4 ms·

The US spends billions and billions of dollars trying to police problems instead of spending the same money on addressing the root cause... collectively there'

The US spends billions and billions of dollars trying to police problems instead of spending the same money on addressing the root cause... collectively there's enough money to make this country an absolute paradise, but we're all acting like crabs in a bucket. It's sad that there was no one in this decision chain calling out this absolute waste.

toomuchtodo 8mo ago
"The purpose of a system is what it does." The purpose is not to create an absolute paradise for its citizens and residents, unfortunately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- goodmythical 8mo ago
  That's not a fact. That's just an opinion. You could just as easily claim, and still be just as opinionated, that a system is what is intended to be (intentional design theory), or that a system should be what it ought to be (normative systems theory), or that a system should evolve to fit the purposes of it's environment (structural functionism), or that there is no fixed purpose and that purpose is instead decided by social consensus (social constructivism). A motivated reader might notice that the above systems thinking models each align with various schools of thought/philosophical schools. Idealism, telologism, constructivism, etc. This highlights the assertion that there might not be any one correct system of thought given one's stance on Truth, in that certain said systems might believe that they are the One Truth but could not logically demonstrate to the others that they are as such.
  - toomuchtodo 8mo ago
    The US spends ~$1T/year on its military but states it cannot afford universal healthcare, childcare, education, efforts towards affordable housing, etc. Observe what the system does, not what it says it does. Agree this is just my opinion, as a scholar of systems field reporting observations. Am I wrong? I am always open to being challenged and wrong, in my quest for the Truth. "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" as the song goes. https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/government-spending/
- micromacrofoot 8mo ago
  I think the closest thing we'd get to purpose for a government is likely defined by the constitution? we're not really even upholding those values
goodmythical 8mo ago
Iowa has the second highest cancer rate in the country. Their leading solution? Increase tax on cigarettes. Not 'increase tax on cigarettes to increase early detection initiatives' or increase tax on cigarettes to increase screening subsidies', just 'increase tax on cigarettes so that the state has more money and poor people have less money'.
- iso1631 8mo ago
  Increasing the price incentivises people not to buy it, econ 101
  - saltwatercowboy 8mo ago
    Increasing the price fosters a black market, econ 102
  - hexer292 8mo ago
    Just like increasing taxes incentivises people not to work.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - goodmythical 8mo ago
    ooooh, ur so smart. Iowa's tobacco use is relatively low. If tobacco were the primary problem (as indicated by the focus of the solution), you'd expect Iowa to use more tobacco than most or all states. Given that their utilization is so low, it cannot possibly be the leading contributor. Reducing an already low use of the product is a dumb place to start and a worse place to stop if your goal is to decrease the cancer rate. If your goal were to reduce the cancer rate, you'd focus on something about your population that is contributing to the higher cancer rate.
- nxor2 8mo ago
  Iowa : Industrial Agriculture :: West Virginia : Coal
underlipton 8mo ago
"But I don't WANT to make this country an absolute paradise. I WANT to enforce a racist and classist social hierarchy and keep the labor class distracted and divided so that they can't organize and mount a legitimate campaign against capital interests."
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- nxor2 8mo ago
  A relative of mine works for a school district in the Chicago area. What should they do? Not take note of people's residence? The whole reason they do is because they used to not. Then people took advantage of it. And the people that take advantage of it typically cause problems for the district. Everything is racist and classist. But wanting a diverse school district to thrive? No that's the real problem. I guarantee Alsip is more diverse than wherever you are writing from. The irony. [0] https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?districtid=07016126002&source=studentcharacteristics&source2=studentdemographics https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?districtid=...
  - john_strinlai 8mo ago
    >What should they do? Not take note of people's residence? in this article, the childs parents provided proof of residence.
    - nxor2 8mo ago
      No. From the article: According to the school district, her daughter’s new student enrollment form was denied due to “license plate recognition software showing only Chicago addresses overnight” in July and August. In an email sent to Sánchez in August, the school district told her, “Although you are the owner on record of a house in our district boundaries, your license plate recognition shows that is not the place where you reside.” | Her response, according to the article? "No I'm not." Real trustworthy. People in the Chicago area lie all the time. There is more to the story and I do not have the information. My relative sees this all the time.
GuinansEyebrows 8mo ago
within a profit-driven economy, problems are simply profit centers to exploit for short-term revenue. solving those problems removes short-term revenue streams in favor of long-term stability, which of course would lead to long-term revenue streams... but who has time to wait?
hibikir 8mo ago
I don't know how fixable that one is via just spending: There's a significant component of just selecting for student quality, interest in studying and parentally funded support when a student is struggling. It's a non-trivial part of the US' love of sprawl: Fewer kids of different levels of means will live near you. So when parents say they buy a house for "good schools" they aren't just saying funding per student. And yes, we have this too even in areas without a significant racial component. Making sure only very expensive houses are around you, and keeping housing prices up, has an effect on schooling, even if just by selecting for kids of parents that can afford the big houses. Ultimately the American parent is paying for the kids education either way: Either by buying a more expensive house near said "good schools", or by paying a private school, which is allowed to be selective in their admissions and match students. Making all schools actually be about the same is not just a matter of funding them equally, but you'd have to end the student segregation (even when it's in legal ways(, which is quite the challenge. For instance, around me, there's some really bad school districts that end up grabbing very large mansions. But what happens there is that none of the kids of people living in those mansions actually go to public school. So while it might not be economically difficult to up the funding of the schools near poorer neighborhoods, I don't even necessarily think that they will get the same outcomes for the same funding: The selection component is going to change performance.
- micromacrofoot 8mo ago
  Tying property taxes to school funding is designed to cause this outcome, it's not a mistake. The majority of US history involves actively harming the poor through policy.
  - like_any_other 8mo ago
    A common myth - federal and state governments supplement school funding to roughly equalize per-pupil expenditure. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357203
    - micromacrofoot 8mo ago
like_any_other 8mo ago
The US spends the 5th most in the world on education per-pupil: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... They even spend the most on minorities: "Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively" - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419872445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724... (see Table 1 for details) (I admit I don't understand the deep wisdom behind presenting absolute differences in amounts, and omitting the amounts themselves, but from the rest of that article, and from the 1st link, we can see that per-pupil spending is in the $10k+ range, so a difference of $200 is negligible. In other words, it would be unfair to call Black and Latinx students privileged because of this.) Whatever the reason for the sorry state of US education, lack of funding isn't it.
- micromacrofoot 7mo ago
  It's often lack of everything else conflating the issue: if you don't fund healthcare, early childcare, mental health services, etc... you can't put it all on education to correct later. Not to mention a lot of the funding doesn't even make it to teachers at the end of the day, who despite these numbers are still having to go out and buy supplies with their own money. You can see anecdotes from teachers all across the country that they're expected to do more and more parenting-related tasks just to keep classrooms from complete chaos.

toomuchtodo 8mo ago

"The purpose of a system is what it does." The purpose is not to create an absolute paradise for its citizens and residents, unfortunately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

goodmythical 8mo ago
That's not a fact. That's just an opinion. You could just as easily claim, and still be just as opinionated, that a system is what is intended to be (intentional design theory), or that a system should be what it ought to be (normative systems theory), or that a system should evolve to fit the purposes of it's environment (structural functionism), or that there is no fixed purpose and that purpose is instead decided by social consensus (social constructivism). A motivated reader might notice that the above systems thinking models each align with various schools of thought/philosophical schools. Idealism, telologism, constructivism, etc. This highlights the assertion that there might not be any one correct system of thought given one's stance on Truth, in that certain said systems might believe that they are the One Truth but could not logically demonstrate to the others that they are as such.
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago
  The US spends ~$1T/year on its military but states it cannot afford universal healthcare, childcare, education, efforts towards affordable housing, etc. Observe what the system does, not what it says it does. Agree this is just my opinion, as a scholar of systems field reporting observations. Am I wrong? I am always open to being challenged and wrong, in my quest for the Truth. "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" as the song goes. https://usafacts.org/government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/government-spending/
micromacrofoot 8mo ago
I think the closest thing we'd get to purpose for a government is likely defined by the constitution? we're not really even upholding those values

goodmythical 8mo ago

Iowa has the second highest cancer rate in the country. Their leading solution? Increase tax on cigarettes. Not 'increase tax on cigarettes to increase early detection initiatives' or increase tax on cigarettes to increase screening subsidies', just 'increase tax on cigarettes so that the state has more money and poor people have less money'.

iso1631 8mo ago
Increasing the price incentivises people not to buy it, econ 101
- saltwatercowboy 8mo ago
  Increasing the price fosters a black market, econ 102
- hexer292 8mo ago
  Just like increasing taxes incentivises people not to work.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- goodmythical 8mo ago
  ooooh, ur so smart. Iowa's tobacco use is relatively low. If tobacco were the primary problem (as indicated by the focus of the solution), you'd expect Iowa to use more tobacco than most or all states. Given that their utilization is so low, it cannot possibly be the leading contributor. Reducing an already low use of the product is a dumb place to start and a worse place to stop if your goal is to decrease the cancer rate. If your goal were to reduce the cancer rate, you'd focus on something about your population that is contributing to the higher cancer rate.
nxor2 8mo ago
Iowa : Industrial Agriculture :: West Virginia : Coal

underlipton 8mo ago

"But I don't WANT to make this country an absolute paradise. I WANT to enforce a racist and classist social hierarchy and keep the labor class distracted and divided so that they can't organize and mount a legitimate campaign against capital interests."

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
nxor2 8mo ago
A relative of mine works for a school district in the Chicago area. What should they do? Not take note of people's residence? The whole reason they do is because they used to not. Then people took advantage of it. And the people that take advantage of it typically cause problems for the district. Everything is racist and classist. But wanting a diverse school district to thrive? No that's the real problem. I guarantee Alsip is more diverse than wherever you are writing from. The irony. [0] https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?districtid=07016126002&source=studentcharacteristics&source2=studentdemographics https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?districtid=...
- john_strinlai 8mo ago
  >What should they do? Not take note of people's residence? in this article, the childs parents provided proof of residence.
  - nxor2 8mo ago
    No. From the article: According to the school district, her daughter’s new student enrollment form was denied due to “license plate recognition software showing only Chicago addresses overnight” in July and August. In an email sent to Sánchez in August, the school district told her, “Although you are the owner on record of a house in our district boundaries, your license plate recognition shows that is not the place where you reside.” | Her response, according to the article? "No I'm not." Real trustworthy. People in the Chicago area lie all the time. There is more to the story and I do not have the information. My relative sees this all the time.

GuinansEyebrows 8mo ago

within a profit-driven economy, problems are simply profit centers to exploit for short-term revenue. solving those problems removes short-term revenue streams in favor of long-term stability, which of course would lead to long-term revenue streams... but who has time to wait?

hibikir 8mo ago

I don't know how fixable that one is via just spending: There's a significant component of just selecting for student quality, interest in studying and parentally funded support when a student is struggling. It's a non-trivial part of the US' love of sprawl: Fewer kids of different levels of means will live near you. So when parents say they buy a house for "good schools" they aren't just saying funding per student. And yes, we have this too even in areas without a significant racial component. Making sure only very expensive houses are around you, and keeping housing prices up, has an effect on schooling, even if just by selecting for kids of parents that can afford the big houses. Ultimately the American parent is paying for the kids education either way: Either by buying a more expensive house near said "good schools", or by paying a private school, which is allowed to be selective in their admissions and match students. Making all schools actually be about the same is not just a matter of funding them equally, but you'd have to end the student segregation (even when it's in legal ways(, which is quite the challenge. For instance, around me, there's some really bad school districts that end up grabbing very large mansions. But what happens there is that none of the kids of people living in those mansions actually go to public school. So while it might not be economically difficult to up the funding of the schools near poorer neighborhoods, I don't even necessarily think that they will get the same outcomes for the same funding: The selection component is going to change performance.

micromacrofoot 8mo ago
Tying property taxes to school funding is designed to cause this outcome, it's not a mistake. The majority of US history involves actively harming the poor through policy.
- like_any_other 8mo ago
  A common myth - federal and state governments supplement school funding to roughly equalize per-pupil expenditure. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357203
  - micromacrofoot 8mo ago

like_any_other 8mo ago

The US spends the 5th most in the world on education per-pupil: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... They even spend the most on minorities: "Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively" - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419872445 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724... (see Table 1 for details) (I admit I don't understand the deep wisdom behind presenting absolute differences in amounts, and omitting the amounts themselves, but from the rest of that article, and from the 1st link, we can see that per-pupil spending is in the $10k+ range, so a difference of $200 is negligible. In other words, it would be unfair to call Black and Latinx students privileged because of this.) Whatever the reason for the sorry state of US education, lack of funding isn't it.

micromacrofoot 7mo ago
It's often lack of everything else conflating the issue: if you don't fund healthcare, early childcare, mental health services, etc... you can't put it all on education to correct later. Not to mention a lot of the funding doesn't even make it to teachers at the end of the day, who despite these numbers are still having to go out and buy supplies with their own money. You can see anecdotes from teachers all across the country that they're expected to do more and more parenting-related tasks just to keep classrooms from complete chaos.