Gab@StFerdinandIII - https://unstabbinated.substack.com/
Plenty of cults exist - every cult has its 'religious dogma', its idols, its 'prophets', its 'science', its 'proof' and its intolerant liturgy of demands. Cults everywhere: Corona, 'The Science' or Scientism, Islam, the State, the cult of Gender Fascism, Marxism, Darwin and Evolution, Globaloneywarming, Changing Climate, Abortion...
Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
This is a brilliant essay about the disaster of socialized education. Socializing any market leads to lower standards, poor quality, unionization, and ultimately bankruptcy. The US spends more dollars per-capita on children's education than any other state in the world, usually by a factor of 2 or 3 times more than other nations, and yet over the past 30 years standards, quality, and rational intelligence have declined and been compromised. The socialists demand more money of course and more 'rules', 'metrics', 'more graduates', and 'no child left behind' – another legacy of the Bush system of socialization. If money was the issue, then the US would have the world's best elementary and high school system. It doesn't. Unions, mis-spending, rigidity, 'standards' both local and national which don't measure much of anything or where teachers teach to the test [and of course make sure that GlobaloneyWarming and homosexuality are thoroughly presented in every class]; along with the endless bureaucratization of every single educational process, are some of the reasons why the US system is such a bloody disaster. The ones hurt most by this fiasco are the poor, and those households living in bad school districts. No choice, no competition, no price points always means a disaster.
[Mr. Boudreaux is professor of economics at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center.]
“Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.
Of course, the quality of public supermarkets would play a major role in families' choices about where to live. Real-estate agents and chambers of commerce in prosperous neighborhoods would brag about the high quality of public supermarkets to which families in their cities and towns are assigned.
Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.
How could it be otherwise? Public supermarkets would have captive customers and revenues supplied not by customers but by the government. Of course they wouldn't organize themselves efficiently to meet customers' demands.
Responding to these failures, thoughtful souls would call for "supermarket choice" fueled by vouchers or tax credits. Those calls would be vigorously opposed by public-supermarket administrators and workers.
Opponents of supermarket choice would accuse its proponents of demonizing supermarket workers (who, after all, have no control over their customers' poor eating habits at home). Advocates of choice would also be accused of trying to deny ordinary families the food needed for survival. Such choice, it would be alleged, would drain precious resources from public supermarkets whose poor performance testifies to their overwhelming need for more public funds.
As for the handful of radicals who call for total separation of supermarket and state—well, they would be criticized by almost everyone as antisocial devils indifferent to the starvation that would haunt the land if the provision of groceries were governed exclusively by private market forces.
In the face of calls for supermarket choice, supermarket-workers unions would use their significant resources for lobbying—in favor of public-supermarkets' monopoly power and against any suggestion that market forces are appropriate for delivering something as essential as groceries. Some indignant public-supermarket defenders would even rail against the insensitivity of referring to grocery shoppers as "customers," on the grounds that the relationship between the public servants who supply life-giving groceries and the citizens who need those groceries is not so crass as to be discussed in terms of commerce.
Recognizing that the erosion of their monopoly would stop the gravy train that pays their members handsome salaries without requiring them to satisfy paying customers, unions would ensure that any grass-roots effort to introduce supermarket choice meets fierce political opposition.
In reality, of course, groceries and many other staples of daily life are distributed with extraordinary effectiveness by competitive markets responding to consumer choice. The same could be true of education—the unions' self-serving protestations notwithstanding.”
This is brilliant. Notice the emotionalism. If you opposed food nationalization, which would in effect mean starvation for everyone, than you would be a radical or [insert name here]. “As for the handful of radicals who call for total separation of supermarket and state—well, they would be criticized by almost everyone as antisocial devils indifferent to the starvation that would haunt the land if the provision of groceries were governed exclusively by private market forces.”
Yes indeed. We do recall that the 'radicals' who advocate for example choice in health care, or choice in pension management, or choice in utility provider, or choice in water supplier, or choice in telecoms provider, or choice in wheat, lumber, chicken, dairy, or egg supply, to be asocial sociopaths, who hate the poor and are probably racist [not to mention homophobic and Islamophobic]. Yes, yes we recall this template being used elsewhere. Why not nationalize food Mr. Bourdreaux? Don't you want to starve to death and glory in equal misery and equal starvation for all?
Taxes are far too high. This is obvious. The Canadian debt load, including future off the balance sheet guarantees is well over $15 Trillion or about $1 million per adult tax paying Canadian. Similar debt levels per taxpayer, exist in other Western states (in which half of all tax payers pay no income tax). This means that to solution current debt levels [$1. 5 Trillion, or $100.000 per Canadian] and future debt levels [$15 Trillion and $1.000.000 respectively], you will need to do 5 things:
Cut spending by 35% in the next 4 years.
Cut taxes and implement a fair flat tax on consumption 15% [to create capital, investment and over time, jobs]. This provides enough money for essential government services.
Get rid of personal and corporate income taxes over time.
Reduce unfunded obligations by freeing health care, freeing the utility and energy sectors, reforming the education system [vouchers, competition], curtailing and reducing union power, and reducing benefits and goodies to the voters.
Fight inflation through higher interest rates and stop devaluing the currency [more of a US problem, but interest rates across the world are far too low, which guarantees future inflation].
When you raise taxes your revenues fall. Taxes are the single biggest expense for families. Cut them.
By Niels Veldhuis and Charles Lammam
In 2010, the average Canadian family faced a total tax bill of $29,913 against income of $72,393. This means all taxes imposed on the average Canadian family consumed more than 41% of its annual income.
Such taxes include income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and a host of other taxes that Canadians pay but don’t necessarily see. The average family’s tax bill has grown more rapidly than any other expenditure item over the past 50 years.
More specifically, the tax bill for a family with average income has increased by 1,686% since 1961. In contrast, expenditures on housing increased by 936%, food by 460% and clothing by 416% over the same period.
The total tax bill has grown to the point where families are now paying more in taxes than they do for these basic necessities.
While just over 41% of the family’s budget went to paying for government, 34% of the budget went to paying for food, clothing, and housing combined.
No politician would even implement the above. The current drift and status quo will lead to bankruptcy in the form of inflation, higher taxes, and a default on unfunded liability payments such as corporate and regional transfers, higher utility and energy costs, old age pensions, government worker health and expense benefits, or the degradation of socialized health care.
Another setback for the Socialist poster-girl of Sweden. Not only would Sweden be the poorest area in North America, it would generate a higher proportion of psychological problems including behavioural issues with children than North America's 'unequal' jurisdictions. But by all means copy Sweden. Make North America one large Swedish Nanny-Ninny state. We can then blame equal-poverty-for-all; massive taxation; psychological issues; and child mental-health problems on markets, Jews and Anglo-Saxon capitalism. Just let the state do everything, let the state provide 'free' $20.000 subsidized day-care and let the nanny-state control your offspring including raising your children, wiping their arses, changing their diapers, putting them to bed, blowing their noses, and combing their hair. All in homage to the all-powerful, always moral, 'state'. Who needs the bother of raising the little ones? Shouldn't all children be given the 'same start' in life and shouldn't they all be managed 'equally' ? Jubilee.
“[National Post] True, parental leave in Sweden is a generous 16 months. There are no babies in daycare. But when parental leave ends, practically the reverse is true: A full 92% of all children aged 18 months to five years are in daycare. Parents pay only a symbolic amount for this; tax subsidies for daycare are $20,000 per child, annually. Swedish taxes are among the highest in the world, and the tax system was designed to make both parents seek employment in the work force.
Studies show that most Swedes also want the option of a home-care allowance for the first three to four years of their child’s life. The winning centre-right coalition in the 2006 Swedish national election made this promise. After the election, however, political compromises resulted in an allowance which was small, difficult to use and was not mandatory — local governments could decide whether or not to offer it. Only a third of Swedish municipalities chose to do so.
Then there are the questions about the social toll Sweden’s childcare system is taking. Sweden has offered a comprehensive daycare system since 1975; since the early ‘90s, negative outcomes for children and adolescents are on the rise in areas of health and behaviour. While direct causation has been difficult to prove, many Swedish health-care professionals point to the lack of parent involvement beyond the first 16 months as a primary contributing factor. Psychosomatic disorders and mild psychological problems are escalating among Swedish youth at a faster rate than in any of 11 comparable European countries. Such disorders have tripled among girls over the last 25 years. Education outcomes in Swedish schools have fallen from the top position 30 years ago, to merely average amongst OECD nations today. Behaviour problems in Swedish classrooms are among the worst in Europe.”