Greetings Mark and MOQers all.
It's softball season and I've been busier than a one-legged cat in a
sandbox, but I've wanted to finish out this thread and now I have the
opportunity.
First, Mark, let me congratulate you. I wish I could have stayed home
with my kids. I was better suited to the workplace than my wife.
Mark Brooks wrote:
>
> Hello MOQers!
>
> On 6/6/99 at 9:04 PM -0500, drose wrote:
>
> > In the US, funding for schools is done at a state or local level. The US
> > Constitution does not grant this power to the federal government. It
> > does mandate that the US government provide for the common defense.
>
> This doesn't seem to be completely true. I remember a huge appropriations
> bill for education right before the break in 1998. It was structured like
> the recent police officer bill. Education is also regulated to some extent
> by the federal government (Dept of Education). As for the problem, perhaps
> if we are so concerned with national education statistics, education should
> be funded and controlled nationally.
The bill, like the police officer bill before it, is a grant program
that has hoops which the local school boards must jump through. After
the grant peters out, the shool boards must figure out how to continue
paying for the teachers hired. The act was little more than feel good
politics. I covered the local school board as a stringer for a newspaper
in this area.
Our district had to politely decline. We couldn't afford the grant. In
our district, property taxes provide the bulk of the school system's
budget. The aforementioned grants and cash from federally mandated
programs (usually these are paid from state tax revenues) make up most
of the balance of these budgets.
I think you will find that there was no appreciable increase in police
officers in the US, and certainly not 100,000 of them. The same will
hold true for teachers, I'm afraid.
>
> > And we already provide assistance to mothers in this country through
> > various federal programs. Let's not pretend we do nothing, okay?
>
> I don't think we were. I was saying that we are doing the wrong thing and
> that it was worse than nothing. In the US right now, you get a tax break
> for being single and you get a tax break for using daycare and you get
> money for not working. You do NOT get a tax break for being married and
> trying to have one person stay home to be a parent while the other one
> works (or while both work for that matter). For that better behavior, you
> are in effect penalized.
And the tax break is totally meaningless if you are not willing to do
the right thing without it!
>
> If I sent my son to daycare, I would end up paying less taxes and making
> more money since I could work longer hours. He would be parented by a
> stranger who is responsible for 9-19 other children at the same time and
> who is given little compensation for their work. That doesn't seem right,
> yet it is State sponsored.
But raising your child correctly is still the right thing to do - and
the state has not empowered you to do it. You already have that power.
If the goal is to reform the tax code then let's do so. It irritates me
no end that a substantial portion of my single (paltry) income goes to
fund programs for people who want the government to do what they should
be doing for themselves. Eliminate the break and reduce my taxes. To
hell with a credit. I don't want to keep up with the Joneses, I want to
quit subsidizing them.
>
> This is where Quality and the MOQ came in to the discussion. If parents
> parenting is a better solution than daycare for the children and therefore
> for society, why is the society supporting daycare and penalizing parents?
> Isn't that wrong? What can we do about it?
We do what is needful individually and screw it. Individuals change
society when they change themselves. Societies are not dynamic,
individuals are.
> > Mary wrote:
> >
> >>> You could structure the
> >>> system, give it
> >>> parameters such as time limits or limits on the number of children per
> >>> woman (yes, per woman
> >>> since it is a woman after all who actually bears the child!)
A sexist comment. It is the height of arrogance to presume that women
bear all responsibilty for procreation. It is a partnership. I think it
is sad that some women wish to marginalize men in this area. I don't
know whether they think they are holding onto power or what. I do
suspect that it is not healthy for women or men or society.
> >>>In fact, you
> >>> could follow many
> >>> of the patterns already in use for military service to shape a system that
> >>> gives everyone an
> >>> equal opportunity at parenting.
"...gives everyone an equal opportunity at parenting." Think about this
statement. Mama government GIVES me an opportunity to parent? GIVES? IT
IS MY RIGHT! The government cannot give it to me, I already have it
unless I give it up.
> > Which part of totalitarian did I miss? I believe the Chinese pioneered
> > that approach to child rearing.
>
> She did not propose a system of raising children, she proposed a system of
> encouraging people to be parents instead of resorting to daycare. Also, it
> is not forced birth control, it is a limit on the number of children
> compensated for under the program she is proposing. In my thoughts on this,
> I set that limit to 1.
>
Oh, my. The government cannot empower parents. (I know you didn't use
empower, but it came up earlier in the thread.) All the government can
do is undermine parental responsibility. Parents already have the power
to do what they need to do to raise children correctly. I've been doing
it for 18 years now. I work, my wife either doesn't work (our current
situation) or works part-time. Damn the tax break. I drive older cars,
live in older housing and spend within my means. I don't work past 6:00
and never on Sunday. That one day is important. Whatever else God had in
mind, that day of rest and meditation was a great idea.
My kids rarely come home without one of us waiting for them.
When the governmment set the rates for welfare at a base rate plus so
much extra per each child, the unintended but totally predictable result
was more children per welfare household. The unintended (?) but
predictable result of such a limit would be fewer children per
household, in effect birth control.
> You are twisting the term "system" to mean what you want (a
> state-controlled method of handling children)
No, I'm not.
> and not what Mary intended (a
> state-sponsored financial incentive to encourage parents to parent instead
> of using daycare and working two jobs). Her intentions, however, seem clear
> from her other posts and the rest of the one you quoted.
The road to hell...etc. (Look! A cliche!) You already have the incentive
to do what is right for your kids. If you just can't pass up the BMW,
then ...
Mary (and many others) intentionally or not conceives of government as
nanny, or maybe enabler I think is the word I'm after. The big
difference between "individualist" and "statist" is that the individual
reserves for himself the responsibility to run his life and manage his
affairs and the statist is happy to let someone else do it for him.
Look - I spend a lot of time with kids. I have three teenagers in my
house. I coach boys baseball and girls softball. I make a habit of going
to the park for pickup games with my kids and as many of the
neighborhood kids as want to play. Not to brag, but children other than
my own call me "Daddy." I talk to kids, and almost without exception
they want their parents. My son and daughters are told daily by some kid
or another that they wish their father would play with them like I do
with my children.
Frankly, if a financial incentive is needed to have Mom or Dad stay home
with the kids, then Mom and Dad have their priorities screwed up. I
don't want to hear about my wallet doing my talking.
I have to quit this and get to work on the lineup for tomorrow night's
game. People, I don't doubt that everyone's motives are anything but
lily-pure even if I think they are grossly mistaken. I don't think there
is anyone who contributes regularly to this forum I couldn't get along
with socially. I don't think anyone here is a monster or Nazi in
waiting. Sometime I would like to pound down a beer or have a cuppa joe
with each of you.
Have a good evening and wish us luck for the game tomorrow!
drose
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:05 BST