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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

#451

Post by bagacrap »

hollandheese wrote: post #427
bagacrap wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it should cost less, but I don't understand why everyone seems to think the government (taxpayers) should be paying these tuitions. The problem is that tuition is ridiculous.

You do understand that the state won’t be paying individual tuition to state-run universities. They’ll just fund their actual operations.

No, that's not clear. I'm sure the state (and other) universities would say that tuition already funds "actual operations". What guidelines do bureaucrats inflict on universities to ensure there are no fake operations sucking up funds? Can you point me to the specific state funding proposals you're talking about?

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

#452

Post by bagacrap »

pessimizer wrote: post #77
bagacrap wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived In this utopia you describe, I'd think all kids lived like kings.

Utopia has a really low bar if we get it from treating foster kids like middle-class kids.

Wait, regular people are jealous of how middle class kids live?

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

#453

Post by skybrian »

slavboj wrote: post #426
xmddmx wrote: post #294

This idea is not really new - the California Master Plan for Education essentially promised a free higher education to everyone in California. In 1960. [1] As these things go, the plan was eroded over time, with the (in)famous Proposition 13 of 1978 dealing a big blow. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...

There is this meme that Prop 13 is responsible for everything bad in California because of course we could pay for anything if we had more money. In reality the CA budget has grown faster than inflation for decades. https://www.statista.com/statistics/313176/california-state-...

Is that per-capita as well as inflation adjusted? (I don't have an account, so I don't see the graph.)

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

#454

Post by superchroma »

refurb wrote: post #371
superchroma wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're making non-points. California has not effectively deployed various progressive policies. There exists certain people who are intractably violent or cruel and who cannot be healed or changed with the cutting edge of therapy or medicine. So what?

This knowledge is not a sufficient excuse to give up on the problem. The status quo is unacceptable. That's the key fact.

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

#455

Post by nxx788 »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #446
nxx788 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the language works. We have long ago decided that "free", when used in the context of social services, is correct enough to be understood. Do you think that definition is bad? If so, maybe you'll catch more nibbles by trying to engage in a dialog?

Who is "we"? I've seen a lot of terms used for social services: subsidized, covered, available by grant, available to those who qualify. But I don't always see those social services tossing around the word "free". Sure, sometimes there are "free haircuts for the homeless" or "free medical services for the needy", or "free help to apply for benefits", but generally in the context of entitlements, we're not freely band…

Free public schools, free health care, toll free roads, free housing.

It's not the only way we refer to these things, but it's an accepted one.

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

#456

Post by slashdev »

tadfisher wrote: post #327
nomat wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you know the reason that we don't have those things is precisely because politicians campaigned on the narrative that black people (welfare queens, etc) would unfairly take advantage of a system like that and they won. So it seems like you understand what needs to be done but what not what the blocking issues are.

To reinforce your point, those same politicians are fighting against student loan forgiveness . This is telling; to them, only suffering under the burden of non-dischargeable debt entitles you to the same opportunities as a wealthy family.

I don’t like student loan forgiveness as a policy because it is unequally distributed and benefits those most who were least responsible.

I think one could come up with a more fair proposal than that.

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

#457

Post by [deleted] »

petsormeat wrote: post #430
999900000999 wrote: post #81

Now in a better world we'd drop a word from this sentence and make it free for all state residents. That's closer to what it used to be. Realistically this doesn't change much since it's extremely unlikely a foster kid wouldn't qualify for a full ride prior to this. The only people who really get screwed are middle class families who make too much to qualify for aid, but can't really afford to pay for school.

It's already difficult to attend California's public universities as a state resident; the more popular campuses prefer nonresidents/international students because they pay full price. No-tuition residents will be even less desired by admissions offices.

[deleted]

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

#458

Post by slashdev »

themitigating wrote: post #411
slashdev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Those countries were created by Europeans, they didn’t exist before that. The tribes that were there before were not much of a civilization. They weren’t behind the rest of the world because of colonialism, they were colonized because they were behind the rest of the world.

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

#459

Post by slashdev »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #419
qwytw wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think it would be extremely impractical and impossible to apply fairly.

Maybe that’s not an argument by itself for doing nothing.

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

#460

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

xmddmx wrote: post #380
lisper wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's what he said.

>"Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea.

Like, he's no longer allowed to be a social democrat if he understands bsaic economics? Why am I not surprised?

> some services are social goods and should be treated as such,

Perhaps. But how is higher education that? It's true that not as many people as you would like have 4 year degrees, but many do, and those people serve me overpriced coffees while whining about unionization.

Where is the social good in their degrees? Like, even if they had gotten those for free and there was no student debt, how did their degrees help either society at large, or them personally?

It is apparently very easy for this to not be a social good.

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