MedicalSpecializer t1_j7pl3kt wrote
One in five adults in the United States have a literacy level at or below level 1 of the PIAAC literacy proficiency levels. People at those levels can be considered, for all intents and purposes, illiterate. That number is one in three Baltimoreans. At the same time, the average spending per student in Baltimore is $21,000, an incredibly high number.
Many of these kids and now adults have no home life promoting the value of education, are mentally delayed and stunted due to poor pregnancy and childhood health conditions, have poor impulse and behavioral control, but they innately understand from a young age that they will likely never have any social or economic mobility that will allow them to live a meaningfully better life than their parents.
There is likely no help or recourse for these children or their children or anything else. There’s nothing to be done because nothing can be done. No intervention, no matter how comprehensive, intense, or well-targeted, will meaningfully improve outcomes because these children have reached their full potential.
Low literacy and behavioral issues lead to increased prevalence of criminal activity and other associated antisocial behavior. This costs the city of Baltimore billions of dollars a year in economic costs, due to the fact that it takes a person with a lot of grit, determination, and relatively high tolerance of risk to move here, be economically productive, and raise a family, creating a high barrier for the best and brightest (even with Johns Hopkins). This city is relatively will-integrated and deeply affordable compared to the rest of the East Coast. It should be booming and rapidly growing, but it isn’t.
Well what is to be done if education is irreformable and the kids will never amount to much? Simply put, the city/state/federal government should simply pay them to stay out of society, live comfortably, and avoid interaction with the rest of us. The cost of the integration into the broader economy and society of Baltimore of these kids is far too high relative to their expected lifetime productivity and sociability. Instead, we should pay them to stay out, and let the rest of us create a future here.
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_section=3
z3mcs t1_j7pnap6 wrote
> The cost of the integration into the broader economy and society of Baltimore of these kids is far too high relative to their expected lifetime productivity and sociability. Instead, we should pay them to stay out, and let the rest of us create a future here.
Am I reading this right? Are you literally advocating for segregation lol, and using stereotyping to help do it. Please tell me I misinterpreted your comment.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7po7u1 wrote
Absolutely not, “stay out” was a poorly worded phrase, I was thinking along the lines of basically pay them to stay unemployed, play video games, have a good time, etc. and give them a good home in exchange for not engaging in criminal behavior.
Inevitable_Sherbet42 t1_j7pp95r wrote
>Well what is to be done if education is irreformable and the kids will never amount to much? Simply put, the city/state/federal government should simply pay them to stay out of society, live comfortably, and avoid interaction with the rest of us. The cost of the integration into the broader economy and society of Baltimore of these kids is far too high relative to their expected lifetime productivity and sociability. Instead, we should pay them to stay out, and let the rest of us create a future here.
You do realize this isn't an answer, and that it's not even fully kicking the can down the road further. You're tapping the can lightly.
ScootyHoofdorp t1_j7pwi22 wrote
Holy shit this wasn't going where I expected it to. Your attitude is reprehensible. To just permanently write off an entire swath of the city's population (and by extension millions of Americans in similar situations) as beyond hope is vile and cold. I hope you're never in charge of any kind of policy. The cycle won't be easy to break, but the macroeconomics of this country don't really even allow for us to make a targeted, sustained effort. But that doesn't mean that will always be the case. These are people we're talking about, not unruly pets.
magnoliabluebonnet t1_j7q42sg wrote
It’s legitimately one of the most sociopathic comments I’ve ever read here. Insane that a person actually thinks this way and sees nothing wrong with it.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7q5210 wrote
oooh sorry my value system emphasizes factoring externalities into total costs and benefits and recognizing that interventions across the board are largely ineffective and thus i come up with different responses to problems and that scares you so you call me names oooh
magnoliabluebonnet t1_j7q6m04 wrote
You have serious issues. Seek help.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7pxxxv wrote
The students don’t care, the cycle won’t break because these students aren’t going to put the momentum to break it because they understand that their life will not meaningfully, materially improve even if they do get a decent education. They’ve been largely locked into poverty, permanently, and there’s no interventions that can break that. It’s best to provide palliative, post-education resources to make sure that they’re comfortable, safe, and out of the way.
default_laura t1_j7q2f1c wrote
What the fuck is wrong with you?
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7q36al wrote
What’s wrong with recognizing that all people deserve safety, peace, and comfort, irrespective of their (lack of) economic productivity? Not everyone has potential, that’s okay, they should still be well-cared for and thought of.
default_laura t1_j7r6fmq wrote
I am all for UBI, but this is the worst kind of faux benevolence.
You are discounting the potential and erasing the agency of entire groups of people based on loose statistics and economic potential. This is not a spreadsheet, it’s a community. Do you not understand how utterly backwards and repulsive this attitude is, or do you just not care?
Have you never gone through periods of growth? Have you never, after guidance and self reflection, made meaningful change?
Sometimes it takes people years, even decades. Sometimes they aren’t able to sustain it. But if they want it, they should always have the choice, they should always have the opportunity. They should never just be written off because some rando decided their stats didn’t look promising. Fucking gross.
Cheomesh t1_j7qpkkq wrote
>there’s no interventions that can break that
Then how the hell did I get out
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7pzjau wrote
oh and tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans should be written off. they’re unpleasant, unproductive, unimaginative, and/or unintelligent. the negative external costs are higher than their economic value. it does little good to keep them in the workforce, pay them to stay unemployed and quiet, we will all be better off
Xanny t1_j7pohvg wrote
We could even build them their own communities, we can call them "projects", and have their housing subsidized. I'm sure that would work great.
The US tried this shit. You have to break the cycle. It isn't "economically" profitable in the short term to do it. Nothing else works, people will still exist even if you wish they didn't, and we know from history if you just try to leave all the poor people on their own in a corner somewhere their living conditions deteriorate until it takes the whole city down.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7povqy wrote
My point is, the cycle can’t be broken. It will never meaningfully get better.
officialspinster t1_j7q437i wrote
Oh no, we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7q4c9n wrote
multiple interventions have been mentioned in these comments. they don’t work. what is your idea?
VygotskyCultist t1_j7q6ie5 wrote
Of course it can, it just takes a massive investment of time and resources. You're just pushing eugenics.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7q6tcw wrote
Eugenics? I’ve said nothing about reproductive control, completely outside of the discussion.
VygotskyCultist t1_j7q7wxf wrote
You're discussing sequestering people from society based on their heritable conditions. Sounds a lot like eugenics to me.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7q8e9y wrote
Please tell me, what heritable conditions am I talking about?
VygotskyCultist t1_j7qar32 wrote
You're talking about intergenerational poverty, right? The people in abject poverty you're discussing are born into that. You are writing them off as lost causes who should be sequestered from the rest of us because of their cost to society.
I mean, we'd save money on building ramps, too, if we paid disabled people to stay home. But we don't do that. Because it's bad.
If not literally eugenics, then it's the idea of eugenics applied to economics. "Disabled people shouldn't have kids because it's bad for our gene pool" isn't that different than "Poor people from terrible neighborhoods shouldn't participate in society because it's bad for our economy." It's a bad idea and you should feel bad about promoting it.
Xanny t1_j7q53wq wrote
The poor parts of Baltimore have been naturally depopulating for half a century. If you look at the census data all the areas you would describe as blighted are all losing double digit population per decade. Anyone that can get out does, and anyone that can't probably has a poor life expectancy.
If literally the status quo continues, the city will keep leveling vacant blocks, until all the depressed parts of the city are empty fields. It will just take another century. Simultaneously, gentrification pushes back into these areas on a lot of fronts, and as people find they can sell their run down crumbling houses for enough to move elsewhere with better opportunity they usually will.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7q5t52 wrote
do the people that get out have meaningfully better outcomes (after adjusting for assumed better income due to being in a more economically vibrant area), or are they still income-adjusted, just as sick and unproductive? additionally, since we’re talking cyclical, are their children better off than they were, or are they actually worse off because poverty is largely unbreakable, it just moved around
Xanny t1_j7q6scy wrote
Yes? Look at the demographics of the county. its going to flip minority white by the next census, a drop from like 80% white in 1980 or so. Blacks that could went right where the whites did a half century earlier once they had the chance.
> poverty is largely unbreakable
I bet if you go back 5 generations in your family you had someone working as a subsistence farmer living in a shack they didn't even own, and today you are probably well educated middle class and white collar. News flash, people do actually get out of poverty. My grandmother was daughter to a tenant farmer and died owning her own suburban house with no material wants, all the cars and vacations she wanted, having worked as a university secretary for 30 years.
A lot of why she did that though was from racism. She was on the winning side of the post war suburban sprawl movement, her husband was a veteran, they had all the opportunity handed to them if they were willing to take it and did.
By comparison the "irredeemable" poor people you are describing have been here for 80+ years in the same cycle of disinvestment. They have lived the same lifestyle for generations with no opportunities offered. And like I said, those that did find opportunity largely took it and left. Go find me a anywhere in the county with the kind of total abandonment that the butterfly has.
Its often as simple as if you can get a bank loan on if you can escape generational poverty or not. My family exists as it does today on the back of guaranteed low rate mortgages for veterans and whites after WW2.
z3mcs t1_j7qb3ze wrote
I've been looking to see a comment like this online since the 1990s. Bless you for posting it. If I had awards to give I'd give you all of them.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7q7mh9 wrote
You know, this is a good perspective. I’ll go do more research.
Xanny t1_j7qxrp5 wrote
If you want something else to research look into how many dead towns there are throughout the Rustbelt now. They look exactly like the black butterfly of Baltimore and have similar rates of drug use and crime, just they are smaller and more dispersed so its not as concentrated a problem. Those places had the exact same pattern of white flight as resource extraction and factory labor dried up and left, the difference is they were isolated enough to just be abandoned and forgotten for the most part.
The people that lived there had kids that took opportunity to leave like my grandma did, and nobody else wanted to go there as opportunity dried up, so they turned into ruins too. Like they often still have a few people living there, just like the butterfly, but thats because the erosion of a place with capital flight is slow and drawn out.
Its why the opioid epidemic got so bad for white people. It basically took these dying rural areas and towns and beat them to death bluntly with overdosing. Entire states like Kentucky are scarred by it.
jdl12358 t1_j7qe7xb wrote
I'm sorry but where did you get the idea that the county became majority black in 2020?? Not only is it not majority black, it is still majority white at 55%. Even Howard County has dipped below 50% white. Black people don't even make up 1/3rd of the county population. Not to mention that the majority black parts of the county have probably been majority or plurality black at this point for 30 years. I agree with what you are saying because the original guy commenting is talking eugenics, but the county is still majority white.
ltong1009 t1_j7s76kk wrote
Google “Harlem Children’s Zone”. We know exactly how to break the cycle of poverty.
jabbadarth t1_j7ppj98 wrote
First off let's not link foxbaltimore as a source. They specifically write pieces to rile up the county folk and get clicks, they don't actually want to help. Second this is insanely ahortsighted and assumes that all these kids have no chance of ever learning which is bullshit. I mean most won't become doctors but some will and just because most won't doesn't mean they should be abandoned to "play video games", I mean wtf. There are tons of jobs that don't require a high level of education.
The problems, which are constantly laid at the feet of the school system stem from much more than failing schools. There are certainly some schools that have poor leadership and bad teachers but saying the whole system is failing means that a majority of teachers aren't doing shit amd that's bullshit. Thing is kids go to school for 6 hours a day 5 days a week assuming perfect attendance that's 30 hours a week. Take out 56 hours for sleep and that leaves 82 hours where kids are outside of school. Plenty of those kids have normal family lives with parents who care and have time to help with reading and homework but plenty have parents who are too busy to help or unable to help or no parents or any number of other issues and yet we expect them to get enough information in 30 hours a week while the 82 hours they are generally on their own and free to do what they want.
The solution is a multifaceted one that involves a whole lot more than just a school. We need mentors, community centers, before and after school programs, parenting classes, free childcare, more and better jobs for parents with free Healthcare and paid time off. But instead we just say these kids are hopeless.
I've said this a thousand times but it took us decades to get into this situation with awful policies and disinvestment and racism and segregation amd it will take at least that long to fix it if we start actually trying today.
MedicalSpecializer t1_j7psbk3 wrote
okay let’s not use foxbaltimore.
Per the school district, their 2022-2023 budget is $1.62 billion. They also say they have 76,000 students. That’s $21,300 per student.
https://www.baltimorecityschools.org/node/1597
https://www.baltimorecityschools.org/district-overview
I’m not blaming the school district, system, teachers, or administration. I’m fact, I think most of them are highly competent, caring, and intelligent individuals who want their students to thrive and succeed.
And those community center and after school programs? They improve math skills (good!) but that’s the end of their effectiveness. They have no impact on attendance or behavior, like at all. They don’t work.
https://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/staying_on_track_testing_higher_achievement.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4597889/
These resources don’t meaningfully improve outcomes. This tons of funding isn’t improving outcomes. What do you want to do? It’s not working.
DecayableBrick t1_j7pwddx wrote
They tried throwing a massive amount of resources at a similar school system under order of a court and produced almost no positive results. Kansas city had the highest per capita funding of education and the most opulent facilities probably of any public school system in US history. It's an interesting experiment and anyone discussing school funding should be aware of it.
>Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country. The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.
Cheomesh t1_j7qqpg2 wrote
Man, it really is at home, isn't it.
DecayableBrick t1_j7r62pj wrote
It's something that people in this sub don't want to hear, but yes.
A_P_Dahset t1_j7qchjs wrote
>Low literacy and behavioral issues lead to increased prevalence of criminal activity and other associated antisocial behavior. This costs the city of Baltimore billions of dollars a year in economic costs, due to the fact that it takes a person with a lot of grit, determination, and relatively high tolerance of risk to move here, be economically productive, and raise a family, creating a high barrier for the best and brightest (even with Johns Hopkins). This city is relatively will-integrated and deeply affordable compared to the rest of the East Coast. It should be booming and rapidly growing, but it isn’t.
You're correct on this part; strongly agree. But all the other major east coast cities have already been where Baltimore now is. For that reason I think your proposal isn't the most feasible. Instead, Baltimore's elected officials need to unbury their heads from the sand and actually focus aggressively on growth-oriented public policy and investments to address affordable and inclusionary housing, land use, transportation, and real estate tax reform. I realize this might be asking for much, but given all the cities that are eating Baltimore's lunch, should it be?
Baltimore isn't growing because: we're an old historic city with car-centric Sun Belt city aspirations; our leaders resist fundamental principles of good urbanism; and for some reason said leaders find it perfectly okay to charge us double the price of their competitors for shoddy public service delivery. Baltimore really shows no urgency to sustainably attract economic opportunity to the city. While every student here can't become a world-class scholar, a growing city with more businesses of all sizes, that at minimum pay living wages, could provide more opportunities for steady employment and improved quality of life for less-educated residents.
All this to say that a growing city that is more dense, accessible, and economically competitive can help deconcentrate poverty, which can lead to improved educational outcomes. But leadership needs to have a holistic view of the city and the willingness to move beyond status quo at a faster-than-marginal pace.
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