{"id":1476,"date":"2011-02-17T08:36:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T16:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2011\/02\/merit_vs_math\/"},"modified":"2011-02-17T08:36:55","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T16:36:55","slug":"merit_vs_math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/merit_vs_math.php","title":{"rendered":"Merit vs. math"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Brooks offers some useful insights on the public spending debates<\/a> now raging at every level of government. Here in Wisconsin, another school day has been cancelled due to work actions by public teachers, and public employees at every level of government are storming the capitol<\/a> to protest the dramatic increases in benefit costs and elimination of almost all of their collective bargaining abilities. The NEA is on the cutback block<\/a>, as well, as are state arts agencies<\/a> (pdf file) and public arts funding from coast to coast.<\/p>\n

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Brooks suggests that many responding to this challenge are working from a false assumption. Says he:<\/div>\n
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They assume that if they can only persuade enough people that their programs are producing tremendous results then they will be spared from the budget ax…. They are wrong about that. The coming budget cuts have nothing to do with merit. They have to do with the inexorable logic of mathematics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The increasing majority of public spending now goes to programs that feel off-limits to anyone who wants to be re-elected — entitlement programs, defense, and such. Which means, Brooks suggests, that “all cuts must, therefore, be made in the tiny sliver of the budget where the most valuable programs reside and where the most important investments in our future are made.” So, it’s not necessarily that the programs up for cuts aren’t successful (at least, according to the rhetoric), they’re just swimming in the tiny ‘discretionary spending’ puddle that’s politically expedient to cut.<\/p>\n

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While it’s fairly clear that the math argument is a clever screen for many to reduce or eliminate programs for which they have a political or personal distaste, it’s also clear that merit-based arguments have little hope of trumping the math. Brooks suggests that all such discretionary initiatives must now hang together, or they will most certainly hang separately. He also suggests that these days call for the inverse of the usual maxim: The best defense is a strong offense.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Brooks offers some useful insights on the public spending debates now raging at every level of government. Here in Wisconsin, another school day has been cancelled due to work actions by public teachers, and public employees at every level of government are storming the capitol to protest the dramatic increases in benefit costs and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}