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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure those things would help some people, but probably not as much as you would think. I always see "access to education" as if lack of good teachers is the main thing holding disadvantaged kids back and not their trainwreck of a family life where the single mom working 2 jobs and didn't graduate high school herself has no idea how to help her kids and lets them slip into truancy like she did.

Making the public school system take on all of the roles 2 parents used to take on is not sustainable. We need to fix the problem at a more fundamental level.

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> the single mom working 2 jobs and didn't graduate high school herself

This isn't a quick fix strategy, it's a long term fix strategy that takes generations. The "access to education" is exactly for the benefit of people like the mother. Also the UBI means that she no longer has to work two jobs to pay for basic services for her kids.

UBI is the ultimate safety net that catches almost everyone who the current system has failed, and education is the long term guarantee to break the cycle of poverty.

Maybe, but I'm not convinced. People don't just magically bootstrap themselves into incremental self-improvement just because their immediate needs are being met. My next door neighbors here in Maryland are impoverished african americans receiving SNAP and HOC from the state (basically free rent and food), and the kids are consistently truant and on track to drop out of middle school. There needs to be an element of mentorship at some point.

Your observation of reality is racist /s.

Part of "access to decent education" is a school with well paid, highly motivated, and properly resourced teachers that can develop those relationships with kids who need extra help.

So what is your take on that? I am genuinely interested, because coming from a country where everybody started with more or less the same crappy housing, cheap transit, no-frills healthcare, and ok education (and where 95% of my classmates were the same ethnicity, and the other 5% were, if anything, more successful and richer), I've come to look at such people with extreme disdain. Growing up I was actually on the poorer end of my peers, and I was merely pro-meritocracy, by my mid-20ies I was (and still am) outright classist.

So, in the US, I buy the arguments about the people who have a precarious housing situation, etc.; but I would absolutely "leave behind" the people you describe, with free rent and food. What else can one do?

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