But broadly, the long-term benefits of social programs are to create a richer, more stable society. If one's goal is strictly positional, then other people being less poor is negative, because the whole point is having someone to look down upon. However, you can take some comfort from the "more stable" part, as it means your kids are less likely to get guillotined at some point.
I think the value of the location of a house for me would be tied to the relative safety, convenience, and nearby opportunities compared to other neighborhoods. None of those things require that people less affluent than me don't live in the same neighborhood. That being said, it might be tough for some of them to afford it, but that's what the housing vouchers are designed to help with in the first place.
Too many Section 8 residents will hurt school scores, which hurts home values, which hurts school scores, ...
I have no idea how many it would take to impact values in such a way. But, the school board meetings I’ve attended show that if nothing else, wealthy parents are fiercely protective of their school districts.
Test scores have a lot to do with parental income, but as you say, that's strongly correlated with money and the things money buys.
It's the chance of a genetically fortunate person (with a great nature-given voice, or intelligence, or strength and perseverance) to become rich through it, and maybe pass it to children. This chance is not very high, of course.
It's funny how even the most restrained statements with any eugenic implications are outright rejected, but people don't bat an eye at Lysenkoism.
If you don't believe that intelligence is at all heritable, then I'm not sure how you would explain why it is that people with genetic defects like Down's syndrome have below average IQs.
In regards to arguing that genetic defects cause lower intelligence, you have to define intelligence. The rate at which certain, particular categories of knowledge are learned? The speed at which knowledge is utilized? Are autistic savants the most intelligent people to have ever lived? People with down syndrome seem adept at reading and responding to body language, in my experience. Precise empathy is certainly a form of intelligence. I think our intelligences are diffuse. In the abscence of how biological data relates to these, we are just pattern matching.
After that, you have to ascertain what is even a factor in those intelligences: the total pool of genes we can draw from, the ways the genes express themselves on or off, or the delicate mosh-pit of biochemistry weaving our personality together. There are too many variables to control for, variables that aren't understood. It seems clear to me that environment dictates more than heritability of genetics. How much more is up for debate, but I'm not confident genes will be adequately contextualized in my lifetime.
"People with Down's syndrome are not less intelligent than average" is the sort of thing that you can only say in an ultra-progressive environment. It would not be taken seriously by most people. Under any reasonable definition of intelligence, those with Down's syndrome have less of it on average.
Your observation about multiple intelligences isn't novel or profound. The interesting thing about intelligence is that different kinds of intelligence are positively correlated (SAT math scores correlate with SAT verbal scores. Musical ability is correlated with mathematical ability. Etc. etc.)
At this point you've just recited the standard college freshman talking points, which tells me that this isn't a subject that you're curious about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
I don't even think a statement like "It seems clear to me that environment dictates more than heritability of genetics" is intelligible. The idea of dividing it into X% genetics versus (100 - X)% environment betrays an incredibly naive understanding of the question.
It's a bit more than that. If you look at all the different measure of intelligence that people have come up with like vocabulary, finding patterns in shapes, SAT scores, etc, and do a factor analysis there seems to be more or less a single factor behind the correlation. Some of these, like vocabulary, have an additional large effect from training. Some, like vocabulary and SAT verbal scores, have a strong correlation independent of the the rest of these varied scores. But in general there seems to be one factor, the hypothetical g, that explains why everything is correlated together. And it seems to explain part of other test results too that don't seem to be what we would normally consider intelligence, like the classic reflex test that measures how long it takes you to press a button after a light turns on.
IQ tests try to measure this 'g' by using a number of different subtests chosen to not respond strongly to practice. But these, like all tests, have a certain amount of noise and shouldn't be taken as absolute truth.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/your-genes-wont-make-yo...
I mean that in a somewhat literal sense: it was once true that "gentleman" meant a man possessing property, a member of the gentry. The section titled Sir George Sitwell in the Wikipedia article on the word "gentleman" is amusing and to the point.
There are rich crooks, yes, but that's beside the point here.
I think the main driver is maybe less living in this area, and more that your kids can go to a great school.
I think if the US ever figures out a way to make the schools for poor people decent or even good, much of the reason for segregation would disappear.
Instead of trying to fix the problem by allowing non-monetary ways to segregate, which would be available to everyone, people are busy trying to universalize the problem.
To answer your question: you're not an asshole, but you're the only one without a broken leg... and we'll break it to make things fair to everyone.
That's exactly what this study ISN'T saying. The entire point of this research is to determine if the reason very poor people stay in very poor neighborhoods is personal preference or other factors. This study found that many poor people would in fact prefer to move from very poor neighborhoods.
There isn't. You didn't buy the house from the government and they don't owe you any right to not meet any poor people. Segregating out the poor from access to quality education just reinforces generational class stagnation- no one can be anything better than their parents were. This is a bad thing for everyone in the long run.
> I’m going to sound like an asshole, but...
Life-tip: if you need to start a sentence with that, chance are it's because what you sound like is reflecting reality.
Ignoring the snark, arguments like these stop making sense when the government is actively tipping the scales by manipulating the housing market in that area. You can make arguments for the morality of it, but arguments along the lines of the government not owing one group something are pretty weak when you're literally supporting the government owing another group something. The government can owe whoever and whatever we want them to owe.
I used to live in a highly integrated neighborhood. The neighbors across the street were section 8. I had no problem with that. What I did have a problem with is when my daughter was playing in the front yard and their son ran outside screaming shooting his rifle as a car peeled out down the street. This was of course on mother’s day while my mother-in-law was on the phone.
We moved to the most expensive neighborhood we could afford after that. And you know what? The worse thing I’ve had to deal with was some neighbors having a slightly heated conversation at 11pm on their front porch.
If that hadn’t been an option, if everywhere had this “affordable housing”, we’d have just moved three hours away and bought 100 acres and lived in a trailer instead. I’m not going to risk my daughters safety to fulfill some equity agenda.
My concern is that class stagnation, where one cannot be anything more than the class they were born to, is a bad thing that we must work hard to prevent from happening. Keeping poor people out of nice schools? That is a thing that causes class stagnation.
> We moved to the most expensive neighborhood we could afford after that.
Right, and what if that neighbourhood had raised prices, locking you out of that option? What if that neighbourhood re-zoned it's school district to ensure no one with less than $K/year income could possibly afford to go there? That's what class stagnation is all about, locking you and your daughter into where you are so that you cannot become anything more than you were born.
Affordable housing means poverty is not isolated in a single, dense community. It gives those born into families with lower incomes the option to go to better schools- as you have with your daughter.
You made it- wouldn't it be good if more people could? Or are you the type to say "Got mine, fuck the rest of you"?
It's also fairly obvious - rich people think they're better humans than poor people and don't want to live near them. Not worthy of much hand-wringing or fretting in my opinion.
This seems... unlikely.
I.e. even after the white people get replaced, it would still be a good neighborhood.
Naturally, I don't agree with the "race realist" view on this, and think the term is a bit of a strawman. Humans are intensely social, people's actions are deeply shaped by their social environments, and the liberal view being mocked isn't that your location transforms you but that your social milieu does.
But your comment seems to actually be this strawman come to life, which I find fascinating. To be clear, do you really think it's likely that good neighborhoods are shaped _primarily_ by factors independent of who lives in them? I know this is possible in the abstract, eg a downtown neighborhood is closer to jobs, a neighborhood with a freeway running through it is rarely cohesive, etc. But this seems dwarfed by the mountains and mountains of data points of neighborhoods transforming dramatically due to shifts in resident demographics, and pretty much every housing-related phenomenon is in line with this: white flight, gentrification, the recent impoverishing of the suburbs etc.
I do not - I was pointing out the contradiction. Although to be fair, the way schools are funded in the US complicates this. If a neighborhood becomes low-income, then the schools will get less funding as well, as I understand it, because schools are funded from neighborhood-level property taxes.
Seems like the really wealthy will still end up with enclaves one way or another.
Because unfamiliarity breeds contempt.
One of the successes of london is that unlike paris they didn't eject all the poor people to the outskirts in the 1930-70s. this means that even opposite the houses of parliament, there is social housing.
Yes there are sink estates, but they are not whole boroughs (well, kinda, there are stressed areas.)
yes, we still have problems. The police still stop black people because they are "suspicious" (alas we've recently gone backwards)
But they are not stopped because they are in the "wrong area" the whole "Trayvon Martin" effect just doesn't really apply.
TL;DR:
Segregation increases problems, regardless of it being by choice, or by an act of government (ala rhodesia/south africa) unless you socialise with the "other" you are going to continually live in fear/contempt
Unless such families make the effort to change their circumstance and save enough to move to the preferable area, programs like this one rob them of their free will.
I don't understand why advocates of progressive programs like this seem to always miss this crucial point. Real, lasting change only comes when people make conscious decisions to improve their lives with no external input whatsoever handed to them. Anything else is anti-competitive and subject to regulatory capture.
>Unless such families make the effort to change their circumstance and save enough to move to the preferable area, programs like this one rob them of their free will.
This is a bizarre claim. Participants were given advice, not forcibly relocated:
>They would also be given information on which neighborhoods promise the most opportunity for their kids, based on the research data. They’d also be assigned “navigators” whose job it was to walk them through the apartment application process, and receive additional financial assistance with down payments if necessary.
that doesn't sound right. most people want to improve their life. it's not about making the decision, but about knowing what steps to take to achieve it. and why wouldn't someone take help for that?
you seem to think that making a conscious decision is all it takes. far from it. in particular, when the steps to achieve it involve time and effort that you don't seem to have time for.
i made a conscious decision to increase my income years ago. it wasn't effective until i found partners who helped me get clients (iaw i found a sales person who would work by sharing profit instead of taking a salary), so that i could focus delivering the service.