Tag Archives: Government

Your tax dollars in military and education… where are they going? (Petition)

by

0

*Iowa State Daily column by Ian Timberlake*

In 1947 our national defense budget was below $100 billion. In 1952 it was nearly $500 billion, and ever since 1955, it has been on the incline from $225 billion. Excluding the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2001 our defense budget has gone up from $287 billion to $530 billion. These numbers have indeed been adjusted for inflation.


According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2012 the United States spent $711 billion in military. This accounts for 41 percent of the world’s military spending and is equivalent to five China defense budgets — the world’s second in military spending.

The only thing I will say about tax and budget cuts is that, regardless of administration, most of them are likened to cutting a lawn of grass at a slower rate than it grows back. Or maybe the more satisfying, trimming the foam off the beer.

Without contempt, I will be the first to opinionate that whomever the world superpower is, has a responsibility to act (at some regard) as a global justifier. A global hierarchy needs to exist in order to bay any international injustices. This does not mean, however, we need to micromanage all of Earth.

Since 1977, the defense budget has accounted for 41-65 percent of the total national budget, while the education budget has accounted for 3-6 percent — with the exception of the 2009 stimulus that briefly placed the number at 10 percent.

Obviously, the costs are not comparable. An Air Force B2 stealth bomber costs about one billion dollars, we own 21. That alone accounts for a third of the entire Department of Education budget in 2012. I can’t simply say we need to take money out of defense and put it in education, here’s why.

Data shows that the amount of money in a nation’s education budget does not correlate with the quality of education received. The United States is tied with Switzerland for having the highest annual spending per student, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Among the 31 industrialized nations, we place 15th in literacy, 23rd in math, and 17th in science. Where Switzerland is 17th, 7th, and 18th, respectively. The top nations in each category have a relatively low education expenditure. Finland, Japan, and Korea are on top of the respective literacy, math, and science charts.

These three nations are not far from the top in the other two categories, with Finland considered to be the global example in education, where teachers are high-status and require masters degrees. University is also free in Finland.

What needs to happen is a large percentage of our money needs to be put towards education reform. It’s shown that once the proper education plan is in place, top dollar is no longer required to operate at an effective rate.

A small percentage of the defense budget put towards education reform would not be difficult, our government just needs a plan and have the guts to do it. Here’s my proposition:

Grades K-12 need to be more difficult to pass by not “teaching to the test”. Private, religious, and boarding schools must maintain the minimum requirements of the public schools. Teachers need to be paid more and on performance — as well as easily fireable. Tenure needs to be more difficult to achieve, or flat-out removed. Curriculum needs to be more flexible and/or reevaluated. Education should be free until the age of 18. School years should be longer. More money should be awarded to schools with lower graduation rates. Classes need to be smaller and we should never have a more-supervisors-to-teachers ratio that currently exists.

Why revamp education?

Outside of maintaining the status quo of the success of humanity, improved education could fix many other areas of problem in our nation’s society — as speculated:

Crime rates would drop, prison costs would go down. Health would improve, cost of care would go down. Unplanned pregnancy would go down, children would be raised in more privileged homes. Economy would improve through better business and innovation.

We need to start placing money where it matters: Less in military; Less in prisons (where it costs more to bed an inmate than it does to send a student off to university); Less in foreign aid that includes nations, religious organizations, and major corporations. And into: Education reform, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation — all of which contribute towards the advancement of education among other, smaller, organizations.

To do anything less would be subverting the human species one profound thought at a time. Here is a petition I wrote that calls the White House to make education reform a top-3 priority, please sign and share this as much as you care: 
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-education-reform-top-3-priority/j2g0NSG2 


Related articles

 

Iceland’s New Open-Source Constitution

by

1

*Iowa State Daily column by Ian Timberlake*

Iceland leaves no leaf unturned. Iceland rewrites and updates its constitution, open-source, through social media platforms. As your jaw retreats back to its skull, read that again.

This time last year, 25 representative citizens turned in the first draft of a “crowd-sourced” constitution constructed via the internet that would become the new governing document of the nation. This was as a result of the 2008 economic collapse the nation saw that sent them from towering in as one of the richest nations in the world to less than empty pocketed. It was the greatest collapse any nation has suffered (relative to its size) in economic history.

Iceland’s Parliament

In 2010, Iceland decided to start “ný,” or fresh, as we might call it. Upon liberation from Denmark in 1944, Iceland adopted its constitution, a near carbon copy. The only practical alteration was the term “king” that was changed to “president.” Being progressive, Iceland decided to push the boundary of what the rest of the world might consider acceptable politics. Thus, heralding in a new age of government deliberation.

Opening up to the citizens of Iceland online government forums, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms, a new constitution was assembled through suggestion and inquisition. Many thousands of people from the small nation contributed, giving their take on exactly what the new constitution would entail. The 25 citizen representatives were to analyze the information and create drafts of the constitution, presenting the drafts live, online. A literal evolution of the document took place, perpetuated by the people.

The result? A perfectly compromised constitution in that it guaranteed freedom and protection of the people, maintained government balance and order and was as close to systemically pleasing as possible.

I am surprised it took me two years to hear about this. I feel like news of this sort is acute to the 21st century and a glimpse to future global government and politics. I recently heard about it because the citizens are making a referendum this October for a number of things: abolishing the state church in favor of separation of church and state, declaring public ownership of natural resources, state provided internet access, among other things.

What we are seeing is a shift in government policy making, at least with Iceland. With the election looming, American citizens and Iowa State’s students alike would benefit from understanding the fundamental ideology Iceland has created. I am too cynical of our citizens to think open-sourcing our constitution would be remotely helpful, we already have a work of art as a constitution. However, I do suggest that we take the idea of open-sourcing and apply it to political discourse and voting. Americans should vote not on the basis of party and/or ideology, but on policy that is best suited for the whole of the nation.

For example, there is a slight yet stark difference between being Republican because you align yourself with the ideologies, and being Republican because it closest fits your own personal ideology. The open-sourced constitution of the Icelandic people removes partisanship association and takes the differing ideologies of each citizen and evolves them into one perfectly compromised set of national law.

You might argue that partisan politics is necessary. What if I told you that we no longer live in an age where either party is ideal? If the winner of the presidential race always was the most well suited for the nation, then each presidential inauguration would come with a seamless continuation or evolution of the previous president, and we don’t see that. Gridlock in decision making has made it nearly impossible to progress in policy making.

Iceland’s open-sourced constitution brings forth the possibility to have politics (as opposed to just constitutional law) always move the nation in the direction most desirable. There would no longer be a constitution tug-of-war across the aisle and instead self-perpetuating compromise between all citizens of the nation.

Voting for a party comes with a catalog of presuppositions, some of which I might be in favor of and others I might not be in favor of, leaving me with a vote toward the lesser of the two evils.

I say we become an open-source society. Leave the constitution be, but allow the citizens of America to debate and “write” future laws into official government practice. Not simply voting, but actual law writing, without the need to lobby and/or strongarm. Oxford psychologist, Dr. Susan Blackmore, has said we are no longer gene machines, but in-fact “meme-machines.” Just as in genetics, the most adaptive society is the most successful society; we need to become as transparent as possible, citizen-sourced.