<p>How about using Sweden as the example? They do everything I suggested, and, last time I looked, spent less per student than the U.S. does. Exeter education isn’t necessary. But money spent on supporting families is. </p>
<p>By the way, Sweden has an extraordinary foster care system, and one of the results of that is that they have virtually no kids in their juvenile justice system. (Actually, they don’t really have a juvenile justice system.) But they spend about 3X what we do, on biological parents, foster parents, and the kids (though not on schools).</p>
<p>And let’s be clear: it’s all money we are spending already.</p>
<p>“Spend what Philips Exeter believes is necessary to educate a rich kid well - both in annual spending and endowment - add a little,”</p>
<p>That is hogwash.</p>
<p>In HISD one of the school spends more than twice per student than the best school. The school that spends most money ~ $16 k/student/yr is the worst school in HISD.</p>
<p>Big difference between $16k and $40k. And then do it for 13 years straight (and throw in all the vacation and summer spending on top of that - so make it $50k for 13 years), and see what you get. Exeter knows what it costs to educate a rich person; why would you expect it would cost any less to get similar results with a poor one?</p>
<p>Now, as I said, if had the money, I wouldn’t spend it on schools, or in schools. And I wouldn’t spend it on jails, prisons, juvenile courts, crime victim costs, police, or a broken foster care system either.</p>
<p>(For what it’s worth, the top corporate tax rate in Sweden is substantially LOWER than in the U.S. But they make sure that corporations are actually paying it. Neither corporations, nor rich people, nor physicians are fleeing Sweden.)</p>
<p>“Exactly. It’s NOT money.”</p>
<p>And yes, it IS money (BcEagle says it is the 60% tax rate.) But it isn’t money spent on schools. It is money spent on the school-to-prison pipeline, and the prison-industrial complex.</p>
<p>I am not here to defend the Swedish system. Only to explain how it works, and why they can spend LESS per pupil than the U.S. </p>
<p>(And yes, in Sweden, higher education is free - that is, paid for by taxes - including medical schools, etc. And you’ll never have to pay for childcare, because they’ll pay you to stay home with your kids, if you choose. And yes, in Sweden, health care is almost free - that is, paid by taxes - and if you add those costs to your taxes in the U.S., guess what you come up with. ) But corporate taxes are lower. I was there two years ago. Met doctors and corporate execs, and service workers - no one is leaving. (By the way, I don’t know who (other than some rightwing blog) told you the income tax rate in Sweden is 60%. The bottom income tax rate, paid by most folks, is 29%. Top tax rate dropped by 51% since 1991. Total tax burden IS high (as it is in the U.S.), but remember what it buys.)</p>
<p>And why isn’t everyone moving to Sweden? Because they carefully control immigration, though they have been far more generous than the U.S with Iraqi refugees - the refugee who lives with me has a sister and family there, and I wish we provided to him even one quarter of what she is provided with. </p>
<p>But the point is that other choices can be made. Including spending LESS on schools. That’s the point about Sweden! And given the choices we as a society have made, I think that woman should be given a medal - within a year, parents of 82% of U.S. schools, will be told they have the option of moving their kids to a better school, if they can find one.</p>
<p>“Big difference between $16k and $40k. And then do it for 13 years straight (and throw in all the vacation and summer spending on top of that - so make it $50k for 13 years), and see what you get.”</p>
<p>What would I get? Currently 16 k buys me about 5% of non prison bound school population. $50 K will buy me 10% of non prison bound school population.</p>
<p>The typical worker receives 40% of his income after the tax wedge. The slowly declining overall taxation, 51.1% of GDP in 2007, is still nearly double of that in the United States or Ireland. The share of employment financed via tax income amounts to a third of Swedish workforce, a substantially higher proportion than in most other countries. Overall, GDP growth has been fast since reforms in the early 1990s, especially in manufacturing.[109]</p>
<p>I think this woman should be given an apology and the friend should get their apartment back. This is what Stamford thinks they should be spending their money on? Shameful.</p>
<p>I’m from that area and this happens a lot - well, not the homeless thing but I have known several students who lived in Bridgeport or Trumbull but were enrolled in Stamford public schools because their parents thought the schools were better there.</p>
<p>Let’s remember what her “crime” was: not registering at the homeless shelter at which she stayed. If she registered, she’s a hero. Now she faces 20 years. What thieving, lying, prestige-college-graduating, multi-millionaire crook now faces 20 years as a result of the nation’s financial meltdown?</p>
<p>Note that mom is a real charmer: “The police said she was found to be in possession of 60 bags of marijuana and had 14 bags of crack cocaine stashed under a black wig she was wearing.” Somehow I doubt her kid’s education was her first priority (if she had bothered to register her son as homeless, he could have stayed at the school, but apparently fraud was easier.) With any luck, she’ll lose her rights to the kid and he can stay with the relatives now caring for him.</p>
<p>On behalf of my hometown, I want to point out that Stamford has nothing to do with this case. The child was removed from a school in Norwalk (rather amusingly referred to in the article to as a “suburban” school despite the fact that Norwalk is a small city and the school district in question included the low-income housing project that was used as the false address. Whatever, NYT). I don’t know what the mother’s motivations were (maybe she wanted he kid in a school closer to her drug connection, for convenience sake), but I assure you she wasn’t seeking educational excellence by putting the boy in a Norwalk elementary school–if he’d been registered in Darien, Westport or New Canaan, the whole narrative being pushed by the NYT might have held water, but there’s less here than meets the eye.</p>
<p>Regarding Sweden - apparently they have a rather high VAT too and maybe that is why Wikipedia puts their average tax rate at 60%.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to look at the contrast between the european states that provide generous social benefits and the asian countries that provide little social supports. Some of the european countries are doing quite well with their model and many of the asian countries can say the same.</p>
<p>As a long-time resident of Southern Fairfield County and graduate of one of the school systems mentioned by MommaJ, I completely agree. I was bemused by the idea that someone would commit fraud to put their kid in a Norwalk school for a “better” education, when Norwalk is surrounded by towns where the public education really is superior. It may be “better” than some parts of Bridgeport, but not by much. Something else is at work in this particular case.</p>
<p>That said, I generally agree with Mini about the skewed priorities of our nation.</p>
<p>“The typical worker receives 40% of his income after the tax wedge. The slowly declining overall taxation, 51.1% of GDP in 2007, is still nearly double of that in the United States or Ireland.”</p>
<p>So take that tax and compare with U.S. middle-class person - add together income tax, sales taxes, real estate taxes, estate taxes, all costs of child care, costs for university education, costs of post-graduate education, and all health care costs. (That’s just the short list.)I think you’ll find that the Swedes get a bargain. Especially when you consider they never have to worry about any of this stuff - and EVERYONE is covered. Which is why they don’t leave. Neither do corporations, which have a LOWER top corporate rate in the U.S.</p>
<p>“The U.S. welfare state is one of the least extensive in the developed
world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by
considerably less than the mean for rich nations,[87][88] though
combined private and public social expenditures per capita are higher
than in any of the Nordic countries.[89] While the American welfare
state does well in reducing poverty among the elderly,[90] the young
receive relatively little assistance.[91] A 2007 UNICEF study of
children’s well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations ranked the
United States next to last.[92]”</p>
<p>Wikipedia says that the US does not fare well compared to any of the
Nordic countries.</p>
<p>I think that New Hampshire would fare well against Sweden, especially
on overall taxation rates but that is cherry picking.</p>
<p>My point, though, was comparing Asian nations to European nations. I
guess we can include Nordic countries too.</p>
<p>Take a look at health care costs for Singapore and Sweden. Sweden’s is
about 9% (Wikipedia) while Singapore spends 3.4% (pressrun.net and
others) and has an excellent healthcare system (I know this from
personal experience). Malaysia spends 4.3% GDP (my mother-in-law had
to have surgery in Malaysia a few years ago - they did an excellent
job and the total bill was a few thousand of their local currency
which included a hospital stay of a week - this was the real bill, my
mother-in-law didn’t have insurance coverage. China is at 4.5% and
India at 4.9%. I do not know anything about the quality of healthcare
in those two countries.</p>
<p>“America spends as much as 15.3 percent of its GDP on health care,
Switzerland 11.3 percent, France 11.1 percent, Germany 10.4 percent,
Canada 10 percent, Portugal 10 percent, Denmark 9.5 percent, New
Zealand 9.4 percent, the Netherlands 9.3 percent, Italy 9 percent,
Sweden 8.9 percent, Norway 8.7 percent, Australia 8.7 percent, Britain
8.4 percent, Spain 8.1 percent, Japan 7.9 percent, Israel 7.8 percent,
Ireland 7.5 percent, South Korea 6.5 percent.”</p>
<p>It’s interesting to note that the Asian countries pay considerably
less for healthcare compared to the European and Nordic countries.</p>
<p>Note, the original source for these numbers was from the WHO.</p>
) But corporate taxes are lower. I was there two years ago. Met doctors and corporate execs, and service workers - no one is leaving. (By the way, I don’t know who (other than some rightwing blog) told you the income tax rate in Sweden is 60%. The bottom income tax rate, paid by most folks, is 29%. Top tax rate dropped by 51% since 1991. Total tax burden IS high (as it is in the U.S.), but remember what it buys.)</p>