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You know- I'm still at an age where I can be an idealist and here's a few of the ideas I think might be good for our country. Realize when I say these things I'm 18- and I realize many of my values will change later in life.
1. Set up a Federal Grading Scale- I think just doing this will make take a lot of bureaucracy and confusion out of schools.
2. Have a nationally mandated 200-day school year. Right now 30 states are at 180 days, a few are below and a few are above. It would be easier to compare disctrict v. district educational programs if they were at equal footing for the number of days. I also encourage lengthening the school year because many of the economic powerhouses of today (Germany, Japan) have around 220 days, and a 40 day gap is quite expansive.
3. Gradually elminate Gas-taxes. I think if we got rid of gas-taxes then it would be more an incentive to companies that work with alternative fuel sources. Once the government stops making money on Oil- they might start to try and help end our addiction to it.
4. Pass a balance-bill act. I believe there was one in the past wherein the federal budget has to be balanced before it can be passed. And limit use of an "Emergency Fund" clause to very specific needs.
5. Eliminate pork. I don't know how to define it- but if you tell me what it is I can tell you whether it is or isn't. (Yeah, I know- rather vague for law. According to SCOTUS though that works for pornography). Some of these include decent ideas and examples like the National Endowment for the Arts- nice idea, but it seems like a lot of money. (Unless there are some things I do not know about that particular program).
6. Incentives given for companies working on alternative fuel sources.
Those are a few of the things I think would be pretty good for this country. I just want to know if you guys agree/disagree or what? And why? What would you guys like to see done?
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Did you know that when when the colonials were up in arms about taxes, it was generally less than 5% of gross income?
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I don't see the problem with the "National Endowment for the Arts. The money going there is a drop in the bucket compared to other pork barrel programs. I'd much rather encourage creativity than waste money in any of the many, many other ways the government does.
Let's keep programs like the NEA and NASA, which use relatively little money and have a lot of intangible benefits, and stop creating make-work programs so some senator's company gets a huge contract.
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7. Up the tax rate on bonuses over a million dollars.
I may be a Republican, but I don't trust big corporations to play fair. Let's make it economically meaningless to give away stupid large bonuses to the CEO and Board.
Yes, I'm still cranky about my dad getting laid off so the company could save $2 million the same year they gave the CEO a $10 million "thanks for not retiring" bonus. They'll have to keep the reduced workforce for five years to offset one bonus. That's just wrong.
8. Hospitals can only send you one bill for your stay.
I don't see how I can possibly be expected to know what companies the hospital subcontracted their work out to while I was there. How do I know who did what, which bills are for real procedures, and how many of these people did anything they should be able to bill me for?
The hospital wrote off about $20,000 of Chet's stay since he doesn't have insurance. They said the reduced bill was only $500. So we paid it. Then they turned around and sent us two bills for the doctors. And bills started pouring in from other groups claiming we owed them, too. Up to three months later, we were getting new bills from people, most of whom I had never heard of.
Right, wrong, or indifferent, it felt like a scam. It felt like a straight up bait and switch. "Here's your bill. No wait, here's your real bill." It's hard to have a lot of sympathy for the health care crisis when they pawn their accounting off on me.
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3. I have a problem with. The problem there isn't the money itself, I think that money still serves as a good deterrent for driving.
9I think however, perhaps a better way of rewarding drivers who have more responsible driving habits (with regards to fuel consumption), would be to rax vehicle purchases that have low fuel economy standards. Tax Hummers, Tax Escalades. The big problem with this is that it hurts US Companies more than foriegn, but too bad. I know Ford is hurting right now, but they should have upped their fuel economy standards years ago.
It's ridiculous that the country that first mass produced/invented the automobile is so far behind Japan, Germany, whoever when it comes to quality and fuel economy. Tax poor performance cars, it will either force the company to redesign it for better performance, or people won't buy it.
4. I'd like to hear more details on it. What happens when a natural disaster hits or we have to go to war? The bill is suspended? Or will the bill mandate we have a rainy day fund? Several states have just such a policy.
5. Good luck. I don't see how you will EVER eliminate pork. The best way that comes to mind though, would be something along the lines of what the senate tried to pass (before Ted Stevens pidgeonholed it temporarily), is to pass a bill that forces every cent spent in Congress to be published on a website. I think it should be easy to read and understand. Let the public discover why 200 million dollars it going to build a useless bridge in Alaska, or to build a wax museum in Iowa. The sooner that crap ends, the sooner we can get financially back on our feet, as a nation.
6. If this isn't already the case, I agree.
7. Wholeheartedly agree. CEO salaries and bonuses are disgusting.
8. The health system in general needs to be fixed. I love that they are finally getting on board with digitizing the whole thing. It's going to save billions, cut thousands of mistakes made every year (which I can only imagine will save billions more from the courts), and will make the entire process more efficient. I think every effort should be made for hospitals and insurers to get on board with this. The government needs to take a long hard look at the healthcare system and try to fix inefficiencies, without creating more!
10. Fix the tax code, possibly eliminate most corporate taxes. They make America less competitive, confuse Americans, and waste billions of dollars just trying to understand them. They also waste billions by having a million and one loops holes written in by special interests to the point where getting rid of all the loop holes and making them pay what they were supposed to to begin with would probably render the move revenue neutral. Simplify it.
11. Make it possible for every kid who wants to, to go to college in America. Maybe they won't want to go, maybe they aren't smart enough, there's always trade schools (which aren't appreciated enough anymore), but the ballooning cost of education has to be addressed, and soon, before college is something only the upper class can afford.
I hope this thread only grows in size.
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quote:11. Make it possible for every kid who wants to, to go to college in America.
How sure are you this isn't the case right now?
I only say that because we got into a discussion on college costs the other day in one of my classes and I was the only one - the ONLY one who was paying her full way through college. And I'm not talking "Mommy and Daddy pay my way." I'm talking about being the only one who didn't receive some sort of financial assistance through the financial aid office. In fact, that was the complaint that started the discussion - the financial aid office apparently hadn't released funds for some people until after the first week of school so they didn't buy their books on time.
I find it very hard to believe that anyone truly movtivated to get a college education couldn't find a way to pay for it. It might be through loans that would have to be repaid, and it might be to a community college, not the Ivy League school you want, and it might be working through work-study or a part time job to pay for necessities, but I really do think a college education is within the reach of the vast majority of people in this country. It's a question of priorities.
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Alright I might have to amend that to make it possible for them to go to college without bankrupting them.
Two of my best friends are going to graduate with more than 60K in student loans. Granted, they didn't HAVE to go to the schools they wanted. I couldn't afford to go to U of M or MSU like I wanted to, I had to pick a school closer to home because I can't afford room and board. The government looks at how much my mom makes and creates a number for how much money she should be able to give me, but that doesn't take into account the fact that she's so in debt she can't help at all.
I don't get any grant money, I get a little government loan money, and the rest I either get from a local bank at a disgusting interest rate, or I work 35 hours a week on top of school to pay for it. And I'm STILL going to be in debt when I graduate, to be paid off with my fabulous teaching salary.
Community College severely limits your career opportunities. I can't be a teacher by going to a community college, I couldn't be an engineer, or a doctor, etc, etc.
If I may ask, how are you affording your college education Belle? If I had to guess, I'd say day time job and going to night school?
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The problem with school costs isn't necessarily the tuition, it's tuitions plus living expenses and ancillary costs. Some states are better at this than others. Florida, Arizona, and I think Georgia have model assistance programs, in my opinion. Affordability is an college issue, but I think that the chief problem I have with schools are what's being taught and why.
From a black male perspective, only half of us are graduating high school. Paying tuition for an amorphous college degree is only one of a thousand issues at play.
quote:I think if we got rid of gas-taxes then it would be more an incentive to companies that work with alternative fuel sources. Once the government stops making money on Oil- they might start to try and help end our addiction to it.
The problem is that the government is not, ostensibly, a for-profit entity, and I'm not sure that in this instance, we can expect it to behave like one.
Oil companies and oil company lobby money are the reasons we haven't advanced with respect to alternative energy resources. Serious research into viable alternative energy is going take a massive and expensive partnership between the government and private industries that don't even exist yet. Right now, our chemical and electrical engineers are going to work for BP or Chevron, because that's where the money is.
Get rid of federal involvement in primary and secondary schooling beyond perhaps some emergency funding to prevent local issues from being significantly detrimental to the progress of students in a state or general advice on curricula (helpful, not prescriptive). Colleges are perfectly capable of forming cooperatives and/or hiring outside companies to evaluate grades from different areas of the country, and they already do this to a significant extent. Federal intervention would lead to least common denominator effects and wouldn't really standardize anything due to variation in schools.
Similarly bad. We're doing perfectly fine at education by any measure that looks at the overall success of the system. Additionally, many problems with short school years are caused by funding issues that are in part brought on by unfunded federal education mandates.
Not until we're told exactly what funding is being cut to do so or other taxes raised. Cutting taxes without doing one or the other is just fiscal irresponsibility.
Bad idea. There are economic theories with at least decent evidential support that there are times it is better for the government to spend than it receives. Now, the general goal of a balanced budget in an average economic situation or better is good, but if the economy takes a downturn, significant government cuts in spending are likely to magnify that downturn. Companies that are doing badly conserve expenditures, sure, but they also take out loans to develop things they think will get them out of the bad period, not stop developing.
The NEA's a small bit of money, not a lot, and isn't generally considered pork, so I'm not sure why you think its part of the pork you know when you see. I'm not completely opposed to its elimination, but any elimination must be undertaken carefully and systematically, and with an appreciation for what it does. This is not true of pork, which by its nature merits little specific consideration. There is no way to determine if certain things are pork, but the best way to cut down on it would be to only pass bills that only deal with the subjects they ostensibly deal with, instead of having all sorts of riders.
Not sure its necessary. Consumers seem to be doing a pretty good job of driving that change (ouch, unintentional pun, but I'll keep it).
A million dollars is an extraordinarily low limit, for one thing. The big problem that most analysts have found is that the accounting required for certain sorts of bonuses creates perverse incentives. Correcting those accounting issues should lead to a significant reduction in this activity.
Health care needs to have a better delineation of rights set up that will encourage real privatization and a real free market. Right now we have governmentally-supported fiefdoms that lead to the same inefficiencies found in any feudal system.
I think eliminating the tax breaks that can be used on certain sorts of badly fuel inefficient vehicles would be sufficient.
Definitely simplify the tax code, and getting rid of corporate taxes is one way to start on that. A simplification of personal income tax should accompany that; I'm in favor of a near-flat tax structure, where people up to a certain income pay nothing, people between that income and a significantly higher income pay one rate on income above the certain income, and people with even more income pay a slightly higher rate on the income above that. The cutoffs could be phrased in terms of number of dependents. Say, anyone making below $10k per supported person (the individual plus any other dependents) pays no tax and anyone making more than $10k per person pays 15% on the amount above $10k per person and below $100k per person and 20% on the amount above $100k per person. Those numbers are mostly for example. No other deductions, all income is included.
Loans are a perfectly decent way to fund a college education. If you think you aren't going to get value out of it equal to the amount it costs, you shouldn't go. In fact, I support measures that make clearer how much a college education costs at a state school. A better accounting of parental ability to pay wouldn't be without merit, but would likely involve some families paying more as well as some families paying less. And debt is asked for on the FAFSA; the EFC is based not on what a family could easily pay, but on what a family should be able to pay with some sacrifice because college is important. Also, programs that educate students in situations likely to not lead to a college education on the affordability of a college education are extremely important. Many poor students with okay grades could receive a cheap education at a state school under the existing system, but don't. The problem is not with students taking on loans to pay for college, its with educating students about the huge amounts of cheap money available to pay for college.
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Irami -It should be noted that there isn't NO effort being made. Those chemical and electrical engineers at BP are doing research into alternative energies, and the government is spending millions on grant research money through the DOE to researchers to work on alt. energy.
I think it should be billions, and not millions, but that's my own opinion. People love to say that you can't just throw money at a problem, but sometimes, maybe even most of the time, money DOES bring about a faster solution. It's a matter of HOW that money is used.
What I'd love to see is either a X-Prize styled research initiative, increased research grant spending, or outright subsidizing of the alt. energy industry. You think all those airlines got funding to buy planes from banks to start? or Fed Ex and UPS to buy their shipping planes? No, the government loaned them massive amounts of money for it. I don't see why this is automatically seen as a bad thing today, especially when it's in the best interests of the nation for the government to do so.
As far as the X-Prize thing, I mean have the government set up a fund. Say that the deadline is 2015, and whoever comes up with whatever set standard we have for cost effectiveness and energy production through whatever means gets a $2 billion dollar prize. This promotes outside the box thinking. A lot of great inventions we have today were created in someone's basement. PV cells are ever gaining in how much energy they produce per square inch of cell size, new designs for wind power are creating smaller, quieter, more efficient turbines (that don't have birdstrike issues), etc etc.
The government needs to get more involved not directly in research, but by calling more players to the table and getting the rest of the nation involved. I think innovation is at its peak when the government does just that.
fugu -
quote:If you think you aren't going to get value out of it equal to the amount it costs, you shouldn't go.
I think that opens up a separate issue on how ridiculous it is for (alright I'm talking about education mostly here) us to expect people to be college educated in order to do low paying jobs.
And the last FAFSA I filled out did NOT ask for debt, it asked for net worth, total savings and such minus debt. It's incredibly vague. It makes no separation of those truly at 0, and those 50,000 in debt or what not. I don't think kids should have to pay for their parents being horrible at their personal finances.
I like the rest of what you had to say on the subject. Lack of knowledge on how the system works, and on available funding holds too many kids back.
quote:Similarly bad. We're doing perfectly fine at education by any measure that looks at the overall success of the system.
There are more black men in prison than in college. I think I might take issue with your criteria for success.
But I agree that lengthening the school year won't address these problems.
_________
quote:If you think you aren't going to get value out of it equal to the amount it costs, you shouldn't go.
What if the value you get isn't clearly remunerative? This attitude is what biases educational concerns to those areas that earn, concern, or attract money, leaving the study of the humanities to atrophy, which has long term and subtle public policy effects, including public support for ill-concieved wars.
In his time, Fulbright said quite a few good and bad things, but one of this is one of his gems:
quote:To me, the irony of this involvement with size, as I observed earlier, is the unwillingness or inability of so many Americans to identify themselves with something as vast as the United States. Bigger cars, bigger parking lots, bigger corporate structures, bigger farms, bigger drug stores, bigger supermarkets, bigger motion-picture screens. The tangible and the functional expand, while the intangible and the beautiful shrink. Left to wither is the national purpose, national educational needs, literature and theater, and our critical faculties. The national dialogue is gradually being lost in a froth of misleading self-congratulation and cliché. National needs and interests are slowly being submerged by the national preoccupation with the irrelevant.
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Irami: I should clarify, I'm talking about those people who do finish the system, and the population overall after said education. I agree there are people being failed by our system, but that doesn't mean both the people who make it through aren't doing fine compared to their counterparts in other countries, and that our population on the whole isn't doing fine in a similar comparison.
As for the value of college, who said anything about it being purely monetary? Now, there is a theoretical case where the total cost of loans taken out would be prohibitively beyond the ability of someone working a low-paying job to pay back -- except that student loan programs have an option to pay back money based on a percentage of income, which is well within the capabilities of someone working as, for instance, a teacher. Again, if the value (monetary or otherwise) of college isn't worth, say, $20k in loans (anyone willing to work a significant part time job and go to an in-state state college can get through college on $20k in loans, and likely less), then don't go. I should think you'd strongly agree that at least some parts of college are worth more than $20k, since according to you they are worth infinite sums. And $20k is a perfectly manageable sum of student loans.
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quote:If I may ask, how are you affording your college education Belle? If I had to guess, I'd say day time job and going to night school?
I do not work. My husband works two jobs to support our family and the money from college comes right out of our family budget. According to the financial aid office, he makes too much money for me to qualify for any type of aid. *shrug*
Actually, compared to most people, we are in pretty good shape. It didn't fall in our laps, I did work for many years and my husband averages about 70 hours a week working to keep us in the situation we're currently in, and it sure would help if I could get some kind of financial aid. Paying for my college means that we aren't able to put aside money for our kids college, so right now we plan for me to graduate, start working, and then paying for college for our oldest out of my salary.
My point is we have a busy life and a large family but we manage to pay for college because we make it a priority. Paying tuition comes before paying for vacations or buying a new tv or furniture or a new car. When I went back to school we downgraded our vehicle, from a top-of-the-line minivan with all the bells and whistles to a strictly serviceable GMC Safari so we could save money on our car payment and put it toward tuition.
quote:Community College severely limits your career opportunities. I can't be a teacher by going to a community college, I couldn't be an engineer, or a doctor, etc, etc.
I wasn't clear, I meant that one could start out in community college for the first two years, because it's so much less expensive, then transfer for the last years to a 4 year institution. That's what I did, I finished all my lower level requirements at a community college that was half the tuition cost of the state school I'm attending now. Also, there are lots of transfer scholarships available because four year schools are competing for those junior college graduates and it opens up more opportunities. What I'm trying to point out is that just because you can't afford to go to the number one school on your preference list doesn't mean you can't still get a great education by starting at junior college, and then transferring to a state school.
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