4 ms·

A K-12 student's performance correlates strongly with the family's wealth [1], and interacts with several other factors like race category, stable home life, an

A K-12 student's performance correlates strongly with the family's wealth [1], and interacts with several other factors like race category, stable home life, and the low incidence of everyday violent crime. If rich people successfully exclude poor people, which can be done with legal price mechanisms instead of illegal discrimination, public school performance remains high. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-...

AstralStorm 8y ago
Even without price there are other mechanisms - accumulation of rich in specific places by word of mouth alone... where the influence and money is accumulated and applied. We see this even in primary education even in Europe, even in non-private schools. Then there are extracurriculars which take money amd time... A typical person out of place won't be able to keep up.
- weberc2 8y ago
  This is an interesting observation. Basically freedom of association, like many freedoms, is working against equality. I'm nowhere near the 9.9 percent, but it unnerves me to think about restricting someone's basic freedoms even if it benefits me. Also it strikes me as odd that we focus on relative wealth fluctuations. Shouldn't we be more concerned about the number of people who can't afford basic necessities? If the poor are getting poorer, it seems like we should be concerned about that regardless of the performance of the rich. If the poor are getting richer but less slowly than the rich, isn't that still a good thing, or am I naive? Personally, I don't need to keep up with the 9.9%, but I'm content if my family's fortunes keep improving.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Correct. This is doable but the pushback is likely to be immense. Not to mention such a programme is quite expensive and you will have to forcibly appropriate wealth in some forms. And probably introduce major savings too. UBI potentially would work on this, the question remains if you'd buy of masses politically that way. That could be the end of republic as is known.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      I’m not even advocating for any program in particular; just curious why we are laser focused on relative wealth metrics when absolute metrics seem more significant.

AstralStorm 8y ago

Even without price there are other mechanisms - accumulation of rich in specific places by word of mouth alone... where the influence and money is accumulated and applied. We see this even in primary education even in Europe, even in non-private schools. Then there are extracurriculars which take money amd time... A typical person out of place won't be able to keep up.

weberc2 8y ago
This is an interesting observation. Basically freedom of association, like many freedoms, is working against equality. I'm nowhere near the 9.9 percent, but it unnerves me to think about restricting someone's basic freedoms even if it benefits me. Also it strikes me as odd that we focus on relative wealth fluctuations. Shouldn't we be more concerned about the number of people who can't afford basic necessities? If the poor are getting poorer, it seems like we should be concerned about that regardless of the performance of the rich. If the poor are getting richer but less slowly than the rich, isn't that still a good thing, or am I naive? Personally, I don't need to keep up with the 9.9%, but I'm content if my family's fortunes keep improving.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Correct. This is doable but the pushback is likely to be immense. Not to mention such a programme is quite expensive and you will have to forcibly appropriate wealth in some forms. And probably introduce major savings too. UBI potentially would work on this, the question remains if you'd buy of masses politically that way. That could be the end of republic as is known.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    I’m not even advocating for any program in particular; just curious why we are laser focused on relative wealth metrics when absolute metrics seem more significant.