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All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

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Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#241

Post by rlt »

whall6 wrote: post #200
pessimizer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If foster children were raised so well that people were jealous, maybe that would create an adverse incentive for people to create more children than they can handle and desert children that they’ve already had?

This is called a “moral hazard”, and I agree.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#242

Post by johnnyanmac »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #36
getmeinrn wrote: post #13

This is what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation, not because their skin color or gender.

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.

The issue is the pareto principle. As it is the CSU/UC systems cannot support every applicant that wants to come in. But making it completely free they'd be flooded with most of the country's prospective students.

Also, schools are state funded as well as federally funded. So there's a bunch of issues when it comes to out of state students and who should cover. That exists even with today's crazily high priced tuition.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#243

Post by troupe »

slashdev wrote: post #139
themitigating wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person? There were many laws that existed well after slavery that could prevent a black person from succeeding. That's my justification for affirmative a…

> Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person? No I mean the average African-American is easily over 10x wealthier, and has far better opportunities than the average citizen of the countries that now inhabit the lands they originally came from. Were it not for slavery, again as abhorrent as it was, they'd be a lot worse off tod…

It is also easy to forget that the suppliers of slaves were African nations that practiced slavery themselves. They found the Europeans to be great customers for their slaves. So descendants of the Ashanti and others benefited from the selling of slaves. If we really want to look at reparations, we probably need some way to determine what percentage each person benefited from slavery and what percentage they suffered from it. Also there were slaves from Asia and other places that are probably just as deserving of payments if that happens. But all of this flies in face of the narrative that slavery was something whites did to blacks.

A better approach would be to try to provide opportunities that people can take advantage of. The US actually does a great job of this which is why we don't see mass exodus of people trying to go back to the African nations.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#244

Post by johnnyanmac »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #185
bushbaba wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally state colleges will take any applicant who meets the pre-set bar. Where as tier 1 universities are more a zero sum game.

University of California, Washington, and Texas are hardly uncompetitive. Their admission rates are very low for the good programs.

UC's are a huge exception, yes. The better equivalent is the CSU system and even then it's relatively competitive comared to other public unis.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#245

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #187
phpisthebest wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, and this will be controversial it does not matter. Prisons should be a place to house people that have been deemed unable to function in society until such time they can (sometimes that is never). This is not necessarily only violence but violent offenders should be the majority, but people that simply refuse to follow the rules of a society also degrade and are a danger to the society over all…

Okay, but this logic is explicitly filtered through class in the US context. Some of the most antisocial members of our society are CEOs, politicians, and similar leaders. The damage they inflict on society often far exceeds that by individual acts of violence, fraud, thievery etc. Think about what has been wrought by Sacklers, the people running 3M, or those who led the country into war premised on lies. Indeed, you…

> San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

People were complaining about land speculators in SF in Mark Twain’s time. That was literally when the city started growing. So I’m trying to figure out when you thought SF was a lovely city? Maybe during the property bust of the 1990s?

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#246

Post by throwaway72762 »

version_five wrote: post #230
lostdog wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I flagged that top level affirmative action comment, and I hope more people do. Contentless flamewars about unrelated culture war policies are boring, and are a negative contribution to the discussion.

From the guidelines Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.

I agree with the guidelines, but they aren't working anymore. I can predict the tenor and content of the comments on half of the HN front page these days just from the title and domain, which means flagging isn't cutting it.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#247

Post by slashdev »

nomat wrote: post #217
slashdev wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You can't argue with what I said, it's a fact. Facts just are. You can argue about what it means if you want, or how it makes you feel.

you keep saying that but your set of facts is clearly missing many pieces (you admit as much) so to keep repeating it doesn't make it any more true and is really revealing a lot.

You can't make a fact more true. It simply is.

You can drop the personal attacks and insinuations. That's not necessary.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#249

Post by TheCoelacanth »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #215
getmeinrn wrote: post #13

This is what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation, not because their skin color or gender.

Yes. I have to add a "but". But why "Foster Kids" and not "Passes means test". That means test would probably include all/most foster kids of course.

Why not just expand it to everyone? We don't means-test free high school and that works great.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#250

Post by throwaway72762 »

veave wrote: post #235
throwaway72762 wrote: post #111

Is everything culture war all the time now on this site? Every post becomes a stupid comment section where we'd be better off getting an LLM to write the comments for us. Here it's people trying to insert their affirmative action narratives and also rant about California a bit (in a backhanded way). We can do better.

What kind of discussion did you expect on a post like this? Obviously everybody is going to talk about the politics involved, that's the only thing that you can discuss here.

Perhaps we'd be better off not having any country or state or city does X type posts here unless they're about tech. (That won't solve it, though, because any mention of certain cities or states, even in a tech context, brings out the culture warriors.)
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