Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
oh my gawd..unconscionable? Give it a break. The comparison is intended to demonstrate that private enterprises have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make a profit, public entities do not.
How many examples can you provide where the public sector has outperformed the private sector? I can think of one example but they certainly aren't outperforming the private sector, the post office which does not have to generate profit and more importantly has 100% saturation of the market with their monopoly of first class mail by all rights should be able to bury the private sector. UPS and Fedex should not exist and that is just the plain truth.
A private company is accountable to their customers first and foremost, to attract customers they need to keep prices competitive. If rising prices from the private sector is greatest concern as I've posted previously the voucher proposal here in PA would have allowed the student to use it at either a public or private school. If your argument holds true then the public schools should have absolutely no concern about this.
The problem with the public schools is it's basically a monopoly, that's never good public or private. Costs will inevitably rise when the consumer is given no choice.
How many examples can you provide where the public sector has outperformed the private sector? I can think of one example but they certainly aren't outperforming the private sector, the post office which does not have to generate profit and more importantly has 100% saturation of the market with their monopoly of first class mail by all rights should be able to bury the private sector. UPS and Fedex should not exist and that is just the plain truth.
A private company is accountable to their customers first and foremost, to attract customers they need to keep prices competitive. If rising prices from the private sector is greatest concern as I've posted previously the voucher proposal here in PA would have allowed the student to use it at either a public or private school. If your argument holds true then the public schools should have absolutely no concern about this.
The problem with the public schools is it's basically a monopoly, that's never good public or private. Costs will inevitably rise when the consumer is given no choice.
Public school is not a monopoly. There are privates and homeschool and charters.
The main goal of for profit entities is to make money. They are accountable to PROFIT first and foremost, not customers. The myth is that translates into making a better, cheaper product that people are more satisfied with. The reality is that means SELLING people the IDEA that they are getting something worth the money, not actually providing something good for people.
Is McDonalds really the best food that can be made cheaply and convienently? No, it's just marketed well (especially to children) and made to taste good by adding lots of sugar and salt. The product itself isn't good for anyone. We can point to a thousand industries where the actual best is not actually delivered by the most popular company. The best can cost too much to mass produce, may be too hard to deliver everywhere, is too hard to figure out... Hell the consumers may not know enough about what they are buying to know what the best actually is for that product.
The post office is actually a great example. Sure Fedex and UPS Have figured out how to make certain segments of mail delivery profitable. But not all of it. What would happen if they had to deliver regular mail they couldn't charge a lot for to remote places? What happens when they have to hire enough mail delivers to cover the entire country every single day, even very poor areas that don't generate lots of revenue? What happens when small businesses suddenly have to pay triple to send mail? The best mail delivery for the country is one where everyone can get mail cheaply, regularly and reliably. Would that happen in a fully privatized system?
What would happen to healthcare if there was no Medicaid or Medicare to cover the wildly unprofitable to treat older population and the poor?
This is why you don't want to unleash the for profit world on education as an exclusive market. We need all children to relieve the best education. We don't need all children to receive the education one can make a decent profit from. The expensive to educate would be screwed. More effective methods of teaching would be lost if they got in the way of profit. We'd get marketed with buzzwords meant to lure us into believing children are being taken care of, even if it's not really true.
The public system is not perfect, but I'd rather retool it than naively believe privatizing will fix everything.
How many examples can you provide where the public sector has outperformed the private sector? I can think of one example but they certainly aren't outperforming the private sector, the post office which does not have to generate profit and more importantly has 100% saturation of the market with their monopoly of first class mail by all rights should be able to bury the private sector. UPS and Fedex should not exist and that is just the plain truth.
A private company is accountable to their customers first and foremost, to attract customers they need to keep prices competitive. If rising prices from the private sector is greatest concern as I've posted previously the voucher proposal here in PA would have allowed the student to use it at either a public or private school. If your argument holds true then the public schools should have absolutely no concern about this.
The problem with the public schools is it's basically a monopoly, that's never good public or private. Costs will inevitably rise when the consumer is given no choice.
What does "outperform" mean? Do you mean deliver a service for less money, or do you mean deliver a superior service? Let's turn this around- YOU name some privatized services that have outperformed the public sector.
You don't need vouchers for school choice, there has been school choice in this Country for as long as I can remember there was never prohibiting anyone from enrolling their child in private schools. More recently there have been charter schools. I have not read one thing in this thread that convinces me that vouchers are anything but welfare for the wealthy and since you hate welfare so much I would expect you to be against it. As far as public schools competing with private, I'm not going to keep going over this, but public schools can't pick and choose, they must educate who ever shows up; private schools can and do screen out the kids who are expensive to educate.
As far as the post office, they are stuck- by law- with delivering mail 6 days a week to every address in the US for 49 cents per ounce, UPS and Fed EX don't have that obligation and never have had- they pick and choose what services they offer, just like private schools pick who they will and won't educate.
Oh..by the way, a corporations first and foremost obligation is to their shareholders - that is called fiduciary responsibility, if they put their customers first at the expense of their shareholders they can be sued, so by law they put profit first, then their customers.
Yes it is because they have monopolized the public funding.
Quote:
The main goal of for profit entities is to make money. They are accountable to PROFIT first and foremost, not customers.
You are putting the cart before the horse, if you don't serve your customers well there is no profit.
Quote:
The public system is not perfect, but I'd rather retool it than naively believe privatizing will fix everything.
As I've said previously we don't need to fully privatize it. Following along with your arguments about profits what is the issue here with allowing them to compete against private schools for funding? They don't need to make a profit so if your arguments are correct then there is no issue.
What does "outperform" mean? Do you mean deliver a service for less money, or do you mean deliver a superior service? Let's turn this around- YOU name some privatized services that have outperformed the public sector.
The low hanging fruit here is private schools but I have even better example. In the state of PA liquor is sold only by the state. They are one of the largest purchasers of liquor in the world if not the largest. On 2 billion in sales they make about 100 million in profit or 5% which is paltry by any standards. All of this should translate into cheaper booze, better services and better selections. Not happeneing.
Quote:
You don't need vouchers for school choice, there has been school choice in this Country for as long as I can remember there was never prohibiting anyone from enrolling their child in private schools. More recently there have been charter schools. I have not read one thing in this thread that convinces me that vouchers are anything but welfare for the wealthy and since you hate welfare so much I would expect you to be against it.
The pilot voucher proposal here in PA was going to the lowest performing and subsequently poorest districts in the state.
Quote:
As far as public schools competing with private, I'm not going to keep going over this, but public schools can't pick and choose, they must educate who ever shows up; private schools can and do screen out the kids who are expensive to educate.
You need to read what I have posted in this topic as I have already covered this. You set up a quota system, for every regular student you have to take in X amount of special needs. To expand on this a little further numerous schools could band together and consolidate these students into one school which should be very beneficial for the students and lower costs.
Quote:
As far as the post office, they are stuck- by law- with delivering mail 6 days a week to every address in the US for 49 cents per ounce, UPS and Fed EX don't have that obligation and never have had- they pick and choose what services they offer,
And the reason for that is they have been granted a monopoly on first class mail. Fedex and UPS cannot offer when it gets there mail, there is actually a law that outlines what they have to charge. If they wanted to offer when it gets there mail the minimum charge is going to be something like $3.
Quote:
Oh..by the way, a corporations first and foremost obligation is to their shareholders - that is called fiduciary responsibility, if they put their customers first at the expense of their shareholders they can be sued, so by law they put profit first, then their customers.
You too are putting the cart before the horse. Without customers there is no profit.
A simple proposal. Why not let motivated students study through the summer in an accelerated program skip a grade? Maybe even forget their senior year and go straight to college or whatever path they choose to take?
I hear all this talk about gifted kids, so just let them loose to work a little harder and get ahead of their peers. I think the cost would be minimal.
The most frustrating thing about a bureaucratically bound public system is its inflexibility.
A simple proposal. Why not let motivated students study through the summer in an accelerated program skip a grade? Maybe even forget their senior year and go straight to college or whatever path they choose to take?
I hear all this talk about gifted kids, so just let them loose to work a little harder and get ahead of their peers. I think the cost would be minimal.
The most frustrating thing about a bureaucratically bound public system is its inflexibility.
Yes, this. It works in AliefISD, which services the inner city youth of Houston. It's fabulous and it works.
Admission is based on grades, attendance, and behavior. It shows how public schools can function similar to private schools if they get to choose their students. It ha a 95% retention rate from 9th to 10th grade in an area where drop outs are high. (19% district wide)
They allowed bullying instead of writing it up and punish the victims of the bullies instead and there needs to be laws against that because it's not acceptable! I got busted for standing up for myself even though violence is not the answer at Pershing when some mean kids called me Charlie Brown to irritate me and alot of my teachers wouldn't do anything about it when I reported it. I ended up being grounded for mostly about a week when I was sent to the assistant principal's office. Going to the assistant principal's office when I got to school one day about the issue on the school bus didn't work and my dad told the school principal when we went to open house, but the bullies didn't get removed from bus route until after I whacked them with my umbrella and I wasn't allowed to have an umbrella there anymore. I couldn't go to private school because my mom and dad couldn't afford it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
