Nothing ticks me off more...

Marjorie Suddard wrote: So don't think my rant above is some silly, ungrounded fear that people really don't believe in paying to educate anyone but their own offspring... it's happening in Florida, where people come to retire and suck off the system. And by the way, how do these people resolve their right-wing views with their willingness to take a Social Security check that represents far more $$ than they ever put into the system? Margie

that's because old people suck. and it's a perfect example of how communism is contrary to human nature. people are selfish. the only time communal living works is when the trades between people of the community are mutually beneficial.

in my perfect world, everyone would pay to educate their own children. i think public school = welfare.

edit: i also forgot to add that in my perfect world, people who couldn't educate or fund the education of their own children wouldn't breed.

Guns don't kill people. Dresses and makeup kill people.

If we outlaw dresses and makeup, only outlaws will have dresses and makeup?

What's the bigger issue here, a flamboyantly gay boy wearing makeup/woman's clothing to school or a boy carrying a gun to his school with the intent to murder someone?

I think the reason why nobody has mentioned it is the fact that everyone knows its not the victim's fault at ALL. Hence no reason to address it.

Finally, the US school system scares me. Admittingly enough we are having problems here with not being able to fail kids and commie/liberal/left teachers coming out of the woodwork but are missing a LOT of the problems you guys speak of. Nonetheless I would consider private school if I ever had kids (God forbid) after my ok experience with the catholic school system (which is MUCH better then the public)!

Marjorie Suddard wrote: And by the way, how do these people resolve their right-wing views with their willingness to take a Social Security check that represents far more $$ than they ever put into the system? Margie

The argument is that:

It was money taken by force of law.

The real amount paid in is double what they paid in as individuals(as any self-employeed person will know), because the employer is required to pay half.

If they were allowed to invest it, it would be much more than they'll ever see from the SS system.

So it doesn't matter what was paid in, only how much that amount is or could be worth today.

---just explaining the reasoning---

-James

HiTempguy wrote: I would consider private school if I ever had kids (God forbid) after my ok experience with the Catholic school system (which is MUCH better than the public)!

Fixed that for you. Apparently the public schools teach at least one thing better than parochial schools.

Margie

Doh!

nice house http://maps.google.com/maps?q=71+secretary+trl+32164&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title

is that CHE selling insurance? he's turning over in his grave.

Marjorie Suddard wrote: Why, that makes sense! After all, everybody KNOWS that you don't get anything out of educating anybody beyond your own kids. Heck, the more uneducated people there are in a society, the better it flourishes. Just ask the fine folks who brought you the Khmer Rouge. ...over a wasteland. Margie

Whoa whoa whoa... put on the brakes. I'm not suggesting that the powers that be want to eradicate funding to schools. It's more an issue of overall quality of the schooling experience that I'm questioning. I'm just looking at the schools and materials that are available today vs. what I saw when I first began schooling.

(begin rant)

Perhaps you can give me a better explanation other than reduced funding why the school my mom teaches at doesn't have an art or music teacher, why there is a PE class only once every two weeks, and why permanent structures outside of administration buildings are a thing of the past? So much of the real classroom material is of no substance; my mom switched from 4th to 6th grade because at least half of her class time had to be dedicated to FCAT (as a Florida parent I'm sure you're well aware of it) prep every day.

When I was in elementary school in Texas, I remember the standardized testing just being a way to cross-reference students' and schools' performances. It was more of a survey than an exam. However, twelve years later, the standarized test has become the sole litmus test for both schools and students.

Where am I going with this? My point is that I can't understand how anyone with the power to make changes within the school system can be so complacent with how it works now. Are they not seeing the atmosphere that their children and grandchildren are learning in? Here, I'll give it to you in FCAT form:

What's most important in an education?

A Knowing how to take tests well

B Actually learning information about the world we live in

C Rainbow Skittles

D none of the above

Skittles, ehh?

I wonder if they're as lucrative as the M&M market...

Colorful candies are for wimps. In middle school my biggest sellers were cinnamon sticks and fireballs.

I agree with you, Mitchell.

Where do you think we got that FCAT-based curriculum? "No Child Left Behind." The movement to make our schools accountable, based on a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter idea of achievement that was developed by people who don't have the faintest idea what our schools are facing.

Make no mistake, though, the more able kids are learning more. My children leave MIDDLE school with 2 H.S. foreign language credits (where the Spanish and French curricula looked just like what I took in H.S. back in the stone age), 2 math credits (Algebra I and Algebra II, the latter more advanced than the same class I took my Junior year of H.S.). The rest of their curriculum was similarly advanced.

In the schools, just as in our neighborhoods and everything else in this country, it's become increasingly balkanized between the haves and the have-nots.

I remember learning from a Brazilian friend in college that she and everyone she knew back home lived locked behind high gates and walls with security guards that protected their neighborhoods, and was horrified. Our very popular "gated communities" still horrify me. And I cannot, absolutely cannot, understand why everyone else seems just fine with this. Don't you want a country where YOU are free?

Margie

Dr. Hess wrote: Not all teachers are Commies. Not all Commies are teachers. Not all D's are Commies. Not all Commies are D's. Most teachers are D's (especially in higher education). Most Commies are D's.

CItations for your "facts", please.

wreckerboy wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: Not all teachers are Commies. Not all Commies are teachers. Not all D's are Commies. Not all Commies are D's. Most teachers are D's (especially in higher education). Most Commies are D's.

CItations for your "facts", please.

I'm going to cite the song, "throw some D's on it"

That'll cover it.

Jensenman wrote: The basis of socialism is 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. That's how property taxes work and is why I think they are regressive. The school system needs funding, no doubt about it, it just needs to be done differently. Yeah, I'm talking about a sales tax. With no 5 year sunset provision. Now everyone will screech 'but that takes disproportionately from poor people'. Guess who gets the bulk of the tax funded public services anyway? Fire away, Dimmycrats.

Move to California. We've had a version of that for a while. We have a property tax cap where your property tax does not increase when the value of your house increases. We've been berkeleyed by it.

If you travel through Cali, every town is the same. The basis has become communities built around strip malls, because you need that revenue to fund basic services. It has also contributed to our housing prices because no one wants to sell and lose the house with the low property tax rate.

It promotes a wanton and inefficient government that will throw itself deep into debt too. We can break down the basic types of taxes as: Property, Income, and Sales. That is the order in which they are best. Property taxes are incredibly stable. They do not boom and bust with the economy. The government can be trained to know exactly how much it will be able to spend. Income taxes fluctuate a decent amount with the state of the economy. Sales taxes go all over the place with moods, seasons, and people's perceptions of the economy. Base a budget off of unstable revenue figures and watch what happens. Governments are terrible at saving for lean times.

There was no property tax cap here for a looooonnnnggg time, when reassessment time rolled around (the city gov't kept putting it off because they knew what was going to happen, the state finally sued to make them do it) people who had owned their houses for a long time suddenly found themselves facing tax bills of over $10K simply because of where the house stood. You'd have to understand downtown Charleston to know what I mean, but in a nutshell: there are neighborhoods of small 1 family homes which back up to 'trophy homes'. The trophy home jacks up the value of the small houses in that district. Now our small home owner (usually a blue collar worker who inherited their house but had to borrow against it for whatever reason) is faced with a dilemma: how do they pay these property taxes? In many cases their only option was to sell before the city took the house for back taxes. Just think: at $10k a year x 3 years plus interest you'd easily rack up a $35,000 tax bill. So speculators bought the houses, fixed them up and resold them to yuppies, the original owners had to buy houses elsewhere. Usually they'd go to the 'burbs, meaning they had really long commutes to their jobs downtown.

Now there's a cap but it's only on the value increase percentage and it's not retroactive. It's all screwed up. Real estate property taxes are regressive as hell. They need to be done away with.

I had a good experience with public education when I was in school (I graduated high school in 2003). I think the problems with my school district started two years after with that horrible mathematics experiment.

I had absolutely no problems in any of my writing or literature courses in any of my four years of college. Hell, I've never done research papers that were as intense or demanding as the four that I did in high school. Nothing even comes close.

I blew through Economics I and II thanks to my 12th grade Econ class.

Thanks to FOURTH-GRADE SCIENCE, I was able to blast right through my required college science course which left other people struggling. "UHH, What's the periodic table? Isn't that for Inglish?" smacks forehead

And my school left me with the uncanney gift of creative thought.

At the university level, I was able to attend both a public school: Bloomsburg University of PA; and a private school: Loyola College in Maryland. The only difference, really, was the caliber of students that surrounded me - but the state school did have a duty (I believe this is a good thing) to admit students who would otherwise not be allowed to attend college for whatever reason (ACT 101). Both schools had brilliant professors, virtually the SAME curriculum, and even some of the same books.

My last Literature professor had been rumored to flunk Tom Clancey. She didn't! But he was in her class many years ago. Another student of hers - a current student now - actually wrote and published a book which is similar to Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. I read it, and it is fantastic. I'll see if I can remember the title.

The quality of the public education system is heavily dependent on the government that surrounds it. I admit, there are some crappy public schools out there. I met some of the by-products of them while at BU. But some are quite good, and they deserve the attention of intellegent folks to make sure that they don't turn into statistics.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Property taxes are vital to local governments.

It sounds to me like those property tax issues wouldn't have hit people with the same crazy impact if the cap had never been put in place.

I can see the difficulty of people finding their home has become too valuable to afford to pay taxes on. However, that sympathy is tempered by the fact that it means they're paying more taxes because they've had a much greater than expected return on their investment.

Yeah, like I said earlier I have had no problems with my kid's education so far. I help her with her homework every night and I think I'd notice if there was something wrong. The funny part: where we live (Berkeley County District 2) is considered to be one of the 'lesser' school districts when compared to Dorchester District 4.

That school district with the huge spending disparity I mentioned in an earlier post is Charleston County, right next door to both Dorchester 4 and Berkeley 2. Pockets of it have good scores, most of it suxxors when you consider test results and graduation percentage. That school district spends probably twice what the other two do and can't get anywhere near the results. The schools that are doing well have no correlation to dollars spent either.

Salanis wrote: Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Property taxes are vital to local governments. It sounds to me like those property tax issues wouldn't have hit people with the same crazy impact if the cap had never been put in place. I can see the difficulty of people finding their home has become too valuable to afford to pay taxes on. However, that sympathy is tempered by the fact that it means they're paying more taxes because they've had a much greater than expected return on their investment.

Yeah, but the only way to realize that increase in real life is to sell. Back to square 1.

Jensenman wrote: Yeah, but the only way to realize that increase in real life is to sell. Back to square 1.

Yes. But you will sell for profit and presumably be able to buy something at least as nice, possibly in a less convenient location, and then pocket a nice chunk of profit.

I see people having to move while making a significant profit to be a much less significant issue than all of the problems property tax caps have caused.

You still gotta sell. The problem for a lot of the old timers down here is the house they live in is quite possibly the one they were born in and it's not as easy as just selling and moving. Plus the 'heir's property' issue raises its head, this is common in these older communities where real estate might have been passed down without a will meaning that all the descendants have a claim to the property. Now you got forty'leven people fighting over the same chunk of change. It's a real mess. I think the government should just back out of that entirely, replace it with a sales tax. That way they'd get the tax revenue without having to put people out of their homes and getting tied up in court etc.

Salanis, you talk of these tax caps like they are cutting taxes. They don't. They just limit how much MORE money the government can rob the people of. You also seem to me like someone who doesn't own a house and is pretty big on taxing those who do. I, personally, would like to propose a 100% tax on people living or previously living in Central Ca. who are direct male decendants of previous member of the House of Representatives, own Miatas and climb rocks. Every single thing they own and every single cent they earn for their entire lives should be taken by force of law (cop with a gun). We just need 51% of the people to support this and we can do it. After all, It's For The Children.

Umm... I'm well aware that they're not cutting taxes. They're shifting them. They're shifting them to something less stable, and the reverberating effects are significant and profoundly negative. It is especially negative to local city and county governments, the ones that are arguably the most valuable and responsive to the will of the people who they genuinely represent.

Property taxes are good to have because they remain very stable despite the state of the economy.

And yes, I believe that our government needs to provide certain services (what services it should pay for is a whole other debate). Those services need to be paid for with tax revenue. I am not as convinced as you are that our system is completely broken.

Hell, shifting money from property to sales tax will take money out of the hands of the small, local, relatively efficient governments and put it in the hands of big stupid state governments that can't pass a berkeleying budget.

Around here we got something called LOST: Local Option Sales Tax. For instance, here at work sales tax is 7.5%. I drive 2 miles to my house, it's 6.5%. The difference is add ons by the local municipalities, etc. So no sales taxes don't neccesarily go to the big inefficient state government. Lots of times they go to the smaller inefficient local governments.

Keep in mind whenever I mention sales taxes, what I mean is: eliminate income and property taxes and replace them with a sales tax.

Jensenman wrote: Keep in mind whenever I mention sales taxes, what I mean is: eliminate income and property taxes and replace them with a sales tax.

All the rich folks will do then is incorporate in a state and buy all purchases as "capital investments" so they can write them off and they are non taxable. Because their lifestyle would be the product of the corporation.

ignorant wrote:

Jensenman wrote: Keep in mind whenever I mention sales taxes, what I mean is: eliminate income and property taxes and replace them with a sales tax.

All the rich folks will do then is incorporate in a state and buy all purchases as "capital investments" so they can write them off and they are non taxable. Because their lifestyle would be the product of the corporation.

You mean unlike the way people lease cars, etc though their corporations and then write them off as a business expense?

As long as there are 'special interests' there will be those who try to manipulate the system. Easy fix: eliminate all writeoffs. Done.

For that matter don't forget that (at least in SC) property taxes are a writeoff against income.