Huffington Post Comments, 9/11/2012 Part II

I would like to add some more of the comments I got with one other commenter.

(I don't care for the format I'm presenting these comments in. If you've got a suggestion for improving this format, I'd be happy to hear it.)

justice1906tamu2

The funny thing is that the people on the Right continue to demonize the government under the guise that they don't need it.  The United States is the United States because of the government.  Our country is based on a balance between private sector capitalism and public sector socialism.  Neither can survive without the other.  Why demonize teachers?  They can survive without CEOs, and in many a low income area, there are no funds for the computers, books, etc. that you speak of.  The choice is simple: Continue to not pay teachers and they strike (then what do you do?) or give them their just due and pay them.  A CEO has the right to renegotiate his or her salary and they get rewarded for stellar performance; let the teacher do the same.  I've been in both the private and public sector and have excelled at both.  If all teachers decided not to teach, our nation would crumble.  Argue that...

Me:

Since you want to pick which arguments that I can use in defense of my opinion, I will give you two points that argues we would be better off without public education.

Point 1:

"Overall, there were many similarities in the results for the two grades. In both reading and mathematics, analyses employing unadjusted NAEP scores indicated that the average private school mean score was higher than the average public school mean score, and the difference was statistically significant."

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.asp

Point 2:

Can you name one private school that has had a tragedy such as this (following link) occur in it? This one was last month can you find one that has occurred in a private school, in America, during the last year?

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/08/27/shooting-reported-in-perry-hall-high-schools-cafeteria/

 If I may now move on to the points that I would like to make about public education...

1. the Chicago teachers in particular make around $76,000 per year before benefits more generous than most of us will ever see

2. their salaries come from the taxpayers (that's us)

3. these teachers want even more money and even more benefits while many of the rest of us just want a job (so we can help pay for the teachers)

4. The governments of Chicago, Illinois, and the United States all have huge budget deficits, and unimaginable amounts of debt, from spending too much already

5. Those of us on the right are not trying to demonize teachers, but that does not mean that we should not out when the teachers are wrong.

6. Every time the government tries to "help" it costs more than we were told it would, the "help" does not achieve its stated goals, and there are unforeseen (by the government) side effects.

7. The solution of a problem caused by government always seems to be more government. This has not worked yet. For example, we've had a war on poverty since the '60s. And there are still poor people. We've had a "war on drugs" for decades, and people still use illegal drugs.

8. When countries move from more government to less government the lives of their citizens improve.

http://spootville.blogspot.com/2012/09/less-government-more-prosperity.html