LSUnKaty

Just food for thought. We are not going to fix this issue on a message board, and like I said - I'm far from an expert- but here goes.

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I do wonder if "democratic stability" includes a level of chaos, or at least disagreement. Civil unrest is a hallmark of democracy ... I do presume that Friedman actually appreciated that aspect of democracy
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I believe our schools have a duty to instill a tolerance or fortitude for civil disobedience in students. What could be more patriotic? Or critical?

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This is interesting because it gets right to the point I was trying to make.

It honestly never occurred to me to think about civil disobedience when I read "a basic level of literacy to secure democratic stability." My interpretation was much more fundamental: ensuring that all citizens not only have marketable skills that will allow them to meaningfully contribute to the economic system. but also have the basic skills and critical-thinking abilities necessary to be informed voters and meaningfully participate in the political system.

If we're going to have universal suffrage, we should want a voting public capable of understanding and evaluating foundational principles and the civic institutions built upon them; processing political arguments; recognizing and filtering out rhetoric and demagoguery; understanding incentives; and weighing short-term gains against long-term stability.

That would certainly include an appreciation for free expression and conscience, as well as principles that protect them, and I suppose could lead to an appreciation for civil disobedience and its place in a free society. But instilling a tolerance for civil disobedience wasn't something that immediately came to mind as an aspect of what you meant by "democratic stability."

That's an interesting distinction that highlights how differently the same statement can be interpreted and ultimately addressed.

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Three years of funding from tax dollars without accountability. Three years of people entrusting their children's education to an institution until the accountability metric is triggered.

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As I mentioned, I think this depends in large part on what we're measuring. Are we focused on outcomes at the end of each school year, or are we evaluating the effectiveness of the educational model as a whole against the broader, long-term objectives we're trying to achieve?

Measurements at individual stages don't necessarily translate into an accurate assessment of overall system performance. Proficiency in the traditional fundamentals - reading, writing, and math - is one thing. I see those as necessary assessments built into the system that should be continually monitored and evaluated, and those measurements and their application should also be examined as a critical element of the broader system. My kids have graduated, but based on what I hear about grade-level assessments, promotion criteria, remediation for falling behind, and so forth, it seems that the principles and objectives guiding those parts of the system have moved away from the more traditional pass/fail and competency standards I was accustomed to - for better or worse.

But to evaluate the success of the educational model itself, I don't see how to reach meaningful conclusions until the system has sufficient time to operate and its broader outcomes can be measured. We need to distinguish between evaluating individual components along the way and evaluating the success of the system as a whole.

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I am very interested in learning about alternative funding models that aren't overtly discriminatory or biased.

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I'm not an expert here, but one possibility might be something like the parochial school model I'm familiar with from my days in school in the NOLA area. If I recall correctly, tuition at my grammar school was partially subsidized by the Archdiocese to make it more affordable. Vouchers could serve a similar purpose, helping defray the cost of education without imposing a fixed funding amount or cost structure on every type of educational model.

I recognize the fairness question this raises. Can a parochial school / voucher model coexist with a full public system if, even with assistance, lower-income families might still be excluded from some of the more desirable or expensive schools? That's a legitimate concern, maybe the stipends can be means tested? I don't know - I don't want to suggest that there are easy answers.

While we certainly should work to remove any discrimination, I also think we should be careful elevating fairness above every other value we're trying to achieve. Fairness is important, but so are other measures like quality, parental choice, diversity of approaches, and the ability of families to pursue an education consistent with their values. These objectives can sometimes conflict. Maximizing one doesn't necessarily maximize the others, and it's not self-evident that equal outcomes or even equal access should always take precedence over every competing consideration. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell - whenever two things each have some value, one cannot be categorically more valuable than the other: a diamond is more valuable than a penny, but enough pennies will be worth more than any diamond.

This raises a broader normative question: Who gets to decide which values and priorities should be embedded in our educational system in the first place? Is it appropriate for government to make those decisions on behalf of everyone, or should families retain meaningful authority to make those choices for their own children?

I would argue that there's something fundamentally important about preserving parental autonomy. Education isn't simply about delivering a standardized set of skills or producing a particular set of societal outcomes. It's also about values, philosophy, character, and the kind of people parents hope to raise. I have a hard time accepting that those decisions should ultimately belong to government rather than families.

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my concern is that marginalized, venerable families will be ripe for exploitation ... At least 3+ years of failing kids before "the market" has an opportunity to correct anything. The stakes are just too high.

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I understand that concern, but that risk isn't unique to charter or voucher schools. The question is whether competition and parental choice provide better incentives to correct poor performance than a government-run system, where families often have little recourse. Would we accept the same level of service from a private business that we routinely accept from government institutions? Why should education be different?

And the measurement question cuts both ways. If educational failures take years to identify and correct in a competitive system, why assume government-run schools can identify and address those same failures any more effectively? The problem doesn't disappear simply because the provider is government-operated.

And if charter and voucher schools are concentrated in lower-income areas, then let's try to understand why. Is that inherent to the model, or does it reflect how programs are structured and regulated? Ideally, quality schools should be available to families across the socioeconomic spectrum. We should be looking at what prevents more successful schools from participating, not automatically blaming the model.

I'm not suggesting that competition alone is sufficient. Children can't afford to lose years while a failing school waits for the market to respond. Transparency, meaningful performance measures, and real accountability are essential.

But those safeguards should protect families in either scenario. The existing system has risks, too. The question is which system gives families the best options and has the strongest incentives to deliver results.

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Are there any numbers youd like to dispute?

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Strawmam is strawman.

The numbers may be approximately correct, but the conclusions drawn from them are not.

Federal expenditures reached approximately $7.49 trillion in 2025, roughly an eight- to nine-fold increase.

But there's a fundamental problem: you are comparing nominal dollars across 41 years without accounting for inflation or population growth.

The purchasing power of a dollar in 1984 was substantially greater than it is today so fewer were needed for the same goods and services.

The relevant question isn't whether federal spending increased. Of course it did.

It's whether federal spending increased faster than the economy, and whether the additional spending produced corresponding value.

Additionally, Boomers didn't control the federal government for this entire period. Presidents and congressional majorities from multiple generations and political parties contributed to those decisions.

The money supply did grow, but again, this is a nominal comparison.

Money supply growth isn't synonymous with wealth creation, economic prosperity, or even inflation.

There are also measurement considerations: the Federal Reserve changed its M1 and M2 statistical definitions in 2020.

And who was responsible for monetary policy?

The Federal Reserve is independent of the president and Congress in its monetary policy decisions. Its leadership and the political environment changed repeatedly throughout this period.

You cannot simply attribute the expansion of the money supply to one generation.

Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. In 1984, they were approximately 20 to 38 years old.

They were certainly becoming an increasingly influential voting population, but that doesn't mean they were already the dominant voting generation.

Pew Research data show that Boomers reached their peak as a voting-eligible generation in 2004, with approximately 73 million eligible voters. In 2016, they still represented approximately 31% of eligible voters, compared with 27% for Millennials

So the claim that Boomers have been the largest block of participating voters since 1980 or 1984 needs considerably more evidence.

Even if we establish that Boomers exercised disproportionate political influence for several decades, that still doesn't establish that they collectively made the decisions attributed to them.

I think the biggest intellectual weakness in your post is that it compares the difficulties facing younger people today with an idealized version of life in the 1950s and 1960s.

It treats the economic opportunities available to Boomers as though they were uniformly available, without considering the economic conditions under which they actually entered adulthood.

Here are some important examples:

Stagflation and the energy crises
Extremely high interest rates
The Vietnam War and military draft
Recessions and industrial restructuring

I'm not suggesting these challenges were equivalent to the challenges younger generations face today. They weren't necessarily worse.

I'm pointing out that the claim that Boomers never had to make hard decisions is historically indefensible.


You strawman lists developments spanning four decades, attributes them to one generation, and then blames that generation for the consequences.

But consider the timeline:

Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964.

They entered adulthood over a period spanning the 1960s through the early 1980s.

They became increasingly influential in the electorate during the 1980s and 1990s.

They held substantial political influence during the 2000s and 2010s.

Gen X and Millennials have increasingly shared political and institutional power since then.

Boomers didn't independently decide to expand federal spending, change monetary policy, increase university costs, restrict housing development or accumulate federal debt.

Those were decisions made by elected officials, regulators, institutions, businesses and voters across multiple generations.

And there's something else worth considering - Boomers didn't vote as a unified political bloc. They have always been divided by political affiliation, economic circumstances, geography and ideology.

Your post overlooks the fact that other generations have increasingly participated in the same political system and are now responsible for some of the decisions being made.

You can't assign all the blame to the generation that preceded you while absolving the generations that have since assumed political responsibility.

Fascinating. You sound like an expert here; I am not. I’m casually familiar with Friedman’s arguments and have some familiarity with the functioning of public education through my children’s attendance and my wife’s 30-plus years teaching in public schools - but take my comments for what they’re worth.

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If the State maintains a legitimate interest in requiring children to achieve a basic level of literacy to secure democratic stability, it bears a corresponding responsibility to ensure that the educational options available to fulfill that requirement are immediately adequate. This regulatory obligation is triggered at the point of operation—not years after an institution has opened, drawn tax dollars, and potentially subjected children to an inadequate education before administrative oversight intervenes.

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I see several issues here.

1. Who defines the appropriate “basic level of literacy to secure democratic stability”? That phrase itself makes me somewhat uneasy. Couldn’t such a standard sanction exactly the kind of indoctrination you were arguing against previously? Once the state is empowered not merely to establish basic academic competency but to determine what knowledge or beliefs are necessary for “democratic stability,” we have moved beyond a relatively straightforward literacy standard into much more contestable territory. I'm not sure Friedman contemplated the post-modern influence on pedagogy we see today or the kinds of knowledge that are accepted as legitimate and meaningful in that environment.

2. Who defines the standards and metrics for measuring outcomes, and who determines whether those outcomes sufficiently meet the chosen requirements? Even if we agree that some minimum standard is necessary, there remains the difficult question of what gets measured, how it is measured, and who decides what constitutes success.

3. How can meaningful measurement and assessment occur at the immediate point of operation? And why couldn’t whatever solution we devise to accomplish that difficult task be applied to either delivery model, whether publicly operated or market-based?

Certainly, assessment must be built into the system so that students who fall behind can be identified and remediated as quickly as possible. But what you seem to be addressing here is something broader: the system-wide success of the educational model itself, including the effectiveness of its embedded assessments. That can only be evaluated after the system has had sufficient time to operate and its outcomes can be properly measured and assessed - whatever the delivery model. Again, who designs those measurements and assessments remains an important question, but regardless of who does it, some delay between implementation and meaningful assessment seems unavoidable.

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there's a contradiction between using market metrics to determine success while using a fixed-cost model for funding the institutions.

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Right, but that may actually support my point. Why assume a fixed-cost model in the first place? If market metrics conflict with a funding model that is largely disconnected from demand and performance, perhaps that is an argument against the fixed-cost model rather than against market mechanisms.

My point is to challenge that assumption and ask which approach is most likely to produce better outcomes across the most dimensions and for the most students. Neither will perfectly satisfy every requirement for every population, (ETA: And this is precisely where decisions about what and how to measure come into play. Different perspectives can favor measures that emphasize different priorities, allowing different, even contradictory, outcomes to be presented as evidence of success)

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My concerns are around the same bureaucrats exploiting school choice models to enrich themselves and their loved ones at the expense of the students.

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Do you suppose that private institutions that operate that way will out compete those that provide better outcomes for students, at better costs? Because schools that operate legitimately instead of exploitatively by definition must provide better services with better outcomes more cheaply since they are focusing more resources appropriately on their customers than themselves. This is precisely where market incentives, competition and the invisible hand come in to play.

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Give me a couple more years.

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Good on you. I truly hope you can. Are you involved with anything where others can contribute?

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I don't see it as primarily a tool for "the market," either.

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Why not?

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kids weren't thinking critically. They were basically (and ironically) being indoctrinated.

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Yep.

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One of my biggest gripes about the education reformers is that their methods suck all the joy out of learning.

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And teaching!

My wife was a teacher and eventually got so fed up she retired.

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But standardized test scores don't prove that kids can actually think critically

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Absolutely true.

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Across the board?

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What I meant was halting the unchecked growth of the Federal Register. New regulations might be introduced when warranted, but there should be a check against continually expanding the regulatory burden. Something along the lines of the 2-for-1 rule Trump implemented during his first term: requiring agencies to eliminate existing regulatory burdens when introducing new ones.

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Have you seen evidence that vouchers have been successful?

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Vouchers may not be the answer. Where have they been implemented on a large scale, and how are we measuring success? I think there's evidence of some success, but I'd stop short of suggesting all implementations have been perfect. It's the underlying market principles of choice and competition that I favor. Implementation is always the challenge, and perhaps an inherently political solution like vouchers won't produce the best outcomes.

If school choice through vouchers is evaluated at scale and over time, and the evidence consistently shows unreliable or disappointing outcomes, I'll be willing to reconsider my position - not in the direction of greater centralized control, but toward an even more market-based approach.

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the standardized test fetish has basically forced public schools to discourage critical thinking and has helped to create a pipeline for the uncritical, unquestioning bottom-tier workforce, and a compliant electorate.

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I definitely agree that the outcome you're describing is real, but personally, I'd be more careful about attributing it primarily to standardized testing. An overreliance on standardized testing may certainly be part of the problem, but it would be naive to place all the blame there or assume that the outcome is entirely unintended. There are broader issues involving curriculum, teaching methods, institutional incentives, and the objectives we're asking the education system to prioritize.

And these issues go hand in hand with what any voucher system with similar governmental restrictions could be expected to produce as well.

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Investors want certainty and gridlock in Washington

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This!

Last try. I'm happy to agree to disagree, but I'm not going to concede that your interpretation is valid.

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This country is built on the very foundation of association.

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It was also built on individual accountability. Which principle do you actually want to champion?

Association without individual accountability is just collectivism.

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Every man for himself killed this country.

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Unlike you, I'm not ready to concede defeat. I reject the premise that this country is dead, dying, or beyond saving.

And by "this country," I mean something much bigger than its current government or political dysfunction. I mean the foundational principles, the spirit and character of its people, the opportunities those principles created, and the extraordinary natural resources and potential of this nation.

Have we strayed from those principles? Absolutely. Do we have serious problems? Without question. But that doesn't mean the country itself is lost.

Governments change, political fortunes shift, and we go through difficult cycles, but I'm not prepared to write off this country or the ideals that made it what it is. And I certainly won't cower or concede defeat when those ideals are challenged. I'll defend them, and keep fighting.

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Solve our economy please. Is it just framing?

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Central planning isn’t the solution.

Private property and individual liberty are the absolute essential and necessary foundations of a prosperous economy.

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maybe things are as bad they seem. Maybe things aren't actually as good as they seem.

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I'm confused as to why a TV costing 2 weeks of groceries is a problem per se. What do relative prices between different categories of goods tell you?

Productivity, competition, and innovation have dramatically reduced the “time price” of consumer goods in the United States since 1971. The time required for a blue-collar worker to afford 75 finished goods has fallen dramatically, increasing the personal abundance available to these workers.

Change in Time Price of U.S. Finished Goods: U.S. Blue-Collar Perspective (1971-2024)



Individual Commodity Percentage Change in Time Price and Percentage Change in Abundance, 1980–2024

I woke up this morning to find the earth still spinning. The sun came up. The people I love are still here. Traffic to work still sucked.

Some new a-hole politicians have replaced some old assholes. Everything still SNAFU'd.

Gridlock is our friend as usual.

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What about deindustrialization and the decline of wages?

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Don't believe everything you read.

Americans have never been richer, and they have rarely been angrier. Indeed, by nearly every objective measure of material flourishing, such as life expectancy, real income, hours worked to buy food and shelter, access to technology that did not exist a generation ago, the average American lives better than his grandparents did.

The mood does not match the record: Americans are better off yet deeply dissatisfied

Things can become more expensive in dollar terms while simultaneously becoming more affordable: Rethinking the Cost of Living

Time prices offer a clearer view of American abundance than wages or dollar prices alone: American Abundance Index