>Back in the day for a conservative to say that we should shut down the Dept of Education, would have met by resistance by most people around them and this opinion would be shut down. But now, you can just find people who believe exactly like you on the Internet.
The federal Department of Education was created in 1980, so there was no DoE to eliminate in 1960. The growing centralization of education policy in the hands of ever-higher levels of government and ever more monopolistic public sectors has not worked.
I've seen no evidence of that. Pretty much the entire advanced world has seen its rate of progress slow since the late 1960s, in concurrence with growing public sectors.
I'd argue that you'd have to come up with a VERY suspect definition of "progress" to make that stick. Especially as almost all the major innovation in that time started with tech developed from public funding.
NASA, DARPA, and CERN would like a word with you.
Also most of the private sector innovation was due to public funding and tax code incentives (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc).
So basically technology, science, medicine, and social programs must either not count as progress for your hypothesis to hold... or it's bunk.
Pretty much the entire advanced world has seen its rate of progress slow since the late 1960s, in concurrence with growing public sectors
How are you measuring progress there? If you mean economic growth then now might be a good time to point out that correlation does now imply causation. Otherwise perhaps increasing life expectancy also causes a larger public sector? ;)
Correlation can be an indication of a causative association. I believe in that case of the growth in the public sector and the slowdown in GDP growth, it is.
I believe in that case of the growth in the public sector and the slowdown in GDP growth, it is.
Do you have any evidence of that at all? Because I have evidence showing the opposite: eg China has an estimated public sector value of between 29% and 50%[1] and it is generally regarded as a high-growth economy (6.5%+ growth(, while somewhere like Greece (22% public sector, 0% growth) isn't.
In-fact, eyeballing that table doesn't show much apparent correlation at all. There are high-growth, high-public sector countries, high-growth, low public sector countries, low public sector, low growth AND low public sector high growth countries.
Share of employees working in the public sector is a more narrow statistic than the total role of government in the economy. The share of GDP consisting of government spending is a better measure of that. The correlation between the size of government, as percentage of GDP, and GDP growth, is strong. [1]
China has substantially lower levels of social welfare spending. Its healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP is 5.5% for example [2].
Labour regulations are also much less onerous. You can use IQ tests to filter candidates for example, which would be extremely illegal in the West.
The federal Department of Education was created in 1980, so there was no DoE to eliminate in 1960. The growing centralization of education policy in the hands of ever-higher levels of government and ever more monopolistic public sectors has not worked.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-p...
[2] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839...