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A letter to my students

blogs.berkeley.edu

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Re: A letter to my students

#61

Post by lolhn »

Locke1689 wrote: post #40
patio11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So I went ahead and did a calculation of my own: revenue by all taxes per capita in the state of California between 2005 and 1964. All following figures are from US census data: Total revenue from all taxes per capita 1964: $2182.85 (helpfully provided by the 1964 census). Total revenue from all taxes 2005: $146,692,000,000 Total resident population of California, 2005: 36,250,000 Total revenue from all taxes per cap…

These numbers of yours are adorable, but you're ignoring the fact that the people who are now abandoning spending on education first voted for spending on a lot of other things.

Policy analysis like yours serves only to distract from reality. It's well-intentioned, but fundamentally useless.

Re: A letter to my students

#62

Post by DanielN »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54
Locke1689 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In general teacher salaries are pretty poor,... Yes, but they get great fringe benefits (early retirement, defined benefit pensions) and easy hours. The salaries aren't even that bad if you multiply by (12 months of pay / 9-10 months of work). The underpaid teacher is a myth. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be...

well for what its worth, a lot of studies suggest that you actually get better teachers if you exchange these "fringe benefits" for higher salaries.

Re: A letter to my students

#63

Post by eli »

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…

So is the implication that the state has grown much more wasteful in its spending over the last few decades?

If you've got a plan for providing the level of services from the 60s without raising taxes, I'd love to see the details. (Consider pension and healthcare costs now versus then, even accounting for inflation)

Re: A letter to my students

#64

Post by Avshalom »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54
Locke1689 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In general teacher salaries are pretty poor,... Yes, but they get great fringe benefits (early retirement, defined benefit pensions) and easy hours. The salaries aren't even that bad if you multiply by (12 months of pay / 9-10 months of work). The underpaid teacher is a myth. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be...

"The salaries aren't even that bad if you multiply by (12 months of pay / 9-10 months of work)."

Huh, I never thought of that, but you're right. If we just pretend that we pay teachers more than we do, they have great salaries.

Re: A letter to my students

#65

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

I believe California currently spends a similar amount on prisons as on education. I don't believe that was the case in 1962.

That would effect total spending. Whether that means California is doing more for its citizens in this way is a question one can ask.

Re: A letter to my students

#66

Post by eli »

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…

I think this is actually a much less helpful question than you think it is. For a lot of reasons, outside factors made things like real estate and healthcare a lot more expensive for the state of california. I don't see any evidence that CA is any more wasteful than it was 40 years ago.

Or, put another way, where exactly do you see an extra $100B in CA's budget?

Re: A letter to my students

#67

Post by harshpotatoes »

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…

That of course assumes that the money needed provide the same services for the people grows at the same rate as the population growth. In other words, the cost per person might actually be significantly lower to provide services for 1million people than it would be to provide services for 20 million people. And maybe this isn't due to a government 'inefficiency' (mismanagement of funds), but rather an inefficiency that is inherent in the design of our cities and services (Meaning: Long term problem requiring redesign of many services in order to increase spending efficiency).

So really, I think it's far more important to question: 1) How has the cost for these public services scaled with the population in the past? 2) Based on that, how do I think the cost of the these public services scale with the population in the foreseeable future? 3) Is this increase in expenditure due to wasteful mismanagement of funds, or a design problem in our cities and services?

Re: A letter to my students

#68

Post by ryanhuff »

pmb wrote: post #20
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 higher quality teachers for less cost" --- if and only if we know how to use technology to increase instruction quality. I contend that we have almost no idea about that. He is right to blame all of California's ills on tax cuts. They and Oregon have had the worst abuses of the proposition system of all the states. Both used to be prosperous with balanced budgets, but had sne…

What tax cuts are you talking about? My California state income tax bill (or sales tax) certainly hasn't gone down in recent years. You might be right, but your comment is seeded with anecdotal examples that seem politically partisan ("sneaky?"). "I know a guy who" isn't the best way to prove a point. Instead, numbers showing tax revenue and spending would help illustrate how the financial ills are caused by lower taxes, instead of spending problems.

Re: A letter to my students

#69

Post by ohyes »

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…

His claim is that California is bottom of the barrel WRT the amount of money that it is reinvesting in its education system. (Hence the 'prime the pump' analogy)... This is true:

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_ele_sec_fin_cur_exp_per...

To turn this into a 'low taxes vs high taxes' debate is kind of deceptive. I think that the point about taxes is that the debate around taxes has essentially become petty and mean-spirited.

If a politician wants to raise taxes (in any way, even on the wealthiest 1 or .1%, who would barely notice), countless will bitch about it, without regard for data or reason (or common sense). It will be a knee jerk reaction.

WRT to his assumptions, I don't think that he is assuming that California is not spending its money wastefully (see his mention of the penal system). There is an argument to be made, however, that it is incredibly difficult to reclaim wasteful spending that has already been done. (California is not going to pardon 60% of its prison population and close its prisons or cancel state pensions).

So the expedient solution, if you believe in spending more on education and social services, would be to tax more. (but no politician in their right mind would say that).

Re: A letter to my students

#70

Post by gwern »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #49
bokonist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. Good job, you just discovered that our standardized tests scores are biased in favor of white kids.

Which is why those ethnicities then go on to have perfect 4.0 GPAs and rack up countless patents & inventions and start tons of successful new companies, thus proving those standardized tests wrong in the most effective way possible.
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