Opus 2015-120: On the Street: Numbers Can Lie

I was driving so I may have the numbers wrong but they are close enough to ask some questions.

The two numbers on the giant billboard were 62,300 and 9,100 and underneath the numbers were the words “prison” and “school” respectively.  I think the statement had to do with the cost of one inmate in each institution for a year.  It did not explain what they were proposing.  It just had the numbers.

Did they want to spend less keeping criminals locked up or more keeping children locked up?  Maybe the opposite?  I have been around enough of these people to guess where they are going.  They believe that if we will spend more money on education we will not need to spend so much on prisons.  This is one of many Marie Antoinette moments that Progressives have.  She is reported to have responded to the poor people complaining about a lack of bread, “Then let them eat cake.”  The point is that she was totally out of contact with the world most people lived in.

More money will not solve the problems in education.  Let me make a comparison.  I am a messy.  I do not see mess unless I trip or it is pointed out to me.  Then I quickly forget.  After all, there are always more things to pile higher, right?  You can buy me all the brooms and storage containers you want.  It will just add to the clutter.  You need to change me.

There is no indication that more money improves the product of education.  You can pay for parents to go to parenting classes.  It won’t do any good unless they spend less time at the spa or shopping.  You can buy more technology but technology is part of the problem.  We don’t need more people who can use technology.  We need more people who can design it. 

There are many sources of the problems in crime and education.  There will be no solutions without holding people accountable for their behavior.  The problem for the Progressives is that if people take responsibility for their actions and learn to think, there is no more need for Progressives.  Informed, responsible people are not easy to lead and manipulate.

homo unius libri