I agree upon the success of your parents. It only makes sense that say a 'rich' or 'successful' parent that knows how to budget, had a better education, a strong will to persevere, and/or is extremely kind will pass on those skills of success to their children. Does that kid deserve to have the advantage? I'd say yes because it was the parents who created the life of their kid and what the parents want to do with their money and time, if that's support and educate the life they created then should be able to do that. In U.S. with public education, financial aid, and grants it is about as equal as possible monetarily but if a good blacksmith makes the best swords their son has a teacher around 24/7 that can teach them and make their son the next best blacksmith - but that applies to every single profession, but in general just budgeting or the skills I mentioned above would be enough to succeed in almost any profession, and bonus points if they have multiple of those skills.
Parents provide more than just moral teaching. For example, when kids screw up, wealthy parents can buy them second chances and the appearance of moral rectitude — when in the same situation a poor kid would be ashcanned as a dissolute moral failure, whose parents didn't know how to budget, didn't pass on a strong will to persevere, etc.
Anybody up for an argument that the government should have custody of and raise all children? I know that’s a non-starter, but if you want to level the playing field for all kids, this is how you do it. Outside of that, you are leaving children to whatever shitty situation they didn’t ask to be born into.
I’m not saying I’m for this. I’m not and you would have to kill me to get to my kids. Just seems like the most logical solution to an otherwise impossible problem.
> Anybody up for an argument that the government should have custody of and raise all children?
That's either a bit strong or a bit already true, depending on how you look at it; the state sets boundaries and responsibilities on the relationships parents have with children, and if they violate those boundaries or fail to live up to those responsibilities, the legal relationship between parent and child can be terminated.
I'm for it is a more practical way. It is the state's responsibility to be good at raising children, because some children will have no family to take care of them. We (at least in the US) horribly fail at this, which is a clear signal that our society is selfish and irresponsible. This should be changed. People with shitty parents should be jealous of state wards. If we can't be successful when we have complete control, we shouldn't have much to say about how well parents are doing except in the cases of gross neglect and abuse.
We can't figure out what to do with constituencies that don't have lobbyists.
I think you could do a lot of stuff to provide support to all kids without going all the way to universal government custody. Things like (optional) government paid universal day care and after school care, government paid universal health care for minors, food/housing/etc stipends (like the child tax credit, but bigger), and arguably better pay for teachers and smaller class sizes. These things wouldn't end inequality, but might more kids up to good enough resources.
You could also pull a China and outlaw tutoring/test prep to reduce the advantages wealth can provide.
Violence in the home (most goes unreported),
Mocking education in the home,
Drug abuse in the home,
An example of single parent pregnancy everywhere,
General neglect - nobody to read to you
These are all cultural things. Culture is the software that gets installed on you and some people are getting a shitty software version that almost guarantees failure. If you don’t believe that, watch any documentary on rural Appalachia.
> Anybody up for an argument that the government should have custody of and raise all children?
Because that worked really well in Communist Romania. "Let's make sure things are equally terrible for everyone, then we can call that a level playing field" is not sensible policy.
some grim capitalist realist shit when it's easier to imagine taking everyone's kids away than it is to imagine not structuring society around the exploitation of artificial inequality.
We are obviously not talking about being born into wealth. Middle-class people still need to accumulate capital first, generally by working, something that's not always possible (for an extreme example, take e.g. ~90% unemployment rate for autistic college grads).
Even if we were talking about wealthy families, that doesn't count out being disowned, etc. for being gay or transgender.
Transgender people are a tiny percentage of LGBT people, so using them to characterize all LGBT is intentionally misleading.
Also, this law was actually about requiring that any non-white or LGBT person be on the board; the LGBT part being highlighted is part of Newsweek's anti-gay agenda.
The US has a recent history of racial discrimination that prevented a lot of people from building wealth in their communities or generational wealth. Not that there aren't a shit ton of white people living in trailer parks, but no one was denying them home loans because of the color of their skin.
So, if owning your own home is a big part of your wealth over a life time, and your parents and their parents were discriminated against and prevented from accessing those mechanisms, it makes it much less likely that you will today be born in a wealthy or a poor family.
Look up redlining on wikipedia if you want specifics.
You're reading it wrong. They weren't saying that there's an equal chance for anyone to be born poor as to be born wealthy, they were saying the chances are the same for a straight person to be born either poor or wealthy as for a LGBT person to be born either poor or wealthy.
This is not always true for other minorities. A random black American isn't as likely to have been born into wealth as a random white American.
What a horrible place you immediately jumped to. Historically and systemically disadvantaged does not mean or imply intrinsically disadvantaged. Jesus.
