121–130 of 585 posts
What's to stop parents from putting their kids up for foster care when they turn 15 so they can attend college at 16 for free?
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I agree completely. Something so striking about the situation as well is that on balance, we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate. Yet these are children, specifically, who deserve every opportunity we can afford them by default. Not “hopeless addicts” or some other group deemed not worth saving by so many of us, but people quite literally the epitome of worth saving. These people need…
For me, state wards are one of the four metrics for judging the quality of a country. Wards of the state: our responsibility, through no fault of their own. Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault. Immigrants: not our responsibility, but an indication of how well we can manage our economy. We should be able to put anybody who comes here to work. Emigrants: we should let people leave who don't want to be here. The…
What percentage (approximately) of prisoners in the United States would you categorize as "their fault" and not some product of their upbringing/situation?
This is what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation, not because their skin color or gender.
Affirmative action shouldn't ever have been a contest with prizes for the most unfortunate. It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of slavery. Having been enslaved legally in the US is not a race, it's an atrocity. The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were…
I think nobody argues that it's a vile, morally repugnant thing to enslave another human being. But that was a long time ago, and all those slaves and the people who enslaved them are all dead.
The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved. How do you make an argument that those descendants are victims in need of reparations? No crime was committed against them directly, and they seem to have benefited from the crimes committed against their ancestors.
I must stress that this is not in any way excusing or justifying the wrongs that occurred. But how would you make an argument for reparations, given how things turned out?
ALL kids in Tennessee can now attend any two year trade school upon graduation from a state high school. Adults can, as well, based on certain additional requirements (that really are easy after you've lived in-state).
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> what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation Also, just helping them out. Nobody gets hurt. This isn't creating an allotment of seats for foster kids. The selection process, and thus odds, are the same for them and everyone else.
Maybe the new affirmative action is visible minorities or other groups just get free education? But then you’d need a K-12 system that doesn’t fail them or set them up for not succeeding by getting them into lower stream courses.
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I don’t agree. My parents are low middle class. We didn’t qualify for any financial aid and they were tasked with trying to find a way to send both my sister and I to college which they couldn’t afford. So what did we do? Take out a bunch of loans. Good thing I got a decent job that can pay for them. Too bad for my sister who had a masters and is making $35k as a teacher in Tennessee which is barely more than minimum…
> Too bad for my sister who had a masters and is making $35k as a teacher in Tennessee which is barely more than minimum wage. This is the real crime.
Oh and that’s not even considering how much of her own $$$ is needed to successfully supply a classroom and how barely any is tax deductible.
Her experiences almost single handedly altered my political viewpoints and who I vote for.
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I do not understand why it should be limited to foster kids. Just make the schools free for all, and collect with higher marginal income / wealth taxes. It should not be dependent on parents’ status either. I got zero aid due to my parents, but I also got zero from my parents.
Assuming the best intentions of those running this, there may not be enough money in the budget for it to be free for everyone.
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I don't think anyone here is denying that there is a correlation, but there's a very legitimate question over whether policy should target the correlated trait (skin color) or the hardship itself (poverty) when trying to fix the problem.
The issue is, a lot of problems have been nominally "fixed". But the black community on average has not caught up with the gaps created and re-enforced by these earlier systems. eg. They didn't get to participate as much as white peers in housing booms due to redlining, blockbusting, etc. So if you started out European-American in 1930 [random 20th century year], or having the same wages and being black in that same…
I'm not staking out a position here, I haven't made up my mind myself. I'm just pointing out that OP raised a valid point which you didn't really address.
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I wonder if there were any earth-shattering global-scale events in that time period that could be skewing the numbers? no, I can't think of any
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree completely. Something so striking about the situation as well is that on balance, we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate. Yet these are children, specifically, who deserve every opportunity we can afford them by default. Not “hopeless addicts” or some other group deemed not worth saving by so many of us, but people quite literally the epitome of worth saving. These people need…
For me, state wards are one of the four metrics for judging the quality of a country. Wards of the state: our responsibility, through no fault of their own. Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault. Immigrants: not our responsibility, but an indication of how well we can manage our economy. We should be able to put anybody who comes here to work. Emigrants: we should let people leave who don't want to be here. The…
People that really feel this responsibility become foster parents. But saying the state should deal with them isn't taking on that responsibility - at the end of the day actual people need to be their parents. I'm happy to support those people by having taxes directed their way, but the state doesn't get credit for their good deeds.