

Profiting From a Child’s Illiteracy - bjhoops1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html

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jgoewert
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.

~~~
Mz
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.

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Permit
>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.

~~~
bjhoops1
Ha yes I thought the same thing - definitely more correlation than causation
on that one.

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amputect
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.

