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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

#411

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…

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.

Because those countries were devastated by Europeans

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

#412
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CA's population has tripled in 60 years and so has the tax base and # of teachers. This is a non-issue. Society scales. > and high school graduation rates have risen signifigantly (which is of course good). Not necessarily : see my comment below.

Even if teachers have (which I'm not convinced of to begin with), Universities and land haven't. Its no secret that we've had an overpopulation crisis for the past few decades as is, so We haven't fully solved that issue as of now. And I'm equally unsure if taxes have tripled, between increasing poverty on the bottom and more and more tax evasion on top.

I'm sure if we built new universities, there would be plenty of applicants to teach it in, given how fierce the competition for academic positions already is.

If capacity at existing colleges is the problem, we could start new ones.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is the most charitable country in the world[1]. But, as evidenced by the parent's comment, there is no shortage of people willing to spend other people's money, and Americans are justifiably cautious of that. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-char...

> America is the most charitable country in the world Maybe double check your link next time? > The most noticeable change was arguably the United States, which ranked first in the world in giving for the years 2009-2018 but fell to 19th in the world in 2020. (I also seriously doubt the methodology of this confident ranking of the world's charity based on self reported charitable behavior in surveys, but this was mor…

And the next few sentences from the link:

> However, the U.S. was not the only high-level giver to drop. In fact, many countries that landed in the top 10 most charitable countries in previous years slid completely out of the top 20. According to Charities Aid Foundation Chief Executive Neil Heslop, these changes are not a sign that people's willingness to donate decreased, but that their opportunity to donate diminished, largely as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns. Charity-based retail stores were forced to close, fundraising events were canceled, and many elderly charity volunteers had to shelter themselves instead of volunteering.

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were racist laws all the way up to late 1960s.

That doesn't address his questions. If you're going to codify these things into law, then you should be able to answer questions like this. My paternal grandfather was discriminated against for being black. In truth he was half black, but that didn't temper the racism he faced from people who considered him to be black. For the purposes of reparations, am I 1/4th black or 1/8th black? Because he was my paternal grand…

I'm not serious reparations I'm simply pointing out that the economic suffering of blacks didn't stop when the civil war ended.

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

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a taxpayer who funds public schools, I find it acceptable to subsidize the food of those who are struggling, but I do not have any desire to subsidize the ruling elite (who, in many cases, intentionally keep working class pay low). They can pay for their own children's food.

In theory I agree with you, but in practice I think means testing does more harm than good. Some parents aren't gonna fill out the paperwork and we shouldn't punish kids for that. It also adds overhead to the programs. And I don't think the ruling elite's kids are eating free lunch at public schools :)

Adding on to this a bit, if the ruling elite's children did eat the same cafeteria good, I think it would be a net boon for society.

Think of how every family in Finland taking home a newborn baby gets a box of starter supplies. The box doubles as a crib, so most babies, regardless of their parents wealth, spend their first days sleeping in the same cardboard box.

IMO it's cool as shit to start everyone off the same way like that. From what I understand it also helps reduce the sort of stigma that can hurt kids taking advantage of free lunch programs

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22751415.amp

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

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is the most charitable country in the world[1]. But, as evidenced by the parent's comment, there is no shortage of people willing to spend other people's money, and Americans are justifiably cautious of that. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-char...

I think what you will find is that a stunning amount of that "charity" falls within the giver's social circle. My understanding is it includes donations to the giver's own religious organization. Or even donating to a cause once it's touched you personally -- your mother dies of cancer so you donate to a cancer charity. Giving within your own monkeysphere, and being willfully ignorant of everything outside it, is wha…

As a spot check I googled "turkey earthquate donations by country". The result is a table with US on top donating $185M, followed by UAE donating $100M, Kuwait $68M, and finally the UN $50M.

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

#417
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be free because of stories like yours. It shouldn't be a requirement to be saddled with debt to participate in society.

Problem with free tuitition is it only incentivizes cash grab from educational institutions. There will be gazillion universities overnight similar to coding bootcamps - all competing for state funded tuition without any regard to quality

  > Problem with free tuitition is it only incentivizes cash grab from educational institutions.
that assumes that private schools would be the beneficiaries no?

my understanding is that "free college" usually applies to public institutions (state college/universities)...?

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

#419
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figure out how much the labor was worth. Throw on punitive damages for having enslaved them against their will their entire lives. Now calculate for having invested that money at the time that slavery ended. That's a good STARTING point. Japanese-American citizens got locked up for a few years during WWII and the result was that Reagan signed a bill allowing for their descendants to receive $20K for each incarcerated…

> their descendants Or themselves since plenty of the victims were alive. This was a single event that lasted ~4 years with comparatively very good records. Slavery lasted for several hundreds years, there are not records for most slaves and even cases where they can identified good luck tracking down all of their descendants. That's several magnitudes more complex, to an incomparable extent. > Figure out how much th…

Your argument is that we should never do anything because attempting to do the right thing to people who have had their pasts and futures stolen is hard.

Meanwhile we've got censuses going back hundreds of years. Do the math. It's not that difficult to come up with a minimum standard unless you're in the "do nothing" category.

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

#420

64% of foster youth graduating high school is far far higher than I thought it would be. I’m beyond delighted by this. And if that 64% has free access to post-secondary… that’s a cycle breaking opportunity.

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