-=> Quoting Robert Craft to Walter Luffman <=-
 RC> How 'bout "subsistence level" instead?
I always liked "lowest of the lower-middle-class".   But the
best term is probably "just barely getting by", because that's
all I was doing...or hoped to do in the immediate future.  I'm
not exactly awash in wealth today, more like lower-middle-class,
but I'm slowly gettng there.
(And being a bachelor, the only person my economic plight
concerns is me...unless you count the IRS and the various
companies that want to sell me stuff.)
I think it's a truism that conservatives, regardless of how much
money they have, are not nearly as concerned with wealth as they
are with accomplishment.  Liberals, OTOH, are more concerned
with "balancing the scales" (a.k.a. "getting even") than with
accomplishment, except as individuals; individually, each liberal
wants to accomplish _and_ get wealthy, but may be less picky than
conservatives about what to accomplish or how to go about it.
 RC> Fine by me. The availability of computing power makes
 RC> feasible local control of many programs which have
 RC> heretofore been handled by state/Federal agencies.
Also keeps the control much closer to home, which is what the
idea of small federal government is all about.  Local voters
have more control, and in some cases can even end programs
they no longer find necessary.
 RC> I think market forces will prevent that scenario. Since the
 RC> best schools will be able to charge a tuition of "Voucher +
 RC> $n", cash will remain a portion of the payment. 
At one time, Medicare patients could use a combination of
Medicare and additional out-of-pocket payments, but that has
ended.  It could happen again, although probably not for
several years.
 RC> Remember when the high school diploma was a *guarantee* of
 RC> a certain minimum level of education?
Back then, at least you could safely bet that the graduate
could at least read the diploma.  I was so proud of mine, I
carried a wallet-size miniature for several years.  Today,
a bachelor's degree is the minimum for some jobs that used
to be filled by high-school dropouts -- not because the jobs
themselves require more education, but because we've "dumbed
down" the education system to the point where today's student
with only one or two years of college may actually have
poorer reading and comprehension skills than yesterday's
high-school dropout.
 
 WL> Good, but not good enough. I want to slowly starve out the
 WL> inferior educators and administrators by reducing the
 WL> amount of funding that goes to them.
 RC> I don't think there will be anything "slow" about it at
 RC> all. In fact, it may resemble the "land rush" scenes of
 RC> last century when new territories were opened for
 RC> settlement.
Wish I could be that optimistic.  As long as unions and big
government (including state government in some cases) are
involved at all, I fear it will be impossible to do anything
quickly.
 
 RC> OTOH, can't you see a corporations such as Boeing, etc
 RC> buying up a public school adjacent to the plant and making
 RC> enrollment available to employee children AND making
 RC> teaching positions available to Boeing staffers, either
 RC> active or retired?
I can see the corporate school happen, but I can also see
employer-provided education being taxed as income.  The big
corporations could get around that by opening their schools to
non-employee families on an equal basis with employee families,
but that might be too horrendously expensive to implement.
As for making teaching positions available to Boeing employees
and retirees, we're seeing something similar being proposed in
Tennessee with our "charter schools" program where a percentage
of the teachers could be people with degree-certification in
particular fields (mathematicians and physicists, for example)
but no formal teaching credentials.  It isn't going to happen
this year, and probably not next year -- the teachers' union
is too strong.
Colleges and universities value expertise over teaching
credentials, but not public primary and secondary schools.
Even Stephen Hawking couldn't get a job teaching high-school
physics in this country.
 
 WL> Parents will quickly get the message and move their kids
 WL> (and vouchers) out of those schools and into the better
 WL> (and better-funded) ones; their actions will increase the
 WL> funding available for good schhols even more. 
 RC> Particularly since the good schools will be charging
 RC> premium fees of "voucher + $n". 
If the unions and the federal government don't quash the idea
first.  (I can't help it; I firmly believe that if you count
on liberal groups and bureaucracies to do the right thing, you
just set yourself up for a disappointment.
 
 RC> It won't last that long. The local public schools will be
 RC> purchased out from under the union.
That would be nice, if and when it happens.  Then again,
we'll still need someplace to take the students who are more
interested in causing trouble than in learning.  "Reform
schools" we used to call them; now the closest thing we have
is called an "alternative school", and it's little more than a
place where troublemakers can be meet for several hours a day.
But perhaps if we brought back the honest-to-goodness reform
schools, and made that the default assignment for lazy and
incompetent teachers, we'd drive out those teachers even faster
and then be able to assign qualified teachers who also just
happen to be tough enough to reach those young punks and force
a little education past their tough facades.
Walter, Forked Deer River Ilks
wluffman@usit.net
... In 1820 the branding iron was invented. The cattle were impressed.
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