Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
From a societal perspective, it makes FAR more sense to me to be a little mercenary about where those tax $$ are going, and for which purposes. While it may not be a popular (or at least... PC ) statement, if I have just $10 to spend, and I'm presented with two students, one of whom is working four grades BELOW cohort and cannot seem to learn to read.... and the other of whom is working four grades ABOVE cohort and is ready for advanced mathematics/etc... my impulse is to give that funding where it is an investment for society, not just a momentary way of making myself feel awesome and charitable.

Both situations are social investment opportunities that can pay big dividends down the road. In the first situation, spending on that child to bring them up to a functional level means that child is likelier to grow up to be a functional adult, and self-sufficiency and contributing to society is always less costly than institutionalization.

I can make an argument that the "greatest generation" was also the overwhelmingly most invested-in generation (military experience, GI Bill, government-sponsored research, interstate system, Apollo program, etc.), which played a major role in making them so great.

So the better question is, why can't we come up with $20, and invest in both children?


We have-- but the focus has been on "neediest" rather than on "investment" there for so long that nobody even QUESTIONS throwing the entire $20 at the child who is 'struggling' to keep up.

I don't think that is going to change until we can (societally) admit that some people probably can't keep up with everyone else.

This is why I think that that first sentence really rankled with me. Clearly it resonated the same way with others; it's the notion that this is some kind of zero sum game to begin with, right??

Dude's point is well-taken there. As long as we see this as a 'zero sum game' in which ANY resources directed at students in the 99th percentile are "diverted" from "those poor children" at the 1st percentile, this isn't going to change. At some point we need to step back and ask which is the better investment in the long run-- and admit that even if it IS a zero-sum game, maybe we're not calculating the opportunity costs correctly.



Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.