6 ms·

>Foster kids can be helped, but you really need multiple strong families or support groups dedicated to the task. For a couple of decades, at least. It's sad b

>Foster kids can be helped, but you really need multiple strong families or support groups dedicated to the task. For a couple of decades, at least. It's sad but I don't think that this is sustainable.

bigfudge 6y ago
It would be cheaper than prison. We do so little to support foster families that I don't know how we know that it's not sustainable... we just haven't tried. It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend on Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game changer. This is a question of priorities.
- creato 6y ago
  > It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend on Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game changer. I think people that say things like this overestimate how much we spend on things like this and underestimate social spending. About 50% of US government spending is health and social services. So even cutting everything else to zero is only a doubling of health and social services. A doubling isn't nothing, but a game changer? And not all (or even most) of that other 50% will be spending you feel is frivolous, so it would be much less than doubling.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Almost 60% of projected spending is not on all health and social services, but only 3 specific programs, 2 of which primarily benefit the elderly. It can still be true that if a program to support the success of foster children increased by 10% of the budget from somewhere else, the program would be significantly more successful in helping children.
  - corin_ 6y ago
    Yes of course doubling would be a game changer! Think of the huge amount of good stuff already covered in healthcare and social services, even a 10% increase in budget could do a massive amount of good.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      Prices would double. Some people can spend an unlimited amount of money and accomplish little.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      The central bank is doing far more than doubling with little to show for. The amount isn't important, only the effectiveness. An effective program can end up reducing spending and give better outcomes at the same time.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    She went into foster care, because bio parents just sat around getting stoned constantly. Often forgetting to pick up kids from school. I get that many techies are pro-drugs. But a lot of people waste away on them.
    - frenchy 6y ago
      For what it's worth, there's a difference between pro-drugs and pro-legalization. I personally think that legalization is our best hope for reducing drug use.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      > I get that many techies are pro-drugs. But a lot of people waste away on them. Yah, but prohibition doesn't work very well, either. Not to mention that there are lots of responsible users of alcohol and other intoxicating substances. Some people neglect their kids because of video games or TV, too.
  - jacobion 6y ago
    But doesn't a large majority of 'social services' spending go to retirement incomes? Obviously that is important, but discretionary spending on, for example, taking care of children, is much smaller.
  - carbonguy 6y ago
    > It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend on Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game changer. > > I think people that say things like this overestimate how much we spend on things like this and underestimate social spending. These caught my attention because they both made claims for which the quantitative basis can somewhat easily be established, partly because the parent was making a relatively specific claim as these things go. Here's what I was able to find with ~20min of searching for federal spending in these three categories: Foster care: $22 billion (2017) [1] Drug control: $25 billion (2015) [2] Nuclear arms: $35 billion (2019) [3] I was surprised that these three areas received roughly equivalent amounts of money - support for your statement that people tend to underestimate social spending. As to the parent comment: while it does seem likely that taking 10% of the budget from nuclear arms or drug enforcement would indeed make a qualitative difference to foster service provision, my hunch is that the 10-20% increase that implies wouldn't be a "game changer" as the parent asserted even if the claims in [1] that the program needs to be entirely reconfigured are warranted. EDIT: The parent comment also asserts that a better-funded foster care system would be "cheaper than prison" - another question which could probably be answered with some quantitative basis. Anyone else want to take a shot at it? [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/FosterCare/story?id=2017991&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/FosterCare/story?id=2017991... [2] https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_sheet_Drug_War_Budget_Feb2015.pdf https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_sheet_Dr... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/us/nuclear-weapons-spending-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/us/nuclear-weapons-spending-t...
aaomidi 6y ago
Of course it is. Just not within the parameters of how we've defined family and parenthood. There's a reason societies used collective parenting for centuries and only recently with the push towards individualism that has stopped. There's still collective parenting in places of the world that don't have that same desire of individualism. We've built our society and economy around the idea of 2 parents and some children. This is an arbitrary decision we've made and it wasn't how we came to this point. A push for accepting multi-node families would help nudge us in the right direction. Just changing the tax law to support and provide the same benefits to a union of multiple parents would be extremely useful. We've codefied a single way of living. Maybe we should change that and allow for more dynamic family structures.
- pelasaco 6y ago
  > collective parenting for centuries Could you provide more data here? The only information that I found was traditional families, where the grandparents and relatives take the responsibility for the education too. I lived some years in South American, and I was impressed how many middle class families have their Nanny taking care of their kids (bringing to the school, cooking, controlling home work, taking care while they were sick, etc).. could be that be seem as "collective parenting" too? > There's still collective parenting in places of the world that don't have that same desire of individualism. Would provide more data here? I'm interested to see how they are doing.
- smartbit 6y ago
  I couldn't agree with you more including tax law as part of the problem. > There's a reason societies used collective parenting for centuries and only recently with the push towards individualism that has stopped. Do you have reference to literature or research confirming your statement?
- dudul 6y ago
  > There's still collective parenting in places of the world that don't have that same desire of individualism. > societies used collective parenting for centuries I see these claims made regularly in discussions about kids, families, etc, but I never see a clear example. Which parts of the world have collective parenting? How do you even define that? During which periods did we have collective parenting? What forms did it take? I would be really interested in seeing real examples I can look into to understand better how they could potentially be used as inspiration.
mistermann 6y ago
Look on the bright side: it is speculative, and doesn't consider counterfactuals, etc. Luckily, fine folks like aaomidi walk among us. Not many of them, but some.

bigfudge 6y ago

It would be cheaper than prison. We do so little to support foster families that I don't know how we know that it's not sustainable... we just haven't tried. It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend on Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game changer. This is a question of priorities.

creato 6y ago
> It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend on Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game changer. I think people that say things like this overestimate how much we spend on things like this and underestimate social spending. About 50% of US government spending is health and social services. So even cutting everything else to zero is only a doubling of health and social services. A doubling isn't nothing, but a game changer? And not all (or even most) of that other 50% will be spending you feel is frivolous, so it would be much less than doubling.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Almost 60% of projected spending is not on all health and social services, but only 3 specific programs, 2 of which primarily benefit the elderly. It can still be true that if a program to support the success of foster children increased by 10% of the budget from somewhere else, the program would be significantly more successful in helping children.
- corin_ 6y ago
  Yes of course doubling would be a game changer! Think of the huge amount of good stuff already covered in healthcare and social services, even a 10% increase in budget could do a massive amount of good.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Prices would double. Some people can spend an unlimited amount of money and accomplish little.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The central bank is doing far more than doubling with little to show for. The amount isn't important, only the effectiveness. An effective program can end up reducing spending and give better outcomes at the same time.
- treeman79 6y ago
  She went into foster care, because bio parents just sat around getting stoned constantly. Often forgetting to pick up kids from school. I get that many techies are pro-drugs. But a lot of people waste away on them.
  - frenchy 6y ago
    For what it's worth, there's a difference between pro-drugs and pro-legalization. I personally think that legalization is our best hope for reducing drug use.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    > I get that many techies are pro-drugs. But a lot of people waste away on them. Yah, but prohibition doesn't work very well, either. Not to mention that there are lots of responsible users of alcohol and other intoxicating substances. Some people neglect their kids because of video games or TV, too.
- jacobion 6y ago
  But doesn't a large majority of 'social services' spending go to retirement incomes? Obviously that is important, but discretionary spending on, for example, taking care of children, is much smaller.
- carbonguy 6y ago
  > It's a cliche but if we spent 10% of of what we spend on Nukes or drug enforcement on this it would be a game changer. > > I think people that say things like this overestimate how much we spend on things like this and underestimate social spending. These caught my attention because they both made claims for which the quantitative basis can somewhat easily be established, partly because the parent was making a relatively specific claim as these things go. Here's what I was able to find with ~20min of searching for federal spending in these three categories: Foster care: $22 billion (2017) [1] Drug control: $25 billion (2015) [2] Nuclear arms: $35 billion (2019) [3] I was surprised that these three areas received roughly equivalent amounts of money - support for your statement that people tend to underestimate social spending. As to the parent comment: while it does seem likely that taking 10% of the budget from nuclear arms or drug enforcement would indeed make a qualitative difference to foster service provision, my hunch is that the 10-20% increase that implies wouldn't be a "game changer" as the parent asserted even if the claims in [1] that the program needs to be entirely reconfigured are warranted. EDIT: The parent comment also asserts that a better-funded foster care system would be "cheaper than prison" - another question which could probably be answered with some quantitative basis. Anyone else want to take a shot at it? [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/FosterCare/story?id=2017991&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/FosterCare/story?id=2017991... [2] https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_sheet_Drug_War_Budget_Feb2015.pdf https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_sheet_Dr... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/us/nuclear-weapons-spending-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/us/nuclear-weapons-spending-t...

aaomidi 6y ago

Of course it is. Just not within the parameters of how we've defined family and parenthood. There's a reason societies used collective parenting for centuries and only recently with the push towards individualism that has stopped. There's still collective parenting in places of the world that don't have that same desire of individualism. We've built our society and economy around the idea of 2 parents and some children. This is an arbitrary decision we've made and it wasn't how we came to this point. A push for accepting multi-node families would help nudge us in the right direction. Just changing the tax law to support and provide the same benefits to a union of multiple parents would be extremely useful. We've codefied a single way of living. Maybe we should change that and allow for more dynamic family structures.

pelasaco 6y ago
> collective parenting for centuries Could you provide more data here? The only information that I found was traditional families, where the grandparents and relatives take the responsibility for the education too. I lived some years in South American, and I was impressed how many middle class families have their Nanny taking care of their kids (bringing to the school, cooking, controlling home work, taking care while they were sick, etc).. could be that be seem as "collective parenting" too? > There's still collective parenting in places of the world that don't have that same desire of individualism. Would provide more data here? I'm interested to see how they are doing.
smartbit 6y ago
I couldn't agree with you more including tax law as part of the problem. > There's a reason societies used collective parenting for centuries and only recently with the push towards individualism that has stopped. Do you have reference to literature or research confirming your statement?
dudul 6y ago
> There's still collective parenting in places of the world that don't have that same desire of individualism. > societies used collective parenting for centuries I see these claims made regularly in discussions about kids, families, etc, but I never see a clear example. Which parts of the world have collective parenting? How do you even define that? During which periods did we have collective parenting? What forms did it take? I would be really interested in seeing real examples I can look into to understand better how they could potentially be used as inspiration.

mistermann 6y ago

Look on the bright side: it is speculative, and doesn't consider counterfactuals, etc. Luckily, fine folks like aaomidi walk among us. Not many of them, but some.