Good morning.
- Race error? Heh.
- A taster?
- Very pretty.
- Misunderstanding markets (and perhaps the role of government).
- Not candy coating works too.
- Links and a hope that our President will get some needed education.
- Pimping your parish … or not.
- Lebanon.
- Considering end of life.
- Kids. They’re just so darn immature.
- And keep them away from operating heavy machinery (in some cases).
- A book noted.
- Isn’t “chronically homeless” a euphimism for the mentally ill?
- A Saint.
Misunderstanding markets (and perhaps the role of government).
Not sure here if you meant to say the author is misunderstanding markets or the author is writing about misunderstanding markets. Anyway, it’s a good criticism of the voucher idea for education.
What he missed though is probably more essential. The market is about the customer deciding what they like and don’t like and choosing suppliers accordingly. But it is also about what the customer is willing to give up. Is he willing to give up $30 for a really good pizza pie? If not he may opt for $10 frozen pizza. The ‘giving up’ part isn’t fun but it is essential to the market. What voucher supporters often miss is that there’s a big difference between spending your own money for private school for your kid and spending someone else’s money. Coming home from hours of unpaid overtime and seeing your kid on the Xbox slacking off his homework must be a really grating experience when you just wrote the tuition check out at the beginning of the week and it just cleared so your checking account is down to two digits already.
But unlike the author I don’t oppose vouchers, I just oppose voucher messiahism. That’s the idea that vouchers are the be all and end all to education. There is no education reform or improvement sans vouchers and education reform is nothing but vouchers. I would use vouchers surgerically in areas of deep failure and carefully measure the results. Voucherites, though, often act as if tomorrow they would overturn the whole system and start mailing out checks.
Boonton,
I was attempting to very economically point out that the author was writing about misunderstanding markets, but was also misunderstanding (from my point of view) the relationship between education and goverment, i.e., education is not a “right”.
Is a key insight into why effective education cannot work if it is a free thing offered by the government.
A bit to strong there. Certainly it isn’t why effective education cannot work since plenty of people have received free education and did a lot with it. It is a factor that frustrates free education and it should be taken into account, that’s all.