> The causative relationship of funding on student performance is not strong.
Please don't pretend that "school funding" is the same as feeding children or that we don't have established research showing a connection between school meal programs and improved academic performance and reduced student suspensions.
We spend $100 billion a year on SNAP, which goes primarily to feeding children and mothers. Why is it so important to you to structure the program in one way (providing kids lunches in school) versus feeding kids a different way (providing parents cash to feed their kids)?
But why, to answer your question? Because those studies show, among other thing, that a non-negligible number of parents, given cash, can't or won't use it to feed their kids.
Why should a system that's already designed for a fraction of the population be further beholden to an even smaller fraction of the population?
The SNAP system we have is good, and it's generous. The SNAP benefit for my family of five (two adults, three kids) would be $1,183 a month, which is about what we spend on groceries shopping at ALDI and LIDL. It's good to let parents choose how to use that money to feed their kids, instead of the government imposing a top-down, one-size-fits all system.
Why do conservatives hate doing anything for children so much? WTF. He gave you a clear answer which you just ignored so you could repeat your ideal of how things should work instead of addressing the realities of how they do. You are smart enough to understand the difference, but chose to give a BS reply.
It’s not liberal versus conservative. I’m a liberal on this. I support SNAP. It’s a generous benefit and that’s okay with me. We should give parents plenty of money to make sure their kids can eat.
Your position isn’t just liberal, it’s post-liberal. You’re saying that it’s not enough to have cash benefits that gives parents reasonable choices in feeding their kids. It’s not about having broad-based policies that work for the typical person in need. It’s a post-liberalism that’s obsessed with changing systems that work for normal people to cater to the most dysfunctional few percent of the population.
Bullshit. Free school lunches for all are a simple, bureaucracy-minimizing way to ensure that all kids get fed while they're at school without discrimination (eg treating poor kids conspicuously differently). You said in an adjacent subthread that you'd love if there were universal school lunches like in Japan, then cooked up a bunch of abstract reasons for why that 'isn't possible.' If you think it's a good thing, then there's no need to stand in the way of it.
The parental effect only shows up for the immediate parents not grandparents. Hereditary causes would result in persistent effects. The cause is therefore not genetics but rather family environment. (See studies of children of immigrants)
Successful and wealthy parents support their children, giving them a calm and supportive environment in which to excel. (Poor parents who do that have high achieving children even if they themselves didn’t achieve at a high level).
Simple DJI style drones employed en masse in Afghanistan would have been helpful for a variety of tasks.
I cannot see any reason, over than oversight and a lack of imagination, why something useful in Ukraine in 2022 was not feasible or useful in 2017 by the USA.
We already used drones quite handily well before that time frame but in a much more limited manner in a different form factor.
>I cannot see any reason, over than oversight and a lack of imagination, why something useful in Ukraine in 2022 was not feasible or useful in 2017 by the USA.
Perhaps it had to do with optics? It's not like there was a lack of capability in 2017. [0]
The war in Ukraine provided a way for the US to assist in rapid iteration of the technology without having to shoulder the negative sentiment or grapple with the morality of it.
Also worth noting that the two conflicts were wildly different: Afghanistan was more of an occupation across a much larger area with air superiority. There's not really much impetus to field killer drone swarms when you already have the 24/7 ability to instantly delete most enemy combatants off the map to begin with.
Whereas Ukraine with neither side having air superiority and it resembling something closer to modern trench warfare. In most cases with literal trenches.
>We already used drones quite handily well before that time frame but in a much more limited manner in a different form factor.
The picture below is from 1995. [1]
By approximately 2001 it received the MQ-1A designation indicating it was capable of employing AGM-114 (hellfire) payloads. Kind of crazy to think about.
Combat in Ukraine is, as I understand it, somewhat like WWI with long lines of contact that only shift slowly. So you have a good idea that if you point your drone in a given direction, you'll find an enemy tank or trench.
For Afghanistan it seems like high-flying, capable, armed drones were a better option for that type of conflict.
i mean mon ami drones were employed heavily in Afghanistan
just not DJI suicide drones, and not on the squad level
in 2006 those would have been great but the tech wasn't there the way it is in 2026.
but in 2016 the US had eyes on everything. the difference is that the US had an occupation -- hearts & minds -- and couldn't just JDAM everything that moves, which is the SOP in Ukraine
I don't think numbeo can be a good source, it seems to be self reported metrics. I asked it for comparison of NZ to USA and it told me that NZ was about the same or worse on most numbers. But actual crime rates are lower in NZ. The murder rate is 5x lower.
Murder is a faulty good comparison as it’s unlikely to be a stat that gets manipulated much. Every other crime seems subject to political and social whims of various departments and political agendas.
I just looked it up, and found this in a Philadelphia newspaper:
"The numbers of homicides and shooting victims in Philadelphia have continued their sharp declines since the pandemic. There were 222 homicides last year, the fewest since 1966, and 935 shooting victims, the first time there had been under 1,000 since at least 2007."
Oh no, no way. Child violence on the streets and in school is WAY higher, it's ingrained in culture. It's also pretty rare if a Russian kid would tell his parents about it (only if property damage is involved).
I don't know how your link gathers data (website only shows one dude, software engineer, not a professional survey statistician), but from personal experience I can surely say it's rankings are BS.
The closest in US are the "bad towns" like East Palo Alto or some neighborhoods of Oakland, with their respect for ex-cons and prison slang.
1) Russia is generally very safe, and 2) I agree that the violence amongst children is crazy. It’s a great place to homeschool and free-range and I have not found a way to send children to school in a way that’s acceptable to us.
Larger cities have private schools. There are also embassy-affiliated schools (yes, even today).
In public schools there's this unofficial "letter grade system". Unlike the US, where kids homerooms are mixed around each year on purpose, in Russia a homeroom group sticks together through the entirety of their school career, grades 5-12. Of course some kids will move away, and new kids will join, but the core group remains. Many lifelong friendships are formed this way.
Now - and this part doesn't officially exist, but it certainly does in practice - these groups are not created equal. Let's say there are 3 teachers who are picking up a grade 5 homeroom. They will stick with these kids until they graduate. So, the teacher with the most seniority has their pick of the "best" graduating elementary students. These will be well-behaved and academically strong kids. Their new homeroom will be called 5A. Then the second most senior teacher has their pick. This homeroom will become 5B. And 5C onwards are the "leftovers". And these groups will stick together until they are 12A, B, and C.
If you want a good school experience for a nerdy shy kid - they have to be in "A". Of course, as a newbie who is unfamiliar with the system... your kid will likely be put in "C" ("ve"). And you probably know enough about how Russia works by now to understand how to go about changing that ;)
North Korea likely is extremely safe when things like street violence and bullying are concerned. It's only unsafe for dissidents.
And you know, you can also ask people. In software there is a large population that grew up in the ex-USSR. Many of us still regularly visit the old country and talk to friends and family that live there. And we aren't all bots, despite what many seem to believe.
No one has believed the US are "good guys", probably ever. 9/11 was met with many celebrations across the 3rd world.
America's power has never been greater. In the 60s we had low level paramilitary street insurgencies. American politics are deliberately designed to be un-actionable by the public and opinion is irrelevant.
European countries and their governments are satrapies that we allow a limited independence to. If they try to step too far out of line they will find their government collapses. We did this to Australia at Pine Gap in the 70s and have a whole word for it "color revolution"
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Social programs such as Medicare, SSI, etc dwarf the military budget.
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