Of course, the P³ doesn’t manage to connect this point to any other:
The simple truth is that we can very obviously educate our children: the resources to do so exist within our society. However, in an economy where the whole focus is on meeting the demands of landowners and bankers that can’t happen because they deny us and the government the resources to make all ends, personal and societal, meet.
So who is going to upturn the tables and say people, planet and community above all else?
It is indeed resources that matter. Money’s just the paper trail. Therefore solutions are in the allocation (for completists, the production of them too) of resources, not the paper trail of money.
Or, as we can put it, MMT doesn’t solve anything as it merely plays with the paper trail. It really does come down to the real resources allocation.
Haven’t they tried this in numerous countries? – Venezuela, Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam… the list is endless. And it’s always the same message ‘This time it’ll be different’.
What are these resources we’re being denied by “bankers and landowners” and why are we entitled to them?
Is this ordinary naked envy or is this Jordan Gray style naked envy?
The “resources” put into education are, in all probability, too large. Let me be a curmudgeon: I went through a primary school in a class of 45 – my mother kept my old school reports so this number is not a trick of my memory. The Principal taught a full load and did his principalling after we’d gone home. He had no Deputy though I suppose somebody was nominated to take charge if he had missed a day or two because of illness.
The school didn’t have to deal with what were then called mental defectives because those poor souls went to a separate building on the site of the secondary school where they could be taught by specialists. Nor did the teachers have to deal with the whole range of intelligence because each year was streamed into two classes of 45.
Unlike the state primary school of my offspring, mine didn’t have acres of playing fields nor a swimming pool: concrete playgrounds and outdoor bogs is what we had.
During the teaching day the school was run by the secretary (there was just one) and the janitor. So what did this system cost? Less than half what its modern equivalent costs, no doubt. And I’ll bet it carried far less in overheads at the County Council too.
There’s almost nothing worth quoting in Education Research but one result that seems to be replicable is that money per capita, and class size, have no effect on the success of schooling. Clearly there must be extreme cases where those would matter but they don’t seem to turn up in the studies of actual school systems.
What is he blathering on about? There is universal education publicly funded in all Anglosphere nations.
All your children are already being educated.
It’s not the fault of ‘the rich’ that so many simply refuse to be educated.
Class sizes of 45 aren’t a problem, after all universities do it no problem, IF the clientele want to behave.
Modern kids often do not want to behave and can’t be thrown out easily.
So class sizes have to be smaller.
I can, have, taught 34 seniors and enjoyed it. But it’s a different story for unruly juniors. I had a class this year where one absolute cock caused more issues than the rest combined (I threw him out for the last weeks of the year, but then my school is supportive of discipline). If there had been another like him in the class the time spent teaching would have dropped alarmingly.
This is not the teachers’ fault, but societies’. Bring back effective punishment and large classes become possible again. Oh, and recruitment will be less of an issue too.
* society’s
“Or, as we can put it, MMT doesn’t solve anything as it merely plays with the paper trail. It really does come down to the real resources allocation.”
Actually, MMT tells us to stop worrying about deficits and that resources are the real constraint. A quote from Stephanie Kelton:
[quote]
Several of Kelton’s colleagues told me that she can be playfully funny, but, when we met, in a New School conference room overlooking Fifth Avenue, she spoke with the intense focus and faith of a crusader. For Kelton, M.M.T. would form the basis of a new approach to policymaking, in which our political imagination is broadened. The important question, she said, shouldn’t be “How will you pay for it?” but “How will you resource it?” She uses the mobilization for the Second World War as an example; the country focussed on maximizing its resources to make planes and guns and food. The deficit was not a concern.
[end quote]
Another quote from Stephanie Kelton:
[quote]
The president called his plan “fiscally responsible” during his speech simply because it will raise more revenue than what he’s proposing to spend. On paper, and according to conventional wisdom, this is a balanced policy. It may satisfy the scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office or even earn high marks from deficit hawks. But because these proposed hikes fall exclusively on corporations and more affluent Americans — who have a relatively high marginal propensity to save rather than spend — the taxes may not diminish enough private sector spending to prevent the government’s own increased outlays from igniting some inflationary overheating, especially if Congress does “go way higher.”
The key to responsibly spending vast sums of money lies in carefully managing the economy’s real productive limitations. Just as my son’s Lego projects are limited by the amount of bricks we have bought for him, we can’t squeeze more goods and services out of our economy once we’ve made use of all available resources.
It’s easy to ramp up spending when there are millions of unemployed people who can be hired and plenty of domestic companies eager to supply the government with solar panels and electric vehicles. But what happens when it gets harder to find the idle things and people — construction workers, architects, machinery, raw materials and so on — needed to keep pace with an enormous revamp of our nation’s infrastructure? With the U.S. economy now improving, it would be irresponsible not to develop a rollout plan for those contingencies.
[end quote]
MMT is all about resources…
is this a moan about state education? If so I have an answer. We should pass a law making it illegal for government to intefere. Actually that would just about work for anything the bastards do. Just have to make sure the wording doesn’t over enrich the legal brethren!