ChocolateReignRemix
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Posts posted by ChocolateReignRemix
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A hopeful note. NYC is scrapping 644,000 old warrants for petty crimes. There have been many articles about poorer people languishing in jail because they could not pay small fines. The Bronx court system had years-long backups.
The current bail bond system is also a major issue and is in serious need of reform.
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Yet when people loot, it discourages others from evacuating in the future for fear of looters ("I need to stay here and defend my possessions!"). So it leads to longer term lack of safety, which is why the punishment needs to be stiffer (from an econ view).
Emily
People generally don't fear evacuation due to those who get stranded and go looking for food and water.
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Overall, the innocent appreciation for differences of eye and hair color doesn't bother me but strangers having pictures of my children in the age of Internet does bother me. There have been so many instances of people using images of children and families for nefarious purposes. I think laws around this type of thing need to be rethought.
I mean PETA sued a photographer over a monkeys right to own property for a selfie the monkey took on the photographer's camera. How can this ludicrous issue land in court but the image of someone's minors not? My head literally spins from the craziness sometimes.
Oddly enough, PETA used the avenue of property rights (I believe that was it anyway) which was an interesting angle to take.
Realistically, there is not going to be any court decision which fully protects privacy in a public space as it would be nearly impossible to enforce. It is the same reason that security cameras can video you on a public street without your consent.
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You scavenge your own stuff. If it is in someone else's home or store, it is looting.
No, scavenge is not restricted to items you own.
I would say that when people are getting essentials needed for survival and they are doing so from a flooded store, "scavenge" is a fairly neutral and accurate term.
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And honestly? All that stuff is a loss anyway. On the list of things I am going to get worked up about, "somebody got a new TV after a storm" is just not in the top ten, or even the top thousand. Your store is flooded, your house is flooded, you're just going to shovel it all out into the trash and wait for insurance to cut you a check.
Um....no.
For starters, not all "looting" occurs in the worst hit areas. It often happens in areas where people evacuated but there was relatively minor damage. The shoe stores that were robbed (looting seems like the wrong word imo) in Florida were not flooded. It is also important to remember that many homes/businesses have inadequate insurance coverage for these situations so yes, the money does end up coming out of the pockets of the victims directly (and indirectly from us all when they do have insurance).
People who couldn't evacuate a hard hit area and then have to get supplies via "looting" (again seems like the wrong word) are in a different class as there is no other way for them to get supplies. Those who break in business and homes to enrich themselves and take advantage are simply common criminals.
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Some are mostly for druggies.
What?
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Btw, wrt unintended consequences... there are cities where you don't live if you have children unless you're planning to send them to private school or homeschool them, because the local school district is so bad. So, if those places were to have more real school choice (vouchers, w/e), then middle class people might be more willing to buy/rent houses in those cities, instead of living in the suburbs. Which would then have an impact on property values, and probably quite a number of other things.
Doubtful as "white flight" was about more than schools.
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Are you doing the freeze through Equifax or moving to the other credit reporting agencies?
Calling each individually for the freeze. The fraud alert only requires calling one, and for that we are calling Experian.
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Nice article with additional links.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-ve-hit-equifax-hack-052216312.html
We are compromised and are initiating a freeze today.
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Where are all these free or low cost options for dyslexic students?? Do you have a dyslexic student? 1 in 5 students are dyslexic. Many if not most require intensive tutoring. Bill Gates hasn't made much of a difference for us.
And, frankly, I'm always a bit confused when I hear the phrase "government schools." I think the government schools here in CT and MA would not consider themselves the same as the government schools in Texas or Alabama or Idaho. What does that phrase really mean?
It is a phrase that is used by the libertarian crowd to cause a gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair among the diehards.
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I'm not going to disclose my location, but I can tell you I paid tuition for my kids to attend a charter school. You can choose to disbelieve me.
That does not surprise me. Charter school is a catch-all term that can vary a lot by state.
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I'm not sure what you want - that in every post people should take account of every individual instance?
I know places where kids take three boats to school, or have to take a plane and billet with a family, so yeah, I am aware that is a possibility.
I'm also aware that there are a lot of rural areas that are losing schools where it essentially destroyed the town, and certainly doesn't improve education, or where perfectly good smaller high schools are consolidated so they are larger than my university was.
Do you really want to only make statements that could apply to every district and school in the whole country or continent? Why not the whole world?
How about not prattling on about nonsensical solutions? I know you love your soapbox but there isn't any reason to believe "walkable" elementary schools are the solution to education.
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Yeah, I don't think you'll find the US is less densely populated than Canada.
My point is that we assume, in many cases, that these choices like long bus rides, or giant schools because of economy, or more class options, are better, or indifferent. What's the trade off when you bus a six year old two hours a day?
Often they aren't. And our assumptions about needing certain things aren't always accurate either. Is it really harder to get a good elementary school education in a one or two room school? There are still some schools like that here, and interestingly they typically test really well compared to others.
Of course there is not a possibility of one size fits all - every kid can walk 10 min to school. I've said twice now that regional control at appropriate levels has to address those kinds of practicalities. If we are going to talk about policy and have to say that every time, that is surely an utter waste of it.
But I think Carol is right, in principle. Very large, and populated school districts do tend to become overly-beaurocratic and impersonal. And also, you see the same things in very large schools, and in larger classrooms - even when there are more teachers in that class. One way, where density is sufficient, to keep schools down to a reasonable size seems to be to have walking distance schools, which has other benefits as well. Where there isn't sufficient density, you have to think of other ways to approach that problem - in that case, it isn't too many kids, but too few, or too much distance.
You do know some kids have long bus rides to small schools, right? I know of kids where I grew up who have hour+ drives to a high school that has less than 50 students.
You seem to be pontificating about this as if people have thought these decisions over already. Local school districts in the U.S. still have an immense amount of control, which is generally (not always) a good thing.
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I hope everyone is assuming that the laws about truancy / educational neglect would still hold.
I mean, who forces people to clothe their children in a country where all the clothing sources are private? And yet I haven't seen naked kids running around the US.
I don't see any way they feasibly could without a public education model.
Although we don't have a great safety net in the United States, we do have welfare programs that do provide a way for the poorest to get food and clothing for their children. Your comparison is faulty.
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It wouldn't tend to work - you'd have to think of a different way to make the principle work - perhaps by limiting bus time.
But this is what I mean by determining things at an appropriate level. A district is going to have to decide, based on principles and desired outcomes, how to best instantiate that. A city or suburb might say - kids should be able to walk to school. A rural area - no more than 1/2 hr on the bus. A Northern region might have to take a different approach, teaching with an online tutor, say.
If people keep the outcome and the reasons for them in mind, they can find solutions within the limits they have.
But IME who that gets thrown out the window, you get crap like consolidated schools with 1000 students all of whom are bussed. Or kids on busses for over an hour each way in a rural area.
When I lived in the country when my kids were small, the closest elementary school was just under 1/2 away. It's now been closed as too small - the kids go to the consolidated school another 1/2 hour away in town, with about 500 other kids.
Now interestingly, in the time of my grandparents, kids throughout that area did walk to school, as did the teachers for the most part, mostly in 2 room schools.
I can't say that seems better, or the grandparents seem to be more poorly educated.
Schools in walking distance is a common policy in many cities.
Economies of scale are an issue in education, particularly when you are offering services for students with special needs. I am not sure where you live, but in many parts of the U.S. some students will have long bus rides as there is no other reasonable option.
Comparing education now to one room schoolhouses also seems like a waste of time.
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I also know kids and young adults that can't read. My guess is that someone who lives in a more privalaged area wouldn't see that and therefore think public schools are great. Right now, they do seem great for the wealthy districts.
I would also think that most people could look at a situation rationally and figure out that a school cannot fully control what a child learns. There are significant socioeconomic factors that affect student performance.
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In my town I'm legally allowed to use whichever cable service I want to. However, Cox is the only company that services my house. A monopoly isn't about what one is allowed to do in theory. In theory I could start my own cable internet service tomorrow, so by your logic Cox doesn't have a monopoly in my area.
In theory I'm allowed to start my own school or send my kid to the $15k/year private school down the street. In theory, there's no monopoly because everyone is allowed to quit their job and homeschool tomorrow.
There may be less options in Europe, but that doesn't mean that there's mostly one option for most kids in the US when it comes to education.
Once again you make a statement that indicates you only have a very basic understanding of economics. Barriers to entry (which can be legal, technological, or market driven) are one of the key elements to the formation of monopolies. Cable companies generally had a natural monopoly until technology (satellite, internet, high speed lines) made it possible for more competitors to enter the market. Even so, the barriers to entry still naturally limit competition, at least for now. There is no legal barrier to entering that market but their are numerous natural barriers.
Schools would have similar issues in some areas with mass privatization. Students in very small, rural districts would have no more options that they do now as there simply would not be enough students to allow for multiple competitors in the market due to economies of scale.
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I believe that whenever there are clear cases of abuse by officers, they need the lawsuits to go after the department. The pension fund. IMO, only then will the entire group/dept/union decide to do something about the bad apples. No more having the city make the payments.
Nice idea but you can't go after pension funds, and if you did, it is still a contractual obligation the municipality would need to fulfill.
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This is getting even more tangential, but I do wonder sometimes why the US seems SO particularly averse to doing *anything* following a model of other sucessful countries. I mean, I know not everything translates perfectly from a small country like Finland, with different expectations, culture, constitution to a big, huge, diverse country like the US, but still. In some circles at least, you utter a taboo by merely suggesting that we might have something to learn from a country that gets very good results. I don't understand what the big insult is.
We refuse to model what works within our own borders.
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And of course, again, all of this goes back to my original question: what if we put the onus of educating children back onto their parents? The fact that people find this thought to be an impossibility or a disaster waiting to happen is kind of an indictment of our current system, IMO.
People are being realistic. Public education options didn't appear just for the heck of it. There is an overall public good that is achieved by attempting to educate as much of the population as possible. I can't name a society offhand which did not offer a public education option of some sort which also managed to offer an education to all.
FWIW, for all the gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair regarding our public schools, there are still many schools that do quite well and many students who are learning and achieving. Trying to address what is "wrong" with our schools while ignoring what is working is how we end up with a hodge podge of policies which don't achieve change where it is needed. Part of the issue which is clear from the data but us continually ignored at the policy level is that socioeconomic factors and racial inequalities play a major role in failing school districts, and privatization of education on a wide scale is not a solution for those problems.
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No, I'm talking about the way the market works, the economics of it. I used the curriculum comparison because both markets are selling curriculum so it's easy to see how bad one market is compared the the other when they are selling the same thing. YES, it's individualized and the individual consumer decides what to buy. There are more consumers with varied needs and tastes. More choices emerge and prices are regulated by the people paying for the things. Companies cannot charge exorbitant prices for needless revisions. They cannot do this because no one would buy the stuff. In the textbook market, they can and do because the government mandates that taxpayers give them millions of dollars.
If you are going to try and give a lecture about how markets work, you may first want to spend a bit more time thinking about how the individual markets function. You seem to think that products being similar in form means they have the same market, which is definitely not the case. The development of college level textbooks is very different than that of homeschooling curricula, but the ultimate difference is that those who pay for homeschool products make the final purchasing decisions, which is ultimately not the case for college texts (professor A says buy the text which is then purchased by student B).
The cost of homeschooling texts and texts used in public/private schools are more in line with each other, which makes sense as the markets are more similar (keeping in mind that there are some differences at the publisher level that do make a difference).
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True, but I think there would be enough that would in an all-private system, based on how many currently do.
I don't think that is a reasonable assumption without something more than anecdotal data. I imagine this varies a great deal by area, and from my own personal experience significantly more children received services in public school settings as compared to private.
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Again, the "who pays" part of the equation does not depend on whether the services are provided by a for-profit or government entity.
In my area, there are excellent private schools for children with autism and other issues that make learning in a typical school / classroom inappropriate for the individual child. There is also a very significant state scholarship that pays tens of thousands of dollars per year to educate these children at private schools. The parents have a role in advocating for their kids to get evaluated for admission to these excellent private schools, but the parents do not have to pay the money. Possibly that is not true for rich people, I don't know, but my friends with kids in those schools are not rich (nor poor), and they do not pay.
If this is how "privatization" looks, I don't think it's a problem.
ETA of course many of those kids could probably attend public school if that was what their parents preferred. But the parents are thrilled for the option of the private school.
There may be a middle population where the parents feel the kids would benefit from being in a regular classroom with a 1:1 aide or similar, but this option is not generally available in private schools currently - it isn't necessary since public schools provide it. If there were no public schools, I don't see why the government could not pay for private schools to have aides for these kids. Private schools already get government money for things like Chapter I tutoring, subsidized lunch, etc. They do accept some special needs. If they could get a 1:1 aide without paying for it out of tuition, they would probably accept kids in that situation.
FWIW not all private can (or are willing to accept) government money.
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The sporting facilities at my public school are not open to the public, either. Considering tax dollars pay for these facilities, I think they should be open to the public when school is not in session.
Why? We don't open other public buildings when they are closed.
FWIW, there are significant insurance/liability restrictions on allowing access to facilities without school personnel present. Most policies that cover school facilities only cover sanctioned activities and the participants. In most states, school facilities can be rented (exact policies can vary but in my area the rentals are relatively cheap/free) but additional insurance covering the school system for liability must be provided.
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poverty and protective services
in The Chat Board
Posted
Just a quick comment regarding universal income...
We are on the verge of significant technological changes that could lead to a massive labor surplus in many first world countries. I would argue that we already have a labor surplus at this time, which is one of the (many) reasons we have had low wage growth. If these changes are as significant as I believe they will be, we will be forced to have long, hard conversations about guaranteed incomes.