[tristor]

Let's be clear, many folks in this country are perfectly happy to make the world more equal by dragging others down rather than lifting others up. If there's no way to escape the ills of humanity, it means you're stuck in a situation where the next generation cannot be assured of a better life. The aspiration of the American Dream is very much about escaping all the antisocial behaviors which dominate the lower class and having a prosperous life where you can raise a family that has a better life than you yourself had.

It's segregation by dollars, not by any immutable characteristic, and I do not see that as morally wrong in any way.

I will not sacrifice my children on the altar of economic mobility. I dragged myself out of poverty to make a better life for my family, and others can do the same. The US has some of the highest economic mobility of any society in the world, partly because we segregate based on dollars rather than on immutable characteristics.

If that makes me a NIMBY, so be it.

[TulliusCicero]

> Let's be clear, many folks in this country are perfectly happy to make the world more equal by dragging others down rather than lifting others up.

Yes, we can see that here. It's unfortunate that you've taken that position.

> It's segregation by dollars

The government intentionally separating people by socioeconomic class for something as fundamental as where you live -- which also controls which school your kids go to -- is fundamentally wrong.

And the biggest reason why some schools are so shit is precisely because of economic segregation. Concentrating the most impoverished means concentrating people with the most social problems too.

[tristor]

> Yes, we can see that here. It's unfortunate that you've taken that position.

I am not taking that position at all. I don't know what your position is, but you've implied in your replies to me that you /do/ take this position, however.

Forcing my kids to go to school with lower class children is not going to make the world a better place, it's going to force my children to be exposed to violence, drug use, promiscuity, and reduce their relative aspirations. When I was growing up, the school I went to had almost nobody from its graduating class that made it out and built a decent living. Many folks scrape by working menial retail and service jobs well into their 40s, and consider that a win because they weren't part of the much larger cohort that ended up dead, in jail, or in other dire circumstances which was the expected outcome in the community I came from. Those folks who scrape by considered themselves successful because they're alive, without any felony convictions or addictions to hard drugs, the bar of their relative aspirations is significantly lowered by the circumstances they grew up around.

I didn't drag myself out of that situation in order to see my children put back into it, because you think that averaging out the results of the students is an improvement by dragging down my kids to make up for the difference. I struggled to ensure I could build a family that had a better life than I did, and I don't see anything problematic about that at all. Taking that away on some spurious beliefs that this will enrich the lives of the very same people who are actively engaging in antisocial behaviors is ludicrous, and it's exactly the type of authoritarian leftist nonsense that Americans by-and-large reject wholesale that has helped make this the country with the greatest social and economic mobility and the highest levels of overall prosperity.