LGP Political Discussion Thread

[Gaucho]

Throwing money at schools, for example, might be an idea.

[shafnutz05]

Throwing money at schools, for example, might be an idea.

Responsibly, of course. But I think it goes far beyond schools, too. I don't think it helps that three out of four black youth grow up in a single parent household, either.

[Kaizer]

Banning guns won't do a damn thing to prevent gun violence unless we have a severe police state to enforce it, and that's the only way they could. When the cops start solving gun matters by shooting people for not giving up their firearms, then we really start having fun. I've only seen a few people who wanted them banned completely, they seem like loudmouths trying to get their way no matter the consequences.

[Gaucho]

Throwing money at schools, for example, might be an idea.

Responsibly, of course. But I think it goes far beyond schools, too. I don't think it helps that three out of four black youth grow up in a single parent household, either.

I'd say the single parent aspect is the least of their worries.

[shafnutz05]

Ehhh I'm not so sure. From what I've seen, especially living near Philly, a ton of these kids grow up with ZERO parental supervision or guidance whatsoever. They literally have nobody that has any interest or concern about their life, or how they turn out. This is how you end up with hundreds of rampaging teenagers assaulting people and randomly robbing stores for absolutely no reason at all hours of the day/week (among other things, like beating random people on a subway train into a coma, again for no good reason).

I don't really want to go too far down this road, but I do want to emphasize how much of a "convenient solution" strict gun control is. It makes people feel self-assured that they are doing everything they can to prevent future gun violence/homicide, when it couldn't be further from the truth. There are horrible, horrible societal/cultural issues that are the 5,000 lb. elephant in the room that politicians and the media simply don't want to acknowledge.

And to add again...thousands and thousands of black Americans are murdered every single year in cities across the United States. Why does it take a couple white dudes killing some privileged, white Americans for the president on down to suddenly start getting "tough on guns"? This isn't an endorsement of gun control, obviously, but it just emphasizes the disgusting hypocrisy by so many people that are suddenly crowing about the evil of guns after a Sandy Hook or Aurora happens.

[AlexPKeaton]

This is what happens when you go all the way down the rabbit hole of the nanny state.

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/parent ... 39466.html

Come on Sweden. You used to be a country of vikings. Now look at you....

[Gaucho]

Ehhh I'm not so sure. From what I've seen, especially living near Philly, etc.

Oh, I wasn't even referring to guns or the specific circumstances and conditions of young black people in America's inner cities. My point was merely that, generally, growing up with a single parent isn't necessarily a problem. Sort of going off on a tangent, I guess.

[Rylan]

Kids today grow up with limited parent involvement because a lot of parents still are career driven first. At least that is what I noticed.

[shafnutz05]

My point was merely that, generally, growing up with a single parent isn't necessarily a problem. Sort of going off on a tangent, I guess.

This is a fair point. I was raised by a single parent from 2nd grade on, and I like to think I turned out ok. You can most certainly be a successful single parent (and I admire those people greatly, including my own mom). I think that many of the remaining parents of these kids don't care enough about their lives either, and that's sad too.

[King Sid the Great 87]

Throwing money at schools, for example, might be an idea.

How much more is needed to satisfy you?

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

If you remove parenting from the equation (which is obviously the single biggest variable in determining a child's scholastic aptitude), the place to start is increasing the academic rigor in the cakewalk that is obtaining an education degree.

[shmenguin]

bad parenting beats out good education almost every time. throwing more money at education doesn't help the bottom rung. in new jersey, the worst school districts get the most state funding, while the best get basically nothing. and the best stay the best. and the worst stay the worst.

[tifosi77]

There are plenty of nations with stricter gun controls than the United States, and we’re had gun confiscations in places like Australia and Great Britain in the last couple decades. Guns are being banned across the world.

And does it work? Seems like we're the nation where most shooting happens. Yes, I know.. the culture. But I also feel it's lack of regulation. I don't know what happened in those two countries, but as far as I know you can still own guns there.

The UK banned pretty much all private gun ownership in the late 90s. In Australia, handguns were banned in around 2002 in a measure that included a buy-back program. In both cases, there have been marked declines in gun related incidents and crimes. Whether that's causal or relational is difficult to tell, because - as has been the case here in the U.S. - crime rates in general had been on a roughly 25-year decline. In fact, the suicide rate in the U.S. has fallen faster over this period than it has in Oz. So I'm not sure how significant a data point this really is.

Even in the best of circumstances I'm honestly not really sure how instructive a statistic like that can be. Fewer guns, fewer gun crimes. That's not overly difficult to intuit. But at what price? In virtually all other measure of violent crime the per capita rates in both countries skyrocketd after those respective pieces of legislation went into effect. And in Oz, there was a pronounced increase in the number of violent incidents involving bladed weapons. And I'm not talking small increases here; in Oz, the violent crime rate has practically doubled over the last ten years, and in Britain it is now more common for a home robbery to take place when the owners are at home than it is in an unoccupied residence.

So it becomes a game of risk-reward. Do you want to lower the risk of murder even further in a state where that risk was already pretty low, if lowering that risk means sharply increasing your risk of being the victim of a violent crime? (Which is statistically much more likely, anyway; there are more muggings than murders.)

To me, this is like the debate over visors in hockey. There is empirical evidence that the protective equipment you require, the more likely you are to encounter a high incidence of stick fouls and head shots (and my personal anecdotal evidence bears this out). So yeah, you're more protected, in theory..... but you have to deal with many many more shots to a vulnerable area. So are you really any better off? I would say no.

As you can see from the pretty bar graphs, the vast, VAST majority of gun murders are committed by a demographic that makes up 12% of the population. Rather than look at stricter gun controls as the answer, maybe we should ask why black Americans simply can't stop killing each other? Because in my opinion, there is no question that addressing the astronomically higher murder rate among black Americans is probably a lot more relevant as to addressing the issue of murder in the United States.

It's unfortunate, but this only becomes an issue of national importance when middle-class white people are at the center of the discussion.

Look at CT on that graph: 140 homicides between 2008 and 2010....... broken down as 134:6 black victims v white victims. Suddenly in 2013 when 26 mostly white upper-middle class people are murdered at a school, oh now it's a matter of Great National Importance. The white murder rate had increased six-fold in the span of a few minutes, so we must now ban assault rifles. We're talking about eliminating an entire class of weapons because they are so dangerous, despite them being used in <3% of gun murders. Why? Because they were used by white people to kill other white people. This is suddenly outrageous. Never mind the fact that blacks are murder victims at six times the rate of whites, and that choice of weapon in those cases is almost universally a handgun.

[tifosi77]

Throwing money at schools, for example, might be an idea.

How much more is needed to satisfy you?

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

If you remove parenting from the equation (which is obviously the single biggest variable in determining a child's scholastic aptitude), the place to start is increasing the academic rigor in the cakewalk that is obtaining an education degree.

I think as with most spending in this country it's a matter of being penny wise and pound foolish. We throw gobs of money at a problem, then complain about the cost vs the outcomes. But we never really seem to critically analyze why we're spending so much. Healthcare is a great example. Insurance companies run on something like an average of 30% overhead; thirty cents of every dollar spent goes to running the company, much of which is figuring our how not to pay benefits to their customers. Consequently we spend by far the most on healthcare, per capita, in the developed world, yet we have terrible outcomes.

It's not just spending money, it's being smart with how you spend that money.

[shafnutz05]

^^Exactly. During our home search, my wife and I were rapidly introduced to the world of property taxes. We found an area we liked, but the property taxes were absolutely astronomical (over 10k a year) and the school district is still having all kinds of performance and budget issues. It's the wasteful misuse of funds that jades people.

[Gaucho]

It's not just spending money, it's being smart with how you spend that money.

Yes, of course. I thought that was understood.

[PensFanInDC]

[King Sid the Great 87]

It's not just spending money, it's being smart with how you spend that money.

Yes, of course. I thought that was understood.

I'd like to read your ideas.

[tifosi77]

It's not just spending money, it's being smart with how you spend that money.

Yes, of course. I thought that was understood.

You'd probably be surprised.

[MWB]

School districts spend money on whatever the latest fad is or the money that they get has to be spent a certain way. Those two things lead to most of the wasted money.

[MWB]

Regarding parents: kids that have parents who care are in the best shape. Could be a single parent, two working parents, traditional, two guys.... Just a lot harder for a single parent since they are the only one.

[Shyster]

According to a new USA Today poll, public support for the passage of new federal gun control has dropped below 50%:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... g/2103419/

[MRandall25]

So much for "90% of people want this"

[Gaucho]

It's not just spending money, it's being smart with how you spend that money.

Yes, of course. I thought that was understood.

You'd probably be surprised.

Yeah, but I shouldn't.

[Gaucho]

It's not just spending money, it's being smart with how you spend that money.

Yes, of course. I thought that was understood.

I'd like to read your ideas.

I'm not that familiar with the American school system, so I can't really comment on that. From what i understand, education generally is too expensive, so chances are that the better off you or your family is, the better your education will be. Not good.

I can tell you that over here, in Germany, the biggest problem, imho, is the teacher/student ratio. So it all starts with employing more teachers, who get to teach smaller classes and have better equipment at their disposal.

Another big problem in Germany is the number of immigrant children with limited language skills, but that's mostly due to Germany taking an awful long time to realize and embrace that it is indeed an immigration country.

[MWB]

I'm not that familiar with the American school system, so I can't really comment on that. From what i understand, education generally is too expensive, so chances are that the better off you or your family is, the better your education will be. Not good.

.

This is certainly true to some extent. First, if you're really well off you can afford to send your kids to a top private school, which may or may not be a good school. But there are plenty of good public schools in areas that aren't that expensive to live. You just have to do your research and also have the flexibility to move to an area that had what you want. Obviously wealthier people have more flexibility. So if you're stuck in an area with bad schools it is hard to get out of that situation.