According to my Mayor, play basketball.
Perhaps instead of legalising drugs, the state could take steps to reduce inequality. Like quality schools, health care, early intervention with high risk youth, etc. Seems better than legalising coke. But its not the 'merican way! A handful of disadvantaged kids turned out successful, so anyone that doesn’t is just lazy, right?
I’m not sure you fully grasp how amazingly difficult any one of those issues would be to tackle. It makes a lot more sense to end the war on drugs and reallocate resources.
Think of all the resources currently squandered in law enforcement and the judicial system prosecuting drug offenders. I don’t really see government-sponsored anything as the answer - haven’t they fucked up education and healthcare enough already - but given a choice between law enforcement/the judicial system and those programs, I’d much rather see that money pumped into schools, healthcare, education, etc.
Or since the government wouldn’t have a massive sinkhole in its budget, cut taxes. While most in the inner cities are not net income tax payers and thus wouldn’t feel the effects directly, cutting taxes could be stimulative to the economy and/or lead to capital formation, both of which could help aleviate poverty.
Ending the War on Drugs is only one facet of what would need to happen to bring about sustainable positive change for the people we are talking about.
How would the government improve those amenities in troubled areas? For instance, how would they improve the quality of schools in the middle of Detroit? There are many programs that offer assistance to disadvantaged people (a certain politician who was involved in such community organizing activities has seen good career progress, as I recall). However, clearly these programs are either insufficient or address the wrong issues. It’s easy to say the US doesn’t care about poor people, or that they do things the wrong way, but coming up with solutions to endemic problems like poverty along racial lines is a unique problem and is not so easy to solve.
The US Government spent trillions of dollars and 50 years doing just that with nothing to show for it.
FTFY
I respectfully disagree that the US government has done enough on the equality front. By and large, education quality in the US is determined by whether you live in a wealthy or poor area. This is unique amongst western countries, at least to the extent we see in the US. One step is to end funding of schools via property tax and instead fund equally on a per student basis through state taxation. If inner city Detroit schools had the same funding as suburban Bay Area schools, their outcomes would likely improve. There is no moral justification for a child to receive a lesser education because of their parents… Its not their fault. This is a key piece of address equality. Its also important to address maternal healthy issues that impact fetal development and early childhood learning. This is hard to do in a private health system. The US spends a lot on hospital care for mothers, but often this is too late. Early intervention is key. Despite spending the most on maternal hospitalizations in the OECD, the US has a terrible record on maternal death and birth complications versus its western peers. This likely reflects addressing problems too late. The other aspect of maternal health has to be easy access to contraceptives and abortion for those at low income levels. This exists in some states, but not all. Next up, I’d be looking for a high level of intervention at an early age for youth at risk. This could include nutritional assistance, early childhood education and access to quality daycare (I’m not saying free daycare). Hell, a respectable maternity leave for American mother’s would go a long way, beyond the stone age nonsense currently in place. Ensuring that youth at risk have quality after school care is another step. This won’t solve all the problems, but it would help. I don’t think Americans should resign themselves to believing that their social issues are because of black people’s inherent inability to be productive and therefore they shouldn’t care. That’s utter nonsense. And the reality is the long run costs of these social issues is huge for the American taxpayer. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to keep an inmate in jail, and America has the highest incarceration rate in the western world. This is very expensive. Spending this money up front to ensure a more equal footing for kids is so important, both fiscally and morally.
Right. Trillions wasn’t enough. Let’s make it quadrillions. Then that won’t be enough.
Throwing money at social issues doesn’t work. These kids are not wanting. Their “poverty” generally includes televisions, cable, cars, a roof over their heads, food, etc… This is not third world poverty we’re talking about. Their schools falter not because they lack money, but because they’re filled with hooligans.
Research Abbott Districts in NJ and let me know if you still think funding is the answer.
Research Abecedarian Early Intervention Project as a counter point. But even Abbott shows some areas of improvement, so perhaps there are positives that can be applied. No where do I suggest what I said above will work 100% of the time. Sweden has some poor areas too, and they pretty much hold your hand from conception to death. But stop looking for the perfect solution. Nothing is perfect. Just try to improve some of the injustice. I’ll reiterate that proper maternity leave would go a long way too. The US isn’t even on the map for this. The first year is so important. I say much of this with concern for my own country where we are beginning to see some American trends creeping in for inequality and social mobility.
Geo, aren’t public schools in Canada also funded at least in part by property taxes? They were when I grew up there because I remember my dad complaining about it because I went to private school.
I also whole heartedly agree. I think public schools should be funded from a state/province level, not local, because with the property tax funding mechanism, people pay more to be with good schools, which drives assessments and tax revenue, and vice versa. There is also an incredible amount of wasteful spending in public education, just as with any public run services (healthcare, municipal government, etc).
Any time someone mentions social injustice, you should hold onto your wallet. Because chances are they’re advocating yet another redistribution scheme for a problem that money never solves.
^ In my province, and I think this is Canada wide, education funding is collected in part through property tax, but funding is allocated on a per pupil basis among schools (with some adjustments here and there of course). The province just takes all of the property tax education money and throws it into a pot then divides up as needed. We still have some schools stronger than others of course. But every single public school in Canada offers quality education, and the variances by area are very small.
geo does have some fair points that I agree with. For instance, I would favor statewide funding that provides uniform spending per student, for various reasons. However, such measures would do little do lessen the achievement gap between income groups. Despite lack of any spending advantage, students in affluent areas would still dominate in educational achievement, due to non-explicit support and their existing cultural advantage. I would further support an education system that assigns school based on meritocracy and not residential areas. However, this would only exacerbate achievement gaps along ethnic lines, as is evident from the ethnic breakdown of NYC’s Specialized High Schools, for instance.
Perhaps we could then just randomly assign students to various schools within reasonable commuting distance. I’m afraid this would also end up with the same effect, as incomes again align within these larger areas over time.
Ever heard of “Common Core”, “Obamacare”, or “Head Start”, respectively?
I am advocating a redistribution scheme, I don’t hide that. The US is among the lowest social mobility out of all OECD nations. Very little in the US is earned, most is a product of your parentage. If you think that’s a great country, then have at it, its your country. Essentially your argument boils down to “I won the birth lottery so screw all of you, I don’t want to pay more taxes.”
None of those are even close to on par with OECD peers. Hence why outcomes are below OECD levels. Surprise.
This whole argument assumes that there is a strong causal relationship between academic achievement and school funding. That relationship is nearly non-existent. When a correlation exists, it’s due to the influence of high achieving (and high earning) families and their children.
So this argment is bogus. Schools have been the focus for decades with nothing to bear.
When I was house-shopping recently, I was looking for a good school district for my kid. Not because I thought that he would get a better education, but because I didn’t want him around a bunch of ne’er do wells.
I disagree with this assessment overall, given that there are some groups within the US that have demonstrated strong mobility regardless of initial socioeconomic status. I am not saying there is no problem, but certainly, the problem is group specific and hard to generalize across the whole country.