(08-01-2016 12:41 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(08-01-2016 12:05 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-31-2016 08:54 PM)ausowl Wrote:  From the center left - mostly agree with your analysis and proposals, tho' I'd probably want to spend more on infrastructure and education than you'd find comfortable.

Rather than spend more on either one of them, I'd first want to rethink our approach in both areas. We're obviously approaching them the wrong way now, based on spending versus results.

In the infrastructure area, I'd favor privatizing and paying with user fees for a lot of stuff that government now funds with tax dollars. That would get us to focusing on things that produce a distinct benefit, rather than building a bridge in Congressman Jones's district, and naming it for him/her, in order to get his/her vote on my agriculture or immigration bill.

For education, we've spent through the roof over the last three decades or so, and results have basically flat lined. We need to cut the enormous and out of control administrative costs, and put the money back into the classroom. Our schools need to stop being laboratories for social experimentation and get back into the business of educating. I would favor a tracking system, but for it to work we need massive upgrades to our vocational education system. That's where the best systems really kick our butts--they do a much better job of vocational education. We need more work-study programs, more cooperative programs, more mentor opportunities. We don't need free university for everyone because not everyone needs to go to university. In those European countries that provide free tuition, it's only a small sliver of the population that attends university. We don't need to be producing sociology or gender studies or women's studies majors.

I have noticed the best maintained roads in my area are the toll roads.

Agree on the vocational programs.

Tollways are good exceptions from the norm and should stay that way. By creating more toll roads you will do thee undesirable things: (i) force more people onto non-tollways thus increasing traffic and causing the wear and tear to increase, meaning that the government would be forced to do more repairs, more frequently; (ii) you inherently start to restrict the free movement of goods and services as those with less disposable income are forced to take the slower, more crowded routes to avoid tollways; and (iii) you'll likely increase the cost of shipping since privatized roads try to make a profit and thus charge fees to do so. I understand the benefits to privatizing a number of federal responsibilities, but transportation is one that I think is best kept public. After all, I'd argue that our interstate highway program started by Eisenhower is one of the reasons we are a thriving nation today.

Instead of privatizing roadways why not just look into what inefficiencies our current federal and state transportation agencies have and try and fix those? Any idea what isn't working? Hard to find solutions to problems that aren't well known.