them. They don’t pay full tuition. And they don’t open up the system to full-blown competition.

A typical voucher law has so many poisoned pills inserted that it’s almost bound to fail – “If your child is left-handed, red-headed, with one brown and one blue eye, you can send him to a public school in an adjacent district, and to pay the added costs, you get a certificate for $10 off on your next oil change at Wal-Mart.”

Under True Choice, all schools – including Public Schools – get paid only for the children they attract. Any school can qualify – public, private, for-profit or non-profit. It creates true competition – bad schools fail, good ones prosper.

 

[rlg94086]

Vouchers are not universal – all kids don’t get them. They don’t pay full tuition. And they don’t open up the system to full-blown competition.

A typical voucher law has so many poisoned pills inserted that it’s almost bound to fail – “If your child is left-handed, red-headed, with one brown and one blue eye, you can send him to a public school in an adjacent district, and to pay the added costs, you get a certificate for $10 off on your next oil change at Wal-Mart.”

Under True Choice, all schools – including Public Schools – get paid only for the children they attract. Any school can qualify – public, private, for-profit or non-profit. It creates true competition – bad schools fail, good ones prosper.

Which vouchers? You are talking about existing, “typical” voucher laws. Your program would basically be a universal voucher, where each kid has the same full tuition credit to use at any school. You don’t have to call it a voucher though, if you don’t want to.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Which vouchers? You are talking about existing, “typical” voucher laws. Your program would basically be a universal voucher, where each kid has the same full tuition credit to use at any school. You don’t have to call it a voucher though, if you don’t want to.

I don’t know of any voucher law or proposed bill that actually opens up the education system to real competition, or allows all parents to pick their child’s school. Nor one that limits funding to schools to tuition, only, and starves bad schools out of existance.

 

[rlg94086]

I don’t know of any ***voucher law or proposed bill ***that actually opens up the education system to real competition, or allows all parents to pick their child’s school. Nor one that limits funding to schools to tuition, only, and starves bad schools out of existance.

Your right, one hasn’t been proposed yet. You seem to be requiring that the term voucher be limited by existing laws or proposals. Again, if you don’t like the word voucher, you can call it something else…tuition credit, coupon, certificate? Ontologically though, it remains the same thing.

This is Webster’s definition: “3: a coupon issued by government to a parent or guardian to be used to fund a child’s education in either a public or private school.” It’s pretty general - no mention of restrictions on amounts or a specific group who receives one.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Your right, one hasn’t been proposed yet. You seem to be requiring that the term voucher be limited by existing laws or proposals. Again, if you don’t like the word voucher, you can call it something else…tuition credit, coupon, certificate? Ontologically though, it remains the same thing.

This is Webster’s definition: “3: a coupon issued by government to a parent or guardian to be used to fund a child’s education in either a public or private school.” It’s pretty general - no mention of restrictions on amounts or a specific group who receives one.

I call it True Choice. It doesn’t require the government to issue a certificate to be turned over to the school of choice. The parents enroll the child, and the school bills the state.

It’s a completely open, competitive system.

 

[rlg94086]

I call it True Choice. It doesn’t require the government to issue a certificate to be turned over to the school of choice. The parents enroll the child, and the school bills the state.

It’s a completely open, competitive system.

True Choice(TM?) it is. Saves paper too…very environmentally conscious.

Now…as long as the salary cap doesn’t ruin it, we should be okay.

 

[mapleoak]

Actually what I favor is not a voucher system, it is true choice in education, where the parents choose the school – any school, public, private, non-profit or for-profit – and a standard tuition is paid for each child.

Let the customer, the parent, drive quality, and let good schools flourish and bad ones die.

Don’t forget homeschooling parents as well!

 

[rlg94086]

Don’t forget homeschooling parents as well!

Homeschooling parents should be allowed to write-off [EDIT ADD or possibly reimbursed for] education related expenses - including zoo/museum memberships, special classes at said zoos/museums, materials, etc. That is it. No tuition transfers IMHO. We need to be careful not to create a profit motive in homeschooling.

 

[mapleoak]

Homeschooling parents should be allowed to write-off [EDIT ADD or possibly reimbursed for] education related expenses - including zoo/museum memberships, special classes at said zoos/museums, materials, etc. That is it. No tuition transfers IMHO. We need to be careful not to create a profit motive in homeschooling.

But it should apply to curriculum costs, books, materials, and eclectic classes as well.

 

[rlg94086]

But it should apply to curriculum costs, books, materials, and eclectic classes as well.

Yes…I said “materials”… the rest are covered under “etc.”

 

[vern_humphrey]

We’re getting off topic – but the best American public schools are run by DODEA (Department of Defense Education Activity.) They have a system of internet-delivered Computer Aided Instruction that allows them to deliver high-power courses to small bases where there is no qualified teacher.

We should have such a system nation-wide. It would cost about $500K to develop a course covering half a school year. But with almost 50 million kids in school if only one percent of them took the course the first year, the cost per-pupil would be one dollar. And the next year, the course would be paid for!!

Of course, there would be added expenses – monitoring and updating, books and related materials (which we already buy under the present system) – but we could deliver quality education to every child in America, whether they were in school or homeschooled, for much less cost than presently.

 

[D317]

…This is not about “class envy.” It’s about economic theory, and the contention that right now the economy isn’t working as well as it could.

[sign]The economy is working fine. The problem you are dancing around is how to fix the abuse in the system. Your answer is to trash the system, not fix it![/sign]

And no, this is not about socialism or communism either. Distributists argue, in fact, that some form of socialism or communism is really the final destination of capitalism. [sign]So it IS about socialism/communism. At least I know where you are coming from. [/sign]. It should be noted that the Popes who have written on economic issues have criticized some effects of capitalism (like the hoarding of goods and a denial of the universal destination of goods) as well as socialism.

[sign]Just because the Pope writes about economic theory does not make it an infallible teaching. Wake up. If everyone just stopped working & waited for your hand-outs from the “universal destination of goods” the world economy would stop. You would counter with the argument that people with a strong work ethic would need to just do the work so others could get some of the “redistributed wealth”[/sign]

… Would it really be such a horrible thing if, say, the top earner of a company could not have total compensation above 10 times (or 8x, or less) what the average employee makes?

[sign]What if the CEO works 20 or 30 times harder than the “average” worker to meet the payroll, grow the business, and keep people employed? Do we just not reward people for the work? What happens to all of the “savings” in public companies when you institute your plan? It should go directly to the SHAREHOLDERS who actually OWN the company. You would simply confiscate it & “redistribute the means of production.” It didn’t work so well in the good ole USSR now did it?[/sign]
…

To believe in distributism, one must believe that THE STATE knows better than the PEOPLE how they should live, work, and earn. More important, precisely WHO is going to do all of the redistribution of OUR wealth?

Its funny, at the first sign of any abuse within the best economic system ever devised there are people who want to trash the entire system & start some egalitarian nonsense.

Recall a German monk who couldn’t “feel” the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist or the effects of Sanctifying Grace? Because he couldn’t “feel” them, he decided that they were not real at all and that they must just be a figment of everyone’s imagination for almost 1,500 years. Then he saw some idiot priest independently selling indulgences and decided that the Catholic Church was terrible and needed reformed. His idea of reform was to leave the Church founded on Peter and start a man-made church of his own.

I’m not comparing capitalism to the Church; but isn’t that how “reform” movements always end up? They leave the best for something woefully worse.

Want to hear something else that is funny? An interview with another “world do-gooder” Warren Buffet. He thinks our system stinks also. He is all for confiscation of personal wealth across the board.

The interviewer asked him that if he felt so strongly about the need for more tax dollars to federal/state governments to “help the poor” why he didn’t just write a big check! He then started to waffle and stated that voluntary measures won’t work. It never works for the do-gooders if THEY have to make the sacrifice. He will never put his money where his mouth is!! But then isn’t that how all of the do-gooders that want to “fix” things: at someone else’s expense? It makes me sick.

Didn’t the success of welfare reform teach us anything? People value what they work for, not what they are given in the form of a hand-out lifestyle.

I agree that there are some abuses in the entire compensation structure of many companies. This problem is corporate governance (or lack there of). Rather than trying to figure how to redistribute your money, I’d rather work for increased shareholder power so that those who actually own public companies can have a greater say in how they are operated.

I’m all for helping the poor (and my charitable contributions go for that purpose) but is ruining the American system really going to make things better?

 

[ribozyme]

Respond to this please…

There shouldn’t be an “cap” on the ability of people to perform in their vocation. We are all called to a vocation which is set within God’s plan. The Church recognizes that “talents” are not equally distributed as it is also part of God’s plan to have such differences. Those with more are obliged to give more to those less fortunate.

Gee… I thought the people on this forum loathe communism so much. God’s plan??? Sounds like an “astute” central planner such as Mao who conceived the Great Leap Backward.

God’s plan? Look at the world… Many countries in Africa have a GDP-PPP less than 2,000 USD and many diseases such as HIV and tuberculous are rampant. Just like in China, the central planner is responsible for immense suffering and injustice.

Do you want to know what grevious consequences that the inequality of ability has caused? Read IQ and Global Inequality which I have done and I am reluctant to talk about their content in depth here or on IIDB. I said too much, just parse the wiki.

Tell me how God cares? Why should humanity trust the negligent Christian God?

Why do you dislike Warren Buffett? The guy who knows how to succeed in Capitalism?

And yes… there are people who cannot help themselves…

People are impaired in ways that might not be apparent to you… do not pretend that almost “everyone has the “control” to choose how to respond to every circumstance presented them” when this is not correct as they might not have the capacity to decide that is best for them.

For example:

Life is difficult at the low end of the IQ bell curve (IQ 75 and below), as anthropologists have poignantly documented for mildly retarded adults (e.g., Edgerton, 1993, deinstitutionalized retarded adults; Gazaway, 1969, a low-IQ White Appalachian community; Koegel & Edgerton, 1984, Black inner-city special
education students as adults). This is the “high risk” zone: high risk of failing elementary school, being unmasked as incompetent in daily affairs (making change, reading a letter, filling out a job application, understanding doctors’ instructions, monitoring one’s young children), being cheated by merchants and exploited by friends and relatives, remaining unemployed, dependent, and socially isolated, and “consistently fail[ing] to understand certain important aspects of the world in which they live, and so regularly find[ing] themselves unable to cope with some demands of this world” (Edger-ton, 1993, p. 222). Many eventually lead satisfying lives, but only with the help of a benefactor or strong social support network or only after a long struggle to find a self-affirming social niche.

…

As noted before, they are prohibited from enlisting in the military, and no civilian jobs routinely recruit them. They are increasingly vulnerable-and unemployable-as unskilled jobs disappear.

Some might not have a “benefactor” or a “strong social support network.” Do not pretend that they “change trades, professions or positions” easily. Reality sunders that individualistic chimerical fantasy.

Blame them… it is their fault they are failures.

Problem is that God himself allowed those inequalities as YOU said so yourself.

Its funny, at the first sign of any abuse within the best economic system ever devised there are people who want to trash the entire system & start some egalitarian nonsense

I think Scandinavia is a better system…

No one advocates communism; my economic sentiments advocate Keynesianisn.

 

[ribozyme]

BTW, Warren Buffett is donating his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, but keep your objurgating about his sincere belief in social justice.

Didn’t the success of welfare reform teach us anything? People value what they work for, not what they are given in the form of a hand-out lifestyle.

And what do you propose as fulfilling work? Jobs at McDonalds?

 

[rlg94086]

Yo Ribo,

You need to work on your posting skills. I don’t know what to respond to…you have a quote inside of a quote with comments, none of which are marked with a name. I don’t know which are your thoughts and/or what you are trying to get across. It just looks like ranting to me. If you want someone to respond, you should state things clearly.

The only thing I got is that you like Scandinavia better. Okay, move there. I almost moved to Sweden once myself. A lovely country. I’m sure they could use your talents.

Robert

Respond to this please…

Tell me how God cares? Why should humanity trust the negligent Christian God?

Why do you dislike Warren Buffett? The guy who knows how to succeed in Capitalism?

And yes… there are people who cannot help themselves…

Blame them… it is their fault they are failures.

Problem is that God himself allowed those inequalities as YOU said so yourself.

I think Scandinavia is a better system…

No one advocates communism; my economic sentiments advocate Keynesianisn.

 

[rlg94086]

BTW, Warren Buffett is donating his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, but keep your objurgating about his sincere belief in social justice.

And what do you propose as fulfilling work? Jobs at McDonalds?

It can be. It is better to work at McDonalds than to suck on the government teat.

Are you looking down your nose at people who work at McDonalds? Everyone has to start somewhere.

 

[ribozyme]

Yo Ribo,

You need to work on your posting skills. I don’t know what to respond to…you have a quote inside of a quote with comments, none of which are marked with a name. I don’t know which are your thoughts and/or what you are trying to get across. It just looks like ranting to me. If you want someone to respond, you should state things clearly.
:

Robert

It is from an old posts I made in this thread and a quote from a Linda Gottfredson paper.

Regarding McDonalds, I believe that people are generally happier if they feel they are making a meaningful contribution. I do not think working at McDonalds fits this. What does McDonalds do? They sell rather jejune food that causes people to be extremely unhealthy for the sake of profits.

I fail to see how that contributes to the utility of society.

I will admit something, the posts of D317 is evocative of extreme anger. It elicits paroxysms in me and maybe that is why some of my posts sound much like a rant.

Much like Moses the Raven, he says that the inequality and suffering within humanity are part of “God’s plan.” When I look at the world, I do not see any numinous force. If such a force exists, it is rather apathetic.

About giving people jobs, some people cannot join the military.

udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf (pg. 12). What should we do for them?

• Ryo

 

[rlg94086]

It is from an old posts I made in this thread and a quote from a Linda Gottfredson paper.

Regarding McDonalds, I believe that people are generally happier if they feel they are making a meaningful contribution. I do not think working at McDonalds fits this. What does McDonalds do? They sell rather jujune food that causes people to be extremely unhealthy.

I fail to see how that contributes to the utility of society.

I will admit something, the posts of D317 is evocative of extreme anger. It elicits paroxysms in me and maybe that is why some of my posts sound much like a rant.

• Ryo

Ryo (btw…which one? The good guy or the bad guy? ),

Thanks for the vocabulary addition (misspelling aside ) - I had to look up “jujune.”

There is no reason to say that a service job has no meaning. McDonalds fulfills a need. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have prospered. As far as their jejune food, it depends on what you order. I find their Bacon Ranch Salad w/Grilled Chicken (w/low fat Balsamic vinaigrette)to be tasty and quite healthy.

I also eat at Subway occasionally…does Jared’s success at losing the poundage on his Subway diet make the sandwich maker’s job at Subway more meaningful? What about trash collectors? Janitors? Toll booth operators? Are their jobs more meaningful than a McDonald’s employee? Or do you look down your nose at them too?

As I said, everyone has to start somewhere. I will bet you $1000, that I can find a millionaire who started his first job at McDonalds.

Of course, he might never had made it to being a millionaire with salary caps.