Whack of the Week: Santorum

My whack of the week is Rick Santorum for his view on higher education.  Recently on the campaign trail, Santorum blasted Obama for wanting people to go to school and suggested that higher education, because he considers all of it "liberal" should not be supported by the government.  http://bit.ly/xFcDwk.  Is he serious?  How can we compete in this world with just plumbers and janitors and personal trainers (although I love and respect plumbers and janitors and I am a personal trainer ;-)  How out of touch can he be to suggest that higher education is a liberal plot to remake Americans in Obama's image???  Our higher education system is one of the best in the world, and having been through a whole line of them (fortunately for my knowledge and unfortunately for my debt) I know that they teach knowledge not some propaganda.  And if liberal is another word for educated... that means that conservative means uneducated and closed minded.  I do not believe that, of course, but drawing the connection between education and liberal values is ridiculous! 

The other issue he has brought up is that our public school system eats 11% of our budget (as opposed to over 40% spent on military) and he thinks it is too little, because we still have problems with it. So he wants to eliminate Department of Education.  It seems like Santorum is deciding to wage the War on Education, in the same way that Regan started the War on Drugs.  Now, our public school system IS broken (though I certainly received good education from it.)  But it is not because we spend too much money on it.  It is because we spend the WRONG money on it.  In this century of globalization our public schools are still funded by property taxes in most communities.  This might have made sense in 1800s but it hardly makes sense today.  Because of this, poor neighborhoods have poor schools and rich neighborhoods have good schools, perpetuating and widening the educational divide between have and have nots.  Our strategy should be to nationalize the financing of schools, where every school gets the same funding, but localize what is taught in the schools, so that teachers can do their job and parents have a chance to adjust the curriculum.  Every other developed nation has public schools funded like this and that is why American public education is falling behind. 

What say you, Bill?

WHACK OF THE WEEK-Italian Politics

For the last week, I have been traveling in Italy. It is my last BC vacation (before child) and my wife and I are enjoying it.

One thing that I have noticed in Italy is that the level of messed up politics far exceeds that of US. Talk to Italians about their political system and you consistently get a Whack Em All sentiment. Their biggest complaint--corruption. Think about it-despite all of the political differences in US, we rarely bring out corruption as our biggest issue. To say it in another way- we in US argue about how much money government can spend and on what. In Italy the question is how much money reaches the treasury to begin with.

This issue of politicians siphoning money of the top is even worth in developing countries-serving as one of the largest reason for suffering economy. And when the population does not have faith in the government they are much more likely not to pay taxes. That is what we found in Italy-many hotels want cash only to avoid paying taxes, which again decreases money in the coffers, creating a vicious cycle.

So lets give our political system its due - Americans have more integrity and trust in their government than many other countries... for now.

     

Whack of the Week - Timothy Geithner

Recently, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the wealthier individuals should pay higher taxes as a "burden of the privilege of being an American."

First off, being an American isn't a privilege granted by a benevolent government. It is our right by virtue of our having been born or naturalized here, and the government is there to work for us not the other way around. It's also an equal right. The homeless guy at the soup kitchen and the dot-com billionaire each have exactly the same right to call themselves Americans and neither one can be stripped of that because someone doesn't feel they are contributing their fair share.

Ideally, I'd like to see a flat tax. That's the most fair to everyone. If you make a dollar, you contribute X% to the running of the government regardless of whether it's your first dollar or your millionth. I don't know whether or not such a flat tax would be practical (I've certainly seen people who've looked more closely at the numbers than me argue both sides.) Even if it's not practical, though, it's still the most fair, and we should be striving to get as close to that as possible. Instead, tax policy is being used to divide the country along class lines, and that never ends well. So, instead of just talking about how the wealthy should be paying more, let's look at comprehensive reform of both tax and spending policy and find a way for everyone to pay a fair share for a sustainable set of government services.