Interesting article. Seems weird to me, as a Brit, why there isn't more pressure from American parents against guns. One might expect them to think "OK, I like having the right to own a gun, but I don't want kids entire lives to revolve (pardon the pun!) around the threat of gun violence, so there needs to be some kind of control". But apparently not... I know someone (British) who's engaged to an American and in the process of moving there and planning to have kid(s), who intends to homeschool her kid(s) because she doesn't think 5-yr-olds having to be given training in case a shooter enters their school is healthy. I mean, I agree with her, but having to homeschool them to avoid this... it's madness.
Children don’t vote. If they would only get up off their butts and vote, they’d get some representation. Imagine what they could do if they pooled all their lunch money and started a SuperPAC! Then Congress would take notice.
Their parents sure as hell aren’t going to do the voting for them. They just want lower taxes.
There’s always Somalia. I heard it’s got great schools, if “child soldier” is what you aspire your children to be.
But hey at least no one will be there to “steal” your hard earned currency that was minted by a central government or build you those pesky roads or whatever.
I like roads, and indoor plumbing. I like living in urban environments that are well thought out and enjoy the ability to efficiently travel to natural destinations. I also enjoy safety nets of the social and judicial varieties, and the innovations of research institutions. Living without fear of a horse coming over the horizon is also a nice benefit.
If this could all be done without taxes, that would be nice. But I doubt the above could be achieved via voluntary payment without living in a dystopian world ruled by an oligarchy.
> isnt it funny how we have invented words like "taxes", so that it can be presented as something you want to be graciously given when you want it lowered, rather than you wish to resist someone coming to enslave you, take half your working life away from you, under the threat of imprisonment and your kids being placed with a foster family.
Should we compare taxes to slavery, or to rent? If you refuse to pay your rent, you can end up homeless, and then they may indeed take your children away from you. Many places still have anti-vagrancy laws on the books–even if very inconsistently enforced–so if they really want to, they can imprison you for homelessness too.
Even if you own your own home – you bought it (or the land it is built on) from somebody else, who bought it from somebody else, and so on. In settler-colonial countries such as the US, Canada or Australia, the chain of title almost always ends in a government land grant. So if the government which claims the right to tax your private property (and its inhabitants) is illegitimate, your own title to that property isn't legitimate either. That government land grant was issued subject to the condition that grantee and occupants pay taxes, and nemo dat quod non habet (the buyer can have no better title than the seller). True freehold doesn't really exist, all freehold titles are really a form of leasehold (transferrable leases), with the sovereign state as the ultimate landlord–and if you don't like it, you can always choose to rent from some other landlord instead, aka emigration.
If you are an indigenous person, you may indeed have a valid argument that your ancestors' ownership of the land long predates the existence of the current government, and hence the taxes it levies are a form of theft from you. But if you aren't indigenous, then that argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
So this article goes on for paragraphs blaming republicans and evangelicals and the red scare and slavery. But why do democrats (apparently) hate their children as well? After all, education is 90% funded by states and municipalities. That’s not unique to the US—education is a local issue everywhere from Sweden to Canada to Germany. Why are schools falling apart in Baltimore and Chicago? Why aren’t social services for children materially better in Illinois and New York?
For example, the article prominently quotes a state Rep from Idaho to illustrate why the author’s political opponents have the wrong values. But 8th graders in Idaho do better in reading than those in California, Delaware, Oregon, and Maryland, and comparably to New York, Vermont, Connecticut, and Minnesota. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/s.... And Idaho is a lot poorer than those states!
The author’s comparison to Greece is unintentionally revealing. Allegedly, Greece doesn’t hate its children. But Greece spends only 4% of GDP on education, in comparison to 6% for the US. Another telling data point: over 90% of Greek children live with both parents, compared to under 70% in the US.
The Breakfast club analogy in the first 2/3rds of the film --- there's a finite number of distinct and static social-idelogical-clubs --- analogously Republicans and Democrats in politics is silly. No penetrating and practical solutions will follow from this contextualization.
Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places. Their challenges are significantly easier. Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor.
European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.
> Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places.
That's a weird statement. By your logic, diversity makes people's lives worse, and folks in Idaho are justified in wanting no part in it.
> Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor.
But, on objective metrics, those dumbfucks in Idaho are doing a better job teaching their kids to read than those in California--and for a lot less money.
Utah has the kind of flat, egalitarian society liberals say they want to create: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/12/28/24017943/best-state-.... ("A 2014 article in The Atlantic pointed toward two strengths that Salt Lake City has that make it a positive environment for upward mobility: 'A strong middle class and a less extreme gap between the rich and the poor.' ... Based on data from 2020 to 2022, the Gini Index from the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Utah as having one of the lowest economic inequality scores across the country.").
> European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.
In America, religion is pretty much the only check on "extreme forms of individualism." Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the places where, more than anywhere else in America, people worship money rather than God. Are those models to follow?
How much does cost of living factor into ability to deliver results for schools? The further you go into the heartland, the cheaper the land gets. I think that plays a part.
Cost of living declines, but the tax base also shrinks – fewer large corporations and high-income earners, plus cheaper real estate reduces property tax revenues. Whatever advantages the lower cost of living gives, the reduced tax base may take away.
The problem is "diversity" is too mealy mouthed for the specific finger they're trying to point- kids from Guatemala (or insert any other country with a high number of recent emigres) who don't speak or read English don't test well on exams with English language instructions for tautological reasons.
That's only part of the problem in blue states though, and does not explain the full discrepancy.
> Idaho has a small fraction of the population and diversity of those other places. Their challenges are significantly easier.
One of the states rayiner cited Idaho as outperforming is Delaware. Idaho does not have a "small fraction" of the population of Delaware, it has almost twice Delware's population
It is also unclear why, above a certain minimum, population in itself should make any significant difference to a jurisdiction's ability to provide a quality education. As population scales, other relevant factors (such as student and teacher numbers and size of budgets) should scale proportionately – and if they don't, then we've identified a relevant explanatory factor other than population.
Furthermore, Idaho is a lot more diverse than you seem to think it is. Only 80% of the state's population is non-Hispanic white; in K-12 public school enrolments, it is only 73%. [0] Deep red Idaho's schools outperform those of light blue Maine, despite the fact that Idaho has close to 40% more people, and significantly greater ethnic diversity (Maine's population is 92% non-Hispanic white)
> As population scales, other relevant factors (such as student and teacher numbers and size of budgets) should scale proportionately – and if they don't, then we've identified a relevant explanatory factor other than population.
American cities and suburbs are so low density that they end up losing money because infrastructure is spread out over such a large area that taxes collected per square mile aren't enough to keep things working. People get pissed if the electric poles fall down, or when water stops flowing, so school budgets get cut instead.
Accordingly, older cities lose more money (more old stuff to maintain) and cities that grow larger (add more low density single family homes) lose more money faster.
40% of Idaho's population lives in a single mid-size city that apparently isn't burning through cash. If Boise 3x'd in population, it'd probably also start losing money like other larger American cities.
> American cities and suburbs are so low density that they end up losing money because infrastructure is spread out over such a large area that taxes collected per square mile aren't enough to keep things working.
This is very much false. I don’t know why this misinformation is so widespread, but even a glance look at the municipal budgets is enough to see the facts contradict it. The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.
Newer areas do fine. Infrastructure eventually needs not just maintenance, but massive replacement.
Roads, bridges, sewer systems, all start to fall down. Ideally a city would estimate the worst cost of replacement at the time infrastructure is first built, and set aside money from year 1 such that the replacement cost is fully funded when the roads/pipes/bridges wear out.
If that ever does happen (and maybe it has happened a couple times in history) what will end up happening is some candidate for city council comes along and says they can reduce taxes, just vote'em in, and now all of a sudden the "50 year in the future replacement fund" is no more.
There is of course the economic argument that saving money in the bank with crap interest rates is terrible finances, and that it is in fact better for the city to just borrow 50 years hence, but the counter argument is that low interests were a recent anomaly in US history.
(The investment options cities have for where they can save money for 50 year later projects are fairly limited, which is another point against cities saving money up).
Now, a bit ironically, large condo and townhome associations in many cities are required to have savings sufficient for future expenses. These laws were passed because without the backing of "the city is making us" board members on HOAs will quickly get kicked out the second they propose a budget that actually covers future expenses. In cities that don't mandate responsible reserve funds on the part of HOAs, what you find is tons of complexes are underfunded because despite having a (mandated by law) prepared document of future expenses, the can is just kicked down the road.
(cities do have reserve funding, but rarely do those take into account all future infra needs)
> The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.
I opened the budget for the city of Kirkland WA[1], which is obscenely well run financially (they regularly run a surplus despite Washington state having a law capping properly tax increases are below inflation levels, a law which has slowly starved many cities of funding), and capital projects are over 25% of the budget. Just water and sewer appears to be around 13% of the city's overall budget.
Looking at Seattle's budget, a city that other countries would call "low density" (and honestly, in some countries Seattle is small enough that it wouldn't even be considered a major city!) of a nearly 6 billion dollar budget, 2 billion is spent on utilities. As someone who lives in Seattle, I can attest that one of the current problems we face is our sewer system is way behind the times and needs lots of updating, but again, no money.
Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).
Washington State is actually a bit odd in that district funding largely comes from the state, by way of property taxes, but even so let's compare the funding for schools to the rest of a city's budget.
Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects.
Is it a huge chunk of the city's budget? Yeah. But by no means do educational expenses dwarf other city expenses.
What you are not considering here, is that in many states, school districts are separate special-purpose local governments, independent from the county or municipality, with their own separate elections, governing bodies, budgets, taxing and borrowing powers. So how much the county or municipality is spending on whatever has no direct impact on how much the school district has to spend. It is possible for the county or municipality to go bankrupt due to financial mismanagement, even while the school districts are in good financial shape.
I was replying to the statement that education spending dwarfs infra spending, by providing evidence that the two are on par with each other.
Around where I live, schools are in financial troubles, and infra is in financial trouble, nothing is doing well.
West Coast cities are older (rising costs) while also being low to medium density (low tax base) and honestly outside of LA and SF, don't even have a large population for how much area they take up.
It isn't a great combo.
In regards to city vs school funding, the two are separated in WA state because of how schools are funded, except that cities pass special levies to fill funding gaps, which is a separate political problem.
Of course city residents rarely understand how funding works, and they yell at the city council when schools start falling apart. (Quite a few of the public schools I went to had broken heating and crumbing walls, and from what I grok, the financial situation of the district was better back then compared to now!)
OK, what I wrote was incorrect. What I had in mind was that cities spend less than 10% on road infrastructure, but I carelessly didn't specify that. You seem to understand these issues much better than a typical person, and I think you deserve a careful and thorough reply.
> Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).
> (...)
> Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects
First, the Shoreline School District's budget is more like $220M. $168M is just the General Fund, additional $26M go to capital projects, and $35M go to debt service. That's $16k per student, which, by the way, is around 50% more than the private school tuition for my children in Seattle, which does not exactly makes me sympathetic to the narrative of starved school budgets being cut to pay for infra.
Worth noting is that many Shoreline parents pay for private education, but do not pay for private roads or water or sewer. Thus, $220M is underestimate of educational spend, whereas infrastructure spend is not underestimated by looking at the budget.
Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less (not a given though: we'd have fewer miles of roads to maintain, but average right of way would become much busier, and work on busy road is typically much more expensive). So let's dive into Shoreline budget to see what spend could look like in more dense world.
The $136.1 capital spend is split as follows:
* $43M is General Capital, and $92M is Road Capital
* The $43M General Capital fund is split into $5M spend on Maintenance Facility, $5M on "Debt Service and Other", and $33M is spent on capital improvements to city parks. I'll assume that all of this spend would remain in denser world (unless denser world means fewer/smaller city parks per capita).
* $92M is spent roughly in half between Pedestrian/Non-Motorized Projects, and Safety Operations (which I assume is mostly motorized infrastructure).
* Half of pedestrian spend is on a pedestrian bridge over I-5, which would still be built if Shoreline was denser (in fact, we might then need more pedestrian bridges). The other half is building new sidewalks. More pedestrians means fewer roads, but more sidewalks required, so it's hard for me to estimate how sidewalk spend which change with increased density, but let's say that increased density means spend on sidewalks could be cut by half, so we'd see something like $15M savings.
* In the Safety Operations (i.e. motorized) spend, large majority is N 145th St improvements. This is the major arterial in Shoreline, and would likely still be part of Shoreline's budget if it was denser. It would probably be shorter then, so let's cut the spend by half. The rest we can also cut in half, for $20M in total savings.
* Worth noting is that road resurfacing spend (which accounts for most of road maintenance) is less than $3M, which is a tiny fraction of the whole budget. Maintaining suburban roads is very cheap.
* Thus, increased densification would result in savings of something like $35M, which is a quarter of capital projects.
* If you do the same exercise for utilities, you'll find that a third of it is surface water spend (storm drains etc), which would probably be cut by half in denser world. Two thirds is wastewater spend, which would be reduced by much less in denser world (as the spend scales much more with volume than with length of the system).
* To sum up, densification would save Shoreline something like $60M, which is a small fraction of educational spend. In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control...
Part of what cannot be determined here is what long term costs Shoreline will face when its (relatively new) infrastructure starts to fail. Those are the kinds of costs Seattle is facing now with its stormwater projects, and its failing bridges. "old bridge suddenly collapsing" doesn't show up in a year's budget proposal, but rather it shows up in next year's proposal under "unexpected costs", but really, everyone knew the bridge was going to fall down soon, so how unexpected was it?
Though compared to Seattle, Shoreline isn't going to have as much of a "random bridges falling down" problem. :-D
But that aside, I did notice this
> In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control, to the level of my private school in Seattle.
Public schools cost more to operate because they have to serve everyone, including those with special needs and learning disabilities. They have to help feed children who do not have enough food, and they are expected to have after school programs from children that do not have a safe place to go home to (which, given how early schools get out, is honestly a problem for many families, public or private school).
As more children from (comparatively) wealthy go to private schools, the average cost of schooling the kids in public schools actually goes up, as a larger % of the kids left need extra help and support.
> The other half is building new sidewalks.
I am happy that the residents in Shoreline have finally decided to stop running over pedestrians! But seriously, Shoreline needs more sidewalks, it'll honestly add a lot to property values there.
> Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less
There would also be a lot more revenue per given square mile. You could take my Seattle neighborhood and 2x the density w/o much harm to the "feel" of the neighborhood. If you 3x it, now you can add tons of commercial activity, allow small business owners to actually live close to their business (why does my barber have to drive in to work? Oh because zoning makes living in Seattle absurd), and cities start to actually make money.
The economics of dense cities are incredibly different, and they start a virtuous cycle that works out really well for everyone. Sadly America shut down all the goodness when we added strict zoning laws.
Also where the heck are you spending only 11k on private school? The non-religious private schools in Seattle that I looked at cost 30-40k. (Heck the at home daycare we use right now costs over 25k a year!)
Why isn't education funded at the federal level? Feels like something so expensive, should be funded at the federal level, not just regulated there, and not when federal income taxes dwarf state tax options.
How is state vs federal funding relevant here? What is the point that you are trying make? Im confused here. That we needs the Feds to slash enormous school budgets in failing places like NYC, Baltimore or Chicago, to the levels seen in more successful places like Idaho which have lower budgets?
Midwestern states get farming subsidies. I know several people in the Midwest who, after making snarky comments about West Coast schools, will you l happily take that $1000+/mo check, people that don't have kids. If the federal government is going to regulate the schools, as they do, discussing whether they should help pay for it out of the enormous federal budget seems relevant to me. I can think of a lot of different ways I would rather spend money on, like schools, than on the military and health care system, things that disproportionately benefit certain states (not saying those are all Midwestern states!). But, let's not stop having conversations about where and how money is spent.
I have no idea how farming subsidies are relevant here. Farm subsidies are tiny fraction of US federal government spend. US Federal Government already spends more than 5 times as much money on education than it does on agricultural subsidies, and 50 times as much on military than it does on agricultural subsidies. Even that tiny spend is mostly benefitting the consumers rather than farmers, in the form of lower food prices. If we redirected all agricultural subsidies to educational spending, because federal educational spending is only a small fraction of total educational spending, total educational spending in US would only grow by measly 2%.
I have no idea why anyone would bring agricultural subsidies in the context of education spend, other than to signal disdain for the outgroup. This is simply completely irrelevant.
I think using a term like "retarded" is pretty craven. You are talking about people who, through no fault of their own, have a much harder life than we will ever know. Rather than craft a better insult, you take the lazy and cruel path.
Who dumped water on your magnet, buddy? Figure it out.
Kids in poorer states being able to read better actually makes sense considering the damage that Marie Clay's cueing system caused. Check out https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ if you're interested. It was posted here a couple months back.
but often it tells you how little time they have spent actually engaged with the real truth of the place or places they are about to compare the problems of wherever they live, instead of the idealistic view of someone who was visiting family or being a tourist … it is a shortcut to that emotional connection to the reader, but taking that can sometimes leave the writer clearly marked as not actually having any grounds upon which the rest of their arguments can stand…
This however doesn’t appear to suffer from that. It seems quite well considered.
Is it really so distracting from the larger point? Are you aware of counter evidence, proving Greece is systematically neglecting its children? Keep reading
Yes it is distracting. I'm sure Greece, like all other countries in the world except America, treats its children wonderfully, but I don't need to know that the author spent 2 weeks on vacation there, and everybody was so nice to their kids in the bookstore or the library.
And maybe the article eventually uses data that goes beyond "my 2 weeks visiting my dad", but then why do I need this idiotic intro? Is it supposed to build some sort of credibility, like "I was there, I saw it, I experienced it, now you have to agree with me"?
I've seen this type of writing a lot, and I agree with you: It's an excuse to draw attention to the writer.
Anecdotes aren't bad if they lead into something more substantive. E.g., "My experience with my kids in Greece got me interested in [concept], and here is the data that I collected; my conclusion is that..."
But no, it's usually like: Check out this experience I had or quirky thing I do. Now let's talk about something tangentially related.
It's really a need to vent being displayed most prominently. Maybe covid/social media/WFM/inflation/whatever you want to blame has made people lonely to the point of trying to add water cooler talk into their publications.
"Virtually every other industrialized nation provides more government aid for their children than America does. "
Somehow I knew that would be the main point as soon as I saw the title and the publication. For many, the answer to all problems is government spending.
Given the increasingly inverse educational outcomes relative to per pupil spending, it really does sound like they've reduced a complex situation down to a single variable that has a rather poor predicative function.
Different areas have different CoL. So if you compare unadjusted spending per pupil you'll get a skewed picture. Different areas also have different mixes of cultures, expectations, and parental challenges like poverty or needing to work multiple jobs. The article specifically calls out that families in our capitalist nightmare need help feeding their kids and caring for those too young for school.
It's well documented that 1) children are/were barely affected by COVID, and 2) mask caused more problems, especially for younger kids who are learning to speak, and need to be able to see facial expressions.
COVID is around, and always will be. And "protecting" causes more harm and weakens the development of the immune system.
All well known and common sense stuff, to those who don't live in fear of merely getting sick.
We don't actually know that children were barely affected by covid. Covid is a pretty unknown disease in the long term. It could be like chicken pox which looked harmless in children until a few decades later with shingles. Maybe we'll find out that having young co-relates with later adult outcomes like how having multiple serious bouts of the flu qas corelated with mental decline. We don't even know if covid would be like the flu when it first appeared where future waves would be worse in children. It's best to be cautious with a disease that still hasn't settled into a stable form.
I'll dismiss it until the risk is quantified, because all I've heard is "might" and "maybe" when it comes to long term effects. Then compare that quantified risk to the precautions required to avoid being infected (i.e. a lot more than what was done, because everyone still got it) and there's your actual rational response.
Merely getting sick is a wild oversimplification. My parents just got sick for the first time with it. 7 vaccines in. Yeah they didn't die but I personally don't want to get what they got. My long distance GF got it and her athletic cardio endurance is markedly worse.
Guess what prevented me from getting sick last time I was in the car with my father just days before he tested positive? I was wearing a mask.
Mask and get your vaccines and boosters and limit exposure. For everyone!
Two year old children will remove their facemask to pick their nose, or share a licked cookie with their best friend. You can try to teach older kids to use a facemask corectly, but for two years olld it's security theater.
> At root, we must overthrow the persistent delusion of rugged individualism — the perverse American mythology that everyone must fend for themselves, no matter the cost.
I don't think the author considered their own bias since there is no mention of movements like gender ideology that are the epitome of individualism, which says that anyone can declare their own gender and identity. If you can define your own identity, how is society supposed to function in any coherent way? People can't predict your role in society, and so the default behavior is to ignore people and let everyone live their lives in whatever way they please. I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong, but it's a blind spot of the article's analysis.
Progressivism is aiming for the maximum amount of individualism, as it aspires to maximize individual freedom and create technology that empowers the individual, from cars to VR. The alternative is to maximize the family as the basic unit of society, but in order to do that you have to define what a family is, and right now it seems the status quo is dismantling the family structure and giving individuals direct control of their role and identity in society (which amounts to having no roles).
> How many articles have I read about whether children should be allowed on airplanes, or at weddings, or in restaurants?
American culture’s view of children as burdensome is a self fulfilling prophecy. Parents may sarcastically quip about their children’s imposition on their careers, finances, and sex lives, but they practice genuine resentment when they get some “me time” by encouraging a child’s screen time addiction, or by refusing to punish a child’s antisocial behavior. Their mal-adjusted children are unsuitable companions in a social venue, a genuine burden unwelcome to society for many years longer than they need be.
You can break this cycle by not thinking of your child like a burden, and by training them to not be a burden to others.
Shortly after I could talk, I was raised to address adults respectfully and to say please and thank you. My dad would also have us practice sitting still and quiet for a few minutes before bed. These basic manners elicited a decade of compliments from wait staff and flight attendants effusively telling my parents what nice children we were. Given what a small effort it takes to make eye contact and say “thank you”, even at the time I understood their praise as more a comment on society.
Now that I have children of my own, I’ve taught them from a young age how to attend a funeral or wedding (or grocery store) without ruining it for others. I can bring them without hesitation to a meeting with my banker or lawyer, excellent learning opportunities. They say please and thank you, and in response, adults across our community dote on and encourage and appreciate my children, and their good behaviour has earned them privileges and opportunity that I couldn’t personally have awarded them.
I refuse to call my wife a “ball and chain” or to refer to nun
> How many articles have I read about whether children should be allowed on airplanes, or at weddings, or in restaurants?
American culture’s view of children as burdensome is a self fulfilling prophecy. Parents may sarcastically quip about their children’s imposition on their careers, finances, and sex lives, but they practice genuine resentment when they get some “me time” by encouraging a child’s screen time addiction, or by refusing to punish a child’s antisocial behavior. Their mal-adjusted children are unsuitable companions in a social venue, a genuine burden unwelcome to society for many years longer than they need be, and it breeds anti child sentiment.
You can break this cycle by not thinking of your child like a burden, and by training them to not be a burden to others.
Shortly after I could talk, I was raised to address adults respectfully and to say please and thank you. My dad would also have us practice sitting still and quiet for a few minutes before bed. These basic manners elicited a decade of compliments from wait staff and flight attendants effusively telling my parents what nice children we were. Given what a small effort it takes to make eye contact and say “thank you”, even at the time I understood their praise as more a comment on society.
Now that I have children of my own, I’ve taught them from a young age how to attend a funeral or wedding (or grocery store) without ruining it for others. I can bring them without hesitation to a meeting with my banker or lawyer, excellent learning opportunities. They say please and thank you, and in response, adults across our community dote on and encourage and appreciate my children, and their good behaviour has earned them privileges and opportunity that I couldn’t personally have awarded them.
I’ve done my best to avoid the attitude trap of treating my children like a burden. They are each individually and altogether one of the greatest joys I’ve ever known. And teaching them a modicum of manners early on seems to have reopened whatever doors for them that American anti-child culture would have closed.
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Because its not salient. Your child has a higher likelihood of being struck by lightning twice than to be killed in a school shooting.
Their parents sure as hell aren’t going to do the voting for them. They just want lower taxes.
But hey at least no one will be there to “steal” your hard earned currency that was minted by a central government or build you those pesky roads or whatever.
If this could all be done without taxes, that would be nice. But I doubt the above could be achieved via voluntary payment without living in a dystopian world ruled by an oligarchy.
Should we compare taxes to slavery, or to rent? If you refuse to pay your rent, you can end up homeless, and then they may indeed take your children away from you. Many places still have anti-vagrancy laws on the books–even if very inconsistently enforced–so if they really want to, they can imprison you for homelessness too.
Even if you own your own home – you bought it (or the land it is built on) from somebody else, who bought it from somebody else, and so on. In settler-colonial countries such as the US, Canada or Australia, the chain of title almost always ends in a government land grant. So if the government which claims the right to tax your private property (and its inhabitants) is illegitimate, your own title to that property isn't legitimate either. That government land grant was issued subject to the condition that grantee and occupants pay taxes, and nemo dat quod non habet (the buyer can have no better title than the seller). True freehold doesn't really exist, all freehold titles are really a form of leasehold (transferrable leases), with the sovereign state as the ultimate landlord–and if you don't like it, you can always choose to rent from some other landlord instead, aka emigration.
If you are an indigenous person, you may indeed have a valid argument that your ancestors' ownership of the land long predates the existence of the current government, and hence the taxes it levies are a form of theft from you. But if you aren't indigenous, then that argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
For example, the article prominently quotes a state Rep from Idaho to illustrate why the author’s political opponents have the wrong values. But 8th graders in Idaho do better in reading than those in California, Delaware, Oregon, and Maryland, and comparably to New York, Vermont, Connecticut, and Minnesota. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/s.... And Idaho is a lot poorer than those states!
The author’s comparison to Greece is unintentionally revealing. Allegedly, Greece doesn’t hate its children. But Greece spends only 4% of GDP on education, in comparison to 6% for the US. Another telling data point: over 90% of Greek children live with both parents, compared to under 70% in the US.
European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.
That's a weird statement. By your logic, diversity makes people's lives worse, and folks in Idaho are justified in wanting no part in it.
> Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor.
But, on objective metrics, those dumbfucks in Idaho are doing a better job teaching their kids to read than those in California--and for a lot less money.
It's not just reading scores. Conservatives have greater well-being on various objective measures: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand.... That includes their kids: https://www.foxnews.com/media/conservative-teenagers-general....
Utah has the kind of flat, egalitarian society liberals say they want to create: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/12/28/24017943/best-state-.... ("A 2014 article in The Atlantic pointed toward two strengths that Salt Lake City has that make it a positive environment for upward mobility: 'A strong middle class and a less extreme gap between the rich and the poor.' ... Based on data from 2020 to 2022, the Gini Index from the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Utah as having one of the lowest economic inequality scores across the country.").
> European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.
In America, religion is pretty much the only check on "extreme forms of individualism." Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the places where, more than anywhere else in America, people worship money rather than God. Are those models to follow?
That's only part of the problem in blue states though, and does not explain the full discrepancy.
One of the states rayiner cited Idaho as outperforming is Delaware. Idaho does not have a "small fraction" of the population of Delaware, it has almost twice Delware's population
It is also unclear why, above a certain minimum, population in itself should make any significant difference to a jurisdiction's ability to provide a quality education. As population scales, other relevant factors (such as student and teacher numbers and size of budgets) should scale proportionately – and if they don't, then we've identified a relevant explanatory factor other than population.
Furthermore, Idaho is a lot more diverse than you seem to think it is. Only 80% of the state's population is non-Hispanic white; in K-12 public school enrolments, it is only 73%. [0] Deep red Idaho's schools outperform those of light blue Maine, despite the fact that Idaho has close to 40% more people, and significantly greater ethnic diversity (Maine's population is 92% non-Hispanic white)
[0] https://idahoschools.org/state/ID
American cities and suburbs are so low density that they end up losing money because infrastructure is spread out over such a large area that taxes collected per square mile aren't enough to keep things working. People get pissed if the electric poles fall down, or when water stops flowing, so school budgets get cut instead.
Accordingly, older cities lose more money (more old stuff to maintain) and cities that grow larger (add more low density single family homes) lose more money faster.
40% of Idaho's population lives in a single mid-size city that apparently isn't burning through cash. If Boise 3x'd in population, it'd probably also start losing money like other larger American cities.
This is very much false. I don’t know why this misinformation is so widespread, but even a glance look at the municipal budgets is enough to see the facts contradict it. The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.
Newer areas do fine. Infrastructure eventually needs not just maintenance, but massive replacement.
Roads, bridges, sewer systems, all start to fall down. Ideally a city would estimate the worst cost of replacement at the time infrastructure is first built, and set aside money from year 1 such that the replacement cost is fully funded when the roads/pipes/bridges wear out.
If that ever does happen (and maybe it has happened a couple times in history) what will end up happening is some candidate for city council comes along and says they can reduce taxes, just vote'em in, and now all of a sudden the "50 year in the future replacement fund" is no more.
There is of course the economic argument that saving money in the bank with crap interest rates is terrible finances, and that it is in fact better for the city to just borrow 50 years hence, but the counter argument is that low interests were a recent anomaly in US history.
(The investment options cities have for where they can save money for 50 year later projects are fairly limited, which is another point against cities saving money up).
Now, a bit ironically, large condo and townhome associations in many cities are required to have savings sufficient for future expenses. These laws were passed because without the backing of "the city is making us" board members on HOAs will quickly get kicked out the second they propose a budget that actually covers future expenses. In cities that don't mandate responsible reserve funds on the part of HOAs, what you find is tons of complexes are underfunded because despite having a (mandated by law) prepared document of future expenses, the can is just kicked down the road.
(cities do have reserve funding, but rarely do those take into account all future infra needs)
> The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.
I opened the budget for the city of Kirkland WA[1], which is obscenely well run financially (they regularly run a surplus despite Washington state having a law capping properly tax increases are below inflation levels, a law which has slowly starved many cities of funding), and capital projects are over 25% of the budget. Just water and sewer appears to be around 13% of the city's overall budget.
Looking at Seattle's budget, a city that other countries would call "low density" (and honestly, in some countries Seattle is small enough that it wouldn't even be considered a major city!) of a nearly 6 billion dollar budget, 2 billion is spent on utilities. As someone who lives in Seattle, I can attest that one of the current problems we face is our sewer system is way behind the times and needs lots of updating, but again, no money.
Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).
Washington State is actually a bit odd in that district funding largely comes from the state, by way of property taxes, but even so let's compare the funding for schools to the rest of a city's budget.
Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects.
Is it a huge chunk of the city's budget? Yeah. But by no means do educational expenses dwarf other city expenses.
[1] https://www.kirklandwa.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/2/fin...
[2]https://www.shorelinewa.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57270...
[3] skissane ↗ What you are not considering here, is that in many states, school districts are separate special-purpose local governments, independent from the county or municipality, with their own separate elections, governing bodies, budgets, taxing and borrowing powers. So how much the county or municipality is spending on whatever has no direct impact on how much the school district has to spend. It is possible for the county or municipality to go bankrupt due to financial mismanagement, even while the school districts are in good financial shape. com2kid ↗ I was replying to the statement that education spending dwarfs infra spending, by providing evidence that the two are on par with each other. xyzzyz ↗ OK, what I wrote was incorrect. What I had in mind was that cities spend less than 10% on road infrastructure, but I carelessly didn't specify that. You seem to understand these issues much better than a typical person, and I think you deserve a careful and thorough reply. com2kid ↗ Part of what cannot be determined here is what long term costs Shoreline will face when its (relatively new) infrastructure starts to fail. Those are the kinds of costs Seattle is facing now with its stormwater projects, and its failing bridges. "old bridge suddenly collapsing" doesn't show up in a year's budget proposal, but rather it shows up in next year's proposal under "unexpected costs", but really, everyone knew the bridge was going to fall down soon, so how unexpected was it?
Around where I live, schools are in financial troubles, and infra is in financial trouble, nothing is doing well.
West Coast cities are older (rising costs) while also being low to medium density (low tax base) and honestly outside of LA and SF, don't even have a large population for how much area they take up.
It isn't a great combo.
In regards to city vs school funding, the two are separated in WA state because of how schools are funded, except that cities pass special levies to fill funding gaps, which is a separate political problem.
Of course city residents rarely understand how funding works, and they yell at the city council when schools start falling apart. (Quite a few of the public schools I went to had broken heating and crumbing walls, and from what I grok, the financial situation of the district was better back then compared to now!)
> Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).
> (...)
> Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects
First, the Shoreline School District's budget is more like $220M. $168M is just the General Fund, additional $26M go to capital projects, and $35M go to debt service. That's $16k per student, which, by the way, is around 50% more than the private school tuition for my children in Seattle, which does not exactly makes me sympathetic to the narrative of starved school budgets being cut to pay for infra.
Worth noting is that many Shoreline parents pay for private education, but do not pay for private roads or water or sewer. Thus, $220M is underestimate of educational spend, whereas infrastructure spend is not underestimated by looking at the budget.
Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less (not a given though: we'd have fewer miles of roads to maintain, but average right of way would become much busier, and work on busy road is typically much more expensive). So let's dive into Shoreline budget to see what spend could look like in more dense world.
The $136.1 capital spend is split as follows:
* $43M is General Capital, and $92M is Road Capital
* The $43M General Capital fund is split into $5M spend on Maintenance Facility, $5M on "Debt Service and Other", and $33M is spent on capital improvements to city parks. I'll assume that all of this spend would remain in denser world (unless denser world means fewer/smaller city parks per capita).
* $92M is spent roughly in half between Pedestrian/Non-Motorized Projects, and Safety Operations (which I assume is mostly motorized infrastructure).
* Half of pedestrian spend is on a pedestrian bridge over I-5, which would still be built if Shoreline was denser (in fact, we might then need more pedestrian bridges). The other half is building new sidewalks. More pedestrians means fewer roads, but more sidewalks required, so it's hard for me to estimate how sidewalk spend which change with increased density, but let's say that increased density means spend on sidewalks could be cut by half, so we'd see something like $15M savings.
* In the Safety Operations (i.e. motorized) spend, large majority is N 145th St improvements. This is the major arterial in Shoreline, and would likely still be part of Shoreline's budget if it was denser. It would probably be shorter then, so let's cut the spend by half. The rest we can also cut in half, for $20M in total savings.
* Worth noting is that road resurfacing spend (which accounts for most of road maintenance) is less than $3M, which is a tiny fraction of the whole budget. Maintaining suburban roads is very cheap.
* Thus, increased densification would result in savings of something like $35M, which is a quarter of capital projects.
* If you do the same exercise for utilities, you'll find that a third of it is surface water spend (storm drains etc), which would probably be cut by half in denser world. Two thirds is wastewater spend, which would be reduced by much less in denser world (as the spend scales much more with volume than with length of the system).
* To sum up, densification would save Shoreline something like $60M, which is a small fraction of educational spend. In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control...
Though compared to Seattle, Shoreline isn't going to have as much of a "random bridges falling down" problem. :-D
But that aside, I did notice this
> In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control, to the level of my private school in Seattle.
Public schools cost more to operate because they have to serve everyone, including those with special needs and learning disabilities. They have to help feed children who do not have enough food, and they are expected to have after school programs from children that do not have a safe place to go home to (which, given how early schools get out, is honestly a problem for many families, public or private school).
As more children from (comparatively) wealthy go to private schools, the average cost of schooling the kids in public schools actually goes up, as a larger % of the kids left need extra help and support.
> The other half is building new sidewalks.
I am happy that the residents in Shoreline have finally decided to stop running over pedestrians! But seriously, Shoreline needs more sidewalks, it'll honestly add a lot to property values there.
> Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less
There would also be a lot more revenue per given square mile. You could take my Seattle neighborhood and 2x the density w/o much harm to the "feel" of the neighborhood. If you 3x it, now you can add tons of commercial activity, allow small business owners to actually live close to their business (why does my barber have to drive in to work? Oh because zoning makes living in Seattle absurd), and cities start to actually make money.
The economics of dense cities are incredibly different, and they start a virtuous cycle that works out really well for everyone. Sadly America shut down all the goodness when we added strict zoning laws.
Also where the heck are you spending only 11k on private school? The non-religious private schools in Seattle that I looked at cost 30-40k. (Heck the at home daycare we use right now costs over 25k a year!)
Why isn't education funded at the federal level? Feels like something so expensive, should be funded at the federal level, not just regulated there, and not when federal income taxes dwarf state tax options.
I have no idea why anyone would bring agricultural subsidies in the context of education spend, other than to signal disdain for the outgroup. This is simply completely irrelevant.
Who dumped water on your magnet, buddy? Figure it out.
Very first sentence of the article.
God do I hate this style. Do we always need to start with your own, personal, true-to-you, totally-happened experience this one time?
Is it a new thing or it's always been like that and I didn't realize it?
but often it tells you how little time they have spent actually engaged with the real truth of the place or places they are about to compare the problems of wherever they live, instead of the idealistic view of someone who was visiting family or being a tourist … it is a shortcut to that emotional connection to the reader, but taking that can sometimes leave the writer clearly marked as not actually having any grounds upon which the rest of their arguments can stand…
This however doesn’t appear to suffer from that. It seems quite well considered.
And maybe the article eventually uses data that goes beyond "my 2 weeks visiting my dad", but then why do I need this idiotic intro? Is it supposed to build some sort of credibility, like "I was there, I saw it, I experienced it, now you have to agree with me"?
Anyway, no I didn't keep reading.
Anecdotes aren't bad if they lead into something more substantive. E.g., "My experience with my kids in Greece got me interested in [concept], and here is the data that I collected; my conclusion is that..."
But no, it's usually like: Check out this experience I had or quirky thing I do. Now let's talk about something tangentially related.
It's really a need to vent being displayed most prominently. Maybe covid/social media/WFM/inflation/whatever you want to blame has made people lonely to the point of trying to add water cooler talk into their publications.
Somehow I knew that would be the main point as soon as I saw the title and the publication. For many, the answer to all problems is government spending.
Children should be protected against airborne transmittable sickness.
Also, we are still in COVID it's not over.
COVID is around, and always will be. And "protecting" causes more harm and weakens the development of the immune system.
All well known and common sense stuff, to those who don't live in fear of merely getting sick.
That risk elicits a disproportionate response in rational people. Dismissing it is useless.
Guess what prevented me from getting sick last time I was in the car with my father just days before he tested positive? I was wearing a mask.
Mask and get your vaccines and boosters and limit exposure. For everyone!
Two year old children will remove their facemask to pick their nose, or share a licked cookie with their best friend. You can try to teach older kids to use a facemask corectly, but for two years olld it's security theater.
I don't think the author considered their own bias since there is no mention of movements like gender ideology that are the epitome of individualism, which says that anyone can declare their own gender and identity. If you can define your own identity, how is society supposed to function in any coherent way? People can't predict your role in society, and so the default behavior is to ignore people and let everyone live their lives in whatever way they please. I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong, but it's a blind spot of the article's analysis.
Progressivism is aiming for the maximum amount of individualism, as it aspires to maximize individual freedom and create technology that empowers the individual, from cars to VR. The alternative is to maximize the family as the basic unit of society, but in order to do that you have to define what a family is, and right now it seems the status quo is dismantling the family structure and giving individuals direct control of their role and identity in society (which amounts to having no roles).
American culture’s view of children as burdensome is a self fulfilling prophecy. Parents may sarcastically quip about their children’s imposition on their careers, finances, and sex lives, but they practice genuine resentment when they get some “me time” by encouraging a child’s screen time addiction, or by refusing to punish a child’s antisocial behavior. Their mal-adjusted children are unsuitable companions in a social venue, a genuine burden unwelcome to society for many years longer than they need be.
You can break this cycle by not thinking of your child like a burden, and by training them to not be a burden to others.
Shortly after I could talk, I was raised to address adults respectfully and to say please and thank you. My dad would also have us practice sitting still and quiet for a few minutes before bed. These basic manners elicited a decade of compliments from wait staff and flight attendants effusively telling my parents what nice children we were. Given what a small effort it takes to make eye contact and say “thank you”, even at the time I understood their praise as more a comment on society.
Now that I have children of my own, I’ve taught them from a young age how to attend a funeral or wedding (or grocery store) without ruining it for others. I can bring them without hesitation to a meeting with my banker or lawyer, excellent learning opportunities. They say please and thank you, and in response, adults across our community dote on and encourage and appreciate my children, and their good behaviour has earned them privileges and opportunity that I couldn’t personally have awarded them.
I refuse to call my wife a “ball and chain” or to refer to nun
American culture’s view of children as burdensome is a self fulfilling prophecy. Parents may sarcastically quip about their children’s imposition on their careers, finances, and sex lives, but they practice genuine resentment when they get some “me time” by encouraging a child’s screen time addiction, or by refusing to punish a child’s antisocial behavior. Their mal-adjusted children are unsuitable companions in a social venue, a genuine burden unwelcome to society for many years longer than they need be, and it breeds anti child sentiment.
You can break this cycle by not thinking of your child like a burden, and by training them to not be a burden to others.
Shortly after I could talk, I was raised to address adults respectfully and to say please and thank you. My dad would also have us practice sitting still and quiet for a few minutes before bed. These basic manners elicited a decade of compliments from wait staff and flight attendants effusively telling my parents what nice children we were. Given what a small effort it takes to make eye contact and say “thank you”, even at the time I understood their praise as more a comment on society.
Now that I have children of my own, I’ve taught them from a young age how to attend a funeral or wedding (or grocery store) without ruining it for others. I can bring them without hesitation to a meeting with my banker or lawyer, excellent learning opportunities. They say please and thank you, and in response, adults across our community dote on and encourage and appreciate my children, and their good behaviour has earned them privileges and opportunity that I couldn’t personally have awarded them.
I’ve done my best to avoid the attitude trap of treating my children like a burden. They are each individually and altogether one of the greatest joys I’ve ever known. And teaching them a modicum of manners early on seems to have reopened whatever doors for them that American anti-child culture would have closed.