[Xantar]

Originally Posted by Professor S

Thats a common myth. Our test scores suck in comparison because we compare test scores to countries with exclusive education systems. In most other nations, students are tracked and TOLD what they will study and what they will be. Low scoring secondary school students are shipped off the vocational schools, and all our test scores are compared only to the scores of the best performing students of these nations. Its like comparing two half rotten apples, but allowing one of the apples to have the rotten part cut away.

Actually, I was looking at things like our literacy rate. I don't trust test scores precisely because they are too standardized and restricting. And our literacy rate, along with basic knowledge about things like the reason we have four seasons, sucks.

True, but I'd rather pay too much than get socialized healthcare. We girlfriend and I just went through government hoops for her father's heart transplant, and the red tape is maddening and counter-productive. The real change that needs to take place is a control on malpractice suits which cause the need for such rediculous healthcare costs and regulations,

Why not both? I know they tell lots of horror stories about the health care system in the UK (I don't know which country your girlfriend's father was trying to get a transplant in although I'm guessing Canada), but in many countries it works quite well. Everybody I know from Sweden (and that's more people than you might think) loves their health care, for example. Like anything, there are good ways to implement a system and there are bad ways.

Besides, I think you'd be towing a different line if you were one of the millions of Americans who has no health insurance. Those people would love the opportunity to jump through hoops and cut through red tape to get a government-sponsored operation.

Nonsense, we broke records this passed quarter in growth. Inflation has been kept in check to the point that interest rates were just raised and we've seen a growth in higher paying jobs in the last 6 months. Sorry if supply side is working, I know you hate it so.

I wasn't talking about however well we're doing in the current quarter. Any competent economist knows that changes in quarterly growth from one year to the next is basically so much noise. It's the long term trend I'm worried about, and what with the ballooning deficit, baby boomers hitting retirement (with not nearly enough being done by society to prepare for it), trade deficits and high oil prices (yeah, they're falling now, but they're never going to go down as low as in the mid-90s), the picture doesn't look good.

The media shouldn't be saying anything. The should be reporting events, and reporting everything. Not just what they feel is news.

The problem is in this day and age, nearly any reporting is seen with a political slant by pundits and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, whether that is deservedly so or not.

At the end of the Kosovo War, the only thing the media was reporting was, "We won the war with 0 casualties! We won the war with 0 casualties!" Nothing about the suffering on the ground or the shattered economy or anything like that. The media back then, just like it is now, is obsessed with the death count because they know it sells papers (or brings viewers or whatever).

I'm sure you're familiar with the argument that the media is liberal because it's only talking about the worst that's happening in Iraq. Did you know that lots of liberal pundits are saying that the media's fixation on the death toll to the exclusion of anything else is a sign that the newspapers are corporate slaves? It's true. And if conservatives complaining about the liberal media are more prevalent, well, that's probably because Fox News is louder than the Daily Kos.

As a side note, my favorite news magazine is The Economist. Maybe that surprises you, but here's the thing: I'm not a conservative and I disagree with a lot of what is written in The Economist. But that particular magazine is honest about its slant and proceeds to look at the facts in depth to tell us how it arrives at the particular position it supports. After reading an article, I feel that I understand the issue it's talking about and that I have been able to think about it clearly.

I don't think the media is liberal or conservative by and large. I just think it's sensationalistic and juvenile. And my problem with it can be best summed up with its treatment of the vote to renew the Patriot Act. Whether you are a liberal or a conservative, I think we can agree that we ought to actually know what the new Patriot Act says. But about the most specific information I've been able to read about it in a mainstream source is that it expands the federal ability to search records and that some people are concerned about it infringing on civil liberties (note: I haven't read The Economist yet on that one). Your average American probably isn't even aware that the Patriot Act is being voted on.

Yeah, that's because they aren't interested. It doesn't mean, however, that the media shouldn't report it. This is an important issue. It deserves to be debated and engaged. And I shouldn't have to go searching through blogs to be informed about it. But oh, that nagging need to make profit...

Now I know many believe that the policies taken during the depression were necessary, and I partly agree, but there were definite negative reprocussions. Yet we continue to want to replace parts of our society with the government. Thats backward.

Let us suppose we got rid of welfare, Medicaid, public drug rehab programs and whatever else you care to name. We will still have that poor society there. What would you propose to do about it? I guarantee that any realistic plan you come up with will involve government money being spent somewhere. It's just too naive to believe that society will take care of it on its own or that the nation's poor will just somehow pull itself up by its bootstraps.

So maybe welfare has had its problems. No program will be perfect. The way I think about it is actually, in a way, sort of like how you think about religion. It will do bad things, but the question is whether in the long run and in the aggregate it has done good.

By the way, did you know that the welfare rolls have been shrinking for a long time now?