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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

#371

Post by refurb »

superchroma wrote: post #324
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…

We've tried it your way for decades - where prisons are permanent storage for badly made humans - and it doesn't work. They fill up, cost the taxpayer and become yet another thing to exploit. Society looks the other way whilst they get mistreated. Obscenities like rape are constant grim realities of such facilities, and organizations like gangs thrive in them too. Recidivism rates are alarming to boot. The point of p…

Take a look at California if you want to see a failed attempt at reform - namely NOT incarcerating criminals.

The results is worsening crime rates and multiple examples of serial recidivism where the public pays the cost through lower quality of life.

I’m not saying there isn’t room for reform, but some people need to be in prison not for their own good, but for the public’s good.

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

#372

Post by krapp »

dopidopHN wrote: post #310
WWLink wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. I'd rather see kids get free pizza and hot dogs for school lunch, than I would a system where it costs $8 per student and only some kids get free lunch, but it's 100% vegan fair trade certified healthy food. Now if you can pull a boiling frog meme and make the pizza be healthy, haha more power to them!

I agree with you, I really do. Some meal is better than no meal. But we forgot how to make decent food at scale.

We didn't forget. It would just be expensive, and Americans simply don't want their hard-earned tax dollars to pay to feed other people's kids, so schools have to resort to cheap solutions. It took radical activism (mostly by the black community and groups like the black panthers) just to get school lunches to begin with, and Republicans/Conservatives have been trying to tear it down ever since.

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

#374

Post by coryrc »

confidantlake wrote: post #329
giantg2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see these numbers I'm shocked at how it's not >98%.

If intelligence is distributed on a bell curve there are going to be some that can't graduate no matter how hard they work, and some more that can only graduate with a lot of hard work. Then throw in some more people that have some difficult life circumstances: parents dying, depression or other health issues, drug or alcohol problems, etc.

This number is including the fact that we already lower standards for those on the left side of the bell curve. It's entirely the difficult life situations at play.

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

#375

Post by bnralt »

jonathanlb wrote: post #145
slashdev wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Please cut me some slack here, by the nature of the world we live in, I have not uttered these thoughts to another human being, and they might have obvious flaws. It's tough when you can't talk about ideas out of fear of the consequences. 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…

It's true that enslaved people and their enslavers are no longer alive, but the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory polic…

> Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development.

Slavery in Africa was widespread before the Atlantic slave as well as after the Atlantic slave trade. There's some apologism (interestingly enough, quite similar to Southern U.S. slavery apologism) claiming that it wasn't that bad, but if you look at the actual accounts it could be extremely brutal. Like with the U.S. there was certainly a degree of different experiences, but like in the U.S., that doesn't justify the practice.

In the end it was actually European powers that ended most slavery in Africa, often with a great deal of local opposition ("The End of Slavery in Africa" is a decent starting place if you want to see how it happened in each individual area).

Ethiopia is an interesting example - it wasn't colonized[1], and so slavery there persisted long after it ended in most of the continent. The League of Nations kept pressuring the country to end the practice, but it kept dragging it's feet. It only ended when Italy invaded in the run-up to WWII (it's also interesting as a non-colonized control country when it comes to colonization).

[1] It was conquered by fascist powers for some years, the same as most of Europe.

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

#376

Post by slashdev »

smogcutter wrote: post #345
slashdev wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of…

> Why make it about race? Just make those things available to all disadvantaged individuals, period. Because… > the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinfor…

I do know what my answer would be. I don't make excuses or play the victim card or blame my current condition on external circumstances. I accept what has passed, what my current situation is, and try to play the hand I was dealt the best way I can. That's my personality, I don't think that'd change.

I can certainly understand why one would be bitter about "every generation of your ancestors was subject to both systemic and individual discrimination and violence". They have a right to be upset. A lot of people have a right to be upset about a lot of things. I don't think you can jump from that to reparations though.

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

#377

Post by JumpCrisscross »

j45 wrote: post #297
BurningFrog wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I know is that this word used to mean "shares in a company", and then, over a month or two, it meant "everyone having the same outcomes".

Equity is a stake in something, for its outcome. Investment is one a thing. Having access to opportunity is another

> Having access to opportunity is another

This isn’t what equity means, according to this socioeconomic model. It’s equality of outcomes.

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

#378

Post by commonlisp94 »

ttfkam wrote: post #127
er4hn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the best intentions of those running this, there may not be enough money in the budget for it to be free for everyone.

Somehow European countries pull it off without bankrupting themselves.

Indeed, but not without tradeoffs, including:

- accepting fewer students (having strict requirements).

- failing students out in early classes (fewer opportunities to retake classes).

- more professionally focused and shorter curriculum.

- less class and subject choices

- the degree commanding significantly less earnings

For whatever reason, the best students seem to end up at a few top European schools (like Oxford) or go to the US.

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

#379

Post by billfor »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #302
vl wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why post like this should be here at all? How it meets the inclusion criteria? If I remember correctly, not so long ago dang was editing out posts about ongoing armed revolt in Russia - a country that started largest war in Europe in recent history. And yet there is a post about minor policy decision in one of the 50 states.

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. I think you can argue there's an interesting new phenomenon here. By these rules, I'm guessing the original "Russia attacks Ukraine" post would be allowed, but not the…

It is an interesting new phenomena. I think it dilutes the original purpose of this forum and as a side topic it would be interesting to figure why it's happening more, but maybe its fair to just let things evolve to what people what them to be, even if people that used to come here for technical things mostly might stop frequenting it as much I guess - it takes time to keep hitting the hide button. It's getting like posting political commentary on a recipe site, and I do get that it's not a perfect analogy but hopefully you see what I mean....

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

#380

Post by xmddmx »

lisper wrote: post #359
xmddmx wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an educator, and a social democrat (approximately) so "yes"? What saddens me is that grand (and simple) plan "free education for all" gets watered down and chipped away to "free education for those who have money or connections" and later attempts to shore it up offten amount to "free education for $special_group". While I don't deny $special_group should get free education, what gets me is all the special-pleadi…

I'm approximately a social democrat too, but I'm also a pragmatist. Asking for "free education" is like a child asking for a pony. Education, like everything, costs money, and we can't just wave a magic wand and change that. The only question is who pays for it: the student, or someone else. "Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It…

"social democrat" - are you sure? the point remains: some services are social goods and should be treated as such, so that "nobody lacks for inability to pay". That's not literally "free" but has the same meaning in practice.
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