From: caforce@lims02.lerc.nasa.gov (DALE FORCE)
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Distribution: inet
Date:  5 Jan 1993 16:48 EST  

In article <1ic9pvINNt8@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes...
>In article <4JAN199322424251@venus.tamu.edu> gmw0622@venus.tamu.edu (Mr. Grinch) writes:
>>In article <1iab94INNsdv@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes...
>> >Considering that room, board, and tuition at most top-notch universities costs
>> >close to the median family income in the US, its pretty obvious that
>> >Libertarianism would tie quality of education to family wealth as closely as
>> >it is tied in most third world nations (and used to be in most modern industrial
>> >nations.)
>>>
>>Most taxes are paid by the middle class.  The middle class can't possibly
>>save money by paying taxes to subsidize universities rather than paying the
>>university directly.
> 
>Actually, it can.  Simply because meritocratic distribution of college funding
>can have better results than nepotistic funding.  And that's exactly my point
>above: in most third world nations, college funding is primarily nepotistic. 
>Reliance on nepotistic funding guarantees waste of the talents of the pool of
>candidates that haven't wealthy relatives.
> 
>And of course, your response entirely sidesteps the issue of ENTRY into the
>middle class.  The subsidies that enabled the education of my family have been
>paid back by taxes on our higher earnings.
> 
>>You are trying to make more champaign by pouring it
>>onto the rug and sucking it up rather than drinking it straight from the 
>>bottle.
> 
>Please spare us your "reasoning" in metaphors.  They are easily turned:
>better everybody gets a swig than one person is drunk.
> 
>> >My parents were impoverished immigrants.  They, my sisters, and I could
>> >never have afforded our educations which propelled us into the middle class
>> >without substantial government loans and subsidies.  I defy you to point to
>> >a nation that creates and perpetuates a large middle class without such
>> > subsidies.
>>
>>I don't suppose you'd believe me if I were to claim the USA had a large middle
>>class BEFORE there was massive public education,  that in fact without that
>>large middle class we wouldn't have the tax base to support this government 
>>spending in the first place?  Nonetheless,  it's true.
> 
>Yes, but that large middle class was a product of pre-industrial government
>subsidy: ever hear of the Homestead Act?  And its long list of predecessors?
>And state agricultural research?  That large middle class consisted primarily
>of farmers until the major migrations to the cities that engendered massive
>public education.  Giving small allotments of farmland away for free is a
>subsidy that has seldom been replicated.
> 
>>What I'd like you to find is instances of the head of a government agency
>>declaring his agency to be superfluous and harmful and that it should be 
>>eliminated.  Who knows,  maybe you'll actually find some and convince me that 
>>governments can be trusted to regulate their own growth.
> 
>You set a standard for government that private industry won't meet either.
>Let's ask a tobacco company to declare itself to be "superfluous and harmful
>and that it should be eliminated."  Isn't it funny: both know they have
>constituencies.
> 
>I don't think you'd have to look to far to find departments of government that
>have been abolished or diminished.  Reorganizations are common.
> 
>Mike Huben
> 
>"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under
>a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the
>kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."   Samuel Beckett
I know many people you are middle-class without going to college, and many 
others who are middle-class despite work that does not involve their 
college field. As far as prestige colleges are concerned, a Harvard degree 
and a trust fund will make you as wealthy as a trust fund alone.
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