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Agree with this & I'd broaden it: as income inequality increases, the affluent class increasingly strains to free itself of public services. Those services suffer & the flywheel accelerates. Only way to stop is to say, for certain things, no: you have to use the same shit as us.

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social

An edcuation policy soloution that would get you killed by angry parents but also fix like 60% of problems after a couple of generations is children being randomly assigned a public school within ten miles of their house. That is the school you attend and you cannot transfer.

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If one of the "rewards" of affluence is that you get to opt out of the services everyone else uses -- roads & transit, aviation system, schools, healthcare, etc. -- then those services are inevitably starved of resources & decline. We have to force affluent people to be invested in them.

But public schools in rich areas bear no resemblance to the terrible public schools in poor areas. This plan consigns poor children to the worst schools.

Reasonable point. In my county, which is huge and includes a wide diversity of kids (racial and economic), the county allows kids to transfer to any school that isn't "full" as a result of its districted-draw. That means kids from less affluent areas have access to some of the most affluent schools.

Geography definitely presents a barrier -- it's an hour's drive from one end of the county to the other -- and the lack of public transportation is a hindrance. Mitigating that is the fact there are some excellent schools on both ends of the county.

Yes it’s also the argument for why universality is such an important component of policies like social assistance and healthcare. As we’ve learned in Canada the strategy to rolling back social programs and social progress often starts with eliminating universality. It’s why for-profit healthcare

Is such a danger to publicly funded healthcare even though it’s held out as a means to reduce waiting times for procedures by shifting some (more affluent) people to a ‘parallel system’.

step 3 is then you get to tell all your slightly less affluent friends how crappy the service is and encourage them to opt out. This produced the political momentum for vouchers/subsidies.

Absolutely. This is the argument for why everyone should probably be forced to use public defenders. They would suddenly be fully funded and the best of the best. You'd actually have equal justice under law.

I think about how this would affect filing decisions. Charging rich ppl means protracted fights with well resourced teams, so they only get charged when evidence is strong. Whereas for poor ppl it’s easier to think “we can prob prove it” (then set bail and wait for them to plead or lose everything.)

I met a girl who grew up in a v poor region of Africa, where the kids sat on the floor in the local school. Rich kids like her went to boarding school but she was v young & so upset about leaving that her parents kept her at the local school, and father bought tables & chairs for all the children.

The rich would create "real schools" to supplement public school. They would defund schools even more than they do now. They would push for 3 hour school days and then fund the creation of private "tutoring centers" that would be designed to circumvent any tax or prohibition on private schools.

Frankly, it would be enough if we just focus on the politicians. If all those in senior government roles had to use public health, public transport, public schools et cetera for them and their families, we would quickly see a redrawing of priorities. 

May I add? #WhatIfDems ban politicians from using TSA PreCheck and other membership programs that protect them from the consequences of their infrastructure investment votes? Or one better: Require Congress to commute to Washington by train. Enjoy the system they voted for! (Hawai'i can fly to LA.)

The FED govt doesn’t have to rely on rich people to fund anything. I’d be happy with rich people getting the hell out of the way. Quit butting in and lobbying against public funding for everyone else.

In IT we call this dogfooding. You have to use the same systems and products that you foist upon the end users, or you'll never experience the frustrations or identify the issues.

How about we acknowledge the unconstitutionality and obvious unfairness of paying for public schools out of property taxes, delivering unequal outcomes, and mandate the same funding per student in EVERY district within a state, and not one cent for charter, religious, or other private schools.

IMO private K-12 should be abolished. Private planes should be highly taxed. TBH, I’d eliminate the charitable tax deduction as well as charities/non-profits are evidence of civic failure

We have plenty of examples of what happens if you create a two tiered school system and let the well off do the sorting. It really hurts the poor kids who the public school system is supposed to help most and often it turns into a legal way to discriminate. www.propublica.org/article/camd...

propublica.orgSegregation Academies Still Operate Across the South. One Town Grapples With Its Divided Schools.Seventy years after Brown v. Board, Black and white residents, in Camden, Alabama, say they would like to see their children schooled together. But after so long apart, they aren’t sure how to make it...

We already have this experiment it is called Palo Alto The public highschool is world class and it is funded through the city not allowing a single new home under 2 million to be built and fees on commercial office space