Why O won and R lost?

[Zoebird]

I was watching O'Reilly live when he said that. I can see how it would be offensive to the other side. It is incredibly simplistic. But sorry, I also think there's a ton of truth in it for many Obama supporters, certainly not all. Perhaps not even a majority of Obama voters--yet. It's not yet a majority who expect the "stuff." But it will be, the tide has turned and the tipping point is past, I think.

Can you provide some evidence to support this idea? That many people who support Obama -- and eventually will be a majority -- want "stuff?"

If you don't think stuff is important, just look here on this website at the first posts celebrating his reelection where there is reference to the stuff he's bringing with his administration.There were many reasons to reelect the President and his gift basket, bigger than Mitt Romney's, was one of them.

Such as the protection of the civil rights of homosexual individuals in terms of marriage? protecting women's reproductive rights? slowing down the military interventionism ideology in favor of diplomacy? Providing a tax plan that used real numbers? Putting forward Obamacare wherein individuals will be able to buy insurance plans independent of employer group plans (as such driving the market into providing better service at better prices)?

I liked what O'Reilly said that the overriding POV is: what can my government give to me? Not John Kennedy's idea of what can we do for our country? I don't know if that part played on the O'Reilly clip above.

You are effectively asserting that non-republicans are selfish, unwilling to work, and basically want government handouts.

This is not the case. It is an over-simplified cartoonish sense of how democrats work.

It's basically the difference between two different points of view in terms of autonomy (rep) vs equality (dem).

I want to point out that I'm using "equality" in a specific way here. I believe that in the big concept of civil equality, both Rep and Dems hold the same position. but to the idea of "everyone gets the same" is the idea for the dems.
I'll use an example from education that requires some background leg work.

First, one we are familiar with because it's happening in the US: republicans would choose a voucher system (which utilizes tax parity and free market values) to facilitate increased educational standards. The research on the matter tells us that, in fact, this idea works. Public schools near private schools that accept vouchers are of higher quality and cost less per student to run than schools in non-voucher areas (this is according to the Manhattan Institute of Policy regarding test cases in Florida).

In the alternative, democrats would probably go for what we have here, which are education reforms that were brought in by the labour party and then altered a bit when the nationals came in after. Happened in the 1990s.

what labour did was really interesting. the essentially got rid of the dept of education and created a smaller, ministry of education which basically verified a curriculum. Curriculum development and school management went entirely local. Parents, teachers, and a board of trustees (locally determined) manages each school.

With the nationals, funding for schools moved to a per-student basis (as I understand it, labor just gave each school the same amount of money). since this proved to be an inadequate amount of funding early on (1990s), the schools also began to work on fund-raising efforts, and by 2000, 74% of schools were asking for a tax-deducatable "fee" (donation) per child to cover other costs. Over time, taxes have been adjusted to pay a better per-child rate, but still schools require both fees and fund raising in most instances.

To many people, this looks rather "republican-y" because it's about local ownership (with a national curriculum standard though individual methods are determined at the local school level), but where it gets really "democrat-y" is with the national (or what would be federal in the US) government providing a dollar amount per child enrolled in that school.

According to policy research here in NZ, this system is quite effective in terms of creating competitive schools. Nationals also did away with districts -- so any child can go to any school in a given locality -- which functions under the same market ideology as "voting with their feet" so to speak, and keeping schools more competitive. The more students they attract, the more money they attract, and the less they may need to fund-raise.

Special character -- or private schools -- are included in this scheme, and are the most likely to ask for the fees. These are donations, and so they cannot reject you once they have accepted you as all public schooling in NZ is free. And since they accept gov't money per student, even a private school therefore qualifies as public! Thus, it created open competition between all schools -- as all get funded per child.

The desire of these programs is the same: high quality education for all children by creating competitive schools.

But their methods of going about it were very different. One provides the voucher (tax credit) for families who are choosing to opt-out of public schooling, which in turn makes public schools more competitive because they are trying to attract students. The other provides a per-student national funding (every student gets funded if they go to school -- homeschoolers are SOL unlike in the voucher system), and then schools make up the difference with donation fees (tax deductible) and also fund raising activities.

The first one increases/decreases the tax amount based on the actual requirements of the competitive school (but is not determined per child, but per budget), while the second one increases/decreases/maintains the tax amount based on the actual requirement of the competitive school's number of students.

They both create competitive schools that spend less money and provide higher quality education for the children. Both are more locally driven, too, with some modest national oversight (curriculum). They both work.

And how does this fit in with autonomy vs "equality?"

In the first instance, the family is autonomous and chooses the school, and the school is autonomous of the students as well -- getting funding based on it's necessary, competitive budget (which determines the tax amount). Parents pay into the tax to pay for public schooling if their child utilizes that school, keeping the family autonomous from public schooling.

In the second instance, each child is provided with an equal amount of money for their education, which can be utilized at any school in NZ (but not homeschooling).

As you can see, neither of these approaches is about gift baskets or being ignorant or even wanting hand-outs. It's simply a different way of solving the problem of needless/excessive education spending (as we know, spending more money per child doesn't necessarily increase educational results), while also providing education to our citizens.

The real difficulty of the voucher system is the issue of income levels of families within a tax base. Can a poorer tax base support public schools if the wealthier individuals in that tax base are opting out (with the educaitonal tax credit), thereby decreasing tax revenue to support those schools?

We know that when the tax base is broad enough (populous enough) that the system can create a dynamic free market where some wealthy families will choose (and in particular, middle class families will mostly choose) -- these being the tax base -- to send their children to good, public schools, thus continuing to adequately fund those schools. Because, ostensibly, if everyone in a given tax base is opting out, then there won't be enough revenue for public schools, which would leave the poor (who are technically not paying income taxes, etc. . . or not at the rates of middle class and wealthier people) without educational opportunities with the exception of private schools (which they may or may not be able to afford).

And that's the concern of the liberal party. They would much rather that taxes go into a pot and that if you opt-out of the system (like a homeschooler in NZ) then that's what you choose freely, but that the poorest will have an opportunity for education provided by the tax base. Everyone is provided with this basic education -- public school -- and if you want to home school or send to another school, you are free to opt-out and do so.

And they do this as an aspect of equality.

I don't see this as an ignorant, hand-out desiring process. I see it as a process of simply trying to solve the same problem using two different methods -- both of which have evidence to support that they work in creating competitive schools.

For most things, it's really not that we disagree on the idea (education) or the result (competitive schools), but the methods of achieving these outcomes.

And I think if we all just acknowledged that, we'd be less likely to call each other names over it.