I'm not a rich person, but the tax cut on dividends helped me and my family, just like it helped small investors and retired people everywhere. Some of you guys don't seem to understand that capitalism depends on "capital" -- in order to run a company and give people jobs, you have to have money, and you get money by selling stock in your company. There has to be an incentive for me to buy your stock, and if you can pay me a dividend without me getting taxed to death, then that's an incentive.

As for education, I was educated when there was NO federal support for education whatsoever. I'm still waiting for somebody to show me how it's helped.

Thanks, OO, however I understand that my reply was as simplistic as the previous remarks. These issues are really complicated. I was just annoyed by the assumption that all conservatives are anti-evolution, anti-education rich bigots. And what any of it has to do with online education escapes me.

LVN wrote:

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I'm not a rich person, but the tax cut on dividends helped me and my family, just like it helped small investors and retired people everywhere. Some of you guys don't seem to understand that capitalism depends on "capital" -- in order to run a company and give people jobs, you have to have money, and you get money by selling stock in your company. There has to be an incentive for me to buy your stock, and if you can pay me a dividend without me getting taxed to death, then that's an incentive. As for education, I was educated when there was NO federal support for education whatsoever. I'm still waiting for somebody to show me how it's helped.

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With all due respect, LVN, and without any intention of attacking you, I must point out that "rich" is relative.  Everyone is rich compared to those who have less and poor relative to those who have more.  The way to see how education helps is to try the opposite, a very expensive experiment in a capitalist democracy because the outcome is dictatorships.  From where I come from, if you were able to get a university education without outside help then your family was "rich" by definition.

589 West wrote:

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LVN wrote: I'm not a rich person, but the tax cut on dividends helped me and my family, just like it helped small investors and retired people everywhere. Some of you guys don't seem to understand that capitalism depends on "capital" -- in order to run a company and give people jobs, you have to have money, and you get money by selling stock in your company. There has to be an incentive for me to buy your stock, and if you can pay me a dividend without me getting taxed to death, then that's an incentive. As for education, I was educated when there was NO federal support for education whatsoever. I'm still waiting for somebody to show me how it's helped. Agree. Look at how funding per student has risen since 1950 and you'll see an inverse correlation between funding and true education. We hear a lot about the fact that not many Mississippians finish high school and even fewer get a college degree. The issue with the high school problem is not one that money can solve. Until families make it a priority and an expectation that their children obtain a complete high school education, money will do no good at all. If a Mississippi high school education were a real high school education, the college issue wouldn't be as much of an issue. It's a cultural problem (not a racial problem or an economic problem). Very few high school age students have to drop out of school to help support the family. Choices are made that eliminate educational opportunities, and these choices need to be "preached" to these kids as BAD from a young age. Proper expectations will go a lot farther than money will.

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You are correct, 589 West, in that the "culture" is the ultimate cause.  How do you change that?  Have the state take over the parenting of children or, heaven forbid, a faith-based organization do the parenting?  However the state can assist the poor to get an education.  The problem occurs when the schools try to run themselves as a capitalistic business and maximizes their funding from the state by passing as many students through as possible.  The problem is the same as with FEMA, no quality controls.

LVN wrote:

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I'm not a rich person, but the tax cut on dividends helped me and my family, just like it helped small investors and retired people everywhere. Some of you guys don't seem to understand that capitalism depends on "capital" -- in order to run a company and give people jobs, you have to have money, and you get money by selling stock in your company. There has to be an incentive for me to buy your stock, and if you can pay me a dividend without me getting taxed to death, then that's an incentive. As for education, I was educated when there was NO federal support for education whatsoever. I'm still waiting for somebody to show me how it's helped.

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LVN -- There has always been federal support for higher education . . .  it was just more embedded than it is now. Once upon a time there was a lot more public (federal and state) money available to students and NOT just in the form of loans . . . that is how many of us got through college in the late sixties and seventies without mortgaging ourt futures to get our degrees. Once upon a time the percentage of public money going to support state institutions of higher ed was larger as well. We now have a system of public assisted universities, not public universities.

Angeline wrote:

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LVN wrote: I'm not a rich person, but the tax cut on dividends helped me and my family, just like it helped small investors and retired people everywhere. Some of you guys don't seem to understand that capitalism depends on "capital" -- in order to run a company and give people jobs, you have to have money, and you get money by selling stock in your company. There has to be an incentive for me to buy your stock, and if you can pay me a dividend without me getting taxed to death, then that's an incentive. As for education, I was educated when there was NO federal support for education whatsoever. I'm still waiting for somebody to show me how it's helped. LVN: I like your responses throughout the life of this board but respectfully disagree with you on these issues.  It is quite apparent that the powers-that-be in Washington and this state are trying to pass the entire social services, tax, debt, and educational burden to working class and middle class individuals like you and me.   Meanwhile they spend OUR money in the billions on unwanted wars, bridges to nowhere, pork, pork, pork.  Now such corrupt policies may sound nice in a "everyone needs to take responsibility for their own actions" sort of way, but it means that the middle class - forget the poor altogether - will increasingly be unable to afford healthcare, education, gas, food, housing and so on.  Last I checked those are basic necessities in the USA.  If the Republicans - and many Democrat lackeys - do not want government to exist to help people - what other purpose is there for government? - then they need to step aside and let people govern who actually have the constituents' and average persons' interests at heart.

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It was apparent to me as a student back in the seventies from the rhetoric in Washington that the student loan system is designed to create the kind of future indebtedness that will make any student reluctant to ever again take on the government the way happened beginning in 1964. The version that was sold was that the system of public support for higher education had freed students from sensing their obligation to the state and provided them with too much leisure time to get into trouble . . .  it also created way too many of those liberal arts majors, who have way too many disruptive ideas. It also created an "educated elite." (How weird since that elite came from the ranks of the lower and lower middle class society that could never afford college before).

So . . . to create a lot of indebtedness . . . is an automatic pail of cold water on questioning authority . . .  students who have to work half or full time jobs to avoid indebtedness are too busy to do much more than take classes . . .  or they end up filling the ranks of new, more pragmatic careers in which the role is to ease students into the society as it exists rather than provoking questioning about the society that we might achieve . . .

The end result is eliminating the conditions that made student unrest in the sixties possible . . . and of course, lump into that the ending of draft.

 

 

Stephen, I got student loans when there was a liberal Democrat president and it didn't effect my personal politics one whit. I think you're really reaching here.
I was a bureaucrat under three or four presidents, and nothing my agency did ever related to anybody's politics. My student loans except for one small batch were administered by private banks and merely insured by the feds.

LVN wrote:

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And Vict, I am NOT a "Republikan," and I really do resent the implication in that. Ya know I love ya, man, but that's over the edge.

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Lighten up, kiddo. I insulted Democraps as well in my post. Seems to me that there isn't a helluva lot of difference between one career politician & the next except what they tell people they believe in order to get themselves elected. Most of 'em don't believe anything at all & they don't even believe that unless there's money in it!

≶ATYPICAL NON-DYLAN QUOTE>
"Raise your glass to the hard working people,
 Let's drink to the uncounted heads,
 Let's think of the wavering millions,
 Who need leading but get gamblers instead.
 Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
 Whose empty eyes stare at strange beauty shows,
 And a parade of grey-suited grafters,
 A choice of cancer or polio."

-- Jagger/Richards, "Salt of the Earth"
≶/ATYPICAL NON-DYLAN QUOTE>

Revisiting my post, I do believe I may have insulted Methodists as well. And by omission, I've probably offended the Baptists, Presbyterians & Black Bumper Mennonites, too.

LVN wrote:

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 I was just annoyed by the assumption that all conservatives are anti-evolution

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That's just one misconception to which the far left subscribes about conservatives.

Mr. Scrooge wrote:

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I hate to rain on the parade, but there is little or no evidence that spending more money on education makes any difference in measured achievement. Mississippi has doubled expenditures on K-12 education over the past 15 years. Are your students any different? The explanation for some wealthy states which spend lots of money on education and do well on test scores is usually plenty of educated, high earning parents and a limited minority population.

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http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/fall2004/class.html

The RAND CORP is hardly a bastion of throw money at 'em solutions. This study concludes it is poverty (socio-economic status) that is perhaps the most relevant factor to student achievement (not minority status). This is not a unique finding. I'll send some funding research that I have seen later when I get home (if I remember). My kid is graduating tomorrow from USM with a Music Industry degree, so we are meeting at the Walnut Circle for chow. I have been very displeased, as a parent, with the treatment of the MI students and the program (it has been trashed). One of my colleagues in music suggested that I write a letter. To whom? Who in music or the academic side in A&L admin would care at this point?  

Mitch wrote:

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Mr. Scrooge wrote: I hate to rain on the parade, but there is little or no evidence that spending more money on education makes any difference in measured achievement. Mississippi has doubled expenditures on K-12 education over the past 15 years. Are your students any different? The explanation for some wealthy states which spend lots of money on education and do well on test scores is usually plenty of educated, high earning parents and a limited minority population. http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/fall2004/class.html The RAND CORP is hardly a bastion of throw money at 'em solutions. This study concludes it is poverty (socio-economic status) that is perhaps the most relevant factor to student achievement (not minority status). This is not a unique finding. I'll send some funding research that I have seen later when I get home (if I remember). My kid is graduating tomorrow from USM with a Music Industry degree, so we are meeting at the Walnut Circle for chow. I have been very displeased, as a parent, with the treatment of the MI students and the program (it has been trashed). One of my colleagues in music suggested that I write a letter. To whom? Who in music or the academic side in A&L admin would care at this point?  

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Actually Mitch, it hasn't been trashed but it has taken a different form -- becoming the entertainment industries major. My understanding is that it continues to include music as one component of a larger career track. From the little that I know from my perspective in theatre, the issue of training students (especially those oriented toward technical and equipment areas) has actually opened up into many possiblities beyond discreet disciplines -- soemthing that technology has made possible. I cannot say that was all of the thinking behind this chnage, but I think that the chnage is certainly consistent with the direction of related fields.

stephen judd wrote:

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 Actually Mitch, it hasn't been trashed but it has taken a different form -- becoming the entertainment industries major. My understanding is that it continues to include music as one component of a larger career track. From the little that I know from my perspective in theatre, the issue of training students (especially those oriented toward technical and equipment areas) has actually opened up into many possiblities beyond discreet disciplines -- soemthing that technology has made possible. I cannot say that was all of the thinking behind this chnage, but I think that the chnage is certainly consistent with the direction of related fields.

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Stephen:

That would be a good direction to take, if that was what actually happened during my kid's time at USM (and industry experience is what was promised). There were a number of major glitches in this program over the last few years that actually trashed the industry component for my kid. In fact, the current program people were virtually useless in helping my kid obtain an internship. It may be okay in the future (but don't hold your breath), but it was grossly mismanaged during my kid's time here. She regrets coming here, in fact (the program, however, held great promise during her first year). I can give you the inside scoop when I see you. As is the usual story, it involves shabby treatment of both junior faculty and students and really poor planning. What's my kid to do? She will attend law school next fall, but her experience in higher ed in Mississippi has soured her to the idea of attending law school here. I stayed out of it (I didn't want to contribute to the whiny parent syndrome at USM in which parents hassle faculty for their adult children). But now that it's over, I can say that I would never recommend the program to another prospective student. You can also bet that if Dr. M. Stringer was large and in charge, this nonsense would not have happened. Do I sound unhappy? You bet. My kid got the affordable education promised by Roy Klumb, absence the quality component.

?Some will cry foul and say quit injecting "politics" into this board, but anyone supportive of quality education cannot be pleased with these actions. Do these politicians really represent the people who elected them?

I am supportive of quality education and public education. However, anyone who believes that there is a high correlation between additional spending by congress and quality education still believes in the tooth fairy. Education is a process similar to a productive process where educated human beings are the output. Money to support education is necessary but not sufficient alone as an input. As noted by other posters, much the contribution to the process of education must come from the one becoming educated. As also noted, culture can be a very important component in determining how much the person seeking education is contributing to the process. The marginal impact of the "cuts" in education will be very small or negligible given the overall quality of the secondary public system. Conversely, increasing the funding has not improved quality in the past. One other factor that is not evident from the press article is if the "cut" is a reduction in the total budget, or a reduction in the growth of increase. Many reporters cannot discern between the two. Putting it into words that faculty would quickly grasp, has your salary been reduced, or is the increase in your salary less than last year? If, as I suspect, the cut is a reduction in growth, perhaps we could then discuss the appropriate rate of increase in education budgets rather than being upset over a reduction in the total outlay that did not happen.