Worst case scenario? Complete loss of faith in the financial system leading to massive cash withdrawls and a collapse of the money supply, the lack of liquidity and general uncertainty grinding economic activity to a halt.

Even though I think the scale of failure was too huge to stand idly by, I agree that the banks still need to be taught a lesson. Pull a Standard Oil and dice them up into more managable chunks while keeping a closer eye on huge system-wide problems that will develop from time to time. Too big to fail is too big to exist as a whole.

I agree, that's exactly what I think. A sure sign of inefficient government spending is a lack of a correlation of results with regards to investment. Be it Education, Healthcare, Libraries, anything really.

I mean if I take your example of the lack of correlation between states, there are some cases which defy logic. Looking at Utah, it has the lowest funding per child of any education district, and yet it achieves one of the highest rates of graduation. But conversely New York has the highest funding per child of any education district, but achieves low graduation rates.

What does that tell a lamen like me?

It tells me that the Utah board of education are working in a far more efficient and effective manner, where as New York just seem to be bleeding money and achieving very little.

I can't pick out any specific factors that are causing this, but I can imagine that it is down to good management, healthy internal politics, consistent generation of good ideas and a few other factors. In a perfect world New York would be looking at what Utah is doing to make it's education system work so effectively and look at how some of Utah's ideas can be adapted to benefit their own education system.

Also. Am I right in thinking that the USA has a general nationwide curriculum and states have similar education goals?

You know, with the massive amount spent on stabilizing the big banks, the government could probably have done a massive education program on the banking system, and helped people move their cash to credit unions and other stable banks. They're always eager to take the big banks' business.

There is some corerlation here... just not what you'd expect.

Note how almost all the really awesome states are in the Northern Midwest.

In otherwords... far away from Mexico and New York.  Lots of people immigrate from Mexico often illegally.  Lots of people immigrate to New York.

Families of immigrants tend to not perform well... they try stuff like teaching classes in spansih.  Doesn't seem to help...and only worsens the budget problems leaving states like Califonia in horrible disrepair.  That's what happens though when you have dozens of kids who should be in the 8th grade by age but are in the 4th grade in ability... really there should be less focus on age and more on ability.

Though those states do have their efficency problems as well... and there is a tendency to only "throw money" at the problem.

This money is usually spent getting teachers or on the teachers union so they can get "good" teachers to come to poorer neighberhoods... when the reality is you need to spend more on having more buildings, seats and other stuff... and not just spending a lot on teachers.

I don't think that immigration is the sole problem to be honest Kasz. But I do see your point

California is synonymous for illegal immigration, but do the children of these illegal immigrants get free public education? I imagine they don't, and if they do then they shouldn't and that's when we get on to the kind of inefficient ideas that I was on about already. If you are pooling resources to pay for students that aren't legal citizens, then that is a prime example of an inefficient behaviour.

Anyway, moving on. I have read several sources that said many schools in California are now required to teach the same class in both Spanish and English due to the large Spanish speaking population, this is a problem caused by immigration. But again, this is a grossly inefficient use of the taxpayers money.

It's double edged sword if you like because it is increasing costs (Having to hire more Spanish and bi-lingual speaking teachers, building more classrooms and schools, etc...) and it's not pushing the immigrants to speak English. If you had schools that didn't accommodate for Spanish speakers then you would reduce costs effectively and it would be easier for the Spanish speakers to adapt to an English speaking environment by forcing them to learn the language more quickly.

So your immigration argument can work in the south western states.

...

But New York, now that's a little more tricky to explain in the same way. Most of the immigrants to New York are legal and legal immigrants tend to be fairly well educated. This graph shows that 49% of illegal immigrants do not graduate from high school, but only 21% of legal immigrants do not graduate, but we see the same result as the states with high rates of illegal immigrants. How can a difference of 28% achieve similar result? Especially when the funding is so high.

What is also confusing about New York is that the bordering states all get high graduation rates, while New York gets low graduation rates. Which shows to me that it is something specific to the state of New York.

Source

...

Also, the south eastern states are abysmal. But even in Britain they have a reputation for being a bit *ahem* not with the times shall I say (Trying not to offend people).

Illegal Immigrant children do get free public education.  Often free school lunches too.

If your a child and you're in the country you get free public education no matter your legal status.

The Supreme court ruled that such a law can't be passed since children while illegal immigrants have no choice in the matter.  If their parents bring them over even knowing their children can't be schooled... the children are denied because the parents broke the law.  That's deemed unacceptable in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyler_v._Doe

This isn't the SOLE factor... but it is a very high confounding variable.

I think I'm beginning to see why many Americans are Libertarian or right wing. 

I like the idea of keynesian economics, as do many Europeans. A mixed economy, where the various areas of the economy are either public or private, depending on which is the most efficient and effective. Like most of the Europeans liberals on this site I think I've always assumed that American government efficiency =/= European governments efficiency. When this is clearly not the case.

I'm not trying to offend Americans, I'm really not, I'm just being honest. But I can see why so many don't want their government take control of something like healthcare because they can't see the government doing it well.

I'm not saying the European countries are perfect in any way (quite frankly I think the UK police force is criminally inefficient). But it seems like we trust our governments to take control of something like healthcare because we can see them doing it to an effective standard. I think this is where the difference lies.

In which case the US government need to pull it's finger out of its arse and start doing things more efficiently. I don't think I blame Americans for opposing the healthcare reform as much now, because they essentially see it as a promise the government can't keep because it is too inefficient.

Bingo.

Oh yeah, the American government is a lot less efficent then most europeon ones.  In general they just need to find a way so special interests don't get as much pull.  Perhaps switch to government funded elections.  The pull of the teachers union for example is why we keep throwing money at schools rather then reforms.  One of the more powerful special interest groups in the US, not only do they have a lot of votes in like every state, but they're influencing out children and the way they vote in the future.

Additionally a lot of illegal immigrants are also on welfare... lots use medicaid.  Illegal immigrants move over here... have a child.  Bam.  They're illegal immigrants... but their child is a legal citizen of the United States of America.  As such their household qualfies for Welfare... i guess something like 1.4 million illegal immigrant households use welfare.  I guess you could change the law so that only children born of people here legally become citizens.

Stuff like Medicaid too often works on a "declration of citizenship."  Basically they ask you if your a citizen, then as for a SS #... and you could say 123-457-7890 and you'd get treatment in most states.  Doctors can question citizenship if they really want... but why?  Your just costing yourself money, and opening yourself up to lawsuits and claims of racial profiling.

Still... the question is... is it moral to NOT do things this way.  Sure they're here illegally, but does that mean we should deny them support?  I mean, criminals in jail get healthcare, food and education (In some states at least.)

Also, would we really be better off pooling the money towards legal citizens only... having large numbers of poor, starving uneducated illegal immigrants around our streets? 

Illegal Immigration in the US posses seems to provide nothing but "No-win" situations.

There we go. You now understand the US political system. I am genuinely and honestly glad you understand our system of government.

The problem, I feel has to do with the size and scope of the American political entity. The advantage that Europeans have well over America is the fact that your countries, regardless of political persuasion, are much smaller than ours are. In the EU, each country does not have a political interdependence on the other one to make, promote, and enact reforms to help them out. Rather, each country is allowed to test what works and what does not - dozens of testbeds for social, economic, and moral paradigms.

We do not quite have the same luxury, which I fear may not be the case for long as Europe decends into a one-nation entity, which I fear won't work out as well as it has here (because despite some things we've done great as a country, we still have many failures that you see).

The key to the issue, I think, is the American federal government. It's both a blessing and a curse. It does provide some very critical neccecities such as a military, but also provides a lot of things at a country-wide level that are not practical for universal solutions.

As time has progressed, the size and scope of the federal government has become larger versus state and local authority, which is a major issue, I think, because it's much harder to enact reforms on a federal level vs. a state level. Kasz's NEA example is great, because it exerts much pressure on government (state, fed, and local) because of it's size - the largest union behemoth taking on small county boards and states.

Right wingers (and I mean real right wingers in terms of limited government) believe that we need to have a better separation between state and federal authority. America not only has to be competitive as an entity with other countries, but also within itself. For the most part, states have done a good job of this - California used to be a great example of ingenuity and innovation driving economic success for its citizens....Which may also serve as a warning to state because of its recent failures.

Continue to look at the problems of efficency in large companies and governments. You'll note that the larger something gets, the harder it is to ensure that efficent measures are in place. This goes not only for the amount of government (a very pervasive government in a small country) but the size of the nation (a decently sized government with a huge population). That's why scandinavian democracies work so well - they are still very small, and able to ensure that what they do can be done very efficently because they are very interconnected with their voter bloc. Not so much the same for California congressmen thinking they know best for Maine and vice-versa.