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The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

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Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#151

Post by WirelessGigabit »

brendanyounger wrote: post #144
sandworm101 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also a time living in an unnatural community not subject all the issues that exist in the outside world. Campuses are not functionally independent entities. They are artificial environments funded from the outside to fulfill a specific purpose. Spend time on a military base. They are also great places in which to live. Easy commutes, local services, great security, very low unemployment and most are very walkable.…

Not entirely true. I moved a block away from the local college with three daughters in elementary school specifically to take advantage of the businesses and enrichment activities around the school. In 1.5 years living here, we've had the cops called on us once when we let our 7 year old walk 2 blocks to her friend's house unescorted. We also have to deal with the muscle cars and loud motorcycles which whizz by our h…

Those revving engines are the reason why I moved far away from everybody. I shouldn't have to deal with it, but apparently the cops here don't enforce the muffler laws.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#152

Post by 11101010001100 »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #16

I started the article expecting it to be little more than a standard case of one's pet grievance being the cause of all of society's ills. I was pleasantly surprised as I started reading. I thought maybe 'social safety net' to the author doesn't mean wealth distribution but rather something like community engagement and mutual support. Alas. Not halfway through does the article take the expected turn towards pet grie…

Does wealth disparity have nothing to do with 'lack of community engagement, lack of trust, misplaced fear of harm, an endless optimizing mindset, and so on'?

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#153

Post by ars »

tmnvix wrote: post #122
kasey_junk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find these stories of kids not walking (or biking) outside wild! Hundreds of kids in my neighborhood walk, bike, or public transit to school everyday with no issues. I do worry about car on pedestrian crashes but the city has crossing guards and traffic calming for just this. Where are these places that you can’t be outside as a child?

I'm not from the US, but just zoomed into a random spot in what I assume is a typical shopping district in suburban Atlanta[1]. Can't imagine many young kids safely walking or biking around there. Compare a local shopping district near me[2]. Plenty of young kids walking and biking to school here alone and in groups. [1] https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@33.8644514,-84.5949946,3a,75y... [2] https://www.google.co.nz/maps…

You compared a commercial zone to a residential zone. What did you expect?

I mean drive around a little in the place you picked - do you see any houses? Now move your map a couple miles in any direction and you'll see forests with walking trails, ponds, parks, small streets where kids can play on the street. That's what it's actually like.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#154

Post by ClimaxGravely »

gnicholas wrote: post #132
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of the parent posters were talking about leaving kids in a car . That is certainly a dangerous thing to do.

Why is it "certainly dangerous" to leave a 5 year old and a 10 year old in a car, while I go into a store to pick something up?

Not the person you asked but if I had to guess it might be similar to how people react to leaving a dog in a car. That is to say it's a heat issue.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#155

Post by hackinthebochs »

11101010001100 wrote: post #152
hackinthebochs wrote: post #16

I started the article expecting it to be little more than a standard case of one's pet grievance being the cause of all of society's ills. I was pleasantly surprised as I started reading. I thought maybe 'social safety net' to the author doesn't mean wealth distribution but rather something like community engagement and mutual support. Alas. Not halfway through does the article take the expected turn towards pet grie…

Does wealth disparity have nothing to do with 'lack of community engagement, lack of trust, misplaced fear of harm, an endless optimizing mindset, and so on'?

It's not obvious that it does. Sure, some of these things correlate with wealth disparities. But there's no reason to think the causal arrow flows from wealth disparity to distrust, lack of community engagement, etc. For example, most communities are wealth-segregated. So within community will not see a vast wealth disparity. Any proposed explanation must also contend with the fact that parenting was to a much larger degree laissez-faire just a couple of generations ago. (Average/median) Wealth disparities haven't grown that much in this time (meaning discounting the culturally irrelevant growth of a handful of tech billionaires).

We might say that low income and a lack of social safety net results in increased anxiety about oneself and society, which results in lack of trust, increased fear, etc, and consequently more controlling parenting. This seems plausible enough. But it doesn't well explain the recent massive increase in hypermanaging/helicopter parenting. American society hasn't become more precarious or more dangerous. While income anxiety may be a contributing factor, it probably isn't the proximal cause. There was a phase change in the average parenting ideology in the last 30-40 years that isn't well explained by the usual societal bugbears.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#156

Post by beej71 »

Talanes wrote: post #123
bcrosby95 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's an urban/suburban/rural or political divide when it comes to this. I live in a suburb in California and have never ran into this problem. But we're also unincorporated and don't have cops with nothing better to do than harass some kid walking to school alone. We're also surrounded by people whose kids are now in their 20s-30s. They don't see our kids running around as a nuisance - they're relative…

I grew up in rural California in the one town in the county that was incorporated; the kind of place where every cop in town shows up if anything happens at all. I biked and rollerbladed to school alongside literal highways and never was approached about it once.

And in my rural California town growing up the cops pulled you over for everything. I was once pulled over for riding my bicycle "fast". I wasn't speeding.

Every place is different.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#157

Post by 11101010001100 »

throwaway49849 wrote: post #128
dhc02 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this a great frame to examine taxes though: Are taxes perfect, too high, or too low? Now that we have the question, how to we decide the answer? I think there are several possibilities, but one that comes to mind is happiness. A subjective and flawed metric to be sure, but a metric all the same. Thankfully, we do not have to resign ourselves to thought experiments with no opportunity for real data collection,…

>your criticism of the article is an argument in favor of the article. I never criticized the article, which is about social safety net and child happiness. I'm criticizing the claimed taxation level required to have nice things. Wasteful/not wasteful is mostly orthogonal to high/low. If high taxes, in a wasteful system, results in happy people, then that means you can get the same result for less. Meaning people get…

If you have a non linear map, then the nice properties of orthogonality can disappear...

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#158

Post by therealdrag0 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #20

I'm somewhat skeptical that the Dutch social safety net is why Dutch parents let their kids "ride their bikes in the rain unsupervised". Does anyone believe that Americans would be more like Dutch parents with a social safety net? What causal chain is necessary for that result, when American parents tend to be be like that due to anxiety about monstrous crimes? Do we really believe that the crimes happen enough that…

No it made no sense to me either.

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#159

Post by hooper_ »

ambichook wrote: post #110
hooper_ wrote: post #88

I had a simmilar experiance in Iceland, compared to my home country (Australia). Some examples: * The birth of our son cost us a total of $50. That was parking fees and a bed for me in the same room as my Partner. Who had a 30 hour labor and an emergancy C-Section. * For the first couple of weeks we had a nurse coming over and checking up on the health of my partner and son. Organized and paid for by the goverment. *…

i'm unfamiliar with any law making kids below twelve walking to school illegal, if it is then a decent portion of my class in primary school were breaking the law, unless it being fine is just a queensland thing. there have been scares sure, events that make parents afraid to let their children walk to school unsupervised, but at the very least where i grew up buses were only the norm because of how spread out the ar…

Your right! I'm wrong :)

Source showing I'm wrong and giving more context: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-09/how-long-is-too-long-...

Re: The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets

#160

Post by hooper_ »

seoulmetro wrote: post #148
hooper_ wrote: post #88

I had a simmilar experiance in Iceland, compared to my home country (Australia). Some examples: * The birth of our son cost us a total of $50. That was parking fees and a bed for me in the same room as my Partner. Who had a 30 hour labor and an emergancy C-Section. * For the first couple of weeks we had a nurse coming over and checking up on the health of my partner and son. Organized and paid for by the goverment. *…

>Its illiegal for my son to walk to school by himself, before he's ~12 Where's the source for this? I don't believe that's true. Also most of what you wrote is true for Australia too. Except it's 3 months to split from gov leave, and as long as your company offers in paid leave. Kindy is free in QLD now. Not sure whether that equates to daycare?

Re: 12yr olds walking to school, yep I'm wrong about that!

Re: Kindy, that starts at 4yrs old. Daycare is prior to that. There is government assistance for sending your kid to daycare, the 1 week to 1 month cost I mentioned is the out of pocket expense.

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