Would you give up privilege to promote equality for all?

[yssie]

kids are resilient they can handle a longer bus ride. it is not in the name of politics it is rectifying a wrong. my kids went to all kinds of schools and it was always the black kids bused in in Raleigh.

my kids went to a high rated public high school with kids from everywhere and they survived. my kids moved around as we moved around for careers, they lived and made new friends. IBM = I've Been Moved

you sound as though you think kids are little snowflakes that will melt, they won't, i've been through this whole thing

Think you might have misunderstood my last thought K - I agree, the argument about slightly longer bus rides causing stress is completely absurd.

Kids aren’t snowflakes, but their junior high and high school years are some of the most difficult, for some *the* most difficult, that they’ll ever have. This isn’t me saying this - it’s decades of psychology. I’d be much more in favour of this if it was for the incoming class - don’t upend the kids that already have stability at both schools. But they’re not talking about only future students, unless I’m misunderstanding.

 

[Volute]

Thank you for your thoughtful post. IMO organically is the only way as I am vehemently against government mandating anything with regard to where children go to school other than current school districting based on property taxes and location. I would like school choice available but I don't think anyone will ever make that happen.

And you as well! It’s not an easy question. Property taxes funding schools has had unsatisfactory outcomes for so many places I’ve lived in. Is it better for your area? Personally, I know that it makes me angry how much better some schools are than others. We can’t necessarily achieve equality of outcome but the differences have become too great. I suppose I disagree with you respectfully, but very, very strongly. I don’t think people can compel government to represent them without education, and the current system favors wealth.

I’ve attended great schools. I’ve worked hard. Most people at these schools did. But it’s not a meritocracy, and it needs to be. They could never have deserved so much more than other students who weren’t from private schools or unbelievably well-funded public schools. These people move on to work that pays too much more. Stocks routinely outpace income more and more every year while the buy-in gets steeper. The organic way to address this kind of injustice is usually revolution, and I don’t want to see it.

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

An example of this would be healthcare for all, but then it might be harder to get appointments and care for your family or from the top doctors. Or spreading school resources and good teachers, to help low performing and/or poorly resourced schools.

I agree that if you don't make your family a #1 priority, no one else will.

I'd like to clarify the assumption that healthcare or free education for all means lesser standard in healthcare and education.

I have lived in countries with mandatory healthcare all my life. I have enjoyed free choice of doctors all my life. Our hospitals are ranked consistently among the best worldwide.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of all EU countries, but I have lived in Germany, France, Ireland and the UK.

Adding the Scandinavian countries and Benelux, Austria Spain and Italy, where I know the healthcare system as a whole and know they rank very high in most studies, you have a market as big as the US population wise.
In all EU countries you can get treatment with your European health insurance card free of charge.

You might have to pay out of pocket for treatments not covered under your policies (aesthetic dental, more complicated elective procedures when something simpler would have been sufficient).
Emergency room visits are free for insured individuals.

They just take my card and process the rest with my insurance.

Same goes for schools. They are publicly funded, but not by your districts, but by state level.

So there's more equality.

So this plus in equality doesn't mean worse standards, actually.
It's , in our case overall excellent standards.

Private schools remain the exception.
In Germany it's mostly for parents who wish bilingual or purely English education or for expats who wish to stay in their countries' educational system (Lycee Francais, American College, British school etc.).

In France it's also religious affiliation, since by law public schools have to be non -religious.
The fees for Catholic School were about 60€ / kid /month.



The sacrifices for more well to do families are completely different:

- You pay a tax on your fortune (primary residence is excluded from this)

- because you need to pay insurances for unemployed , health and your retirement it's deducted from your income. This leaves less " fun money ". You can invest in private retirement funds only after having paid your percentage into the public system)


-Houses are much smaller (building standards are regulated for the sake of the environment, so building is more expensive as well) .
- Smaller cars ( gas is more expensive, cars taxed for environmental reasons) ...
- Fewer BLING.



To answer the question: yes I value and appreciate this system and pay taxes happily.

We could have emigrated to the US multiple times (job offers including all Visa paperwork). We have benefitted from free education and both DH and hold (multiple) university degrees. Those would earn us personally a lot more in salary than here. We personally value their climate and chose to raise our kids with this same mindset as well.

 

[OboeGal]

I'd like to clarify the assumption that healthcare or free education for all means lesser standard in healthcare and education.

I have lived in countries with mandatory healthcare all my life. I have enjoyed free choice of doctors all my life. Our hospitals are ranked consistently among the best worldwide.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of all EU countries, but I have lived in Germany, France, Ireland and the UK.

Adding the Scandinavian countries and Benelux, Austria Spain and Italy, where I know the healthcare system as a whole and know they rank very high in most studies, you have a market as big as the US population wise.
In all EU countries you can get treatment with your European health insurance card free of charge.

You might have to pay out of pocket for treatments not covered under your policies (aesthetic dental, more complicated elective procedures when something simpler would have been sufficient).
Emergency room visits are free for insured individuals.

They just take my card and process the rest with my insurance.

Same goes for schools. They are publicly funded, but not by your districts, but by state level.

So there's more equality.

So this plus in equality doesn't mean worse standards, actually.
It's , in our case overall excellent standards.

Private schools remain the exception.
In Germany it's mostly for parents who wish bilingual or purely English education or for expats who wish to stay in their countries' educational system (Lycee Francais, American College, British school etc.).

In France it's also religious affiliation, since by law public schools have to be non -religious.
The fees for Catholic School were about 60€ / kid /month.



The sacrifices for more well to do families are completely different:

- You pay a tax on your fortune (primary residence is excluded from this)

- because you need to pay insurances for unemployed , health and your retirement it's deducted from your income. This leaves less " fun money ". You can invest in private retirement funds only after having paid your percentage into the public system)


-Houses are much smaller (building standards are regulated for the sake of the environment, so building is more expensive as well) .
- Smaller cars ( gas is more expensive, cars taxed for environmental reasons) ...
- Fewer BLING.



To answer the question: yes I value and appreciate this system and pay taxes happily.

We could have emigrated to the US multiple times (job offers including all Visa paperwork). We have benefitted from free education and both DH and hold (multiple) university degrees. Those would earn us personally a lot more in salary than here. We personally value their climate and chose to raise our kids with this same mindset as well.

I would add the Netherlands to your list of countries described here as having a high standard of healthcare and education for all, as well. My only disagreement with what you've written here, at least based on the experience of DH, who is from the Netherlands, as well as his family and friends, is having less "fun money." That has NOT been DH's experience at all compared to the US, having lived, worked, owned property, and paid taxes in both countries now. He paid a little more in taxes in the Netherlands than he does here, but he also had much more left over for investment and discretionary spending than he has here because what those increased taxes gained him back was so, so much more than his taxes gain him here in the US. He spends so much more for basic healthcare and healthcare-related expenses here than there, and needs to have much more personally invested for retirement and much more of a "safety cushion" of savings here than he did there. This doesn't even get into education expenses here; if one of us had needed college tuition here, or if we had children who did, that disparity would be even more still, by a substantial margin. It has been very difficult for him to deal with the fact that, since coming to the US, he has done the exact same research work at the same highly professional level for an even higher salary, yet is so much more financially insecure than he was in the Netherlands.

 

[OboeGal]

Hi,

People do not choose their parents. Thus, if you are lucky you have parents that fill many of the values of the society you are born into. You re privileged. If you are unlucky you have parents who are poor, perhaps drug addicted, and uneducated, and, in our society non-white. You are not privileged. Both those children born into privilege and those born into the not privileged camp have done nothing either positive or negative to deserve merit on their own behalf. So, we must have equality of opportunity in our society as each person should compete on an equal footing. I don't know if this is possible as support for the children of privilege far exceeds anything those of the non- privilege can provide. Outcomes have to be better for non-priv, as it is just luck who you parents are.

Now, the Corporation is a different story. The worker produces the goods, what ever they are.. Leadership is important, of course. But for the executives to pay themselves so much more than the worker is a fairly new idea. Executives, IMO, must relinquish their right to these out of the world paychecks and return to the workers, not the shareholders. that portion of their pay that is in excess. Workers deserve decent pay.

Billionaires are different than Co executives. They do need to be taxed. Money to be used for quality of opportunity in the schools.

Money is wasted in our society and is not always the answer to fix things. Defending your personal fiefdom also should be held to a minimum. Change is hard.

Annette

I couldn't agree more with everything you've said here. I especially want to draw the attention of others who have commented in this thread to your point that children don't choose their parents or the circumstances and environment into which they land; it is extraordinarily unfair, and I would argue terribly unwise and short-sighted, for parents to pour all their resources into further advantaging their own children when other children are falling further behind, and not one of those children has done a thing to "earn" their circumstances, and their circumstances don't necessarily have any correlation with their innate talents or what they could be capable of contributing to the well-being of society. This attitude of going out of the way to advantage one's "own" over others is just another expression of the same impulses that underly racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc. - "only my tribe is deserving, not those others." It's also another expression of the self-centered, dog-eat-dog attitude that prevails so strongly in America, and what's happening here in a crisis - a pandemic - is a perfect example of the outcome of that attitude. That attitude has it's moments - in a few circumstances where an individual or group must protect themselves against the predators in society - but not as the prevailing cultural and societal ethos. The cultural ethos that led to the advancement of human beings as a species was our sense of community - an understanding that when everyone else in the village does reasonably well, we tend to do well ourselves. It doesn't have to be perfectly equal - there's a place for "extras" to motivate extra effort and developing talents and innovation - but everyone should be OK at a baseline minimum.

That is why I say that this super-charged effort to advantage one's own self or family or children is unwise and short-sighted. Your child will not grow up to live a perfect life, be perfectly self-sufficient in every way, or live in a bubble. They will live in a society with others they will need to work with, live with, raise a family with. They will have to rely on others sometimes to provide them things and help keep them safe. They have to live with the elected officials that the majority around them vote for. It behooves them for the people around them to be well-educated and capable, to be healthy (both physically and mentally), to not be desperate and ignorant - even if that means your child has a little less materially, they ultimately will be living in a better and safer society. Isn't that what we should ultimately want for them?

 

[OboeGal]

As to the original question of the thread - yes, as long as I still had a certain minimum (the level of which would probably depend on where I was living and what kind of social safety net was in place), I would be willing to give up some of my privilege to lift others. For various reasons: speaking selfishly, as I explained above, if those around me are doing better in general, it's likely that I will be living in a safer, better society. For the reason that I've had times in my life when I desperately needed help, and there was none forthcoming, no matter where I turned, and I know how that has affected me for the rest of my life. Yet other times, there was help, and I know how that affected me, and utterly changed my life and what I was able to contribute to society. If I know what a difference that makes, why would I wish to perpetuate the cruelty by not helping when I could? Why would I not want to face my mortal end knowing that I chose to be better than those who failed me - that when I could, I helped perhaps change another's life, and maybe more of society rippling out from them? For the reason that......it's the right thing to do.

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

if those around me are doing better in general, it's likely that I will be living in a safer, better society.

I think this sums up the European understanding of our goal as human society pretty well.

Some on here call it Socialism. Which, in extremely simplified terms it is NOT. It's still still a market driven economic system and merit based society. But the focus is on equal opportunity.

As @smitcompton and @OboeGal said: no one picks their parents.

No child must be left behind.



ETA

@SandyinAnaheim
I've read your story and I have a the deepest respect. You're a survivor. ((Hugs))

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that a minor living in a car wouldn't lead to immediate action. I know there are social workers and the child protection office, no?
In my youth and now still the cops would be called on this as soon as anyone would notice. They'd get there with the children's/youth intervention team and hand over the kid to a social worker led sheltered home. From there on into a long term youth group. It's like a shared appt. with social workers training the kids for real life on their own.

Usually one can stay there until 18, most if the times 21 y/O.
My mom's friend used to work as a coordinator for the service.
They aim to offer all possibilities to the kids before they are homeless. Apparently there's nowadays a kind of "couch surfing" situation oftentimes before the actual homelessness. They're trying to help the kids at that stage by being available by phone/text and app, Internet contact form.
I sure hope things have changed in the US since then!!