The fact that AOC commented on and was know to have commented on Uvaldes's budget is a huge problem for Democrats. We are NOT a small, ideologically coherent party and candidates need to be able to appeal to the median voter of their districts. For the Republican candidate for Congress that represents Uvalde to be able to run against AOC [In fact he'll run against some Muslim Atheist Communist caricature that is even worse than AOC :)] instead of the local Democrat is a big advantage.
We do ourselves no favors by nationalizing issues unnecessarily.
During the pandemic, we learned that teacher unions would happily outsource the entire education portion of their jobs to parents and the kids themselves if you let them. In SF, Chicago, and other big cities, the teacher unions were happy to have teachers on zoom pretending to teach, fighting against vaccine mandates, and otherwise abandoning their job.
Public school is de facto public daycare for kids 4-18, with actual education as a nice to have side effect. They are basically “cops for kids”. There are exceptions of course, usually outliers where a good PTA in a wealthier community demands better. But most schools are abysmal at their core functions.
Not unlike police who fight things like automated traffic enforcement because taking away that function would mean they have to do the actual job of solving crimes v handing out tickets.
Both are noble occupations that systemically drive out ambitious well meaning people, leaving behind mediocre rule followers who are willing to stay for a moderately well paying union gig.
The slow boring solution is a popular grand bargain: defund the teacher *and* police unions, on the premise that, like the military, those functions are too important to let a union fuck them up.
In terms of education funding levels and policy reforms to improve quality, I think Freddie deBoer has provided a fair amount of valuable critique over the years. His basic thesis is that out-of-school factors dominate (accepted by Yglesias [1]) and almost no education interventions are found to have long term effects on student performance and life outcomes.
> This point is both totally banal and yet potentially revelatory given our educational policy conversations: mobility of individual students in quantitative academic metrics relative to their peers over time is far lower than popularly believed. Students sort themselves into an ability hierarchy at a very early age and tend to stay in their position in that hierarchy for the remainder of their lives, to a remarkable degree. The children identified as the smart kids early in elementary school will, with surprising regularity, maintain that position throughout schooling.
> Most everybody stays in about the same place relative to peers over academic careers. The consequences of this are immense, as it is this relative position, not learning itself, which is rewarded with economic gain by our society.
> The persistence of relative academic performance is remarkable. Standardized test scores collected at the age of thirteen are strong predictors of not just future high school and college educational performance but adult outcomes like academic career milestones and economic position, even after adjusting for parental income.
I’ve never been particularly comfortable with this critique and its implications. Yet I think it is important when we put so much focus on K-12 education as a means of improving society, including decreasing social inequalities. deBoer’s critique suggests we should decrease the emphasis on education and focus more on income redistribution.
They're both good examples of places where we've long since stopped seeing meaningful returns from increasing funding. Public sector unions are far too capable of absorbing any new resources we might attempt to direct to outcomes at these institutions. No amount of funding, no matter where it's coming from, will escape the rent-seekers pockets so long as their stranglehold is unchallenged.
Its a big shame that there's no political movement in the US to ban school districts from choosing students based on their address. It would've done wonders for equality in the US, as currently people are paying through the nose to live in a "good" school district, resulting in a big divide between the rich and the poor. If school spots were instead allocated by lottery alone, there would be much less incentive to cluster around "good" schools and the poorest family would have a fair chance to apply to whatever school they want.
On the story of Kerr County residents not living in any city, we notoriously have a group of these people here, too. They despise even having to write Boise on their address, as they cannot stand Boise and the allegedly outrageous taxes they charge, and prefer to be called the Southwest Ada County Alliance. They have long fought tooth and nail to resist any sort of annexation effort by Boise.
So it was quite ironically funny when they absolutely lost their shit over Boise wanting to turn a piece of farmland the city itself owns nearby this area into housing. They demanded it become a very large park instead, despite the fact that they very blatantly do not want to be Boise citizens.
I've been really struck lately about how rhetoric from the left and right on cops and teachers these days is almost a mirror-image. For instance, over the years we've often seen conservatives point to some failing in the public school system and argue "see, this just proves that this is all a waste of money, more parents should move their kids into private and parochial schools instead," while the liberal counterargument is, "no, public schools are necessary and irreplaceable and we need to put more resources into them." But on cops it's the reverse: so many progressives (not even far-left agitators but relatively mainstream voices who don't have two feet on the "defund" wagon but will make anti-anti-defund arguments) have been pointing to Uvalde, or to evidence of cops laying down on the job via "soft strikes", and arguing: "see this just proves that cops add no value at all."
Personally, I say the liberal argument on public schools is *mostly* right, and the exact same logic should apply to cops.
Looking at spending on a GDP basis is one good way to look at the spending, but a few questions. 1) For many of the other countries in your graphs are both police and education spending calculated the same way as spending in the USA? Are all the same hard costs included (like buildings and upkeep, do other countries include k-12 sport stadiums for football, basketball etc.)? Are the same soft costs included - where are the retirement costs for teachers and police for the different countries? 2. For other countries are both police and education all done on a national level? That is, are there no local taxation and variances in either category for most other countries as there are in the USA? So that in the USA there can be wide variances in spending from tax district to tax district, but in other countries little difference province to province? 3. How do different taxing districts in the USA stack up against the other countries on a per student or per policemen basis?
It’s also be interesting to know how much the US spends per student in a publicly funded school, compared to other developed countries. My guess is that we have a larger minority of students in private/parochial schools than many of the European countries (either because those schools don’t exist much in some countries or because they receive public funding), so the actual spending that a US public school student benefits from is higher.
And it’d be interesting to know how much we spend on major categories: teacher salary, overhead, capex, retiree pensions. If a third of our spending is going to administration and the underfunded pensions of Boomers, while only serving 85% of the school-age population, then our spending is not so great. But it’s hard to find good apples-to-apples data!
I think the US has the second highest murder rate in that list of countries after tiny Costa Rica. The Baltic countries are quite high but are much smaller than the USA in terms of population. A sensible move would be to greatly increase the spending on cops in the US - well above Hungary - with the extra cops targeted where they are especially needed.
I rarely see this put forward as a solution who want dramatically more k-12 funding but it seems to me that in the states that I'm familiar with their laws, school districts are treated like JV governments that basically have to get voter approval to raise any revenue greater than a bake sale. If we let school district's governing bodies make those decisions on their own and then let the board members face the voters in those decisions, I'm confident K-12 spending would be higher.
The US/Japan comparison piqued my interest and I was struck by the big disparity in societal investments: for combined primary/secondary education, police and defense, the US spends 7.7% of GDP compared to only 4% for Japan.
I was wondering what Japan does with that windfall and still don't know, but I looked up healthcare spending and was awestruck again at the differences: 20% of GDP for the US versus 11% for Japan, dwarfing that other difference.
Now we're talking about a *huge* difference in societal investment. I hope some smart SB person can tell me where Japan makes the disproportionately large GDP investments compared to the US. I couldn't readily find it. (Apparently 22% of total Japanese spending goes for retirees but I couldn't find a comparable aggregate number for the US -- much smaller, I'd assume.)
P.S. Spielberg and Kushner did not "brilliantly" remake West Side Story but instead did a tired, cliched retread much inferior to the original. I'll take that stand to my dying day.
On the education front it is important to note that the US is also a much richer country than most of the OECD, so it spends FAR more per-pupil than many places. Per-pupil we spend 50% more than Germany or New Zealand.
The fact that AOC commented on and was know to have commented on Uvaldes's budget is a huge problem for Democrats. We are NOT a small, ideologically coherent party and candidates need to be able to appeal to the median voter of their districts. For the Republican candidate for Congress that represents Uvalde to be able to run against AOC [In fact he'll run against some Muslim Atheist Communist caricature that is even worse than AOC :)] instead of the local Democrat is a big advantage.
We do ourselves no favors by nationalizing issues unnecessarily.
During the pandemic, we learned that teacher unions would happily outsource the entire education portion of their jobs to parents and the kids themselves if you let them. In SF, Chicago, and other big cities, the teacher unions were happy to have teachers on zoom pretending to teach, fighting against vaccine mandates, and otherwise abandoning their job.
Public school is de facto public daycare for kids 4-18, with actual education as a nice to have side effect. They are basically “cops for kids”. There are exceptions of course, usually outliers where a good PTA in a wealthier community demands better. But most schools are abysmal at their core functions.
Not unlike police who fight things like automated traffic enforcement because taking away that function would mean they have to do the actual job of solving crimes v handing out tickets.
Both are noble occupations that systemically drive out ambitious well meaning people, leaving behind mediocre rule followers who are willing to stay for a moderately well paying union gig.
The slow boring solution is a popular grand bargain: defund the teacher *and* police unions, on the premise that, like the military, those functions are too important to let a union fuck them up.
“ I’m a defender of our higher education finance setup”
Future mailbag question perhaps, but do you ever change your mind in response to audience criticism?
That was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad take and remains one.
In terms of education funding levels and policy reforms to improve quality, I think Freddie deBoer has provided a fair amount of valuable critique over the years. His basic thesis is that out-of-school factors dominate (accepted by Yglesias [1]) and almost no education interventions are found to have long term effects on student performance and life outcomes.
I believe this is best summarized in deBoer’s article “Education Doesn't Work”, https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-doesnt-work?s=r
> This point is both totally banal and yet potentially revelatory given our educational policy conversations: mobility of individual students in quantitative academic metrics relative to their peers over time is far lower than popularly believed. Students sort themselves into an ability hierarchy at a very early age and tend to stay in their position in that hierarchy for the remainder of their lives, to a remarkable degree. The children identified as the smart kids early in elementary school will, with surprising regularity, maintain that position throughout schooling.
> Most everybody stays in about the same place relative to peers over academic careers. The consequences of this are immense, as it is this relative position, not learning itself, which is rewarded with economic gain by our society.
> The persistence of relative academic performance is remarkable. Standardized test scores collected at the age of thirteen are strong predictors of not just future high school and college educational performance but adult outcomes like academic career milestones and economic position, even after adjusting for parental income.
I’ve never been particularly comfortable with this critique and its implications. Yet I think it is important when we put so much focus on K-12 education as a means of improving society, including decreasing social inequalities. deBoer’s critique suggests we should decrease the emphasis on education and focus more on income redistribution.
[1] https://www.slowboring.com/p/more-good-news-about-dcs-teacher?s=r, “school performance is dominated by out-of-school factors.”
They're both good examples of places where we've long since stopped seeing meaningful returns from increasing funding. Public sector unions are far too capable of absorbing any new resources we might attempt to direct to outcomes at these institutions. No amount of funding, no matter where it's coming from, will escape the rent-seekers pockets so long as their stranglehold is unchallenged.
Its a big shame that there's no political movement in the US to ban school districts from choosing students based on their address. It would've done wonders for equality in the US, as currently people are paying through the nose to live in a "good" school district, resulting in a big divide between the rich and the poor. If school spots were instead allocated by lottery alone, there would be much less incentive to cluster around "good" schools and the poorest family would have a fair chance to apply to whatever school they want.
On the story of Kerr County residents not living in any city, we notoriously have a group of these people here, too. They despise even having to write Boise on their address, as they cannot stand Boise and the allegedly outrageous taxes they charge, and prefer to be called the Southwest Ada County Alliance. They have long fought tooth and nail to resist any sort of annexation effort by Boise.
So it was quite ironically funny when they absolutely lost their shit over Boise wanting to turn a piece of farmland the city itself owns nearby this area into housing. They demanded it become a very large park instead, despite the fact that they very blatantly do not want to be Boise citizens.
I've been really struck lately about how rhetoric from the left and right on cops and teachers these days is almost a mirror-image. For instance, over the years we've often seen conservatives point to some failing in the public school system and argue "see, this just proves that this is all a waste of money, more parents should move their kids into private and parochial schools instead," while the liberal counterargument is, "no, public schools are necessary and irreplaceable and we need to put more resources into them." But on cops it's the reverse: so many progressives (not even far-left agitators but relatively mainstream voices who don't have two feet on the "defund" wagon but will make anti-anti-defund arguments) have been pointing to Uvalde, or to evidence of cops laying down on the job via "soft strikes", and arguing: "see this just proves that cops add no value at all."
Personally, I say the liberal argument on public schools is *mostly* right, and the exact same logic should apply to cops.
Looking at spending on a GDP basis is one good way to look at the spending, but a few questions. 1) For many of the other countries in your graphs are both police and education spending calculated the same way as spending in the USA? Are all the same hard costs included (like buildings and upkeep, do other countries include k-12 sport stadiums for football, basketball etc.)? Are the same soft costs included - where are the retirement costs for teachers and police for the different countries? 2. For other countries are both police and education all done on a national level? That is, are there no local taxation and variances in either category for most other countries as there are in the USA? So that in the USA there can be wide variances in spending from tax district to tax district, but in other countries little difference province to province? 3. How do different taxing districts in the USA stack up against the other countries on a per student or per policemen basis?
"inaccurate facts"
What's that, the progressive version of "alternative facts"?
"fights are conducted with guns versus knives and bludgeons."
Never bring a bludgeon to a gun fight.
It’s also be interesting to know how much the US spends per student in a publicly funded school, compared to other developed countries. My guess is that we have a larger minority of students in private/parochial schools than many of the European countries (either because those schools don’t exist much in some countries or because they receive public funding), so the actual spending that a US public school student benefits from is higher.
And it’d be interesting to know how much we spend on major categories: teacher salary, overhead, capex, retiree pensions. If a third of our spending is going to administration and the underfunded pensions of Boomers, while only serving 85% of the school-age population, then our spending is not so great. But it’s hard to find good apples-to-apples data!
I think the US has the second highest murder rate in that list of countries after tiny Costa Rica. The Baltic countries are quite high but are much smaller than the USA in terms of population. A sensible move would be to greatly increase the spending on cops in the US - well above Hungary - with the extra cops targeted where they are especially needed.
But that won't happen.
I rarely see this put forward as a solution who want dramatically more k-12 funding but it seems to me that in the states that I'm familiar with their laws, school districts are treated like JV governments that basically have to get voter approval to raise any revenue greater than a bake sale. If we let school district's governing bodies make those decisions on their own and then let the board members face the voters in those decisions, I'm confident K-12 spending would be higher.
The US/Japan comparison piqued my interest and I was struck by the big disparity in societal investments: for combined primary/secondary education, police and defense, the US spends 7.7% of GDP compared to only 4% for Japan.
I was wondering what Japan does with that windfall and still don't know, but I looked up healthcare spending and was awestruck again at the differences: 20% of GDP for the US versus 11% for Japan, dwarfing that other difference.
Now we're talking about a *huge* difference in societal investment. I hope some smart SB person can tell me where Japan makes the disproportionately large GDP investments compared to the US. I couldn't readily find it. (Apparently 22% of total Japanese spending goes for retirees but I couldn't find a comparable aggregate number for the US -- much smaller, I'd assume.)
P.S. Spielberg and Kushner did not "brilliantly" remake West Side Story but instead did a tired, cliched retread much inferior to the original. I'll take that stand to my dying day.
On the education front it is important to note that the US is also a much richer country than most of the OECD, so it spends FAR more per-pupil than many places. Per-pupil we spend 50% more than Germany or New Zealand.