Man, I hope some day, maybe when you have kids, you come to realize what a truly awful thing to say that was. In the mean time, it might be worth reading a bit of history to understand why our country has repeatedly re-affirmed it's decision to uphold the values in the Declaration of Independence to spend money to take care of all it's citizens and not just the lucky healthiest smartest richest ones.
> Your needling for sources is derailing this discussion.
I can totally empathize with feeling like you're being needled, as you say, when you're asked multiple times for evidence to support your claims that you don't have. I will stop asking. Is it possible that the lack of evidence says more about the value of those claims?
This discussion was derailed right from the start when you decided to pin the country's economic problems on difficult children and parents with questions -- things that objectively don't affect the overall budget very much, if at all. I've just been trying to figure out where your anger is coming from, what makes you think that some parents talking to teachers is some kind of drain on the economy, what you think makes it a serious problem that needs solving.
The irony here is 1) you jumped on me over a comment about education that I didn't make, the parent comment did, and 2) your entire calculus of fixation on short-term budget efficiencies is obsolete under UBI & other future possibilities. Using ROI for education is at best specious today. Should UBI come to pass, ROI will not be a meaningful metric at all.