But then how do you define poor? I ask because you do enter a new identity politics discussion. Blacks tend to have much lower wealth, even when you control for income. So it’s in the interest of whites to push income and blacks to push wealth.

I also think there’s an optics issue. As you note the poor white males may be getting passed over now. So many would say that it’s really convenient that NOW we want to help all poor people, whereas in the past we made it difficult to help poor black people. It’s like, why do “all lives matter” now?

"So many would say that it’s really convenient NOW we want to help all poor people, whereas in the past we made it difficult to help poor black people. It’s like, why do “all lives matter” now?"

Does historical injustice make it right to behave unjust in the present, almost as if it were a revenge? I don't think so.

I agree about importance of defining poverty though. Both income and wealth should be taken into account and taxed appropriately. It's not only a class issue, but also generational issue with lots of old people sitting on super-expensive property, while young families can't afford a home.

The issue is if the intent to act just now is just a way to institute selective justice to further injustice.

For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most.

So when I hear let’s help everyone when it helps their in-group, but they don’t have that same energy elsewhere (or the same energy a decade ago when maybe it wouldn’t have helped their in-group) — I get cynical.

> For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most.

Not a westerner. Why is this a bad thing at all? Giving college admission is like giving opportunity to improve someone's condition (teaching to fish), whereas welfare schemes are like giving a fish.

My country also suffers greatly due to many welfare schemes, all of that money could have gone to infrastructure and public education.

Disclosure: I also come from a poor background and have benefitted from both merit-based education and welfare schemes. But I think welfare is overblown. If the same money was put on education, my parents would have been educated one generation ago.

College in the US is generally not competitive. That is, learning is available to almost anyone who cares to learn. The community college system is very cheap. Only four years are expensive.

The debate about admissions into the top highly selective colleges is purely about who gets into the gates for networking opportunities and signaling (of the 1000+ colleges, affirmitive action impacts probably less than 100). So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn.

Further, financial aid generally is race blind. It’s only admission at these top schools where affirmitive action plays a role. So if your parents were in the IS they could’ve been educated long ago. The only question is if it is at Harvard or Tennessee State.

Financial aid is not race blind. There are no schools near me that have merit scholarships for white people, but plenty have merit scholarships for non whites.

I’ve researched this because I have kids, and where I grew up merit scholarships applied to all, but where I live now they will not receive any, at least in state. Unlike my parents, however, I’m not dirt poor and can set my kids up for success. If not for a merit scholarship, I likely would have followed my father and his father into a factory job.

Merit scholarships run the gamut. I typically don’t bucket merit scholarships in with financial aid because it is often need blind.

And while there are probably few if any explicit scholarships for white students there are several that have never gone to anything but. Lots of organizational scholarships where nearly everyone in the org is white. Or even large orgs that tilt heavily white such as DAR and the Elks Lodge.

And if you were to add up all merit scholarships the dollar amounts for those that are race based pale in comparison to those that aren’t. And adding in financial aid makes the numbers minuscule.

EDIT: When you say there are no scholarships for white students do you mean that whites are prohibited from winning any scholarships? Or that there are no scholarships exclusively for whites?

There are 0 merit scholarships available to whites. All scholarships at the major state universities in my state have a race based restriction.

So the scholarships aren’t merit, or <race>, but race + merit, presumably to help filter out and select applicants.

I was shocked when I found this information; I assumed that most states had race-blind merit scholarships, but that isn’t the case I guess.

> There are 0 merit scholarships available to whites.

False. There are both non-school private, school-based, and many state programs open to Whites, and, in fact, whites receive them disproportionately under many of the programs. [0]

> All scholarships at the major state universities in my state have a race based restriction.

Even if that’s true (and the claim is vague enough that is impossible to conclusively falsify without reviewing the scholarships available at major state universities in all 50 states), there is a big difference between “there are no merit scholarships available to whites” and “there are no merit scholarships funded at the major state universities in my unspecified state that are open to whites” (and even if the latter was true, there are non-school-specific merit scholarships open to Whites that could be used at those schools.)

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/07/merit-sc...

I received state university scholarships for merit. My kids cannot because I moved and they are white. I’m not sure how this is reasonable in anyone’s mind.

What state are you in?

> So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn.

I have learned so much from what MIT, Stanford etc.. post online, and the material is top notch.

Speaking of IT/engineering, In my country most colleges are crap and the value of a good college mostly lies in provide mostly lies in a) the college hiring pipeline and b) the opportunity to sit in same classroom as many other intelligent people, and learn from them. Teaching is total crap.

So I wonder why you think college doesn't matter. From what I heard, ivy league colleges matter for getting hired in big company too.

This is daft. Treating wealth as a measure of poverty wouldn’t work. Think about why. It pretends families don’t exist. Total non-starter.

So, if someone has a low or nonexistent income and vast inherited wealth, you would consider them to be poor?

Not unheard of - people inherit great houses in fantastic locations that they have no money to keep and which they can't sell otherwise for various legal reasons. You're poor despite living in prime estate and despite theoretically having a net worth into 6 digits.

What kinds of legal reasons?

The property's transfer or sale may be prohibited by the terms of inheritance.

IANAL and am mostly familiar with this type of situation from rom-coms about down-on-their-luck dukes who live in crumbling, unsellable castles, so I'm not sure if that scenario truly exists in law or if it's just a handy conceit.

I prefer the rule where you must spend $30 million dollars in 30 days, but have no trace of the money left — yet still have received fair value for your spending — in order to get the inheritance.

That's pretty easy:

You go to a bank to manufacture you a derivative on eg the stock market. The deal is that you pay them 30 million dollars now, and in 30 days they either pay you x dollars with probability p or you lose everything.

Eg they pay you 100 million dollars, if the S&P 500 index goes above, say, 5000 which they think will happen with probability of just under 30%.

If you do the math: the deal is fair.

If you lose the bet, you get your inheritance.

If you win the bet, you get your 100 million dollars from the bank, and presumably pay the 30 million dollars back (if that's a stipulation in the will).

Yes, this seems much more common in fiction than in reality.

You live in the place already but there are inheritance matters still waiting to be settled. Or you inherit 20% along with 4 other siblings, they don't want to sell but they won't contribute or live in the place. Or you might simply not have the money for the legal process to sell. The place might need work before you could even put it on the market but you don't have the money for it.

You can put things on the market, even if there's work to be done.

> Or you might simply not have the money for the legal process to sell.

If your property is valuable, someone will be willing do that work for you in return for a cut of the proceeds. (And if your property ain't valuable, then the original comment doesn't apply.)

If wealth were useable as a metric for poverty it would be used. It’s not. We define poverty based on income. Not because nobody has ever thought about it in the same lucid terms as yourself, nor is it because the prevailing ethnic group or class has selected their preferred definition and nobody can change it. Wealth that is not realized is sort of meaningless. Are the people of Venezuela wealthy? But they possesses all that oil. See the problem?

That's not true in most states in the US. Programs with means testing (TANF, Medicaid, and the like) don't consider you poor if you have assets.

You hear about this a lot when people require certain kinds of care that Medicaid covers but Medicare does not. People will sign over all their assets (real estate, cars, financial instruments) to their spouse, then get divorced. All because the government doesn't consider you poor if you have wealth.

Doesn’t income have the same issue?

Income isn’t perfect but it’s used for a reason. Think about the problems inherent in defining “wealth”. It’s too squishy a concept to use for policy reasons, or else they would. Is somebody who makes seven figures but spends it all on food, entertainment and travel really poor? No.

Except wealth is used for lots of policy. For example, financial aid at schools attempts to use wealth. Which is why they take into account equity in your home.

And if you have ten million in a trust and no income — are you poor?

Not if payments from that trust is classified as “income”.

Let's say that the terms of a trust dictate that interest revenue be immediately paid out to a specific charity, but you are allowed to spend the principal. Are you poor?

I’m saying it’s not useful in policy as measurement of poverty. Poverty is and forever will be defined by income. Wealth is used in policy like everything else, yes of course. Tax policy is a great example. Is there anything that tax policy doesn’t have loopholes and special provisions for? I’d argue that wealthy people benefit from all that. Poor people benefit from clear and effective policies that use simpler, less game-able constructs. Getting into the business of trying to define nebulous hard to define constructs like wealth will benefit those with greater resources, always.

You measure wealth and income?

You can, but the question is how is this split? What is the formula to measure it?

For example, my cousin does financial aid for a set of private high schools. There is a group that fights the use of wealth measures when determining need. It is typically upper middle class people who don’t want things like their real estate or investment portfolio to be a part of the equation.

The absolute richest oddly do tend to support these measures. I suspect in part because tuition isn’t a big deal to them anyways.

No political issue can be solved if all people care about is optics.

I never said it’s all people care about. But buy-in to policy will be tougher if it looks like you always take on neutral policies only when it helps certain groups.

If you aren't saying it, I will. Most political discussions I see, especially in America seem to mostly care about optics.

Can you give an example?

I agree. Old school leftists were smart enough to understand that being rich is the ultimate privilege, nothing else comes close. Help the poor, and you will also help minorities which are poor due to historical racism, slavery and so on. Help people based on their skin colour/ethnicity, and you'll unnecessarily make all the poor, unprivileged people not included very bitter, increasing political divisions, racism and people like Donald Trump voted into the office.

It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. I don't see any reason why European style model couldn't work well also in the US.

> It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities.

The US already does this. Taxation is more progressive than Europe and large amounts of money are redistributed to poor and troubled schools, in some cases as much as twice the European average. It is not correlated with any of the outcomes you are imagining.

Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. The US has been doing that for decades with nothing to show for it.

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph?

I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

See eg https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is...

> This has all had the unfortunate effect of deepening ignorance about American school spending. We know, for example, that majority-Black and Hispanic schools receive significantly more per-pupil funding than majority-white schools. This fact is so contrary to basic liberal assumptions that they often react angrily to hearing it. But this reality shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, we’ve been shoveling money at the racial achievement gap for 40 years, to no avail. Part of the problem here is an assumption that public education is dominantly funded by local expenditure, which hasn’t been true for some time. In fact, state funding is at or near parity with local spending in the United States, and state funding is heavily tilted towards areas of perceived need (that is, failing schools or districts). Federal funding, including but hardly limited to Title I funding, is also dominantly directed towards poor or high-minority schools. The rising tide of think tank and foundation money that finds its way into public K-12 school is very hard to track, but we can safely assume that almost all of it is earmarked for the poorest students. We’ve been trying to spend our way our of this problem since before I was born! And yet people who should know better pretend not to understand this reality and repeat the complaint about local funding of public schools, despite the fact that that story is not true.

This guys argument is based on a meta-analysis which has nothing at all to do with the argument he is making. The meta analysis in question (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610568.pdf) is talking about how different research techniques measure data in different ways and therefore can't be easily compared. He then takes a look at this data, determines that it means interventions don't work very well (he doesn't argue they don't work, just that they don't work that well) and therefore concludes that we shouldn't even try to close the gaps in educational outcomes. You can't read a study and completely change it's meaning, especially since the study he cites is from researches that clearly believe evidence based educational intervention can work. In other words, the people who the author cites, who looked at the data more closely then the author hold opposite beliefs from the author.

The specific quote given, however, is not from your link but from Pathways to Inequality: Between-District Segregation and Racial Disparities in School District Expenditures[0].

>From this table, we can see that on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively.

That being the case it is possible that GP simply means to bring that one fact, that is, that minorities have more funding yet still do not achieve the same academic results (aside from asians), rather than as an endorsement of the rest of the article. In any event it is a point worth considering regardless of GP's intention.

[0]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...

Also from the article you quote: "We find that as Black–White racial segregation increases over time, total per pupil expenditures and other per pupil expenditures shift in ways that disfavor the typical Black student’s district relative to the typical White student’s district. We also find that Latinx–White segregation is associated with a relative shift of per pupil infrastructure expenditures that disfavors the typical Latinx student’s district and a shift of per pupil other expenditures that favors the typical Latinx student’s district."

So, still doesn't seem better for the argument that's trying to be made.

Not really. That quote alone could simply mean that as already black-majority schools become more black, that is, "increases of time," they get less total funding. But that doesn't mean that total per pupil expenditures of majority black schools are lower than white ones. In fact that would directly contradict that "on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by $229.53 and $126.15, respectively" which is stated explicitly rather than "shift in ways that disfavor the typical Black student’s district relative to the typical White student’s district" which is ambiguous. I didn't read the whole paper but this quote alone doesn't mean anything. The fact is that black schools get more money according to that study.

Indeed, I like to quote my facts from people I disagree with (especially ideologically).

This federal 10%, along with state level funding, is typically used to level the funding across the districts. The equalization of per student spending in school districts across the country has largely already happened, with little to show for it in terms of improvement of low performing schools. Rich districts do have more local school funding than poor districts, but this difference is made up with state and federal funds.

There is extreme scarcity of evidence for the idea that giving more money to schools improve outcomes of students. It simply doesn’t work this way. The worst performing schools in many US cities already have very high levels of funding with little to show it, for example in Washington DC. At the same time, quasi-experimental settings like Zuckerberg dropping $100M on Newark schools have basically zero effect in terms of student outcomes.

Kids don't actually learn much curriculum content (as opposed to social behavior) when at school. They do that when at home.

Poor kids' homes aren't conducive to learning. They lack the necessary materials, (undisturbed) space and time. Necessary social support for content learning is often absent.

Wondering about why money given to schools (used for the most part for administrative nonsense presumably) doesn't change outcomes much consequently appears to show a (class based?) detachment from respective realities?

Yeah that’s my understanding of the situation. Additionally, politically governmental funding of schools stagnates while richer areas use funding drives to make up for it (in addition to the difference in property taxes already making a huge difference). Additionally, when the wealthy live in an area without the aggregate property taxes covering the school costs (eg because local governments slash funding anyway) they send their kids to private schools.

To improve outcomes you need a unified school district and limit the existence of private schools. Charter schools are positioned as “choice” but quality schools will remain out of reach of people using the vouchers to try to get to a better school - transportation is the first hurdle and as soon as meaningful number of “poors” move in, the wealthy will abandon the public schools and move to private institutions with entrance requirements that try to filter out the less wealthy masses.

Is there a part of the world you could point to that banned private schools altogether and saw better aggregate outcomes?

Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of living in the area is so high).

One other type of charter school to consider would be one’s specialized is students with various disadvantages such as charter schools specialized in blind, deaf, autistic or emotionally disturbed students.

This 2018 analysis by the NCSECS (national center for special education) found that there were 137 such specialized schools and many were primarily focused on students with 1 specific disability. These schools had high enrolling rates for such students and found they had lower rates of suspension and expulsion. The recommendation was additional funding for such schools.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED604731.pdf

If the public schools are good, the rich send to private schools for the exclusionary aspect more than for education outcomes so it doesn't really matter. I mean it matters in the sense that less talented people take up the spots for talented people, but not in terms of generating talent out of the general populace.

> Because if we’re just guessing, I would guess elimination of private schools would result in rich people with children grouping up in very wealthy areas more than they do today. A public school in a very affluent and wealthy area would likely not have many “pools” attending (because the cost of living in the area is so high).

But that's the point. If the funding is uniform based on number of pupils, in fact affluent areas will have worse education because they'll have fewer students. The thing that's hard to fight is "funding drives" to buy things for the school. That's the other thing affluent areas do on top of having a higher baseline of funding due to property taxes.

> This 2018 analysis by the NCSECS (national center for special education) found that there were 137 such specialized schools and many were primarily focused on students with 1 specific disability. These schools had high enrolling rates for such students and found they had lower rates of suspension and expulsion. The recommendation was additional funding for such schools.

That is correct. Ontario has additional funding for special education programs for those with disabilities on top of the normal funding per pupil

> To improve outcomes you need a unified school district and limit the existence of private schools.

The true rich will send their kids away to another state, or even another country, if that's what it takes to get their kids into a good school. To stop this and force all the rich kids into public schools you'd have to ban all private schools, not just in the state, not just in every state, but in every single country around the world.

The good news is the above doesn't matter, you don't need rich students to have a good school, you can let all super rich families send their brats to expat boarding schools in the UK and Japan without losing anything that matters to the rest. The entrance and attendance requirements that actually matter don't concern money, but rather student behavior and performance. It is possible to create great schools in poor communities with very little local funding IFF those schools are allowed to have strict requirements for behavior and performance and are empowered to kick out students that fall short of those requirements.

"Rich" isn't a binary thing though. The wealth population drops off rather quickly. People with a net worth of ~$1-10M are unlikely to be sending their kids away I think. It also doesn't matter so much because their taxes would still be paying for the education of everyone who's not doing this and the sending away is an extra tax they choose to pay.

I was surprised to hear that failing, urban schools get substantially more money than their suburban counterparts. But it appears to be true where I live.

Check out https://oese.ed.gov/ppe/.

I live near a school district that is well-known for high quality education. The urban district nearby has 20% higher per-pupil spending and the quality of education is MUCH lower.

while yes the wealthy just move their kids to privet schools they have to pay for that out of pocket while still contributing taxes to the public school system which also now doesn't have to pay toward the privetly schooled child.

Yup. 100% agreed. Private schools are problematic for other reasons but not because they take away funding from public schools.

This you get the argument for child tax credits. Let the money follow the child instead of the school.

In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt.

Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living).

At that point, schools will have to compete on offering a good education instead of being the local monopoly you are forced into using. It also offers smart kids born into bad school districts a way out of the cycle of poverty.

Politically, it’s weird too. This policy is fundamentally socialist redistribution, but is embraced by the right while being decried as evil by the left.

> Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living).

Why do you even need to set a national number? Let states or even counties decide for themselves. (Make transfers to poor counties, if necessary. But don't tell them how to use the money.)

That’s what I said, but from the other end. I started with fixed Federal subsidies (which actually transfers money from wealthy states to poor states) then individual states can optionally set higher limits by adding their own money too.

I'm saying that federal subsidies for poor states should not be earmarked for specific projects like education.

There's no reason to involve the federal level more than necessary. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

There’s merit to this view, but it lacks wisdom.

Why send money just because?

People are then going to ask why they are sending the money instead of lowering federal taxes and increasing state taxes.

The truthful answer “we’re taking money from your state and giving it to another state to subsidize them” is going to tick off the rich states and lead to resentment.

Further, they will still be left asking “why do they need my money?” and “what are they spending my money on?”

Saying “we’re making sure all kids get a decent education” Is much more palatable than “whatever they feel like” even though the money no longer allocated to education is then spent on whatever they feel like.

You can make up stories about voters objecting to almost any good idea, if you need an argument for why a second best idea is preferable.

> The truthful answer “we’re taking money from your state and giving it to another state to subsidize them” is going to tick off the rich states and lead to resentment.

So you are suggestion it's better to mislead people in a democracy?

> In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt.

As you've identified, it's not because of funding, but it's not because private schools care more either. It's because private schools can kick out bad students, the students who deliberately make trouble and hold all the rest back. Private schools all do this, while public schools generally cannot (or it is so difficult that it rarely happens.) Throwing money at schools makes little difference if all the students in that school are forced to endure assaults and disruptions dished out by malicious students who are deliberately sabotaging everybody else.

In my observation, private schools (outside the most ritzy ones) are usually VERY hesitant to remove students because they can’t afford the revenue loss while public schools get the same money either way.

The ability to separate good students (regardless of financial or ethnic background) so they can learn without disruption from kids not wanting to learn is a huge positive. Lots of brilliant kids are held back by the terrible schools they are forced to attend. This would provide much better equality of opportunity.

The sort of private schools who retain lots of disruptive poor performers because of the money aren't the sort of private schools that perform well as schools. My statement that "private schools all [kick out bad students]" is an oversimplification because some private schools definitely specialize in admitting bad students from rich families. But those schools of last resort aren't the schools that are sought after by anybody who could instead send their children to a school with strict behavior and performance requirements. The desirable private schools are selective because being selective makes them desirable.

But at American public schools? A student flunking so hard they have to repeat a grade, once a fairly common occurrence, has become almost unheard of because turning a blind eye to misbehavior and performance has become the path of least resistance to each individual teacher and administrator. School administrators have no incentive to maintain the school's reputation because the school's reputation was never important in the first place. They don't have to sell parents on the merits of the school because they get incoming students and funding by default. The teachers who try to uphold standards get beaten down by the system, crushed with mountains of paperwork and are accused of being the reason that student behaves poorly. And so you get American public school systems where half the graduating students are functionally illiterate and everybody in the system pretends not to notice.

> Funneling children into the arms of private businesses is fundamentally socialist redistribution

Mmm I'm going to take a very controversial stance here and say that no, privatizing education is not "fundamentally socialist distribution" or even "progressive" for that matter.

It absolutely is a money problem when teachers are spending their own salaries (already much lower than their EU counterparts) on classrooms. You can say there's corruption, that the money disappears, etc. but it's possible to solve the problems in public education by making sure the people molding the minds of the next generation make a decent living.

All my friends in academia were tired of being treated like shit (in both public and charter systems) and ended up pivoting to code where they make 2-3x the salary with dramatically less effort. Even worse for teachers in "inner cities" where the cost of living is higher. Small wonder that the US has some of the worst education outcomes compared to other "industrial liberal republics".

Which wealth class do you reckon pays more property taxes?

Why do property taxes need to fund the school / why does wealth class dictate the quality of schooling you’re entitled to? Shouldn’t we give the best schooling to the students that will take the most advantage of it / get the most benefit out of it? There’s all sorts of stories about how privilege at birth gets you into all sorts of elite places through a mix of wealth (bribes) and connections. Yet true expertise in more objective fields (eg STEM) does not reward those as easily.

Look at Ontario, Canada [1]. There’s an equal funding formula out of the general pool of funds for the province largely based on how many students are in your school board. The Toronto School Board (and I imagine other school boards too) then distribute their funds similarly [2]. School fundings isn’t tied to property taxes and it’s fundamentally weird to tie anything to property taxes as it gives back in services more to those areas that are already advantaged and creates skewed voting incentives.

I’m not saying that education in Canada was perfect, but I found the public school system to be decent enough with lots of opportunity to excel regardless and generally an equalizer (home dynamics it can’t correct for and is a huge problem). For example, I went to a well-regarded STEM magnate program that had objective entrance requirements that I had to travel to embedded within the public school. Out of two I got into, I ended up picking one closer because it was more convenient for my mom even though the other one I got into was a bit better regarded / and somehow had better funding (maybe more students but I suspect also outside funding drives / donations).

This travel problem repeats all the time with charter schools and is my main problem with the idea - when you’re wealthy travel is less of a problem (eg you have a very flexible work schedule).

[1] https://peopleforeducation.ca/public-education-in-ontario/ho...

[2] https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Business-Services/Budgets-an...

It doesn’t really matter how much tax is paid by “the rich” (say, top 1 in 1000), because collectively, they make too little money to make much of a difference even if we taxed 100% of their income.

What does matter is taxation on top 20% of population, and they do pay a lot of money on property taxes.

The income (including capital gains) of the top tenth of a percent are more than 10% of total income.

The average federal income tax is under 15%.

It would make a ridiculously large difference.

Any large increase in the social programs of the US is going to have to tied to increased tax on the middle class. The tax-the-rich and spend politicians seem disingenuous by not telling their constituents what it would actually take to fund large social programs. That dishonestly guarantees those social programs will never come to fruition, so do they even want them?

> European style model couldn't work well also in the US.

If you lived here, you would find that European style models barely work in Europe

Europe is a diverse place. It's hard to call both Greece and Estonia a 'European style model'.

I’ve come to the conclusion that progressive taxes do the opposite of their intent.

Looks at tax revenue vs GDP. No matter the tax rates, the percentage stays the same (fluctuations within a couple points) regardless of official tax rates.

When you increase taxes on the wealthy, they don’t pay more. They either pay for loopholes to be created or they reduce/stagnate salaries to compensate.

Meanwhile, Congress cares more about who pays them than who votes (there’s a reason they argue about superficial stuff and agree about all the worst stuff).

When all the taxes get paid by the rich, the poor lose that influence and still wind up making the same amount of money anyway.

Universal sales tax is better. If the rich buy more stuff they pay more. There’s no loopholes to be found. You can also provide tax breaks to the poor by reducing or eliminating sales tax on consumer goods which greatly affects the poor, but only marginally affects the rich.

> Looks at tax revenue vs GDP. No matter the tax rates, the percentage stays the same (fluctuations within a couple points) regardless of official tax rates.

That might perhaps be true over time, but it's not true between countries.

Eg Singapore has a much lower ratio of tax take to GDP than Germany.

> Universal sales tax is better. If the rich buy more stuff they pay more. There’s no loopholes to be found. You can also provide tax breaks to the poor by reducing or eliminating sales tax on consumer goods which greatly affects the poor, but only marginally affects the rich.

No need for a dual system, that just adds more loopholes. Just give pool people money, if necessary.

If you want an even simpler system, tax land value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

You can't hide land, and it's in fixed supply.

> It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. I don't see any reason why European style model couldn't work well also in the US.

You realise that almost all of Europe is poorer than the US?

Yes, you can make people more equal by making the rich poor as well. But what's the point?

Btw, in the US schools in poorer parts already get more funding. That hasn't helped. See https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is...

> This has all had the unfortunate effect of deepening ignorance about American school spending. We know, for example, that majority-Black and Hispanic schools receive significantly more per-pupil funding than majority-white schools. This fact is so contrary to basic liberal assumptions that they often react angrily to hearing it. But this reality shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, we’ve been shoveling money at the racial achievement gap for 40 years, to no avail. Part of the problem here is an assumption that public education is dominantly funded by local expenditure, which hasn’t been true for some time. In fact, state funding is at or near parity with local spending in the United States, and state funding is heavily tilted towards areas of perceived need (that is, failing schools or districts). Federal funding, including but hardly limited to Title I funding, is also dominantly directed towards poor or high-minority schools. The rising tide of think tank and foundation money that finds its way into public K-12 school is very hard to track, but we can safely assume that almost all of it is earmarked for the poorest students. We’ve been trying to spend our way our of this problem since before I was born! And yet people who should know better pretend not to understand this reality and repeat the complaint about local funding of public schools, despite the fact that that story is not true.

Someone refuted the point of the substack you posted above:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35763622

See the rest of that discussions. It's not refuted at all.

There's no reason to think that the European style model works in Europe. Most of Europe is facing dire demographic issues.

What is your prediction of the efficiency of helping the poor that giving the poor money achieves? I assume from your comment you think it's a positive number?

We know that there is a set of people that can't manage money in a sustainable way for themselves. Surely, giving this set of people money produces zero to negative help. But I don't know the make up of all of the "poor" or why they're poor in the first place.

Does that actually follow, though?

My own perspective on the matter as someone who sorta bootstrapped from a pretty shitty strating position is: no. If we took a cross section of people doing reasonably well what they've done is complied with society's demands, more succinctly they've served the market. They aren't exceptionally smart, talented, or disciplined, they just selflessly (including moving far and wide) elected a corner of the market that was valuable, and where they were themselves valued. And from my experience: they have really poor spending habits, they have shallow economic and political positions. And this is sort of the paradigmatic flaw with throwing money at people, in a lot of cases they do not have the faculties to comport themselves in such a manner where it is a benefit to themselves nor to their fellows. I fear many of these people, when they're put through some serious adversity, will succeed in recovering themselves.

I'm not trying to make an argument which paints me as some superior element to these folks, but rather these are mistakes that I have personally made and lived through while also existing on the precipice of dangerous self-amplifying poverty. To some extent, and with the way that things are structured, I think this very much attends to the "teach a man to fish" logic, and that lending that kind of real, personalized trivium is the way forward.

Italy has (or had) such a program: they would disburse pooled funds to a minimum of 3 unemployed individuals who were then expected to use said funds to start a business. To my knowledge many of these were cooperatives, which I think is an ingenious way of remediating some of the more egregious issues which we see bubbling up in our day-to-day lives in the US.

Now, I won't discount the fact that having a decent starting position is a huge boon; the crux of my argument here is that modifying it without respect to the nuance, as I've seen it, can lead to even worse outcomes. And I think the quasi-exclusive programs also nucleate certain perspectives, culture, and communities which themselves can be pretty detrimental. For instance I grew up in trailer parks, I have some aspects of white trash that I very deliberately maintain to my own detriment because it is part of my identity and a mark of pride, and sequestration of those habits makes me legitimately uncomfortable.

Also don't bother comparing the US and Europe, the latter without the former has historically been very volatile and I don't believe there's any reason to expect that things will have changed. As to why that matters: the US must have certain integral aspects both socially and politically which favor its position as the "world peacekeeping force" (read: world police), including egregious spending on "defense". And this is apparently perceived at large as justified. Moreover, military participation is also quite high, in part because of the way that America at large is structured. It is very much a multifaceted incentive complex. And I think that, over the years, it has very much seated America as the lynchpin of the globalized system. Personally, I don't like it, but I very much anticipate the effacement of America's current position as a global leader is going to lead to a very traumatic shift in the way of the world as we know it. The US is itself structured in a completely different way than is Europe as well, with considerable contrasts in needs and wants in comparison to Europe and in contrast with our own many, varied, and multifaceted communities. Rural America is not urban America.

The report only concluded that women didn’t have worse outcomes in acadrmia _after_ getting their PhDs. How are you taking this as a vindication of all affirmative action?

Given through my decade long academic journey I barely saw any African American PIs in biomedical sciences, I don’t think that it’s a solved problem yet for other cases. Even within gender biases, the moment you include PhD enrollment and graduation rates you’ll likely see a massive difference anyway.

Sounds like those people aren't interested in the biomedical field. Maybe representation is indicative of desire instead of oppression.

>Even within gender biases, the moment you include PhD enrollment and graduation rates you’ll likely see a massive difference anyway.

Might as well go all the way and start caring about college enrollment and graduation rates at that point no?

That'd find gender bias. Against men.

Seems that you are advocating both for equality of outcome, and equality of opportunity. It's hard to argue for both, since in a free choice world the opportunities may not be taken up proportionally

That’s confusing causes and effects.

This paper is making the case that if a person makes it to college, they won’t be discriminated against while there. The question of whether they make it to college is a far different one.

Whether someone makes it to college and the different factors involved there are beyond the scope of this study.

This comment is not to agree or disagree with your comment, but to informally provide an interesting finding.

Economies are more or less urban regions surrounded by rural areas with low population density. So, Nashville, DFW, Denver, etc. are regional economies.

I have found it interesting in recent research to find that the level of disparity in health inequity (called Social Determinants of Health, one of which is the 'Area Deprivation Index' managed by UW-Madison) and race/ethnicity is somewhat dependent on which regional economy you review. I can't speak for all regional economies, but the ten I looked into show interesting variation on the strength of economic disparity and the composition of race and ethnic groups.

So are you then arguing that, since the average is no difference in discrimination except small wage discrimination in favor of men and hiring in favor of women , the reality is larger discrimination against men and women that averages out mostly?

Out of curiosity, what part of my prior comment of findings lead to your conclusion that I made the argument you stated?

The article concludes there is no difference except the ones outlined, you pointed out that sub economies have differing results. To have no difference in population but significant difference in sub population thw variance needs to be opposite enough to cancel out significance just by how the math works.

A correlation between ethnic groups and economic disparity is not indicative of causation, much less of what the cause might be?

People having problems with even simple statistics definitely is a cause for racism on the other hand.

I find economists often to be surprisingly bad at math.

> A correlation between ethnic groups and economic disparity is not indicative of causation, much less of what the cause might be?

Correct. We typically understand the actual cause in the US -- historical policies promoting detrimental economic outcomes to targeted ethnic groups. I'm not sure why you interpreted my positive finding of relationship into a normative declaration of causation.

> I find economists often to be surprisingly bad at math.

Which ones?

> I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity politics and simply say: let’s help the poor.

That's a wonderful idea, but the elites need sexism and racism as perennial bogeymen as they can always protest, "I'm not racist, I'm not sexist" But the elites cannot reasonably say, "I'm not biased against poor people."

Have you listened to any recent Planet Money episodes? It's racism all the things. They hardly blame the rich or the elites--don't want to irritate your customers.

bingo, agreed

judge people only by the content of their character. (ie. MLK's dream.) Help based only on their economic means, or their health needs.

I believe some folks in recent years have "gone overboard" and have devised a way to give them an Official feel-good excuse to self-deal or, to discriminate against a new batch of demographic traits. Which in turn just sows the seeds for yet more grievance "back blast" based on identity groups, yet again.

sooner as a society we can all take the higher road, together as one, the better off we'll be

The main reason the USA is less "help the poor" than Europe, is because some of the poor in America were non-WASP, and, well I'll let President Lyndon B Johnson say it:

> "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

And the politicians are still dividing us by race so we'll ignore wealth and privilege, but now the message is "help the historically disadvantaged minorities" instead of "help the poor".

That's certainly an improvement over past behavior but it still leaves millions of poor people shivering in the cold.