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A letter to my students

blogs.berkeley.edu

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Re: A letter to my students

#21

Post by achompas »

mkr-hn wrote: post #12
achompas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government revenue (usually: taxes) funds the services governments provide for its people. Example: USPS has seen slow/negative net revenue growth, so they're considering cutting Saturday service.

That much I knew. But my thinking was that the amount spent and how was a better indicator. If they bring in $5000 in revenue and buy $5000 in golden toilet seats, it's not being spent well. But if that $5000 is going to needed books for schools, it's good.

Agreed. But given that 49 out of 50 states were struggling to fall under budget this past year, we can safely say they're cutting the useful stuff now.

Great anecdote from NY State on a recent episode of This American Life ("Social Contract"): Arizona sold their state capitol to cover costs, and now pays rent to use the building.

Re: A letter to my students

#22

Post by pmb »

mkr-hn wrote: post #12
achompas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government revenue (usually: taxes) funds the services governments provide for its people. Example: USPS has seen slow/negative net revenue growth, so they're considering cutting Saturday service.

That much I knew. But my thinking was that the amount spent and how was a better indicator. If they bring in $5000 in revenue and buy $5000 in golden toilet seats, it's not being spent well. But if that $5000 is going to needed books for schools, it's good.

States can't run a deficit. Money in can never be greater than money out.

Re: A letter to my students

#23

Post by patio11 »

pg wrote: post #4

There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower. Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflati…

Using state figures and the CPI calculator:

1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars)

1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B)

2008-2009: $144B ($145)

2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B)

Even if you adjust for California's prodigious immigration-fueled population growth, spending per person in constant dollars has more than doubled.

You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less.

I feel the urge to get out numbers here, but it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Re: A letter to my students

#24

Post by bokonist »

pg wrote: post #4

There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower. Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflati…

According to this source of unknown reliability ( http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spendin... ) state & local spending as a percentage of state nominal GDP went from 20% to 24% from 1992 to 2009. Don't know the numbers going back to 1960, but I'd be shocked if spending was lower then.

For the change in average levels of education and knowledge, the cause seems pretty obvious to me. If you extended the border of California 400 miles south into Mexico, the average state scores on tests of math, history, and English would obviously go down, simply because of the composition of the population. Similarly, if you move 10 million Mexicans into California, the average test scores of the people living within the borders of California will fall (even if there is no change in the amount of learning for one individual person). In general if you look into correlations between education spending and test scores, there is very little correlation. If you look into the correlation of ethnicity and test scores, its very significant.

Re: A letter to my students

#25

Post by yoyar »

In socialist systems when the service is originally socialized, where do the professionals come from? Well, they come from the private sector, where people must work their asses off to succeed and only the best and brightest achieve the top positions. So, when government comes in and coerces them to be part of a socialized system, things go very well (for a time); the system is staffed with lots of brilliant, hard working people. Over time, the system is more and more politicized, the hard workers retire or become defeated by all of the bullshit that occurs and newcomers more and more over time become entitled and jaded. Real qualifications become less and less important, unions invade, tenure takes hold... Eventually, the system starts to fail more and more, and the worst type of people inhabit it, because those with principles are long gone or don't want to participate and so the move on to other activities where they are wanted and appreciated. What you are left with is a system inhabited by the most corrupt individuals who are highly skilled at gaming the system to their own benefit with little concern for those who use the system. Take a look around at teachers unions, and any other public service union you can think of.

And then the masses yell out "please we need government to come and fix this problem!!!" - Sorry, the solution to the problem is not the problem.

Re: A letter to my students

#26

Post by mkr-hn »

pmb wrote: post #22
mkr-hn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That much I knew. But my thinking was that the amount spent and how was a better indicator. If they bring in $5000 in revenue and buy $5000 in golden toilet seats, it's not being spent well. But if that $5000 is going to needed books for schools, it's good.

States can't run a deficit. Money in can never be greater than money out.

I don't think I'm being as clear as I should be. I'll see if I can rephrase it tomorrow. Trying to think economics at this time of night often proves hazardous for me. :)

Re: A letter to my students

#27

Post by adamc »

Locke1689 wrote: post #5
abcxyz wrote: post #2

"You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less, trained worse and worse, loaded up with more and more mindless administrative duties, and given less and less real support from administrators and staff." What evidence does he provide that the decline in quality of education is due to lower budgets? As technology improves we should expect costs to decline. We should expect higher quality for less cost! W…

As technology improves we should expect costs to decline. Only if you assume labour isn't the prime mover. Assuming that technology improvements help education at all (I'm skeptical -- I learned more about logarithms in math by using an abacus than I did using a calculator), we would ideally want education quality to increase, not decrease. Therefore, we should probably assume costs will stay approximately the same p…

It seems like it would be testable, at least: where do today's teachers stand vis-a-vis their non-teacher classmates? Where did they stand 50 years ago?

Re: A letter to my students

#28

Post by Osiris »

Education is actually a very substantial part of the California budget. According to http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html it's 31% of the budget, with the next largest expenditure being Health and Human Services.

There are few major issues with the California budget.

1) Much of the revenue is required by law to be allocated in a certain way. This leaves the government with very little wiggle room to make changes to the budget.

2) State workers have powerful unions that have burdened the government with an amazing out of debt and future obligations in terms of pension of benefits. No matter what the budget shortfall, the government must meet these obligations.

3) When revenues increased during the DOT COM boom, government was more than happy to spend the increased revenue on new services rather than either decreasing taxes or saving the money in a "rainy day" fund.

4) California is a mess of red-tape and bureaucracy. I'm actually surprised how many startups do business in California and the Bay Area with the all the labor laws and extra benefits that businesses have to pay for that other states don't, like CA SDI that pays for paid leave, while other states don't have it. Also, state land use laws and regulations were directly responsible for the increase in housing prices by making it so difficult to build new developments (among other factors, of course).

Californians have burdened themselves with a massive amount of debt and regulations that have severely hampered the ability of businesses to grow and contribute to state job growth. A article posted a few weeks back showed that there's a huge exodus of people from California to other states. I personally left California (East Bay) because I couldn't afford to buy a home and settle down with my family, not to mention the 9.75% sales tax on purchases from Newegg.com!

Re: A letter to my students

#29

Post by mkr-hn »

bokonist wrote: post #24
pg wrote: post #4

There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower. Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflati…

According to this source of unknown reliability ( http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spendin... ) state & local spending as a percentage of state nominal GDP went from 20% to 24% from 1992 to 2009. Don't know the numbers going back to 1960, but I'd be shocked if spending was lower then. For the change in average levels of education and knowledge, the cause seems pretty obvious to me. If you extended…

Here's an excerpt from the bio of the guy who runs the site: "Despite 35 years living in Seattle, I instinctively revolted against the suffocating left-coast culture of the Soviet of Washington, and came to revere the four great Germans who helped inspire the Reagan revolution: Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin."

However, he does link to real government sources (near the botton), so you can check to see if he weighs by ideology when posting numbers.

Re: A letter to my students

#30

Post by _delirium »

patio11 wrote: post #23
pg wrote: post #4

There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower. Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflati…

Using state figures and the CPI calculator: 1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars) 1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B) 2008-2009: $144B ($145) 2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B) Even if you adjust for California's prodigious immigration-fueled population growth, spending per person in constant dollars has more than doubled. You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less. I feel the urge to get ou…

Those nominal budget figures vary widely from the actual budgets, though, and how much varies year to year. For example, the 2009 nominal budget is indeed $119.2b, but 2009 state revenue and expenditures are somewhere around $450b. I suppose an interesting question would be whether on versus off-budget spending was a similar or different ratio in 1965.
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