Profiting From a Child’s Illiteracy | Hacker News Reader

Profiting From a Child’s Illiteracy

nytimes.com

15 pointsbjhoops16 comments

This has been an issue to me for the last 20 years that I have tried to figure out a solution to, but can't find a way to make it work in the US. Our social order is a complete mess where we congratulate the stupid and ignorant and hide the game changers and world builders. "Socialism" is a curse worse. Greed is a god.

I keep looking at production numbers and see that we would be able to feed and educate every single citizen of the USA with the resources we have. We just need to change our mindset about what Socialism is. When I looked at our Federal budget, I saw a huge wasteful pile of Socialism hidden under the line called "Military/Defense". Don't think that our military is Socialism? Then think about what it does for whom. Well, ok, it currently goes and kills some people overseas to further the interests of large corporations to make footholds into new markets... but I mean what it is really supposed to be for.

Why aren't our Republicans crying tears of blood over this mass of Socialism? What makes it a different "evil" form of socialism than providing healthcare, education, and nutrition to our citizens?

The military protects us from those that want us to not be alive, our freedoms to do as we like, and provide a safety blanket of comfort.

Nutrition, education, and healthcare protects us from biological forces that want us to not be alive, teaches us about our freedoms to do as we like, and provide a safety blanket of comfort.

When that idea takes seed, week can try to improve the lives of our fellow citizens in a much larger and organized way.

However, as a sideways, I keep trying to think up a system that would work to provide nutrition to everyone in the US and could work with our existing infrastructure. The downside is that I can't think of a way to 'make it profitable' to get some sort of private backing which the Republicans tell me should happen instead of government handouts.

I keep thinking of a school program that most of America has on a city or state level of "free or reduced cost lunches" that needs to be broadened. This program is usually supplemented with an additional program where backpacks of food are sent home over the weekend and for pickup during the summer and are meant to provide nutrition to the child. It seems like we need a larger format. Yeah, states have foodstamp style programs, but those lead to a lot of fraud because they are a easily portable, transferable item. We have foodbanks that distribute food, but those are few and far between.

Now, what if we took the foodbank idea, pitched in the foodstamp idea and had "foodboxes" which contain the proper nutrition of items for a specific age/size/allergy requirement and had them available through a trackable system or location, say like at Walmart, the same place that currently store government supplies for emergencies. We even have a convertible infrastructure to track those items, Lottery Machines. (Ok, those are state specific items, but they perform the exact job of processing transactions on a large scale.)

But wait, how can we get companies on board to fill those foodboxes properly? Ask Haliburton. Those guys seem to be able to pull it off for our military so well that they don't even need to bid anymore to get the contract. With our soldiers on our home shores, they will need a new market to suckle from the US government teat contracts. Whoop, there it is.

I apologize for the long post, but this kind of thing is dear to me and nags me that we haven't been able to solve it. I want the USA to have the brightest, best chance at a future, but it seems that someone else bought our system for more personal interests.

I have also long thought about this problem. The problem with your idea is the same problem lamented by the article: That throwing money at the problem of poverty tends to promote dependence and leave people less able to take care of themselves, thus it tends to make poverty more intractable. If money alone could solve such a problem, you would not have such a high banktuptcy rate among lottery winners (last I hear, 2/3s of lottery winners are bakrupt within five years).

The most effective solutions come from developing a culture and set of policies which consider human needs at a baseline which largely ignores current income yet manages to promote effective behaviors. Rewarding poor people with money because they poor is part of what we do now. It has a proven track record of promoting lifelong dependence and helping to create entrenched poverty.

Please keep thinking on this problem. It is one we pretty desperately need to make headway against. But lease think on something other than throwing money at the problem.

Thank you for posting.

>Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households.

Ugh. That seems like a bit of a stretch to claim that getting married is what causes someone to be lifted out of poverty.

Ha yes I thought the same thing - definitely more correlation than causation on that one.

There is a lot of research that supports the remark you are rebutting. In some countries, women get maternity leave, a cash gift to help with expenses when the baby is born, etc. They get these things regardless of marital status. In such countries, marriage is not actively discouraged if you are poor. In the U.S., marriage is actively discouraged if you are poor because benefits disappear if you get married.

The American welfare system was originally envisioned as a means to help "poor, single moms". It was framed that way at a time when having a baby out of wedlock was a huge taboo, so most poor, single moms were "the deserving poor": Widows. The framing changed the social contract and actively grew the population of poor, single mothers (by actively encouraging out-of-wedlock births) and actively discourages poor couples from marrying.

Some of the entrenched problems you see in the U.S. would improve if family support was provided independent of income level or marital status. Requiring someone to be "poor" in order to get help actively rewards failure and actively encourages people to remain broken enough to qualify. The system puts up significant barriers to escaping poverty. In many cases, marginally improving your income would cost you so much in lost benefits as to worsen your situation, not improve it. Most people cannot suddenly and drastically increase their income. Thus, punishing them for moderate improvements in the short run de facto bars some people from ever escaping poverty.

In an environment which does not actively punish poor, married couples, marriage is a very longstanding proven means to give people stability and buffer them against problems. Improved stability and buffering against problems does help reduce poverty in real terms. Pro-marriage policies have a very long track record of being good for both society and individuals. It is unfortunate that America has so many anti-marriage policies and attitudes.

We can't have people forced to choose between teaching their child to read, and feeding them. That's why we need a minimum income, so people don't have to make these choices and children all have the chance to excel independent of the circumstances of their birth.

Or we could just leave them in grinding poverty AND take away their childcare stipend. That works too.

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