Comments on: Op-Ed: Vote “Yes” For Decatur Schools on Election Day

By: Voted in Decatur

Voted in Decatur — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:39:10 +0000

I don’t find private schools all that impressive. We’ve toured at a few with our kids and I did as a kid too. The only difference I see is in who attends. Teachers are usually a bit lower paid at private schools but better treated so it all evens out. Sometimes a child is a particularly good fit to a private school philosophy or specialty (e.g. learning disabilities) or sport (e.g. tennis), but otherwise it’s a lot of money and chauffeuring for a dubious benefit. Now, private school is a status symbol for some folks and that’s ok if that’s how you like to spend your money.

By: DEM

DEM — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:25:34 +0000

So the fact that the private sector manages to provide some of the best schools on the planet is irrelevant to this consensus concerning the private market’s supposed inferiority in supplying schools? If schools are a market failure how do you explain the existence of Harvard? Westminster? It seems to me that a bunch of rich people in Buckhead demanded a really good private secondary school and the market provided it.

My guess is that you mean to say the market won’t necessarily supply funding for universal education, and that’s probably right. But public funding of education doess not necessarily mean that the government has to run the schools. Two different issues.

By: Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:07:20 +0000

Yes – and in any Economics textbook used at any of those schools, plus any others that you might find agreeable, or disagreeable, to your tastes.

Harry Truman once said he wanted a two-handed economist – I’ll let you figure out why, but on this, mainstream economists agree: free markets have failures and the public sector can help solve this problem by providing for public goods.

By: DEM

DEM — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:32:18 +0000

Does this contingent of “most economists” include professors at the elite public institutions of higher learning like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Rice, Swarthmore, or Columbia? Or perhaps teachers at elite public secondary schhols like Phillips Exeter, Westminster, Pace, Trinity, or St. Paul’s?

By: Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:12:52 +0000

Lots of economics terms being thrown around here. But as far as I can tell not the one regarding the fact that most economists agree that certain things the free market cannot feasibly do a better job in handling, and thus are left to the public sector. They are called public goods. Things like roads . . . and schools.