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| 5/25 |
| 2009/5/4-6 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/California/Prop] UID:52938 Activity:high |
5/4 Why does The Netherlands have such a sustained lower unemployment
\_ Why is it The Netherlands? Is it like an LA Freeway?
rate and higher growth than the US? Maybe we can replicate their
success here.
\_ Start by not spending all your money on military and prisons.
\_ They don't have as large a population of illegal immigrants -jblack
\_Lots of Euro countries don't have this problem, they still mostly
have double digit unemployment.
\_ Timely Question:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html
\_ jeesh, They really should not be paying this guy by the word.
\_ So the government taxes you to death and then gives some of
the money back if you have kids, for vacations, and so on.
This "Big Brother" sort of society in which the government
claims to know what you need more than you do is very
anti-American to me, although staunch Democrats must love it
because they could tell people what to do with their money.
\_ My mother is Dutch and I still have family there. It's a wealthy
nation, but very small. I don't see many opportunities to
parallel their policies here successfully.
\_ Why not? We should have economies of scale that they do not.
\_ Because we are much larger and more diverse. I'm not sure
that economies of scale play a large part in this. For
instance, are there economies of scale for educating 1 million
kids versus 100 kids? I'd argue not. In fact, I'd argue it
would be cheaper (per kid) to educate the smaller number.
\_ It is certainly cheaper to build 100 miles of road, than
10 roads, each 10 miles long. Why do you think that it is
cheaper to educate smaller numbers of children? You can
get some kinds of economy of scale even in education,
with things like standard tests, school books, etc.
\_ Examples of why it might cost more to educate more:
higher administrative overhead
higher probability of kids with special/unique needs
more disparate learning abilities and backgrounds
harder to find/recruit so many well-trained teachers.
\_ Why would there be a higher percentage of kids with
special needs? And why harder to find teachers? It
should be the same percentage of population in both
cases.
\_ Because you don't judge these by percentage.
Imagine there is a special need which occurs
1/10000th of the time. The school with 100
kids probably doesn't have to deal with it at
all (or rarely), whereas the school with 1
million kids probably needs a whole program
created to address it. For an example of this
consider bilingual education. The Japanese kids
at my public school did not have a class
dedicated to them, but the South American kids
did even though both were small percentage-wise.
did. A single Spanish-speaking kid isn't a
burden to instruct, but 1,000 is.
\_ There is a lot of evidence (and probably literature) on the
diseconomies of scale in education. Anecdotally, it explains
why property values are significantly lower in parts of LA that
are part of LAUSD, one of the largest and most inefficient
school districts in the nation. (e.g. San Pedro vs. PV, Culver
City vs. Palms, etc). Another way to look at the diseconomies
of scale problem is to think of all the complaints against big
government (gubment = BAD) or big companies (startups = rewl).
\_ If there are diseconomies of scale, why are small private
schools so much more expensive than public schools? -tom
\_ It's not linear. There can be economies of scale which then
translate into diseconomies. Do you really think that LAUSD
is more efficient than, say, Berkeley USD? Tangentially
related is the whole cherry-picking, charter school and/or
voucher concept. Voucher/Charter folks like to really
against large districts, but they get to cherry pick
students. That said, I think http://greendot.org is pretty awesome
and there is a lot to learn from these guys. They fix a
lot of standard inner city problems just by "caring". I
think it's hard to scale caring.
\_ 1. They often provide a better product.
2. It varies by state and district, but many times
private schools aren't more expensive for a similar
product. California spent $8496 per student in
2005-2006, which was 29th in the nation. The US
average was $9100. This figure excludes capital
outlay, interest on school debt, and other subsidies.
(Source: link:tinyurl.com/cyg468
I believe for example that most private schools (unless
they are religious) pay property tax on their land while
public schools do not. For this price you can find
plenty of private schools for your kids to attend and
this discounts scholarships that are often offered. I
could not find the average cost of a private school in
California, but nationwide in 2003-2004 (latest
year I could find) it was $6400 for elementary schools
and $13300 for high schools.
(Source: http://tinyurl.com/cog8wj
Clearly, this figure is not too different from the
$9100 average for public schools.
\_ You can't compare private schools in Des Moines to
public schools in San Francisco. For example:
Head-Royce school in Oakland is $19k/year for
K-5, $21k/year for 6-8, $27k/year for high school.
-tom
\_ I am comparing the average national public
expenditures to the average national private
expenditures. I am not comparing Des Moines
to SF. However, I assure you that you can
find plenty of private schools even in urban
California for less than $10K/year. The schools
charging $20-30K per year are elite schools
providing much more to their students than
public schools do and that's why they cost more.
My neighbor's son goes to Saint Francis High
School in La Canada. It's a pretty good school.
Tuition is $10324. I bet that's not much
different from what the local public HS spends.
Mater Dei tuition is $10950. Don Bosco Tech
is $8600. Not every school is some elitist
academy that costs more than Stanford.
\_ Parochial schools may be subsidized by the
church--you can't just look at tuition to
know their costs. -tom
\_ They may be, but they may not be and
it's not clear to what extent. I went
to a Christian school and it wasn't.
Public schools receive money from other
sources, too, like the PTA fundraisers
and gifts. (The public middle school my
nephew goes to just received $400K from
a donor for a new tennis court.) Also,
many students at private schools pay
*less than* tuition because they
receive financial assistance. I think
it's reasonable to compare tuitions
because public schools receive a lot of
subsidies and private schools have expenses
public schools do not (like advertising).
I would argue they all wash out, which
is why the average private tuition and
public school expenditures are so similar
to each other.
\_ Even Communist Mainland China has a sustained higher growth rate
than the US.
\_ http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/05/upward-mobility-reality-and-illusion.html
\_ This one is great, take that Gold Bugs:
link:tinyurl.com/d4lsch |
| 5/25 |
|
| www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html The pale-yellow light that gives Dutch paintings their special glow suffuses the room. The interior is simple, with high walls and beams across the ceiling. The view through the windows of the 17th-century house in which I have my apartment is of similarly gabled buildings lining the other side of one of Amsterdam's oldest canals. Only instead of a plump maid or a raffish soldier at the center of the canvas, you should substitute a sleep-rumpled writer squinting at a laptop. Room for Debate: Europes Solution Is to Take More Time Off For 18 months now I've been playing the part of the American in Holland, alternately settling into or bristling against the European way of life. History echoes from every edifice as you move through your day. The bicycle is not a means of recreation but a genuine form of transportation. A nearby movie house sells not popcorn but demitasses of espresso and glasses of Dutch gin from behind a wood-paneled bar, which somehow makes you feel sane and adult and enfolded in civilization. Then there are the features of European life that grate on an American sensibility, like the three-inch leeway that drivers deign to grant you on the highway, or the cling film you get from the supermarket, which clings only to itself. For it represents the rate at which the income I earn, as a writer and as the director of an institute, is to be taxed. To be plain: more than half of my modest haul, I learned on arrival, was to be swallowed by the Dutch welfare state. Nothing in my time here has made me feel so much like an American as my reaction to this number. Charlton Heston's NRA rallying cry about prying his gun from his cold, dead hands. And yet as the months rolled along, I found the defiant anger softening by intervals, thanks to a succession of little events and awarenesses. Logging into my bank account, I noted with fleeting but pleasant confusion the arrival of two mysterious payments of 316 euros (about $410) each. On looking at the payor -- the Sociale Verzekeringsbank, or Social Insurance Bank -- I nodded with sage if partial understanding. Every quarter, the SVB quietly drops $665 into my account with the one-word explanation kinderbijslag, or child benefit. As the SVB's Web site cheerily informed me when I went there in bewilderment after the first deposit: "Babies are expensive. The Dutch government provides for child benefit to help you with the costs of bringing up your child." Any parents living in the country receive quarterly payments until their children turn 18. And thanks to a recently passed law, the state now gives parents a hand in paying for school materials. Friends who have small children report that the government can reimburse as much as 70 percent of the cost of day care, which totals around $14,000 per child per year. In late May of last year an unexpected $4,265 arrived in my account: vakantiegeld. This money materializes in the bank accounts of virtually everyone in the country just before the summer holidays; you get from your employer an amount totaling 8 percent of your annual salary, which is meant to cover plane tickets, surfing lessons, tapas: vacations. And we aren't talking about a mere "paid vacation" -- this is on top of the salary you continue to receive during the weeks you're off skydiving or snorkeling. And by law every employer is required to give a minimum of four weeks' vacation. For that matter, even if you are unemployed you still receive a base amount of vakantiegeld from the government, the reasoning being that if you can't go on vacation, you'll get depressed and despondent and you'll never get a job. you don't have to be a Fox News commentator to sneer at what, in the midst of a global financial crisis, seems like Socialism Gone Wild. And stating it as I've done above -- we'll consume half your salary and every once in a while toss you a few euros in return -- it seems like a pretty raw deal. Netherlands is a bendy concept: with a good accountant, you can rack up deductions and exploit loopholes. And while the top income-tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, the numbers are a bit misleading. "People coming from the US to the Netherlands focus on that difference, and on that 52 percent," said Constanze Woelfle, an American accountant based in the Netherlands whose clients are mostly American expats. "But consider that the Dutch rate includes social security, which in the US is an additional 62 percent. If you were to add all those up, you would get close to the 52 percent." But to ponder relative tax rates is only to trace the surface of a deeper story. In fact, as my time abroad has coincided with the crumpling of basic elements of the American economic and social systems, and as politicians, commentators and ordinary Americans have cast about for remedies or potential new models, I have found myself not only giving the Dutch system a personal test drive but also wondering whether some form of it could be adopted by my country. World Economic Forum at Davos in January was the question of whether, amid the derailing of American-style capitalism as we have known it, the European approach, which marries capitalism and social welfare, and which in times of economic crisis seems to offer more stability both to individuals and to society, could suit the United States. President Obama's initial budget called for a $634 billion fund over the next 10 years for revamping the health care system: an attempt to make good on his campaign promise of moving toward universal coverage, which of course is a basic component of the European social system. Two years ago, the Bush administration sent an emissary to examine the Dutch health care system in particular, thanks to its novel blend of public and private elements. With the political atmosphere in Washington in flux, there is no saying what kinds of changes will come. But most people seem to agree that something has to happen. And in talking both with American expats and with experts in the Dutch system, I hear the same thing over and over: American perceptions of European-style social welfare are seriously skewed. The system in which I have embedded myself has its faults, some of them lampoonable. But does the cartoon image of it -- encapsulated in the dread slur "socialism," which is being lobbed in American political circles like a bomb -- match reality? Is there, maybe, a significant upside that is worth exploring? I spent my initial months in Amsterdam under the impression that I was living in a quasi-socialistic system, built upon ideas that originated in the brains of Marx and Engels. This was one of the puzzling features of the Netherlands. It is and has long been a highly capitalistic country -- the Dutch pioneered the multinational corporation and advanced the concept of shares of stock, and last year the country was the third-largest investor in US businesses -- and yet it has what I had been led to believe was a vast, socialistic welfare state. A short stroll from my apartment suggests the outlines of an answer. In about six minutes you reach the Dam, the wide plaza that is the Times Square of Amsterdam. It is no misnomer: after groups of settlers decided, around 1200, to make their homes at this spot where the Amstel River flowed into the inland bay called the IJ, they blocked up the river in order to control the water (hence the city's name: Amstel . Rembrandt, Spinoza and troops of Dutch Masters-looking gents trod these paving stones in the 17th century. One grim day in May 1945, just after the Nazis surrendered the city but before they left, German soldiers fired into the celebrating crowds on the square, killing 20 people. Next Page Russell Shorto is a contributing writer for the magazine. His most recent book is Descartes Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason. |
| tinyurl.com/cog8wj -> nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/affil_2004_whs.asp NOTE: A school is classified as elementary if it has one or more of grades K-6 and none of grades 9-12. Some non-elementary schools include both elementary and secondary grade levels, such as a K-12 school. SOURCE: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), "Private School Data File," 2003-04. |
| delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/05/upward-mobility-reality-and-illusion.html Grasping Reality with Both Hands The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong: A Fair, Balanced, Reality-Based, and More than Two-Handed Look at the World J Bradford DeLong, Department of Economics, UC Berkeley #3880, Berkeley, CA 94720-3880; the very antithesis of the American ideal of upward mobility." Americans are in the odd position of fervently believing in upward mobility while not actually having very much of it. Eruopeans, conversely, don't really believe in economic mobility but have plenty of it.... examined the relative mobility in other Nordic countries. The United States believes itself to be uncommonly meritocratic. But compared to European countries who don't believe themselves very meritocratic, it actually exhibits less income mobility.... If you believe that your country is extremely mobile, you're likely to believe the results of the economic competition are relatively fair. As such, you won't want to slap the rich with particularly high tax rates and you won't be terribly concerned about spreading economic opportunity. On the other hand, if you don't believe your country is terribly mobile, then you're less likely to believe economic outcomes are fair. And if you don't believe the outcomes are fair, you're likely to tax the winners relatively heavily and plow those profits into things like universal health care and free college. Policies, in other words, that spread opportunity more widely and thus make your society more mobile. If you believe your society is already economically mobile, you don't spend a lot of time trying to solve the problem of insufficient economic mobility. if you don't believe that, then you implement policies meant to increase mobility. What's odd is that the public perceptions in Europe and America don't seem to be changing much in response to actual outcomes. May 04, 2009 at 01:25 PM So we've been snowed by the rich into thinking they'll let us into their clique if we work hard enough and they let their largesse trickle down on us. They didn't tell us what that liquid dripping on us *really* was ... May 04, 2009 at 02:18 PM At least in classical studies, which is what I actually know something about, the notion of a Dutch reluctance to excel is more than ludicrous. And as I think about it I also once had a job for a Dutch economist who was concerned that his adolescent daughter learn Greek (her sixth language) because he felt that for all his success (and he was a sort of big honcho in major international organizations) he felt like he'd missed something. May 04, 2009 at 02:30 PM I'm glad that economists "discovered" the mobility paradox. It's been grist for sociological studies of intergenerational mobility for, oh, 35 years. May 05, 2009 at 02:11 AM "If you believe that your country is extremely mobile, you're likely to believe the results of the economic competition are relatively fair. As such, you won't want to slap the rich with particularly high tax rates and you won't be terribly concerned about spreading economic opportunity." This runs exactly counter to studies that show we are more concerned with relative position than absolute position. Whether or not you think the results of competition are fair you are really only concerned about being ahead of as many people as possible. If you think things are fair, you are either stupid, brainwashed, or wealthy or some combination thereof. I can see how these sorts of people might not want to tax the wealthy stiffly, but they certainly wouldn't want to level the playing field unless they feel they are on the losing end. When 99% of a population is on the losing end, but only 10-50% feel like they're not, there's a serious disconnect. "What's odd is that the public perceptions in Europe and America don't seem to be changing much in response to actual outcomes." Perceptions, fear, and greed are being managed quite professionally through the media and PR in general. That is how the wealthiest accumulated their money, and that is how they are trying to keep it. Tip Jar A Rising Sun * "I now know it is a rising, not a setting, sun" --Benjamin Franklin, 1787 From Brad DeLong * J Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, a Research Associate of the NBER, a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Chair of Berkeley's Political Economy major. |
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