[jerf]

"BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education!"

This logic is running rampant right now and is a major player not in the economic collapse, but our inability to convince our governments to deal with economic collapse. When the answer to "Are we spending enough on education?" is simply hard-coded to "No", you get very stupid budget behaviors.

In point of fact, there must be a point where we are spending enough on education, enough on police, enough on health care, enough on welfare, enough on anything. There must even come a point where we are spending enough on educating the disadvantaged, enough on health care for the elderly, enough on programs for poor children. Because the alternative is, frankly, absurd... yet that is where we've gotten to, politically.