Seriously thoughtful The three mass shootings this month - are they related to the recession?

[Moejoe]

Interesting, I'll have to read more on this, I'm not exactly up to speed when it comes to this particular issue (to my own shame). Thanks for the link.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by GlennD

It's more of that American world-view. We fought a war for independence.....we don't intend to give it up anytime soon.

It reads pretty much like standard anti-federalist republican/libertarian thinking. "taking away our right to condemn euthanasia"..

anyway, this is fairly amusing, even if it goes even further off-topic.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

It reads pretty much like standard anti-federalist republican/libertarian thinking. "taking away our right to condemn euthanasia"..

anyway, this is fairly amusing, even if it goes even further off-topic.

Gloriously off-topic and hilarious to boot

[astra]

You can reproduce(read: breed) as much as you want as long as you take care of your own and do NOT rely on government to feed them, i.e., on me and my money to support your children. Otherwise it is equal to stealing money from me on premises that I have a few quid more so I must share, regardless that I had to work all my life very hard in order to have a few more quid than a lazy neighbour who doesn't want to work but prefer to live on benefits and make kids - sure, if you have so much spare time why not to have sex as often as you want to?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

excuse me? You are kidding, right? We should "fix" the disparity HOW? Living in Europe gives you no insight to the problems here.

Personally, I was raised to pay my own way. This is something people can't understand nowdays.

"Paying your own way" is only possible when you're given the tools early to be able to do so. People born into poverty aren't given access to the *opportunity* for the kind of education & training that would let them get out of it. (And that's before we get into the issues of racism and cultural bias that work to keep anyone who's not white and Christian from getting ahead.)

Lets start with the free breakfasts and lunches at school. If you cannot afford to feed your kids, by golly I sure as heck won't. What does oatmeal and a peanutbutter/jelly sandwich cost?

1) Sandwiches are one of the most expensive foods possible.
2) What oatmeal & sandwiches cost is time. A single parent, working full-time or more, may not have those fifteen minutes every day. Not without driving herself to exhaustion, and I don't mean "missing a few minutes' sleep;" I mean "drove the car into a tree because she's been living on 5 hours sleep/night for six months."

A lot of poor parents could feed their kids breakfasts & lunches if they got to choose the schedule. But school schedules aren't built to work with job schedules; they were arranged on the notion that 1 parent would work, and the other would be available to ferry kids back and forth to school. And, of course, not have a job outside the home.

Can't afford health insurance? Don't get it, but sure as hell don't depend on anyone else (except possibly family) to bail you out. lts not a god given right.

No, but it is a right granted by all civilized countries, because they're aware that health is everyone's problem. If my kid gets pneumonia, your kid is at risk; if I have a cold for four months running, but can't afford health insurance so I just work through it, my entire office suffers. My work isn't as good, and everyone else is at risk for illness. Allowing poor people to die from bad kidneys or heart disease, when it's fixable with an available transplant, says "this person will never be worth $100,000 to the rest of society." And maybe that's true, in some cases--but believing it's always true, means losing out on some incredible people.

Can't afford a house? Don't buy one. It isn't a "right" Bought a house and now are losing it due to no fault of your own? Sorry, thats tough. Pull up your big girl panties and start over like our forebears did. I do NOT own you a bailout! Does no one remember the 30's? Who bailed out who then? No one, and we came back a stronger, more reliant society.

FDR's "New Deal" bailed out a lot of people. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) saved a lot of people from starvation--and from it, we got Orson Wells, John Steinbeck, and thousands of ugly, functional buildings that are still in use today.

Can't afford a college education? Bull hockey. Go to work, take out loans, and do like anyone who really wants something does.....sacrifice until you get what you want. You may graduate with horrendous debt, but where is it written higher education should be free? My daughter and son both did this.......and they are now debt free, and have a decent job.

My daughter's college education is covered; Kaiser accidentally killed her father on the operating table and they'll be paying her a ton of money when she's an adult. However, they'll be paying her nothing in the meantime, so I get to hope that the slums of Oakland have schools and neighborhoods good enough to give her both an education and the attitude it takes to make it through college.

I believe the saying is "You have the right to PURSUE happiness", not happiness is guaranteed. That goes for wealth, homes and everything else you might want in this life.

There's a lot of impediments to that pursuit.

Also, the "every man for himself" theory also means "if I'm strong enough, it's my right to take it." I notice you don't talk about millionaire drug lords as successful... but they are wealthy enough to have the house and lifestyle they want. Of course, they're criminals. But they also haven't been given any reason *not* to be criminals, other than "it would offend some people who don't give a damn what happens to me."

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

"...
1) Sandwiches are one of the most expensive foods possible.
2) What oatmeal & sandwiches cost is time. A single parent, working full-time or more, may not have those fifteen minutes every day. Not without driving herself to exhaustion, and I don't mean "missing a few minutes' sleep;" I mean "drove the car into a tree because she's been living on 5 hours sleep/night for six months."

...

But she often has sufficient time (and energy) to get pregnant again & again.

Originally Posted by HarryT

A quote from the article I linked to in post #94 would seem to suggest that the answer is "yes":

Perhaps it might be because shooting yourself is a pretty irrevocable act, whereas if you take a drug overdose, you generally have time to change your mind - and many people do.

Just to keep you honest, Harry, note that your quote references only "gun suicides" or "firearm suicides" not suicides in general. Of course reducing the number of guns will decrease the "gun suicides" and "gun crimes". However that does not address suicides, murders, crimes overall.



And finally, my opinion on what our "rights" are (notwithstanding an authority's opinions or what has been bandied about concerning rights, or even what our US constitution says about rights.

There is a difference between privileges and rights. We have social privileges and social responsibilities. We have physical rights and physical consequences. E.g. if we refuse to eat, we have the right to starve. If we jump off a cliff, we have the right to fall. If we stick our head under water and try to breath, we have the right to drown. Education, health care, etc. are privileges for which someone pays.

What I gather from DG's and Ricky's posts ( and fully agree with) is that the "someone" who pays should be the same someone who benefits. I.e. in the US (at least in our past) the individual is the primary one responsible. Yes this assumes a functional adult and those functional adults also end up paying for the someones who are children, very elderly (at least some of them), the very sick, etc. What we in the US don't want to do is to assume responsibility for other fully functional adults. They must (in our society) be responsible for themselves.

We expect a baby to gain sustenance from a mother's teat. We do not expect an individual to continue sucking at the Government teat for their entire life. They must be responsible for themselves.

Someone mentioned the survival of the fitest. This is often stated as the "law of the jungle". It seems to me that the "law of (socialist) civilization" is the survival of the fitless.

Again, just one man's opinion. And before you ask, when I can no longer take care of myself, I prefer to die and make room for the children of all those breeders, since my children will be vanishingly small in number.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by slayda

But she often has sufficient time (and energy) to get pregnant again & again.

I'm sorry, but what exactly are you trying to say here? That only women who are can find a husband they like and can sit at home all day have the right to get pregnant?
How much lower can you go than suggesting that all (single) women who have to get by on meager salaries are irresponsible for wanting (within certain limits) to lead the life they think is worthwhile?

It seems to me that the "law of (socialist) civilization" is the survival of the fitless.

Indeed, because Europe is just coming apart at the seams, whereas the USA is doing just great. Good Lord how I hate oneliners.

[ahammer]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

I'm sorry, but what exactly are you trying to say here? That only women who are can find a husband they like and can sit at home all day have the right to get pregnant?
How much lower can you go than suggesting that all (single) women who have to get by on meager salaries are irresponsible for wanting (within certain limits) to lead the life they think is worthwhile?


Indeed, because Europe is just coming apart at the seams, whereas the USA is doing just great. Good Lord how I hate oneliners.

1) I dont know how you get A from B. all he saying you can find time to prep things if you take the time. if you know you will not have time in the week get it ready over the weekend. thats what I do for work. it take time to meet people if you have anytime of stands.

2) all the issue we are having is not do to the free market it is doto the goverment telling banks they sould give loins to people that could not pay. ( then takening it off there hands in the form of fain may and fredy mac) so banks started to play hot poteto.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[SNIP a bunch of statistics]
I'm more interested in intergenerational social mobility.
Also, I recall reading that while mobility through the top quintiles is fairly common, moving out of the bottom quintile is nearly impossible, for whatever reason.

There is certainly a lot of intergenerational mobility among the top four quintiles. So let's look at the bottom quintile. There's a bunch of research that suggests that the percentage of the bottom quintile who are there for the very long term (thinking single-generation here) is pretty small. So... How do we measure which quintile your previous generation came from? (I don't have a good answer for this, btw.)

If we restrict the question to the much smaller group who are in that bottom quintile for the long term (perhaps even their entire lives), we are certainly looking at the "hard-core poverty" end of things. People certainly do move out of that quintile (from one generation to the next), but I suspect that it is less frequent than one might like.

Anecdote time: My mother-in-law's parents were hard-scrabble farmers in the deep south of the US. The "white trash" stereotype almost fit, except that they were "hardworking hard-core poor", rather than "lazy shiftless hard-core poor." (No intent of perpetuating the stereotype -- it's just the quickest way to set the stage!) My MiL was first in generations of her family to go to college. Her younger brother did the same. Her cousins also moved out of that bottom quintile by different routes: One started a tiny business using a cart (and mule!) to bring inexpensive supplies to backwoods farms and built from there to a major convenience-store/gas-station chain (making more money than I ever will in the process); another joined the Army, got trained as a mechanic/pipe-fitter and wound up as managing all maintenance activity for the regional gas company. I'll spare you the rest of the list -- suffice it to say that although my wife's grand-parents (and their siblings and ancestors before that back into the early 1800s) were solidly poorest-of-the-poor, none of her cousins and second-cousins are in that bottom quintile nor are/were any of her mother's generation.

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[SNIP more statistics]
[On my comments about doing OK by actually learning something through high-school...]
Sure, but by leaving those families to fend for themselves, you're dooming everyone of the next generation that springs from them as well, except those happy few that are motivated enough to know what they want at age 15.

Or we could state this a different way. Who decides how children "should be" raised. I certainly have strong ideas. So do you. So do lots of people. Problem is, we all disagree! So who decides? Parents? Courts? The city/state/federal government? Who makes the decisions?

The U.S. answer has traditionally been that decisions about child-rearing rest firmly with the parent themselves as long as those decisions stay clear of outright abuse. Other cultures have made other decisions; this is our tradition.

That doesn't mean, however, that I can't try to convince people that a change of attitude or approach might yield greatly improved results. And there're lots of ways to support better learning in the inner city (just for one example).

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[on my comments about access to elite (and also less-than-elite) colleges]
Yeah, but available to how many? It's all well and good, this philantropy thing, but it doesn't really solve systemic issues.

In terms of "available to how many?" the answer is this: You're more likely to have trouble paying for college if your family is in the 3rd or 4th quintiles (the "middle class"). Financial aid for families in the bottom two quintiles is much much more generous than it is for middle class families. Of course, the top quintile needs the aid the least so the fact that they won't get any aid is of little importance. The key distinction is this: Government financial aid to students is about the same across the bottom 3 quintiles; it tails off rapidly in the fourth quintile. But the colleges and universities expect parents in the middle to bear a very significant part of the cost of tuition, room and board. This includes parents going deeply into debt to pay for "their share" of their children's education. By comparison, the schools recognize that families in the bottom two quintiles just can't cover any of that expense, so they don't ask them to -- they typically just waive whatever costs aren't covered by State and Federal aid. This isn't quite universal across all of US higher ed, but it's darned close!

Note that in all cases where there's any aid at all, the student will leave school with substantial student loans to pay off. That's not a variable here -- it's true of essentially all students unless their parents can just write a check for college (that would be part of the top quintile, not even all of it).

So if your family is in the bottom 40% economically, your biggest worry about college isn't paying for it -- that'll be taken care of. Your big worry is doing well enough in school to be admitted in the first place! And many Universities have very active outreach programs to help disadvantaged high-school students catch up with the necessary education for college admission. Again, not all colleges, but it's very widespread! Twenty-seven of the thirty-plus colleges and universities here in Pittsburgh do this (for example). My university has a (free!) summer program for hundreds (many hundreds) of disadvantaged students from the Western third of the state.

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[On attitudes towards education among parents and children...]
And among which classes are these attitudes most common? those who already made it, or those who feel it's hopeless?
It's not about what I would do as a parent, it's about what a parent living in that bottom quintile (or the bottom 30-35%, if you believe the above quotes) would do to their children.

See my previous discussion on "who decides?" Do I get to decide that your kids must pursue college (rather than plumbing, or carpentry or being a mechanic)? Whose value system wins?

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

My whole point with this isn't that it's noble to want to help people, it's that not letting the govt do this means that the efforts will be unreliable for those who want it, and not mandatory for those who don't. Caritas is inefficient, if for no other reason than that it's too small-scale.
Access to primary/secondary education isn't a right, it's a duty.

Caritas is very efficient in several important ways. First, those of us who go out and volunteer and work for what we believe in give what we can afford for causes we wish to support. By comparison, when you mandate things via government action and pay for them via taxation, you take from everyone (semi-voluntarily at best!) and spend the $$ in directions that the taxpayers may well disagree with. See the idea of "tyranny of the majority" for just one principled objection to this. Secondly, the people who choose to take advantage of (for example) the adult education charity my wife volunteers for are there because they want to be. The time, energy, and money she puts in go to recipients who want it rather than to those who are being "forced to sit there in a boring class in school." Finally, if you wish to talk about "efficiency" I would point out that the cost to educate a student from near-nowhere to a GED through that charity is a tiny fraction of what is spent on the "education" that they didn't actually get in the public schools in the first place. We're talking waaaay less than 10% of the cost.

US average cost-per-student in public schools is $5000 per year, for 12 years if they don't drop out, for a total of $60K per student through the end of high-school. Pittsburgh public schools spend more than that. The Literacy Council spends under $2.5K to take a student from 2nd grade through GED. If you add in a nominal cost for volunteer labor (at average teacher salaries) it comes to around $5K.

Inefficient is the wrong charge! I'll grant the "small-scale" aspect. But in terms of financial efficiency they kick butt and take names.

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

[On my observation that you can learn, even in schools that suck.]
Yes, you can. The problem with teens, however, is that their brains aren't even fully grown yet, and specifically those areas of the brain that deal with "persistence", or the strength/will to motivate yourself to do something have not. (Has to do with myelination, which only finishes around your mid-20s.)
Why would you want to create extra barriers for children that probably already come from a bad household (something they can do nothing about)?
[SNIP some discussion of healthcare, because I'm not up to taking that on after working on the rest of this note]
Also, you're welcome

Your point about physical development of the brain is well taken. It's probably a large part of the reason why (as I wrote) "education outcomes are far more strongly influenced by family attitudes than by the outside world" (I'm curious why you snipped that bit, btw). Because (in some families) the family pushes the kid into working at learning when they wouldn't have done so on their own.

As for "creating extra barriers for children ... from a bad household"... I don't want to create extra barriers for them. I observe, however, that the typical government-run approach (in America, at least) amounts to "let's spend lots more money to do more of what already isn't working." So far that path has led to declining outcomes even as per-student expenditure has doubled (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars).

I don't claim to have a solution, however. So instead, I help attack a part of the problem where I can make a real difference -- teaching adults who were not well-served by the system when they were young. This lets them help their children (or sometimes grandchildren) with their schoolwork. It helps them value education more, because they see the difference it belatedly makes in their own lives (both in terms of better jobs and finances and also in terms of self-respect). And it shows that someone from "the other side of the tracks" cares enough to spend time and energy helping them improve their own lives.

Xenophon

P.S. Support your local literacy council!

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

There is certainly a lot of intergenerational mobility among the top four quintiles. So let's look at the bottom quintile. There's a bunch of research that suggests that the percentage of the bottom quintile who are there for the very long term (thinking single-generation here) is pretty small. So... How do we measure which quintile your previous generation came from? (I don't have a good answer for this, btw.)

If we restrict the question to the much smaller group who are in that bottom quintile for the long term (perhaps even their entire lives), we are certainly looking at the "hard-core poverty" end of things. People certainly do move out of that quintile (from one generation to the next), but I suspect that it is less frequent than one might like.

See, for example (although the wiki article does seem to lack references) this, or more interestingly (although more dependent on a single author), this:

This is exceptionally strong evidence that the distribution of income in the United States has gotten (just as Jim Webb claims) substantially more unequal over time. In fact, the trend is so strong that it simply is not in dispute among economists and other social scientists who study inequality—in those circles the live debate is not about whether inequality has grown sharply, but what the causes of that growth have been.
The best way to measure mobility is not via snapshots of the whole population, but by tracking a set of individuals over the course of their lives and seeing how they do compared to how their parents did. Economists who undertake such studies have found that, at a minimum, genuine social mobility has not increased over the past generation, and in fact may have actually slowed.

Conversely, if you are born into a family in the top decile, you have a 26.7% chance of staying there as an adult, a 43.2% of being in the top quintile, and a 77.7% chance of being somewhere in the top half of the income distribution. You have just a 5% chance of falling into the bottom quintile, and only a 1.4% chance of falling into the bottom decile.

In short, if you are born in the poorest rung (decile) of American society, you are over 26 times more likely than someone born in the top rung to stay on that bottom rung as an adult. And if you’re born into the top rung, you’re over 53 times more likely to get there yourself as an adult that someone born on the lowest rung.

Is that fair? Not if you take seriously the notion that America should be characterized by substantive equality of opportunity. (And by the way, from the point of view of African-Americans, the actual picture is even worse than these figures suggest, as Hertz found that upward mobility among African-Americans from the bottom to top quartile was less than half the rates observed among whites.)

The rest of that article also seems worth reading, but I won't quote any more, as you can probably click links just as well as I can ;-)
Another source, perhaps:

He and his colleagues show that there is less social mobility in the US and UK than in the Nordic countries, where incomes are more equal. In the US, 40% of the sons of fathers in the bottom quintile of earners (as of 1974) were themselves in the bottom quintile in the late 1990s. That compares to just 25-28% in the Nordic countries.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Or we could state this a different way. Who decides how children "should be" raised. I certainly have strong ideas. So do you. So do lots of people. Problem is, we all disagree! So who decides? Parents? Courts? The city/state/federal government? Who makes the decisions?

Arguably both people who want to become plumbers and people who want to become lawyers need to make that choice, so I'd prefer just talking about the part of raising kids that deals with "instilling work ethic".
Apologies for inserting myself as a quote:

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

While I agree with most of what you say here, I do want to contest the statement that people always believe in whatever system they grew up with. Why else did MLK, Ghandi, women's suffrage, etc. etc. happen? I would hope that presenting arguments for alternatives does something to people, and that they're not entirely too blasé to even consider reconsidering some of the things they've grown up with.

It's fine to believe that people should work for their money, and work to achieve, but "affirmative action" (like, to be cheeky, the Marshall Plan) does work if you can that way help people who are facing otherwise insurmountable obstacles, like initial investment money.

How is it good for society to let someone who is otherwise fully educated sit collecting welfare because he/she became ill once, who then can't or couldn't get medical care because society figures "tough luck. shouldn't have gotten sick while unemployed"? Healthy people are more likely to stay motivated, to be hired, work harder, and perhaps even like the government that's keeping them healthy better.
Anecdote:

I know a guy living in SF who is uninsured like this, and when he goes to a "free clinic" to get a prescription for some sort of airway-related illness, they still send him a 200$ bill somehow. How is that a "free clinic"?

Consider this: this medication costs 20$ when prescribed, or 70$ when bought online, and without a prescription. So if you have insurance, it will cost you 20$, and if you don't, either 220$ or 70$, take your pick.

In comparison, a (5 minute) consult with a GP here will set you back €15-25.
How is it rational to say that people "shouldn't get sick," "shouldn't have had parents who didn't instill the protestant work ethic," etc.? And what is there to gain from creating extra hurdles for those that already get less medical care?

Accountability is one thing, but only creating opportunities for those that are most driven is just a strange form of elitism; it's just a fact of human nature that most people aren't as driven as Mandela was to see something through, so why not try to at least get them a decent education, in stead of either getting "the best" education when you get into MIT or an ivy league, or hardly any at all when you drop out of HS because you lived in the inner city with terrible teachers and no-good schoolbooks.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

The U.S. answer has traditionally been that decisions about child-rearing rest firmly with the parent themselves as long as those decisions stay clear of outright abuse. Other cultures have made other decisions; this is our tradition.

Don't be silly ;-) Contrary to what you might've heard, we are not sent to socialism camps as kids, nor are parents forced to take a course in what values to raise your kids with. I was just talking about societal expectations (such as the jock culture which we don't have here) of what kinds of jobs and vocations are considered appropriate and strive-worthy by parents living in, say, the bottom 30-40%, who are either not highly educated or actively resentful of gaining such an education?

Originally Posted by Xenophon

[SNIP; Apologies for being a bit inconsistent in indicating when I snip stuff, but it's usually because I don't have a direct answer to it, or because I don't have a problem with it]
By comparison, the schools recognize that families in the bottom two quintiles just can't cover any of that expense, so they don't ask them to -- they typically just waive whatever costs aren't covered by State and Federal aid. This isn't quite universal across all of US higher ed, but it's darned close!
So if your family is in the bottom 40% economically, your biggest worry about college isn't paying for it -- that'll be taken care of. Your big worry is doing well enough in school to be admitted in the first place! And many Universities have very active outreach programs to help disadvantaged high-school students catch up with the necessary education for college admission. Again, not all colleges, but it's very widespread! Twenty-seven of the thirty-plus colleges and universities here in Pittsburgh do this (for example). My university has a (free!) summer program for hundreds (many hundreds) of disadvantaged students from the Western third of the state.

This certainly is admirable, but how many people per year does this affect or can this help, and isn't it already too late for a fair number of those kids? See my own quote for more background.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Caritas is very efficient in several important ways. First, those of us who go out and volunteer and work for what we believe in give what we can afford for causes we wish to support. Finally, if you wish to talk about "efficiency" I would point out that the cost to educate a student from near-nowhere to a GED through that charity is a tiny fraction of what is spent on the "education" that they didn't actually get in the public schools in the first place.
Inefficient is the wrong charge! I'll grant the "small-scale" aspect. But in terms of financial efficiency they kick butt and take names.

Sorry, I wasn't doubting that it's more efficient, specifically because only those people who want it go for it, just that it reaches way too many people. When you set up a society, you don't leave the question whether or not people will receive a basic education (considering we're talking about literacy and a GED here) to chance. As such, you shouldn't leave it to individuals to provide this service. Letting those people depend on charity is demeaning, as it suggests that it's not a right they have, just something they should be grateful for receiving. Access to education is a fundamental right, not something that should depend on chance, especially not in a first world country.
Furthermore, I don't really agree that those who "don't want to learn" need to remain as uneducated as they are. Who cares that they're not motivated, there is lots of services-type work that they can do that doesn't require it.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

By comparison, when you mandate things via government action and pay for them via taxation, you take from everyone (semi-voluntarily at best!) and spend the $$ in directions that the taxpayers may well disagree with. See the idea of "tyranny of the majority" for just one principled objection to this.

Sorry, I don't buy the "principled objection to taxation", as it is applied in far too many cases, and usually for bad reasons, like short-sightedness.
UHC is definitely obtainable at a cost lower than what your current system eats up (just look at the fact that we did it; this is not to say that it might not come with other drawbacks, I don't know if it does, I'm just observing that the "it's unaffordable so/and I don't want to pay for other people's healthcare" argument is one that is both inhumane as well as bad for your GDP)

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Secondly, the people who choose to take advantage of (for example) the adult education charity my wife volunteers for are there because they want to be. The time, energy, and money she puts in go to recipients who want it rather than to those who are being "forced to sit there in a boring class in school."

Agreed. That said, see above. They'll be just as unhappy with needing to work an educated job as an uneducated one, so if they can do both, why not let them do the one that's better for the economy as a whole? (by giving them more spending money as well as your country a better educated workforce)

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Your point about physical development of the brain is well taken. It's probably a large part of the reason why (as I wrote) "education outcomes are far more strongly influenced by family attitudes than by the outside world" (I'm curious why you snipped that bit, btw). Because (in some families) the family pushes the kid into working at learning when they wouldn't have done so on their own.

Sorry, was unintentional, or I felt I answered it somewhere later in my post.
Yes, I'm aware of the fact that parents can be helpful too; I'm just wondering why so much depends on them. Again, see above.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

I observe, however, that the typical government-run approach (in America, at least) amounts to "let's spend lots more money to do more of what already isn't working." So far that path has led to declining outcomes even as per-student expenditure has doubled (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars).

Yeah, there seems to be a problem on that front. Haven't the faintest why though, it hardly seems a necessary outcome.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

I don't claim to have a solution, however. So instead, I help attack a part of the problem where I can make a real difference -- teaching adults who were not well-served by the system when they were young. This lets them help their children (or sometimes grandchildren) with their schoolwork. It helps them value education more, because they see the difference it belatedly makes in their own lives (both in terms of better jobs and finances and also in terms of self-respect). And it shows that someone from "the other side of the tracks" cares enough to spend time and energy helping them improve their own lives.

Xenophon

P.S. Support your local literacy council!

PS. To any reader who's made it this far: my apologies that this reply is a bit on the long side.

[mjh215]

I -really- wanted to discuss this and the latter social topics brought up but to be frank all the piss-on-the-U.S.A. potshots just kills it for me. This country has problems, I tried to start that dialogue earlier on in the thread, but it wasn't a concept of "We have it better" or "They have it better". I believe it is a cultural epidemic that will persist and propagate throughout the world in the years to come regardless of what political group is in power or the basic structure of that government. Again, potshots at particular political groups and schools of logic seem below the standards of this forum. And while trying to formulate my response I just kept feeling the need to address them, and quite frankly I refuse to stoop to the level of insulting everyone from {insert country} or {insert political party} just to get a rise out of people or simply for entertainment.

I also refuse to use direct personal attacks as it is not only against MR rules but I also feel that everyone in here right now, regardless of the temperment of the discussion, are intelligent and thoughtful people.

People obviously can disagree, even heatedly, and can discuss problems they feel are relevent but I think it can be done without the above mentioned tactics.

-MJ

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by mjh215

I -really- wanted to discuss this and the latter social topics brought up but to be frank all the piss-on-the-U.S.A. potshots just kills it for me. This country has problems, I tried to start that dialogue earlier on in the thread, but it wasn't a concept of "We have it better" or "They have it better".

I'm confused. Aren't potshots inanities, trivially true statements, or other types of generalizations that cannot be refuted?

Originally Posted by mjh215

I believe it is a cultural epidemic that will persist and propagate throughout the world in the years to come regardless of what political group is in power or the basic structure of that government. Again, potshots at particular political groups and schools of logic seem below the standards of this forum. And while trying to formulate my response I just kept feeling the need to address them, and quite frankly I refuse to stoop to the level of insulting everyone from {insert country} or {insert political party} just to get a rise out of people or simply for entertainment.

What epidemic are you referring to specifically?
Anyway, I'm not criticizing specific parties or ideologies here, I'm criticizing the practice of refusing to take relevant data into consideration when discussing a topic, and when forming an opinion on the relative merits of a society/practice as opposed to another. (Although it does admittedly bug me when people just say "oh, I feel that people who don't work don't deserve to be helped by their neighbors", since it presupposes that anyone who doesn't does so by choice.)

[RickyMaveety]

@Xenophon ... dead on!! You are so getting karma for your posts.

I might add that when I decided to go to college and graduate school and medical school, even though I was in the top 5% (and at times the top 2%) of my graduating class .... I never qualified for financial aid because my mother was in the "middle class." So, I had to work while I went to school.

When I went to law school, I worked full time, and again, never was able to qualify for aid, even though again, I was in the top 5% of my class the entire time. The students who didn't work and didn't bother with things like studying .... lots of them got a full ride, because they didn't have any money. Little Catch 22 there ... I had money because I was working my ass off ... and the only way I could get through school was to continue to work my ass off. They didn't work, and therefore had no money, so even though they apparently didn't spend the extra time studying (based on performance), they also didn't have to pay off massive student loans after graduation.

I think you can guess my response when the scholarship people came to me begging for money after graduation.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

"Paying your own way" is only possible when you're given the tools early to be able to do so. People born into poverty aren't given access to the *opportunity* for the kind of education & training that would let them get out of it. (And that's before we get into the issues of racism and cultural bias that work to keep anyone who's not white and Christian from getting ahead.)

So according to your analysis, if you are born into poverty, you're too stupid to fight your way out, and don't have the brains to continue your education. Nice. And BS to your "cultural racial issues" Thats rationalizing. If you WANT and education you can get one. Unless you are too immersed in the culture of drugs and the easy life they can afford.



1) Sandwiches are one of the most expensive foods possible. Really? Pnut butter and Jelly? Bologna and cheese? If you are THAT poor, surely you qualify for food stamps.
2) What oatmeal & sandwiches cost is time. A single parent, working full-time or more, may not have those fifteen minutes every day. Not without driving herself to exhaustion, and I don't mean "missing a few minutes' sleep;" I mean "drove the car into a tree because she's been living on 5 hours sleep/night for six months." So a single parent can't take the 15 minutes to feed their kid? You make a choice. A little sacrifice now to teach your child how parenting should be, or teaching them that others should do your job.

A lot of poor parents could feed their kids breakfasts & lunches if they got to choose the schedule. But school schedules aren't built to work with job schedules; they were arranged on the notion that 1 parent would work, and the other would be available to ferry kids back and forth to school. And, of course, not have a job outside the home. So, because you are a single parent with issues, thats an excuse to not make sure they have a decent breakfast or lunch at school?



No, but it is a right granted by all civilized countries, because they're aware that health is everyone's problem. If my kid gets pneumonia, your kid is at risk; if I have a cold for four months running, but can't afford health insurance so I just work through it, my entire office suffers. My work isn't as good, and everyone else is at risk for illness. Allowing poor people to die from bad kidneys or heart disease, when it's fixable with an available transplant, says "this person will never be worth $100,000 to the rest of society." And maybe that's true, in some cases--but believing it's always true, means losing out on some incredible people.
Civilized countries? You mean "Socialist" countries. And who is picking up the tab here? Those who work. And why should anyone work when they don't have to? How long can a shrinking middle class afford to carry the debt of everyone? The government does not and has never owed its citizens health care.

I hear the "I' have to work so I can't keep my kids home" argument just about every day. Meanwhile the kids are running fevers, hacking all over, throwing up, and guess what. They all eventually come down with whatever the one has. But I guess thats okay.



FDR's "New Deal" bailed out a lot of people. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) saved a lot of people from starvation--and from it, we got Orson Wells, John Steinbeck, and thousands of ugly, functional buildings that are still in use today.

I believe you are talking about jobs? People working? What a concept. These were government created jobs, to be sure, but people worked, and took pride in the fact they didn't have to stay on welfare.



My daughter's college education is covered; Kaiser accidentally killed her father on the operating table and they'll be paying her a ton of money when she's an adult. However, they'll be paying her nothing in the meantime, so I get to hope that the slums of Oakland have schools and neighborhoods good enough to give her both an education and the attitude it takes to make it through college.



There's a lot of impediments to that pursuit.

Also, the "every man for himself" theory also means "if I'm strong enough, it's my right to take it." I notice you don't talk about millionaire drug lords as successful... but they are wealthy enough to have the house and lifestyle they want. Of course, they're criminals. But they also haven't been given any reason *not* to be criminals, other than "it would offend some people who don't give a damn what happens to me."

Why does "being strong" mean you have to "take it" Did it ever occur to you that it means not giving up, sticking to what you KNOW is right, insisting your child learn at school, and have the values you instill in her? No one ever said life would be easy. But why, in the name of all thats holy, can people not see that parenting is their most important job, and that that includes feeding them, demanding they learn self respect and self reliance.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Forced sterilization by the state has been recognised by the Rome Statute as a "crime against humanity". You're not advocating the practise, are you?

In certain cases, I am. Like the crack cocaine mothers who refuse to stop breeding. Ever seen a crack baby born? Ever looked at one and felt its agony and been unable to make it stop crying or to comfort it? Because there is not way to stop its suffering. If you can do that and not feel the wrongness of forbidding these women to carry children, you are looking thru an entirely different looking glass.

Like mentally retarded people. Tell me, Harry, how does procreation become a right for these?

How is procreation sacred to every living being?

How about the repeat child abusers, the women who live with their boyfriends and have their children tortured and beaten to death because "I was afraid I'd lose him if I told him to stop" They are allowed "freedom of procreation?"

When do you start thinking of the innocents here, and stop trying to insist everyone has the same rights?