[hakfoo]

> Rich people's improvement outpacing poor people's is not necessarily an issue.

That's like saying "the fact there's a black hole in the centre of the galaxy is not an issue."

Extreme wealth distorts the universe around it. There are people who have no business making nation-state level decisions that are still on the speed dial of the people who are, because of their financial positions.

There's also a strong case that education blocked by finance, on a second order. Wealth creates flight opportunities. Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school. Not everyone can afford that, even if some are nominally tuition-free-- if they don't offer the same bussing, for example, that's going to add thousands of dollars a year in bus or petrol costs to get the kid to and from campus.

But aside from that, when the parents take their kids away, they also take their volunteerism, activity support, and holding staff accountable. The public school ends up supported by the least resourced and least concerned parents, and the students left behind suffer.

Housing is probably solvable with a more holistic central-planning mindset. Everyone wants to live in a few desirable areas, but we have no mechanism to generate more desirable areas. A planned economy could help by steering new economic development to places where housing can be built affordably, perhaps with build-out mandates. The Chinese "Ghost Cities" are actually a great idea in retrospect-- if you build everything at once before the first residents arrive, you can avoid some of the very expensive retrofit problems. Building a subway on the barren ground of a planned city is a lot cheaper than drilling under Lower Manhattan.

A secondary problem is that housing costs and the need for retirement/end of life savings creates a doom loop-- if you're paying 60% of your income on a mortgage, you can't invest in any other way, so it HAS to be the nest egg. I'm not sure how to address that-- richer and more universal pensions might help reduce the load on home equity, and there are certainly ways to de-asset-ify land (maybe replacing outright land ownership with peppercorn leases-- people wouldn't be able to "buy" a house, at best they could try to bribe the existing owner to abandon the lease and hope to grab it when the property goes back up for redistribution)

[sokoloff]

> Parents who can afford it take their kids out of the default public school and take them to a magnet, charter, or private school.

I think it’s pointless to try to prevent this. Try to block it and parents who can afford to will just move to where the public schools are good.

There’s no level of forced equality (other than everyone living in abject squalor) where there won’t be a spread of resources and some will choose to direct theirs in less or more long-term productive ways.

[harimau777]

You are correct that there will never be perfect equality. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take steps to get closer to equality. For example, wealthy parents sending their kids to private schools isn't as much of an issue when it doesn't take money away from public schools (e.g. via vouchers).

[kelseyfrog]

It's fairly easy to prevent. Accreditation is a legitimization mechanism eminently modulatable by law. When only state schools are accredited and truancy is enforced, there is no other option.

The funding issue is also trivial, local property taxes should be transferred to the state rather than being used directly. The idea that somehow poor neighborhoods should have poor schools is asinine and re-enforces existing class structure.

[sokoloff]

It’s not a funding issue, or at least not just a funding issue. In many states, the lower performing districts have more per-pupil funding than higher performing schools.

Parents and community are a massive influence, and parents will move as needed to attend better school districts, even if private schools are outlawed.

[kelseyfrog]

We can find a reason for any intervention to fail, but empiricism should be our guide, not our ability to conjure failure scenarios.

[nradov]

In the US, magnet and charter schools are free and operated by public school districts. When there aren't enough slots, admission is typically handled by lottery so wealthy parents can't pay to get their children in. What they can do is move to a neighborhood with better public schools, and in fact we see a very direct relationship between public school ratings and housing prices in that school's catchment area.

The Chinese ghost cities are a terrible idea in every way. I am mystified as to how anyone would think those are a positive. Most of them will be left to decay without ever getting occupied.

[seventhtiger]

You outlined how education is blocked by finance at an individual level for a specific family or person. We're talking about the national level. Do you think that with more funding every kid can go to a charter school? The problem is that the amount of elite and high quality education is limited. Unless your plan is to give every kid an iPad, then your plan can't just be increasing funding, it must include how to fix the education system from the bottom up.