Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of what other commenters may be doing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying for something else here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

The comment I replied to:

"Yea let’s go back to life when most citizens didn’t get a primary school education let alone high school. You think 100% of families will prioritize tuition for toddlers when it’s a discretionary expense? Or will the bid up rent costs?"

The fact that this above comment I genuinely replied to was not flagged nor rebuked by yourself, yet my genuine and upvoted response was flagged and rebuked, tells me all I need to know about what you're "trying for."

You can't assume that we see all the comments. There are too many for us to see them all: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

We do our level best to be even-handed, but it's way too much to expect perfectly consistent moderation, just like it's too much to expect cops to give tickets to all speeders. Of course it always feels like you're the one getting singled out and pulled over, but that's a cognitive bias we all suffer from: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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It's true that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28382933 was in the flamewar style and shouldn't have been. But that comment was in reply to you (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28382789), and your comment was in precisely the same style. So if we're going to try to be consistent here, the transitive logic of finger-pointing at previous comments means you end up pointing at your own.

I've scolded both of those comments now.

> So if we're going to try to be consistent here, the transitive logic of finger-pointing at previous comments means you end up pointing at your own.

Actually it doesn't, because I never claimed that _anyone's_ comment needed to be flagged or rebuked. That's quite the bald face lie. The transitive logic would be that I was saying everyone's response was genuine, including my own. I never flagged nor downvoted anyone's comment, nor communicated with anyone to do so nor advocated for it being done.

I think you need to go back and read what I really said:

   The fact that this above comment I genuinely replied to was not flagged nor rebuked by yourself, yet my genuine and upvoted response was flagged and rebuked, tells me all I need to know about what you're "trying for."

Please point out anywhere in my statement that said the above comment needed rebuked or flagged. I hope that your reading comprehension improves as a result of this interaction.

I took your comment as a complaint about inconsistency - that still seems to me like a reasonable way to read it, but if that's not what you meant, I apologize for misunderstanding.

Please stop posting off-topic complaints now, and please follow the site guidelines and avoid flamewar comments in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Does the US actually get poor returns on K-12 education? I assume that public K-12 education contributes a lot to the economy in the form of an educated population. Wouldn't both the economy and tax revenue shrink without K-12?

Our ROI is significantly worse than many other developed nations such as Germany, Canada, and Finland [1].

You wouldn't keep throwing more money at a problem until you find out what is going wrong and that those managing it having solved their fiscal responsibility problems.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education...

Using your example of North Dakota State University.

They have about 15,000 students. Over 50% get federal student loans averaging about 6,500/student/year. That is $48,750,000 per year is taxpayer funded loans going to your State school.

If you insist on being a pedant, you had better realize that "North Dakota State University" contains neither "public" nor "college." Revise and resubmit!

Will you be upset when your toddler is no longer in school and you're still paying school taxes?

Yes because that's how taxes work. You don't have any individual say over where your taxes go. Assuming that you're talking about your local tax burden for public schools you're paying $1200/mo. for everyone's elementary school education. When spread over a population all it does it move money around, that money is right now is being spent on people's college educations and the economic hammer-on effects reach you as well. It's not so simple as "if I don't personally feel like I got a 'free' college education then I'm losing money." The thing people want when they say "make college free" is "a college education is free at the point of delivery" not that it's actually without cost.

Also we are allowed to do two things at once. There is no reason that a country of millions of people has to focus on one thing at a time that has the potential to benefit everyone.

I say this as someone who has zero skin in this game. I went to private school as a child. I paid off my student loans, I cannot have children. I will in my lifetime not directly benefit from publicly funded education k-12 or college -- I still want this policy.

>Assuming that you're talking about your local tax burden for public schools you're paying $1200/mo.

$1200 is what I pay in private education for my toddler before taxes start. I am not rich and this is a very large part of my paycheck. No one helps me with this, no subsidies, no nothing, but I'm supposed to pay even more for someone else's college at gunpoint of federal agents under the taxation system.

I'm with you on _wanting_ children to succeed. And adults. I have tutored GED for adults who didn't finish high school, and I did it for free. More money doesn't necessarily mean better education. I pay all of my toddler's education (taxpayers won't help me like they will with K-12 kids). And like most HNers I'm paying out more taxes to fund these programs than the average person. I'm doing my part, now I want the government to handle my money responsibly before I hand them more.

> $1200 is what I pay in private education for my toddler before taxes start.

Why do you pay $1200/month for the private education of a toddler, considering this is a significant fraction of your paycheck? I'm assuming there's some special circumstances here, but as a non-American I can only guess.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying for something else here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

I admit I didn't need to call the other poster foolish. I don't think refuting their point with examples is exactly a "flamewar", though.

It has to do with how you do that. Note this site guideline:

"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar—this is exactly the wrong direction to go, even if you were provoked.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've been doing this repeatedly already; could you please not? It's destructive of everything we're trying to have here.