CHild Poverty

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Yes, a good public education system would certainly be worth having. Of course, with free textbooks and supplies. Preferably a breakfast and lunch program for children of low income families. Regular checkups, eye and dental examinations and maybe a monthly clothing exchange. School-bus service, at least in winter, and definitely in areas where children might have to cross danger zones. After-school care for the younger ones. Enrichment programs and physical education. A quality library wouldn't come amiss.

Nice diversion.

Not a diversion at all - it's right back on topic.

I'd only add free school dinners too.- for kids that would other wise go hungry in the day time.

I agree with all of that too. Shame he's such a PC fuck and doesn't know when being a decent human being crosses the line into an icky turd.

[Hobbes' Choice]

And street-proofing. Sex education, monitoring for high risk of abuse or drug-use.
Most important: offering the children of marginal people a way to change direction - a way out, alternatives, opportunities, good example, leadership and fellowship, so that they are not left with the bleak choice of joining a gang, becoming a mule or being an outcast. Some police organizations have made attempts to do this, as have social and religious organizations. But it's wrong to leave so many children to the hit-and-miss help of charities. We need to take national responsibility for them: co-ordinate all the efforts and close all the cracks they fall through.

(Sorry I went off topic before. I'll ignore the provocation next time.)

There is nothing here I can disagree with. The trouble with the neoliberal, market driven society it that it fails miserably in two ways: one is a failure to impart a moral compass to anything, being obsessed with money; and the other is a complete failure to recognise socially beneficial long term activities.

It could only respond to the plight of vulnerable children in terms of the financial benefits that spending in them could bring, and as children are by nature an investment in the future, neoliberalism (under whose yoke we all work), cannot see the value. The idea the you could spend to improve a child's opportunities just because it is morally right to do so, is simply not in consideration.

Nowhere except Chili has embraced neoliberal economics since 1980 more than the USA. In the USA the children of the 1980s,90s, and now also those of the current century are the adult products of the new ideology of the market driven society. In that time prison populations have doubled and have exceeded all historical, and domestic records.

[Skip]

Many people, including president Obama, have pointed out the economic benefits of investing in the next generation. For ordinary citizens, it makes every kind of sense to reduce crime over a period of decades, to increase productivity and co-operation; it makes financial senses to spend a few thousand $ per child on a classroom, rather than hundreds of thousands on a prison cell - never mind the harm done to persons and communities.

But the corporate mind can plan in only quarterly increments. And the truly cynical financial mind can see many future $$$ in private prisons, alarm systems, home insurance and arming city police as for war.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Many people, including president Obama, have pointed out the economic benefits of investing in the next generation. For ordinary citizens, it makes every kind of sense to reduce crime over a period of decades, to increase productivity and co-operation; it makes financial senses to spend a few thousand $ per child on a classroom, rather than hundreds of thousands on a prison cell - never mind the harm done to persons and communities.

But the corporate mind can plan in only quarterly increments. And the truly cynical financial mind can see many future $$$ in private prisons, alarm systems, home insurance and arming city police as for war.

Bring on Bernie, and Jeremy.

[Obvious Leo]

I used to work with a bloke who was fond of saying that there's no such thing as a stupid Chinaman. Although this is obviously a silly statement he makes a point when it comes to investing in the education of children as a way of investing in the future. In no way am I an apologist for the methods used by the Chinese state in order to achieve its goal of becoming a world superpower but there can be little doubt that state capitalism is a better long-term strategy than the laissez-faire uncertainties of the free market. Personally I like it no better, and I predict yet another dynastic collapse in China within a generation, but whatever rises from the ashes of such a collapse may ultimately lead to a better way in which humanity should govern itself. I say this more in hope than in anticipation but at least the Chinese will have an educated population to sculpt such a future while many countries in the west will have been drawn into their own self-destruction by focusing on their quarterly balance sheets and thereby marginalising a substantial proportion of their own populations.

In the modern jargon we often read talk of "risk management", and individual humans are both humanity's greatest asset and its greatest risk factor. I would suggest that our future risks are not being well managed.