This isn't so cut and dry in terms of funding and building up resources in proper schools while expanding the number of teachers and administrators necessary to properly run the system. Spending redistribution certainly is part of it. While we spend more per student on average, where is that coming from? Inner city schools or private richie-rich schools?
Public Schools, mostly. See link below for what (for example) New York pays (over $18K)
Cause your little graph includes BOTH private and public; when it should just be public. I don't doubt that DC spends the most, lots of politicians there and politicians need richie-rich schools to exclude the "riff raff" and blah blah blah.
D.C. public schools are spending more per student than any state in the nation, writing an $18,667 check for each child
I wonder what your numbers would say if it represented only public education
Well, A) I think they might and B) if they don't, then those numbers would
increase due to the fact that private schools are
cheaper per student than public schools.
41 percent of all private elementary and secondary schools — more than 27,000 nationwide — charged less than $2,500 for tuition. Less than 21 percent of all private schools charged more than $5,000 per year in tuition.
Median cost in the DC area for a private school? $4500.
and broke down the demographics between inner city and suburban.
That appears to be mixed:
Among the schools GAO reviewed, differences in per-pupil spending between inner city and suburban schools varied across metropolitan areas, with inner city schools spending more in some metropolitan areas and suburban schools spending more in other areas. The inner city schools that GAO examined generally spent more per pupil than suburban schools in Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis, while in Fort Worth and New York the suburban schools in GAO's study almost always spent more per pupil than the inner city schools. In Denver and Oakland, spending differences between the selected inner city and suburban schools were mixed.
Additionally, this is also about opening up college more too and funding it better in ways to get more of our population through it.
On the contrary, we send too many people to college for useless degrees, representing an incredible waste of human capital. College at this point has been made
too open, with the result being that large numbers of people go there, acquire student debt, and then realize it's not worth their time and leave without a degree, but with the debt.
And still too much? Use the extra to fix our bridges, repair our roads, or the plethora of other projects necessary to take care of American problems before we start worrying about the world.
And the real problem here is that this is a stupid argument and that Hitchens quote is not applicable as no one is stating isolationism. Only idiots mistake non-military interventionism with isolationism.
On the contrary, Hitchens is on the money. I realize that the standard response is that "oh no, isolationism means no trade and we are in favor of trade", but that is a thin reed to try to hide behind. If the United States was not dominating the strategic chokepoints of the world with the US Navy, then someone else would be. If the US does not keep Iran contained, then either Iran will move to seize regional hegemony and succeed, or Iran will move to seize regional hegemony and spark a sunni/shia war with millions of casualties and severe global economic depression.
As for Saddam, guess we shouldn't have helped put up the Ba'athist regime in the first place, eh?
We didn't help out the Ba'athists in the first place. We helped them fight Iran after they had already established themselves. The Nasserite National Socialist movement that swept the Middle East in the 1950's was without our encouragement and against our interests.
Saddam was our buddy buddy until it became politically advantageous for him not to be.
No. We used a less-worse-a-hole to oppose a more-worse-a-hole. This is what you call "foreign affairs", wherein the world, darn it, refuses to give us happy options, and so you choose the least evil path you can. We allied with the Soviet Union, for example, to destroy Hitler. We then worked with China to weaken the Soviet Union. We worked with Iraq to oppose Iran. We then worked with Saudi Arabia to oppose Iraq, and on it goes.
Interventionism drove us into the situation and your solution....more interventionism.
Fail. Interventionism didn't drive us into this situation. Planes flying into the world trade center put us into Afghanistan. The US moved into Afghanistan to destabilize opposition forces and deny them a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on us.
This is why I really want to stress education, we need an educated populace in order to avoid the insanity of stupidity. We didn't leave the country in a better place, BTW.
We absolutely did.
We made it unstable and a hot bed of insurgent and terrorist activity when it wasn't before.
we did and then we largely fixed that. And then our idiot administration wanted us out quick fast and in a hurry (or simply failed to negotiate a SOFA treaty, which speaks to lack of competency more than lack of desire to be wise), and some of it has since come back - but not much.
We've blown up their roads and schools and hospitals and now they're rebuilding some of it and getting gassed for the efforts. Iraq isn't in a better place, and our 10+ year war is not helping.
You appear to be confused.
This is a map of Iraq:
This is a map of Afghanistan:
Notice how they are different shapes?
When our sovereignty is directly threatened/attacked
Our "soveriegnty". Oh, so not just our "people"? No thanks, that's a
stupid way to solve the problem of mutual defense.
We are not responsible for the world, we do not have infinite money and infinite people to throw at not our problems.
Correct, however, our efforts over the past few years have required neither.
Economic attacks can be resolved with economic means under many circumstances
That is incorrect.
military attacks can be resolved with military action
Gosh, you mean like "terrorist supporting nation launches attack into New York City, US Military moves against terrorist supporting nation"? Why, you little imperialist, you.
Not imperial, foreign, aggressive forever war either. Short, devastating, severe retaliation for actual attack against us proper.
Ah, so you are more a fan of the massive-civilian-casualty-create-more-trouble-for-yourself-down-the-road approach. Well, it's an approach. Got to give it that. It
is an approach.
That's it. Not there to bring democracy, not there to make your life better, just there to remind you the consequences if you actually attack America.
Yeah, they tried that with Germany after WWI. Hey, how did that work out, anywho?
And repeating the same mistakes while spinning your wheels in the mud requires no particular strength of character either.
Which is why you
don't, but rather shift from the failed Rumsfeld Doctrine that the current administration is now
idiotically trying to bring back to a proper Counterinsurgency doctrine which has proven itself consistently successful.
10+ years, trillions of dollars, 4000+ more American dead. And you want to throw more years, more dollars, more lives at the problem saying that if we don't we aren't honoring the sacrifices of the dead. It's a rather sick conclusion when you claim education requires less money and we need to keep killing Americans in foreign lands to honor the sacrifices of those we sent to die in foreign lands.
On the contrary, I support
real education because I want people to
know what they are talking about when they discuss these matters, which you evidently do not; preferring instead to repeat blase shibboleths build on pie in the sky dreams that global stability is somehow the norm.
No, the weak willed Americans are those so afraid that all they can do is hide behind the strength of government and the demonstrated force of the military
Those perhaps too. They are the ones who also support your position in this debate, although they support gun control as well.
The Army and marines went to war, but not for MY freedom. Not for MY safety.
Not unless you happen to be an American, or a Westerner (any will do). Oh, in that case, yes, in fact, it turns out that the psycho violent jihadis whom we've been fighting would, in fact,
love to saw off your head on Youtube to prove what badasses they are.
In fact, it can well be argued I have less of those things. More aggressive government, more debt, more death. What I'm tired of is stupidity ruling the roost. Idiots who think that doing the same thing over and over again will yield different results. Y'all already had 10+ years and over a trillion dollars and the only thing you have to show for it is more dead Americans.
On the contrary - where we have applied proper counterinsurgency doctrine we have seen incredible success. We have brought a measure of lifting from oppression to
millions of people, overthrown two ultra-violent nigh-genocidal regimes, delegitimized AQ, secured our Geopolitical goals in the region, and yes, along the way helped give rise to the Arab spring (which has since gone Islamist - as predicted - and yes, which is a good thing), and given people suffering under jackboots a greater measure of freedom. The Declaration states that
all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights, not just those lucky enough to be born south of the 48th parallel and north of Mexico on the North American Continent
Oh, but to "honor" our troops we have to kill more off for crap that is not our freedom, not our safety, not our problem.
It is our problem, and it is our safety. What do
you think happens
after the American retreat from Afghanistan?
The answer is: The entire Muslim world sees that A) America can be beaten by anyone with determination and that B) taking on America and hitting them where they are weak (their national will) brings you worldly success and umma-wide respect. Like walking into a prison and announcing that you would rather be raped than fight anyone, retreating
invites attack. Think back to your earlier prescription to "remind people what happens when they mess with America". Then ponder the fact that your proposed policy is to affect the
opposite of that.
Who is really denigrating the troops here? Those wishing to call forth their commitment only in times of need for America, or those willing to throw them away at any problem that may come up across the globe?
Those troops volunteered knowing what they were doing and having a better grasp of the why than yourself. Those who are picturing them as some kind of victim, those who would make their sacrifice meaningless, those who speak as though we were the mindless robots of the government rather than thinking, breathing, patriotic human beings and individual citizens are those who denigrate us.
