Why America hates its children
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
For example, the article prominently quotes a state Rep from Idaho to illustrate why the author’s political opponents have the wrong values. But 8th graders in Idaho do better in reading than those in California, Delaware, Oregon, and Maryland, and comparably to New York, Vermont, Connecticut, and Minnesota. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/s.... And Idaho is a lot poorer than those states!
The author’s comparison to Greece is unintentionally revealing. Allegedly, Greece doesn’t hate its children. But Greece spends only 4% of GDP on education, in comparison to 6% for the US. Another telling data point: over 90% of Greek children live with both parents, compared to under 70% in the US.
European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.
That's a weird statement. By your logic, diversity makes people's lives worse, and folks in Idaho are justified in wanting no part in it.
> Having been raised Republican and evangelical, I'd agree with the article. Those groups push kids under the bus and think they're doing the kids a favor.
But, on objective metrics, those dumbfucks in Idaho are doing a better job teaching their kids to read than those in California--and for a lot less money.
It's not just reading scores. Conservatives have greater well-being on various objective measures: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand.... That includes their kids: https://www.foxnews.com/media/conservative-teenagers-general....
Utah has the kind of flat, egalitarian society liberals say they want to create: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/12/28/24017943/best-state-.... ("A 2014 article in The Atlantic pointed toward two strengths that Salt Lake City has that make it a positive environment for upward mobility: 'A strong middle class and a less extreme gap between the rich and the poor.' ... Based on data from 2020 to 2022, the Gini Index from the U.S. Census Bureau ranks Utah as having one of the lowest economic inequality scores across the country.").
> European countries have many problems; IME placing profit, religion, and extreme forms of individualism above child well-being aren't on the list.
In America, religion is pretty much the only check on "extreme forms of individualism." Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the places where, more than anywhere else in America, people worship money rather than God. Are those models to follow?
That's only part of the problem in blue states though, and does not explain the full discrepancy.
One of the states rayiner cited Idaho as outperforming is Delaware. Idaho does not have a "small fraction" of the population of Delaware, it has almost twice Delware's population
It is also unclear why, above a certain minimum, population in itself should make any significant difference to a jurisdiction's ability to provide a quality education. As population scales, other relevant factors (such as student and teacher numbers and size of budgets) should scale proportionately – and if they don't, then we've identified a relevant explanatory factor other than population.
Furthermore, Idaho is a lot more diverse than you seem to think it is. Only 80% of the state's population is non-Hispanic white; in K-12 public school enrolments, it is only 73%. [0] Deep red Idaho's schools outperform those of light blue Maine, despite the fact that Idaho has close to 40% more people, and significantly greater ethnic diversity (Maine's population is 92% non-Hispanic white)
American cities and suburbs are so low density that they end up losing money because infrastructure is spread out over such a large area that taxes collected per square mile aren't enough to keep things working. People get pissed if the electric poles fall down, or when water stops flowing, so school budgets get cut instead.
Accordingly, older cities lose more money (more old stuff to maintain) and cities that grow larger (add more low density single family homes) lose more money faster.
40% of Idaho's population lives in a single mid-size city that apparently isn't burning through cash. If Boise 3x'd in population, it'd probably also start losing money like other larger American cities.
This is very much false. I don’t know why this misinformation is so widespread, but even a glance look at the municipal budgets is enough to see the facts contradict it. The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.
Newer areas do fine. Infrastructure eventually needs not just maintenance, but massive replacement.
Roads, bridges, sewer systems, all start to fall down. Ideally a city would estimate the worst cost of replacement at the time infrastructure is first built, and set aside money from year 1 such that the replacement cost is fully funded when the roads/pipes/bridges wear out.
If that ever does happen (and maybe it has happened a couple times in history) what will end up happening is some candidate for city council comes along and says they can reduce taxes, just vote'em in, and now all of a sudden the "50 year in the future replacement fund" is no more.
There is of course the economic argument that saving money in the bank with crap interest rates is terrible finances, and that it is in fact better for the city to just borrow 50 years hence, but the counter argument is that low interests were a recent anomaly in US history.
(The investment options cities have for where they can save money for 50 year later projects are fairly limited, which is another point against cities saving money up).
Now, a bit ironically, large condo and townhome associations in many cities are required to have savings sufficient for future expenses. These laws were passed because without the backing of "the city is making us" board members on HOAs will quickly get kicked out the second they propose a budget that actually covers future expenses. In cities that don't mandate responsible reserve funds on the part of HOAs, what you find is tons of complexes are underfunded because despite having a (mandated by law) prepared document of future expenses, the can is just kicked down the road.
(cities do have reserve funding, but rarely do those take into account all future infra needs)
> The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.
I opened the budget for the city of Kirkland WA[1], which is obscenely well run financially (they regularly run a surplus despite Washington state having a law capping properly tax increases are below inflation levels, a law which has slowly starved many cities of funding), and capital projects are over 25% of the budget. Just water and sewer appears to be around 13% of the city's overall budget.
Looking at Seattle's budget, a city that other countries would call "low density" (and honestly, in some countries Seattle is small enough that it wouldn't even be considered a major city!) of a nearly 6 billion dollar budget, 2 billion is spent on utilities. As someone who lives in Seattle, I can attest that one of the current problems we face is our sewer system is way behind the times and needs lots of updating, but again, no money.
Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).
Washington State is actually a bit odd in that district funding largely comes from the state, by way of property taxes, but even so let's compare the funding for schools to the rest of a city's budget.
Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects.
Is it a huge chunk of the city's budget? Yeah. But by no means do educational expenses dwarf other city expenses.
[1] https://www.kirklandwa.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/2/fin...
[2]https://www.shorelinewa.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57270...
[3]https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1694655298/shoreline...
Around where I live, schools are in financial troubles, and infra is in financial trouble, nothing is doing well.
West Coast cities are older (rising costs) while also being low to medium density (low tax base) and honestly outside of LA and SF, don't even have a large population for how much area they take up.
It isn't a great combo.
In regards to city vs school funding, the two are separated in WA state because of how schools are funded, except that cities pass special levies to fill funding gaps, which is a separate political problem.
Of course city residents rarely understand how funding works, and they yell at the city council when schools start falling apart. (Quite a few of the public schools I went to had broken heating and crumbing walls, and from what I grok, the financial situation of the district was better back then compared to now!)
> Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).
> (...)
> Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects
First, the Shoreline School District's budget is more like $220M. $168M is just the General Fund, additional $26M go to capital projects, and $35M go to debt service. That's $16k per student, which, by the way, is around 50% more than the private school tuition for my children in Seattle, which does not exactly makes me sympathetic to the narrative of starved school budgets being cut to pay for infra.
Worth noting is that many Shoreline parents pay for private education, but do not pay for private roads or water or sewer. Thus, $220M is underestimate of educational spend, whereas infrastructure spend is not underestimated by looking at the budget.
Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less (not a given though: we'd have fewer miles of roads to maintain, but average right of way would become much busier, and work on busy road is typically much more expensive). So let's dive into Shoreline budget to see what spend could look like in more dense world.
The $136.1 capital spend is split as follows:
* $43M is General Capital, and $92M is Road Capital
* The $43M General Capital fund is split into $5M spend on Maintenance Facility, $5M on "Debt Service and Other", and $33M is spent on capital improvements to city parks. I'll assume that all of this spend would remain in denser world (unless denser world means fewer/smaller city parks per capita).
* $92M is spent roughly in half between Pedestrian/Non-Motorized Projects, and Safety Operations (which I assume is mostly motorized infrastructure).
* Half of pedestrian spend is on a pedestrian bridge over I-5, which would still be built if Shoreline was denser (in fact, we might then need more pedestrian bridges). The other half is building new sidewalks. More pedestrians means fewer roads, but more sidewalks required, so it's hard for me to estimate how sidewalk spend which change with increased density, but let's say that increased density means spend on sidewalks could be cut by half, so we'd see something like $15M savings.
* In the Safety Operations (i.e. motorized) spend, large majority is N 145th St improvements. This is the major arterial in Shoreline, and would likely still be part of Shoreline's budget if it was denser. It would probably be shorter then, so let's cut the spend by half. The rest we can also cut in half, for $20M in total savings.
* Worth noting is that road resurfacing spend (which accounts for most of road maintenance) is less than $3M, which is a tiny fraction of the whole budget. Maintaining suburban roads is very cheap.
* Thus, increased densification would result in savings of something like $35M, which is a quarter of capital projects.
* If you do the same exercise for utilities, you'll find that a third of it is surface water spend (storm drains etc), which would probably be cut by half in denser world. Two thirds is wastewater spend, which would be reduced by much less in denser world (as the spend scales much more with volume than with length of the system).
* To sum up, densification would save Shoreline something like $60M, which is a small fraction of educational spend. In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control, to the level of my private school in Seattle.
Though compared to Seattle, Shoreline isn't going to have as much of a "random bridges falling down" problem. :-D
But that aside, I did notice this
> In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control, to the level of my private school in Seattle.
Public schools cost more to operate because they have to serve everyone, including those with special needs and learning disabilities. They have to help feed children who do not have enough food, and they are expected to have after school programs from children that do not have a safe place to go home to (which, given how early schools get out, is honestly a problem for many families, public or private school).
As more children from (comparatively) wealthy go to private schools, the average cost of schooling the kids in public schools actually goes up, as a larger % of the kids left need extra help and support.
> The other half is building new sidewalks.
I am happy that the residents in Shoreline have finally decided to stop running over pedestrians! But seriously, Shoreline needs more sidewalks, it'll honestly add a lot to property values there.
> Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less
There would also be a lot more revenue per given square mile. You could take my Seattle neighborhood and 2x the density w/o much harm to the "feel" of the neighborhood. If you 3x it, now you can add tons of commercial activity, allow small business owners to actually live close to their business (why does my barber have to drive in to work? Oh because zoning makes living in Seattle absurd), and cities start to actually make money.
The economics of dense cities are incredibly different, and they start a virtuous cycle that works out really well for everyone. Sadly America shut down all the goodness when we added strict zoning laws.
Also where the heck are you spending only 11k on private school? The non-religious private schools in Seattle that I looked at cost 30-40k. (Heck the at home daycare we use right now costs over 25k a year!)
Why isn't education funded at the federal level? Feels like something so expensive, should be funded at the federal level, not just regulated there, and not when federal income taxes dwarf state tax options.
I have no idea why anyone would bring agricultural subsidies in the context of education spend, other than to signal disdain for the outgroup. This is simply completely irrelevant.
Their parents sure as hell aren’t going to do the voting for them. They just want lower taxes.
Gift link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/01/america-f...
Because its not salient. Your child has a higher likelihood of being struck by lightning twice than to be killed in a school shooting.
I don't think the author considered their own bias since there is no mention of movements like gender ideology that are the epitome of individualism, which says that anyone can declare their own gender and identity. If you can define your own identity, how is society supposed to function in any coherent way? People can't predict your role in society, and so the default behavior is to ignore people and let everyone live their lives in whatever way they please. I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong, but it's a blind spot of the article's analysis.
Progressivism is aiming for the maximum amount of individualism, as it aspires to maximize individual freedom and create technology that empowers the individual, from cars to VR. The alternative is to maximize the family as the basic unit of society, but in order to do that you have to define what a family is, and right now it seems the status quo is dismantling the family structure and giving individuals direct control of their role and identity in society (which amounts to having no roles).
Children should be protected against airborne transmittable sickness.
Also, we are still in COVID it's not over.
COVID is around, and always will be. And "protecting" causes more harm and weakens the development of the immune system.
All well known and common sense stuff, to those who don't live in fear of merely getting sick.
That risk elicits a disproportionate response in rational people. Dismissing it is useless.
Guess what prevented me from getting sick last time I was in the car with my father just days before he tested positive? I was wearing a mask.
Mask and get your vaccines and boosters and limit exposure. For everyone!
Two year old children will remove their facemask to pick their nose, or share a licked cookie with their best friend. You can try to teach older kids to use a facemask corectly, but for two years olld it's security theater.
Very first sentence of the article.
God do I hate this style. Do we always need to start with your own, personal, true-to-you, totally-happened experience this one time?
Is it a new thing or it's always been like that and I didn't realize it?
but often it tells you how little time they have spent actually engaged with the real truth of the place or places they are about to compare the problems of wherever they live, instead of the idealistic view of someone who was visiting family or being a tourist … it is a shortcut to that emotional connection to the reader, but taking that can sometimes leave the writer clearly marked as not actually having any grounds upon which the rest of their arguments can stand…
This however doesn’t appear to suffer from that. It seems quite well considered.
And maybe the article eventually uses data that goes beyond "my 2 weeks visiting my dad", but then why do I need this idiotic intro? Is it supposed to build some sort of credibility, like "I was there, I saw it, I experienced it, now you have to agree with me"?
Anyway, no I didn't keep reading.
Anecdotes aren't bad if they lead into something more substantive. E.g., "My experience with my kids in Greece got me interested in [concept], and here is the data that I collected; my conclusion is that..."
But no, it's usually like: Check out this experience I had or quirky thing I do. Now let's talk about something tangentially related.
It's really a need to vent being displayed most prominently. Maybe covid/social media/WFM/inflation/whatever you want to blame has made people lonely to the point of trying to add water cooler talk into their publications.
American culture’s view of children as burdensome is a self fulfilling prophecy. Parents may sarcastically quip about their children’s imposition on their careers, finances, and sex lives, but they practice genuine resentment when they get some “me time” by encouraging a child’s screen time addiction, or by refusing to punish a child’s antisocial behavior. Their mal-adjusted children are unsuitable companions in a social venue, a genuine burden unwelcome to society for many years longer than they need be.
You can break this cycle by not thinking of your child like a burden, and by training them to not be a burden to others.
Shortly after I could talk, I was raised to address adults respectfully and to say please and thank you. My dad would also have us practice sitting still and quiet for a few minutes before bed. These basic manners elicited a decade of compliments from wait staff and flight attendants effusively telling my parents what nice children we were. Given what a small effort it takes to make eye contact and say “thank you”, even at the time I understood their praise as more a comment on society.
Now that I have children of my own, I’ve taught them from a young age how to attend a funeral or wedding (or grocery store) without ruining it for others. I can bring them without hesitation to a meeting with my banker or lawyer, excellent learning opportunities. They say please and thank you, and in response, adults across our community dote on and encourage and appreciate my children, and their good behaviour has earned them privileges and opportunity that I couldn’t personally have awarded them.
I refuse to call my wife a “ball and chain” or to refer to nun
American culture’s view of children as burdensome is a self fulfilling prophecy. Parents may sarcastically quip about their children’s imposition on their careers, finances, and sex lives, but they practice genuine resentment when they get some “me time” by encouraging a child’s screen time addiction, or by refusing to punish a child’s antisocial behavior. Their mal-adjusted children are unsuitable companions in a social venue, a genuine burden unwelcome to society for many years longer than they need be, and it breeds anti child sentiment.
You can break this cycle by not thinking of your child like a burden, and by training them to not be a burden to others.
Shortly after I could talk, I was raised to address adults respectfully and to say please and thank you. My dad would also have us practice sitting still and quiet for a few minutes before bed. These basic manners elicited a decade of compliments from wait staff and flight attendants effusively telling my parents what nice children we were. Given what a small effort it takes to make eye contact and say “thank you”, even at the time I understood their praise as more a comment on society.
Now that I have children of my own, I’ve taught them from a young age how to attend a funeral or wedding (or grocery store) without ruining it for others. I can bring them without hesitation to a meeting with my banker or lawyer, excellent learning opportunities. They say please and thank you, and in response, adults across our community dote on and encourage and appreciate my children, and their good behaviour has earned them privileges and opportunity that I couldn’t personally have awarded them.
I’ve done my best to avoid the attitude trap of treating my children like a burden. They are each individually and altogether one of the greatest joys I’ve ever known. And teaching them a modicum of manners early on seems to have reopened whatever doors for them that American anti-child culture would have closed.
Somehow I knew that would be the main point as soon as I saw the title and the publication. For many, the answer to all problems is government spending.