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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Taking it to the streets is fine. But don't forget US society's need for educated people. Don't screw undergraduate and postgraduate students.


An email newsletter from a friend noted this item (source of phote), which at its second of three pages notes:

Tax Shifts

When you cut taxes that pay for public needs, you are actually shifting taxes. You are taxing others. In California tax cuts for corporations last year led to cuts in the support for public universities, which led to 32% higher tuition and a drastic cut in the number of students educated. That 32% constituted a tax on those students and their parents, and when they had to borrow the money for college, interest payments on the loan effectively double the cost of the loan. That's a very high tax shift. But an even higher tax is shifted onto students who cannot afford the higher tuition: the tax of a lost education lasts all one's life and its cost is not only monetary, but a cost in human potential. It is also a cost to employers, who get less educated workers, and to society, which gets less educated citizens.


The other way to say it is don't eat the seed corn.

Dumb and undereducated people often underestimate the importance of smart educated people, as a social asset for all the rest of us, and that quote shows the "lower my taxes" limitations. You sell out the future of the nation.

Without educated smart people you would not have the home heated and the lights at night - i.e., the ability to provide such a service hinges not just on infrastructure but on power engineers, computer programmers, and linemen. Given the risks of being a lineman I expect the dumb and careless eliminate themselves one way or another.

The Chinese are exemplary in spending to send their brightest and most promising young to US and European graduate schools to become educated and hence worth more to their state and society; while we are hanging our young to the yardarm with costs out of proportion to the ability to pay. And that so some idiots can pay less taxes and drink more Budweiser and smoke more while driving the Dodge Ram trophy truck.

It's unwise. Yet the dumb vote in droves because there are more of them. The bright vote too but are outnumbered. Unfortunately, too often the dumb vote dumb. They are easily deluded by FOX tv, and are short-sighted and too selfish over tax levels.

Government is not inherently evil although crooked or bought politicians are. You do not eliminate the former, you aim and hope to at least curtail if not eliminate the latter. At the local town board level, up to the national and international governing levels, clean house but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And don't eat the seed corn. Protect it.

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The brief excerpt is fine, the entire item gives context and other points of thought. The theme of trying to find effective routes of action, to alter things for the better, is timely as we all are soon to have the opportunity to go to caucus.