From a Scandinavian point of view this seems like such a detour. Why wait for billionaires to be so kind of fund schools when you could tax wealth and fund public and universal education? Why do the American people chose this way time after time?
The reason money from billionaires is interesting is because it's less limited by the regulations. It can be spent in ways public money cannot be used. It didn't work in Newark though, as others in the thread pointed out.
[1] http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48630868....
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
Also, per student spending is substantially evened out in some areas. For example, every public school in NYC has the same per student spending. More importantly, there is almost no correlation between per student spending and educational outcomes. Some of the states with the worst performing public schools also have higher spending. Moreover, many of the states that have higher revenue and higher public school spending also have higher costs of living. If you take the 5 highest and 5 lowest ranked US state public school systems and adjust their spending by the relative cost of living then order them from highest to lowest you end up with this list: 5th, 47th, 49th, 48th, 4th, 50th, 46th, 2nd, 1st. Spending is an easy issue to focus on, but it's not the right issue, and fixing it won't fix outcomes.
Fixing education is a complicated problem, imagining that we can fix it by just throwing money at it is, frankly, lazy. It's like a disengaged father sending his child to the most expensive private school without understanding anything about their child's educational desires or needs.
The problem with the system is that it's bureaucracy bound and married to perverse incentives. We need to fix the incentives, to do so within the existing system is a monumental task.
By the way, nobody has to wait for billionaires anywhere, if you want to help out in education, get up and do it.
That is so obviously not the point. Education needs a bunch of investment in teachers, buildings and equipment, and your volunteering is going to make minimal difference to that.
Anyways, you can also donate money to a educational institution yourself.
Large portion of tax already goes into public education. Money is never enough, thus someone donating more money to education never hurts. But I fail to see connection between 'if we need more money, tax all those wealthy citizens'.
Also, not having too rich and too poor people is a goal in itself - to move wealth from rich to poor creates a society where everyone is equal. Equal people are more happy and peaceful, and that is what it's all about.
We Europeans in general and particular Scandinavians have it very easy to judge in our warm and cuddly nests.
A lot of what is wrong in the U.S. today goes back to our own absolutely unparalleled failure in the roughly 40 years between 1940 until 1980.
I think the American people could be far more powerful and demanding if they weren't hindered by their absurd notion of "socialism". And the reason why the politians can pull this term out of the cage in order to scare and control their folks is rooted in our continent.
Please explain.
Here's my very very very unhealty simplifictation of how the lack of public funding of public services and the events in europe are related.
underfunded schools > public spending in general > fiscal quote > "washington" > elections > cultural reflexes > "socialism" > libertarianism/Reagan > Europe > cold war > socialism > WW II
America had it relatively swell after WWII. Things went so well for so long that they thought that the American Way was indestructible. Again, how is that 'Europes" fault?
You appear to acknowledge this, but just in case: it's our (Europeans') fault because we had two massive, hugely expensive, wars, which the Americans funded, providing them with an economic security that further compounded their preexisting view of their own exceptionalism.
This means that rather than appreciating the degree to which their position of strength was obtained through historical circumstance, they see it solely as a product of the superiority of their own way of life.
edit: Of more relevance to the story, this is interesting, though perhaps not to everyone's taste: http://www.philosophersmail.com/capitalism/the-rich-should-s...
No matter how do you evaluate Hegels work, his ideals etc., it is absolutely stunning to see on which level he and others discussed this matter. And the "others" where especially important, because the role of the state and a nation where discussed not only in the ivory tower but also in broader public.
Fast forward to now. We made huge progress in applied science and technology, but how do we discuss and think about things like our freedom today? Compared to 200 years ago a cnn/fox/whatever discussion is nothing more then the mumbling of a patient in his terminal stage in dementia.
How did we loose all that? Why the degression?
The person who declared and showed how to destroy the state, the establishment and burn everything down was Hitler. His first target was to destroy the political apparatus, and he did.
After the war most european countries where politicaly weakened. So the U.S. was left with basically one true opponent, the soviet union. But this system was more of a dictatorship so it wasnt really a competion between states, but more a (cold) war led by nuclear threat.
So in the end, America won and showed an groth rate in global economical power unparalleled in history. And where money is there is power. So in the end the role of the state was very much diminished, and this laid the groundwork for Reagan.
And lot of the things the U.S. struggle today are the result of Reagans tax revolution.
People in roles like Zuckerberg are not only required to fulfill Machiavellian responsibilities to the companies they operate but they also need to do everything they can to counter the day-to-day reality with a strong likable public image. When Zuckerberg throws money it kind of acts as a bit of an inoculation to things like privacy concerns or the undermining of the middle class through the false culture of 'openness'. If Zuckerberg really cared about bad schools he would have dedicated a year ( or some meaningful amount of time) to teaching at one of them while learning about all the internal granularity and interacting pieces that truly are fucking up kids lives. Just throwing money is nice and I'm sure there is a ton of data behind his decision, but I can't help but think that a first hand perspective is something Zuckerberg has no desire to even begin to entertain. In fact I get the feeling that like most people ( admittedly myself) ), he would rather avoid it all together.
The US is an illusion.
Because:
- Obama is a socialist
- Trickle-down economics is the only thing that works
- Taxing wealth is hating the rich (so basically being a nazi)
- Taxing the wealthy doesn't give them a tax cut like donating money to schools or charities does
- Because taxing job creators just encourages the moochers and takers
(Rinse and repeat ad nauseam until it becomes a way of life)