(From Bryan Caplan, on the excellent http://www.econlib.org/):
When someone drops out of high school, overeats, or fails to exercise, you tell us that their behavior is only "human." But if a conservative or libertarian objects to paying taxes to help people who make these choices, you get angry. Question: Why are you so forgiving of people with irresponsible lifestyles, but so outraged by people who don't want to pay taxes to help people with irresponsible lifestyles? This seems morally perverse. If you're going to single anyone out for condemnation, it should be the person who behaves irresponsibly in the first place, not the complete stranger who asks, "How is this my fault?"
It's tempting to insist, "We're all sinners." But the hard fact is that there's a lot of variance in the population. People with extremely responsible lifestyles are just as human as anyone else. They're not gods, just mortals who do the right thing. We should hold them up as role models, instead of attacking them if they complain that they're taxed enough already.
The low achieving parents seem to have this idea that it is the school building that is responsible for student's high achieving. As in, if they just send their low achieving kids to the high achieving school en masse that the low achieving students will become high achieving students. Their idea is that knowledge is somehow transferred magically and the high achieving students have a lock on the magic school that contains the fountain of knowledge. What they fail to realize is that it's not the building, it's the students inside and most importantly the culture of the people.
ReplyDeleteConstantly putting high achieving schools at risk of being integrated with low achieving schools creates a flight of the upper middle class people to the suburbs. Most cities in America have suffered from this and that is why so many inner cities are frightful slums. So much so that the term "inner city" has very specific demographic connotations. Atlanta at least still has some viable middle class neighborhoods to raise a family in. However, it seems that Atlanta is potentially going to ruin them with school plans.
I also think that driving middle class people out of Atlanta may be part of the plan of the city government. Their reelections and grip on power and the city jobs and contracts that come with it is contingent on maintenance of a majority of a certain demographic. Making the city worse over all to drive away competing higher income and education demographics actually benefits those in power.
Frankly, I would rather live in a city than the suburbs when it comes time to raise a family, but the high crime, poor schools and high cost would make it difficult.