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How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

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Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#2
Would love to see how much Utah residents end up spending on poverty efforts, including donations and taxes and volunteer time. I believe there are inefficiencies in the current system, but by and large poverty reduction costs money. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative may not be feasible when you do the math

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#4
The $20K per year per pupil that NYC (and other large cities) spends is skewed because of the enormous costs of special education. I don't know the numbers for NYC, but from an article I saw about Philly: cost to educate non-special need child: $10K, moderately special need: (7% of students) $20K, severe special need: (another 7% of students) $40K.

I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs students.

Still, we spend an enormous amount of money on K-12 education in NYC and other large cities.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#5
> For a girl raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Salt Lake City is a very weird place. I went to Utah precisely because it’s weird. More specifically, because economic data suggest that modest Salt Lake City, population 192,672, does something that the rest of us seem to be struggling with: It helps people move upward from poverty.

By this criterion, should Salt Lake City be so weird to a New Yorker?

Upward Mobility in the 50 Biggest Cities:

1. San Jose 12.9%

2. San Francisco 12.2%

3. Washington DC 11.0%

4. Seattle 10.9%

5. Salt Lake City 10.8%

6. New York 10.5% ...

50. Charlotte 4.4%

Source: Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/documents/

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#7
post #2

Would love to see how much Utah residents end up spending on poverty efforts, including donations and taxes and volunteer time. I believe there are inefficiencies in the current system, but by and large poverty reduction costs money. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative may not be feasible when you do the math

They do cost money, but by not lumping all of the programs into a single lumbering bureaucracy, you can get a lot more fast moving and need specific operations running, in this case probably at the parish level.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#9
post #4

The $20K per year per pupil that NYC (and other large cities) spends is skewed because of the enormous costs of special education. I don't know the numbers for NYC, but from an article I saw about Philly: cost to educate non-special need child: $10K, moderately special need: (7% of students) $20K, severe special need: (another 7% of students) $40K. I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs stu…

Just raw per student spending without adjusting for cost of living is silly also. If a Manhattan school is spending 14k per student, and a school in the middle of Iowa is spending 12k per student... do some COLA adjustments and you may find Manhattan is a "deal".

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#10
post #2

Would love to see how much Utah residents end up spending on poverty efforts, including donations and taxes and volunteer time. I believe there are inefficiencies in the current system, but by and large poverty reduction costs money. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative may not be feasible when you do the math

It seems to be feasible in Salt Lake City, though. If the community picks up where the government is lacking, the work still gets done and the poorest of our society get the help they need.
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