Text 14422, 66 rader
Skriven 2007-05-11 10:09:25 av lizardgirl (792.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: OT: a proposal for increasing teachers' salaries
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On May 7, 12:09 pm, Kurt Ullman <kurtull...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In article <1178557804.177391.185...@e51g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
>
>  lizardgirl <gab...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > is it fair that doctors, not water treatment experts, get help from
> > the government?  each provides a valuable serve to the general
> > population.  each contributes to the public health.  when the fed
> > wants us to save more money it raises interest rates, when it wants us
> > to spend it lowers them.  grants and the like are designed to
> > encourage folks in a particular direction.  we need more doctors, argo
> > we (the government) do what we (collectively, like it or not, agree or
> > not) can to help people become doctors.
>
>   I am not sure what you are saying. They only get help like others do
> in student loans. Lst I heard the average doc was going into residency
> with better than $100,000 in student loans from a state school and
> $135,000 from private. For that they get to do between 5 and 7 years of
> residency for about what I was making as an RN (about the only time the
> medical pay system made any sense to me- grin).

(wow, this group has been busy!  And the topics, fabulous.  :^)  I'm
having a time catching up after just 3 days away!)

What *was* I trying to say?

Mostly I think I was trying to move the conversation way from a
discussion of the value of art in and off itself.  I think amy's
doctor example put the focus, at least for me, more on social/cultural
values being filtered/massaged by/through government involvement, and
whether this was appropriate spending on my tax burdened behave.

My mother and I go back and forth about the 'value' of the space
program.   She, for the life of her, can not understand why a
government needs to spend billions on space exploration/research when
that money could be put to better use helping people here on earth.  A
point of view shared by many of her peers.  I point out that things
like the space program generate a ton of new products/procedures that
benefit people all the time.  That innovation happens only when people
are questioning and exploring.  Cold war politics aside, by
'investing' in the space program the government is hedging a bet that
good, useful, maybe even practical things will result somewhere in the
future.

My dad usually jumps in at this point and the conversation turns to
whether a government has a responsibility (not necessarily a right) to
do this.  I think the answer is yes.  Art is just another form of
exploration.  It's impact is perhaps less tangible then say, I don't
know, Aerogel :^) but it does have an impact.  As is the hope in
Ireland, it may help preserve the cultural identity of a people.  or
in the case, I believe anyway, of American, it can create one.  it's
hard not to understand a little bit about the horror of the holocaust
while standing in front of a work from gideon's holocaust collection
(this just from a quick google).  Art communicates in a way that
public service announcements don't.

Music is another big one.  I live in a neighborhood with a high
percentage of brain power, aerospace engineers, astrophysicists,
nuclear physicists, doctors and professors of one thing or another.
Just listening to them discuss hair care products makes my brain
hurt.  But when we get together and pull out the vinyl we're all one
big happy family.


lg
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