It's when I see things like this that I'm tempted to agree with BNW


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Zombieneighbours wrote:

So let me re-phrase the question.

If having a strong welfare state, and high levels of taxation result having higher life expectancy, better maths and literacy scores, lower levels of infant mortality, lower murder rates, lower rates of imprisonment, lower rates of teen pregnancy, more trust for your fellow citizens, lower levels of obesity, fewer mental health issues and more social mobility, what is so hard to swallow about it.

That's a pretty big if.


Both capitalism and socialism are pretty terrible in thier purest forms. Trying to find the proper balance between the two is tricky enough that we are still trying to figure out exactly what it should be.


Sissyl wrote:

Sweden is far from socialistic. Understand this well. What we do have is a high taxation level, a population almost entirely without private savings (the house/apartment is literally all people own, and it's all borrowed for), with even the middle class so poor that pizza consumption rises after every month's wages for that weekend. People can't afford even pizza except right after salary. We also have health care that everyone is entitled to... but you REALLY need to get into the habit of WAITING for it. Not even serious cancer diagnostics and treatments are necessarily done on time... and if you have the money to go private, you're still out of luck. We have a system for higher education where people used to come here because it was FREE. Now, they don't anymore, because foreign students had to pay a pretty low fee for it. Our education level has steadily dropped year by year for ages.

We are no longer where we used to be in the early 80s. If you come here to live, our early 80s isn't what you'll get. You'll get service comparable to most other european countries or slightly above... but you pay through the nose for it too.

There are still things that are brilliant about Sweden. Early and good sex ed, preventatives and abortions. A high level of atheism. About obesity, we are some years behind the US, though getting there. About mental health problems, I seriously doubt there is a significant difference. Social mobility is virtually non-existent.

Social mobility: The OECD disagrees, the latest figures point towards you doing worse than you used to compared to other countries, but your still doing nearly twice as well as the UK, which is only a little worse than the U.S. For the largest part your competion comes form the other European social democracys.

Obesity:
OECD(2005)figures for "Percentage of total population who have a BMI (body mass index) greater than 30 Kg/sq.meters"

America 30.6%
Sweden 9.7%
Your no japan, but your beating most developed nations.

I don't have the mental health stats to hand, and am having trouble finding them online right now, but I will try to get back to them when I am not getting ready for work.


Kryzbyn wrote:
Zombieneighbours wrote:

So let me re-phrase the question.

If having a strong welfare state, and high levels of taxation result having higher life expectancy, better maths and literacy scores, lower levels of infant mortality, lower murder rates, lower rates of imprisonment, lower rates of teen pregnancy, more trust for your fellow citizens, lower levels of obesity, fewer mental health issues and more social mobility, what is so hard to swallow about it.

That's a pretty big if.

Not really.

The evidence is very strong that the northern european social democracys, along with other more equal societies out perform the US on all these.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The US has government involvement/programs in almost all those things now, but it's suddenly supposed to get better?

Color me skeptical.


Kryzbyn wrote:

The US has government involvement/programs in almost all those things now, but it's suddenly supposed to get better?

Color me skeptical.

My impression is your not willing to spend very much on them, that many of them are tendered to private companies, and you don't have the infrastructure to delivery them. I mean, how do you expect to undertake national obesity prevention efforts without a network of hospital it is free to base it out off.

No offence, but america is the last place I would choose to live in the developed world, unless I was superrich then "hey USA FTW"


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Yay!!

This thread somehow transformed into a socialism thread and I had nothing to do with it!


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

It's not for a lack of trying. Our gov't throws lots of cash at education, and has for decades. Throwing money at problems is kind of our forte.

I'm ok with that. Means you won't vote here either, no offense.


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I got your back Doodlebug.


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Kryzbyn wrote:

It's not for a lack of trying. Our gov't throws lots of cash at education, and has for decades. Throwing money at problems is kind of our forte.

I'm ok with that. Means you won't vote here either, no offense.

Education is seriously underfunded right now. We pay teachers less than bachelor degree starting salaries but require them to have higher education. Their hours of work are greater than most salaried positions. Our schools are degrading arround us. But go ahead and think that they are overfunded. It will solve all our problems. We can just continue throw all of the money at the military.


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Well, at least our military is good at killing people and blowing things up. That's what they're supposed to do.
Looking at our national education scores, what are our teachers good at?
And is it the teacher's fault? Is is their lack of income? Or is it the curriculum, or practices dictated by the NEA? I think it's a combination of all of the above, but very much less so the income.
Kirth could proabably comment on this more, as I believe he left that occupation for a more lucrative one.


The state I live in in crazy for teaching requirements. In New York, you need a Master's Degree to teach at any level if you want a permanent job. And if you try to use what you know while working up from a Bachelor's Degree by substitute teaching, kiss any chances of getting a job that particular school district goodbye. Qualified subs are also in demend, and school districts are unwilling to reduce that pool by hiring them to permanent positions.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Fun story, might be relevant.


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Kryzbyn wrote:
Kirth could proabably comment on this more, as I believe he left that occupation for a more lucrative one.

I'm not sure where to start. When I left teaching for industry, I ended up with half the work load for double the pay, and a lot less stress to boot.

When I was teaching, my kids generally had very good science scores at the end, and more importantly, a modicum of critical thinking ability, but that was in spite of -- rather than a result of -- most policy.

1. "All children are college-bound, and tracking is wrong, bad, and immoral." This meant that brighter kids received nothing more intellectually stimulating than watching Barney. Average kids remained average, and all effort went to bringing the slower kids up to mediocrity, while waiting for the brighter ones to sink to that level out of sheer disuse of their minds.

2. "We can't afford a lawsuit." This meant that bullying parents set policy at will. Their child fails a test? Must be your fault -- you'll be fired next year if you're not already tenured, and brought up for review if you are, on charges of "hurting the child's feelings and thus damaging their self-esteem." The child misbehaves? You'd better not keep the little cherub after school or punish him or her in any way, or mommy will threaten to sue.

3. "We're gonna have to add just one or two more kids to your classes." I taught 36+ kids in a classroom meant for 24, and with enough lab supplies for 20. I offered to give up my planning period and spread the total number of kids out among 6 classes instead of 5, which would have meant only 30 kids in a class! That was fine until the guidance department immediately added 7 more kids to each class, increasing my total student load by 42 kids and leaving me without a planning period besides.

4. "No Child Left Behind." This means that most people simply teach to the year-end standards test, and don't have time for anything outside of that narrow collation of trivia. Worse, teachers' "merit" was based on the IMPROVEMENT of their students' scores from year to year. I had some of the best outcomes in the state: something like 91% average the first year, 93% thereafter. Which meant that, according to the merit scale, I was considered one of the worst teachers in the state because 93% isn't greater than 93% (never mind that it's > almost everyone else's).

5. Pay. Some of my so-called colleagues weren't qualified to flip burgers -- the standards for teachers were so low that you could be clinically brain-dead and still become licensed. But what do you expect? I started in 1995 with a bachelor's degree and 15 credits towards a master's, fully certified, at the princely salary of $20,000 a year. And no, I did not get summers off -- I was always assigned "additional duties," which is part of the contract. Within a few years, the bright teachers figure out that the problems are insurmountable, and most leave as I did. The ones who stay are left with the thankless life of being constantly compared to the mouth-breathers hired to "replace" the ones who bailed.

I hated the NEA, but in honesty couldn't blame them for any of the problems, which were driven at the federal, state, county, and community levels by government and private concerns.


Sissyl wrote:

Sweden is far from socialistic. Understand this well. What we do have is a high taxation level, a population almost entirely without private savings (the house/apartment is literally all people own, and it's all borrowed for), with even the middle class so poor that pizza consumption rises after every month's wages for that weekend. People can't afford even pizza except right after salary. We also have health care that everyone is entitled to... but you REALLY need to get into the habit of WAITING for it. Not even serious cancer diagnostics and treatments are necessarily done on time... and if you have the money to go private, you're still out of luck. We have a system for higher education where people used to come here because it was FREE. Now, they don't anymore, because foreign students had to pay a pretty low fee for it. Our education level has steadily dropped year by year for ages.

We are no longer where we used to be in the early 80s. If you come here to live, our early 80s isn't what you'll get. You'll get service comparable to most other european countries or slightly above... but you pay through the nose for it too.

There are still things that are brilliant about Sweden. Early and good sex ed, preventatives and abortions. A high level of atheism. About obesity, we are some years behind the US, though getting there. About mental health problems, I seriously doubt there is a significant difference. Social mobility is virtually non-existent.

I guess it's in the eye of the beholder.

I hadn't gotten the notion that things were that bad in our brother nation.
Now, most of the things you mention could probably be said of Denmark too, although I'm not that pessimistic about our situation. Yes, we have high taxes, but e.g. waiting time in the health care system isn't bad for anything non-urgent. And we have excellent private hospitals for those who don't mind paying.
I don't mind paying the taxes I pay for the services I get. Sure, there's room for improvement, but show me a country that doesn't fit that category.
I certainly don't recognize your pizza story either. Do we have poor people here? Yes, but nowhere near the levels nor numbers (per capita) that e.g. the US or the UK have.
I'd be hard pressed to find other countries where I'd rather live than here (or in Scandinavia in general). Plus the crazy religious fundies are at a minimum here (just to get it back on track a bit ;-) ).


Kirth Gersen wrote:
2. "We can't afford a lawsuit." This meant that bullying parents set policy at will. Their child fails a test? Must be your fault -- you'll be fired next year if you're not already tenured, and brought up for review if you are, on charges of "hurting the child's feelings and thus damaging their self-esteem." The child misbehaves? You'd better not keep the little cherub after school or punish him or her in any way, or mommy will threaten to sue.

This! Not so much the lawsuits, we're not that frivolous over here ;-), but the whole "it must be the teacher's fault!"

When I started my first education as a... erm, K-12 teacher must be the most fitting comparison, I was horrified at the conditions the teachers had to work under. The most bratty, spoiled and ill-mannered kids and parents who apparently thought it was the school's job to raise the kids and teach them manners.
But not only that, of course their little angels (devils!) couldn't do anything wrong, so it obviously must be the teachers who couldn't do their jobs properly.
I quit that education, didn't need the hassle and drama.


GentleGiant wrote:
Yes, we have high taxes, but e.g. waiting time in the health care system isn't bad for anything non-urgent. And we have excellent private hospitals for those who don't mind paying.

For my health insurance here in the U.S., I pay around $25 per week for a single person, with my employer covering twice what I pay (although standard the employer only pays about half). I'd happily pay that same amount to a national health care system.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

If it would only ever be that much, it would be tempting. But to assume that it would remain so is naive.


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Kryzbyn wrote:
If it would only ever be that much, it would be tempting. But to assume that it would remain so is naive.

Well, the cost of my insurance goes up faster than my wages as it is. 6 of one, a half dozen of the other as far as I'm concerned. Since I have been able to get health insurance through my job, my wages have gone up about 50%. My insurance costs have doubled, and the deductibles have also doubled as well.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Kirth, if all of those other problems you ran into had not been there, would you have been content to teach for what you were making?


I don't think I ever had insurance between dropping out of college and the passing of Romneycare.

Then, I got a job at the airport with a ground-handling company that had just moved into Logan. First year, insurance was free if you were single. The next year, it jumped up to like $35/week. The next year it jumped up again, but by then I had relocated to NH and said "F$!# you, Romneycare!"

Then I got a job at UPS and now I have better benefits then my friends who became lawyers. And it costs me nothing.

U-nion! U-nion! U-nion! U-nion!

[Knocks on wood--contract negotiations begin this fall]


Kryzbyn wrote:
Kirth, if all of those other problems you ran into had not been there, would you have been content to teach for what you were making?

I honestly don't know. I'm a big picture kind of guy; I have to weigh everything together, and then my subconscious (which is much smarter than I am consciously) processes the data and makes the decision for me.

I like my job now, which means that, if you fixed the other problems but kept the salary that low, I still would probably keep doing what I'm doing. (Unless I could move back to northern Europe -- then I'd be a trash man for all I care!).


Kryzbyn wrote:
Kirth, if all of those other problems you ran into had not been there, would you have been content to teach for what you were making?

Teachers are required to have masters degrees in NYS, where I am from. Average teacher salary by state. The average starting salary is crap for that level of education, even assuming its not a bad job. Its not even a good salary for someone with a bachelors.

Edit: and before you start talking about other bennefits, I would like to point out that most private sector jobs I have seen are comprable or better than what starting public employees get at this point. They have been attacked in every contract negotiation for the past 3 decades.


Kryzbyn wrote:

It's not for a lack of trying. Our gov't throws lots of cash at education, and has for decades. Throwing money at problems is kind of our forte.

Yeah, the federal government spends about 4% of its discretionary budget on Education. It spends over 50% on the military. We care at least 13 times as much about killing brown people than we do educating our own citizens, assuming that discretionary spending is a good litmus test as to our priorities.

As to teacher pay, yes paying them more than an utterly laughable sum will help a whole lot. You have to think about it this way, if you pay them a reasonable amount of money, meaning within earshot of the statistical median income of around 38k, you'll attract better talent. The more you pay teachers as a whole, the higher that bar is raised, the more that talented individuals will choose to teach rather than pursue another career option. And the more people you entice to join the ranks of public educators, and the better they are paid, the more you stimulate demand for educated professionals in general.

I'll just bring up my idea for the "big 5". You want to have a free market, laissez-faire capitalist state? Go crazy, have fun, do what you like...as long as the government has these things covered and are free to every citizen:

Defense
Healthcare
Education
Roads
Environmental Protection


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

To be fair, they don't have to be just brown.


meatrace wrote:


As to teacher pay, yes paying them more than an utterly laughable sum will help a whole lot. You have to think about it this way, if you pay them a reasonable amount of money, meaning within earshot of the statistical median income of around 38k, you'll attract better talent. The more you pay teachers as a whole, the higher that bar is raised, the more that talented individuals will choose to teach rather than pursue another career option. And the more people you entice to join the ranks of public educators, and the better they are paid, the more you stimulate demand for educated professionals in general.

You don't have to just assume it either. Finland discovered they were lagging in education and did just that. The reasoning went something along the lines of "We notice that we don't get highly skilled professional types going into teaching. They go into fields like medicine. That's great for medicine because that's important, but teaching is also important. So how about we try compensating teachers like we do doctors?"


But, but teachers are just glorified babysitters.
If they're so great, how come our kids are so dumb?


Kirth Gersen wrote:
...then I'd be a trash man for all I care!

Trash men actually make a decent living over here, but I guess that's because of the crappy work hours they have. :-)


meatrace wrote:

But, but teachers are just glorified babysitters.

I wish! 180 kids * 1 hour/day each * $5/hour for babysitting * 180 school days/year = $162,000 a year! Clearly, a teacher is worth a tiny fracion of what a babysitter is.


Kryzbyn wrote:
If it would only ever be that much, it would be tempting. But to assume that it would remain so is naive.

2000

Rank Nation $/capita %gdp
1 United States: $4,631.00 13.3
16 United Kingdom: $1,764.00 7.3

2008
Rank Nation $/capita %gdp
1 United States 7,164 15.2
19 United Kingdom 3,222 8.7

2009
Rank Nation $/capita %gdp
1 United States 7,960 17.4
16 United Kingdom 3,487 9.8

Looks like both have grown over time, but american expenditure has grown considerably more, and you still spend considerably less on healthcare if you live in the uk.

It is also worth noting that during that period, UK expenditure on health was increasing to undo damage done to it by the Tory party during thatcher's reign of terror.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I think that says more about the value of the dollar, but in the end for the consumer it's the same result, I suppose.


Kirth Gersen wrote:
meatrace wrote:

But, but teachers are just glorified babysitters.

I wish! 180 kids * 1 hour/day each * $5/hour for babysitting * 180 school days/year = $162,000 a year! Clearly, a teacher is worth a tiny fracion of what a babysitter is.

As someone contemplating a career in education, I wholeheartedly endorse these conservative calculations.

My only question is this: will they serve foie gras in the cafeteria?


Well, American schools vary widely from town to township, but all the various threads that have talked about education have been buzzing in the back of my head and I recently picked up Jonathan Kozol's The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.

I started reading it over my vacation, but it was too depressing for vay-kay reading. In the first chapter he's in Bridgeport, CT (I think, don't have in it front of me) and talks about how the kids spend up to three hours a day lining up to go to and from lunch.

In a lot of places, it seems, schools aren't so much babysitting facilities as they are holding pens.


Comrade Anklebiter wrote:
In the first chapter he's in Bridgeport, CT

Bridgeport is a bad town, dude. Like, even I was nervous around there in the '90s. What's bizarre is that Bridgeport directly abuts Fairfield, CT, Money Magazine's 2006 "ninth 'best place to live' in the United States, and the best place to live in the Northeast." Live on one side of the town line, and you have some of the best public schools in the world; on the other side, the holding pen you alluded to.


Kirth Gersen wrote:
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:
In the first chapter he's in Bridgeport, CT

Bridgeport is a bad town, dude. Like, even I was nervous around there in the '90s. What's bizarre is that Bridgeport directly abuts Fairfield, CT, Money Magazine's 2006 "ninth 'best place to live' in the United States, and the best place to live in the Northeast." Live on one side of the town line, and you have some of the best public schools in the world; on the other side, the holding pen you alluded to.

That's working as designed. One always wants a rougher area nearby so as to increase the cachet of the ritzy town and provide a place for all the people who the ritzy town needs to operate to live without bringing down the ritzy town's property values.

Of course if we arranged things sensibly, this sounds like it's clearly one town artificially divided and we ought to merge the both together.


Correction: He does mention Bridgeport, but the school with the lined-up kids (only 2 hours, not 3) was in the South Bronx.

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