Comments on: The Virtue of a Big Bang

By: dlr

dlr — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:12:07 +0000

FYI, on Illinois schools. Average funding is over 12,000 per year per child. That does not include capital spending, it is operating expenses only.

Multiply that by 25 kids, and you get, $300,000 PER CLASSROOM. Obviously most of that money isn’t being spent in the classroom. Administrators, bureaucrats, and overhead are eating up most of it. Government bureaucracies are like cancer. The more you feed them, the more they grow.

If you want more facts, here is an interesting link that discusses the bloat and waste in Government funded education, with an emphasis on Illinois. http://www.illinoisloop.org/spending.html

By: David Merkel

David Merkel — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:15:39 +0000

I’ve written about Ms. Whitman and her “roll the bones” gamble on equities. She really blew it bigtime.

By: maynardGkeynes

maynardGkeynes — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:29:40 +0000

Maybe you should focus on Christine Todd Whitney. She used outrageous accounting tricks during the boom to underfund municipal pensions so she could cut taxes, so all those wonderful New Jersey suburbanites could buy new SUVs and add decks to their overpriced homes. .Sure, cut school budgets for your kids, and break your contractual obligations to municipal workers and bondholders. That’s today’s morality.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:46:02 +0000

“Tell the schools they are getting less from the state/county/city. Let them figure out what is least valuable in the system, and eliminate it.”

David — I wonder if you have ever had some experience with this. I have served for several years on a citizens committee advising our school district. It consists of business people with broad experience and a commitment to cost cutting.

Illinois has plenty of financial problems. It is late in paying schools for the current year and future payments are uncertain. When you start looking at the actual decisions, it is a lot tougher than speaking in generalities about sharing the pain. In the case of education, it could mean much larger class sizes, for example, and reduced course offerings. Some might see this as cutting back on a crucial investment.

Since I do not have direct expertise with other services, I’ll stick to what I know about. I have observed that cuts are even occurring in police protection. Just a thought….

By: IF

IF — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:29:47 +0000

Krugman hates you, I know for sure. But the problem with cutting first is called “Ireland”. If Greece is managing to get a bail out, the Irish will bite themselves hard. Still a poker game. So why is New Jersey folding now? Is it going to live to fight another day? California is staying in the game and upping the ante. Would be more fun to watch if I didn’t live in CA.