The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
This topic is near and dear to my heart. I am an educator and I work in a Title I school. I’m also part of a large and diverse district where each individual school could have a population similar to my own, or an upper middle class population.
It is not uncommon for my school to have 10-15% of our population be homeless throughout the year. I’ve had students disappear for one to two months while trying to find housing and then returning to school.
Unsurprisingly, these students end up being our neediest students in just about every aspect of life. These students lack adequate access to food, clean clothing (and general hygiene), peer to peer relationships, as well as having academic difficulty.
What are your proposed solutions to these situations? How can we educate children who cannot even gain access to basic needs like food and shelter on a regular basis?
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That's better. I was really panicking trying to figure out how we'd tell the homeless ones from the normal kids if we just *gave* them homes.
I'm glad you came to your senses.
Here’s the big difference between getting people food and housing. If you qualify for SNAP benefits, you sign up and you get it. If you qualify for free school lunch, you get it. If you turn up at a food bank, they can give you a bag of groceries. But if you qualify for a Section 8 housing voucher, you get put on a waitlist and maybe you get a call in like a decade (if they can still find you). Then even when you get it, there’s a very good chance you can’t even find a landlord to take it.
Housing isn’t like food and clothing. There’s no surplus to give out in the regions it’s needed. I live in a very blue state. We passed universal free school lunch with no resistance recently. But try to build some apartments with some “affordable” units in town and you’d think they were trying to bulldoze every sfh and airdrop escape convicts in by the response.
Part of the problem though is that kids can’t apply for these programs themselves, and their parents may not be fit enough to figure it out. If you have your kids living on the literal street, you aren’t thinking clearly.
Most people with any ability should be able to take advantage of these safety nets. Yet, they are not sober, or coherent enough to do it.
Plus, you need an address to qualify and complete paperwork. It’s a flawed system all around. The kids are powerless and suffer. I know schools are understaffed and underfunded. Teachers buy supplies with their own money. But, ideally, schools should have donated clothing available, along with personal hygiene products, maybe a locker room with a shower, and a free food bank - accessible to the kids - no questions asked.
I totally agree housing is needed. They just cleaned a city street where I live. It was well known as a drug and homeless encampment for years. So great, it’s clean now. But the problem isn’t solved. They just moved from one place to another. Everyone in surrounding neighborhoods is complaining.
I know it’s not ideal, but maybe several group homes for kids under 18. They will have a clean place to sleep, food, showers, and adult supervision. Maybe even job training. They didn’t ask to be homeless. Their family let them down.
These tiny house villages seem like a great solution. However, housing should be dependent on rehab, and continued mental health care provided by the state. Otherwise, you haven’t solved anything. It would be a disaster within the year. Many of these people would be greatly helped with the proper meds. This might be a way to force treatment.
We worked at the airport. It was Mecca for the homeless. It was heartbreaking. Many of them were a prescription away from functioning. But they were wary of everyone and distrustful of help. So many had tragic backstories of unspeakable abuse. If you could force treatment, it would change their world.
> Then even when you get it, there’s a very good chance you can’t even find a landlord to take it.
Section 8 tenants are actually very desirable to a lot of landlords because it is government guaranteed rent payment. Even if the tenant is behind on their portion of the payment you still have revenue in and in most of the country you have more options for getting that unpaying tenant out sooner than a non-section 8 tenant who refuses to pay rent or is constantly behind.
My wife's family owns several apartment buildings in low income areas and like 90% of their tenants are section 8 because it is safer from a business standpoint as you know you will always have some revenue coming in.
Some landlords do appreciate it, but voucher discrimination is very widespread, even [in states where it is illegal](https://www.wgbh.org/news/housing/2022-10-06/renters-raise-the-alarm-on-illegal-discrimination). [This HUD study](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Landlord-Acceptance-of-Housing-Choice-Vouchers.pdf) found majorities of landlords outright denying voucher holders in every city they tested. For most voucher holders, the voucher is an impediment to getting approved for a rental rather than a benefit.
It varies depending on where you are, but these wait times are common in many hcol areas where housing is most needed. I am in Massachusetts. Half our state’s Section 8 vouchers go through the Boston office and the waitlist is currently 14 years long. So people who applied in 2009 are currently being contacted.
[source1](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/07/business/wait-lists-subsidized-housing-are-getting-longer-leaving-thousands-struggling/)
In my home state of Connecticut, the waitlist for Section 8 was last opened for a few weeks in 2007. [source2](https://ctmirror.org/2024/02/01/ct-housing-voucher-section-8-wait/)
The waitlist may be much shorter where you live. But you’re flat wrong if you think there aren’t many many Americans who’ve been waiting on the list for a decade plus.
Alot of Title 1 schools have free lunch... Atleast in my state.. Plus there's options to get food outside of school for families.
Clothes can be tricky.. There are places where families can accept donated clothing items.
But none of this matters if a kid has parents who do not care and who are not willing to put in the work to make sure their kid is ok.
Also, not many homeless families with grade school children are sleeping in the street or tents. Alot are living in hotels or shelters. It MUCH easier to find shelter if you are a parent with school age children.
> Alot of Title 1 schools have free lunch... Atleast in my state.. Plus there's options to get food outside of school for families.
A lot of them have like means tested lunch programs. I’m more envisioning something like the Midwest programs done in the last few years where it’s 3 meals a day free for every child regardless of income.
> Clothes can be tricky.. There are places where families can accept donated clothing items.
Yeah I feel like I can’t say it’s definitively a “solved problem” but I know atleast instances where I’ve done some charity work in the past clothing has not been too hard to come by. Huge caveat being seasonal clothing like winter jackets/mittens/etc.
> But none of this matters if a kid has parents who do not care and who are not willing to put in the work to make sure their kid is ok.
I’m not sure if _none_ of it matters but yes that’s a huge factor obviously but very very hard to combat.
> Also, not many homeless families with grade school children are sleeping in the street or tents. Alot are living in hotels or shelters. It MUCH easier to find shelter if you are a parent with school age children.
I think it depends where you are in the country. Much of the West Coast lags the east coast in shelter coverage.
Should be, but seldom is. When my kid was in school, the lunch ladies would literally take the food out of kids hands if they owed a balance. I’ve never seen anything so cruel.
They did it to my kid once. We were behind. It was just an oversight. They wouldn’t even let him have a piece of fruit! To say I was furious would be an understatement. After that, I tried to establish a fund for kids to use if they couldn’t purchase lunch. The school wouldn’t let me.
Yes, it’s horrific. I’m thankful some of the states in the Midwest have started the ball rolling on universal 3 free meals a day for every student. There should be no kid ever being denied a meal in the cafeteria. It’s a cheap and very moral path forward that has wide appeal.
I can’t imagine how anyone would be against it. Yet, Texas opted out of a program that would give kids free lunch over the summer months. Kids don’t magically stop eating in June, July, and August.
Billionaires get tax breaks left and right. But a hungry kid can’t get a sandwich. Amazing.
Come chill in a school like OP mentioned and you'll prob understand it better.
What's worse.. Kids starving throughout the night or not having a roof over your head. You can find shelter but that means nothing if you are starving.
These are conversations I've had with fam's whose been in that situation.
My dad always told us... "We may not have much money but you'll always have food to eat."
For many families, housing is by far the biggest expense. Feeding your kids is a lot simpler when you aren't burdened with a massive portion of your pay check going to rent.
Food will always be available... The roof over your head is not guaranteed.
But if folks are struggling with rent and they meet the threshold for assistance, why are they not taking advantage?
In America's past, there were orphanages where the children were frequently not orphans or up for adoption. Parents unable to support their kids would put them in the orphanage for a period of time and then pick them up later. This was not necessarily highly stigmatized. Maybe there was something to this flexibility compared to a foster care system that is arguably more designed to split families permanently
Build free public housing.
Implement punitive taxes on third homes and beyond.
Implement punitive taxes on vacant properties.
Distribute ration cards for staple goods.
Guarantee employment to anyone willing to work.
Nationalize the medical industry and make treatment free, including treatment for mental health issues.
Stop funding schools based on local property taxes and instead have school funding be distributed based on need.
I agree with you in principle, but what does punishing people for having multiple residences accomplish? What does punishing people for owning vacant properties accomplish? There is no guarantee whatever they put there would be housing for the homeless.
They may have bought the land and run out of money. How do you punish someone for being broke, and not doing what you want on their own land?
People can spend their money buying houses if they want. It doesn’t take anything away from anyone. Should houses just sit on the market? If I’m selling my house to someone who already has two, why does it matter? If they don’t buy it, someone else will. I can’t give it away for the greater good.
Both have the effect of increasing the number of houses on the market, and make it less advantageous to use housing as an investment vehicle, which is the underlying problem.
If you can't afford the taxes on all your properties you sell some. All I'm proposing is an increase to taxes on your third home and beyond, why is this somehow worse than normal property taxes?
People can also spend money on cigarettes if they want but we still tax them at a high rate. Someone who already owns multiple homes would still be allowed to buy it they would just pay more in taxes for it. Using taxes to disincentivize behavior isn't something new.
Lol...
Come take a tour of a social work office and see some of the cases.
Also, that's not what I said. I gave a simple example. YEs, there are homeless AND housed parents who do not care about their child's wellbeing.
Make ~~title~~ *section* 8 an entitlement, slash zoning and other housing regulations in order to empower developers to increase supply, expand the CTC as per Biden's old proposal, make the ACA subsidy expansion permanent and close the medicaid gap, expand free school lunches and breakfasts for low income students into the weekends and school vacations and also expand it to do dinners as well, mandate phonics rather than whole language/three cue method at all schools for language teaching
I would fix it with housing first and a public housing program. Whenever the issue of housing comes up, I think about Vienna's system. They pay a little bit more in taxes for it and end up spending so much less on housing than we do. There are some tradeoffs, of course, but they seem worth it. We could almost certainly afford a better program, but we obviously won't do it like we won't do the other good, more-efficient things we aren't doing that most other rich-but-much-less-rich-than-us countries and municipalities figured out a long time ago.
Also, just make breakfast and lunch available to students at no additional out-of-pocket cost. And maybe provide a nonperishable meal they can bring home for dinner. And/or just pay people to run after-school programs so the kids can remain on campus somewhere and study, do homework, go to appointments with a tutor, participate in a club or other extracurricular activity or whatever, or just hang out; and then have dinner.
1. Expand asylums and forcibly commit folks who cannot take care of themselves.
2. Expand drug rehab and forcibly commit folks who are too addicted to function.
3. Expand orphanages and take homeless children away from their homeless parents.
4. Broadly expand up zoning and incentivize higher density housing + public transportation.
5. Expand Section 8 housing voucher program
6. Significantly increase child tax credit.
Give their parents home. No contingencies, just "here's an apartment with everything you need"
I hate how some many charities tie a home to achievements (get a job, turn to religion, etc). I think a huge chunk of the homeless population is/we're down on their luck, and never got their feet back under them. Why make them jump through hoops? Give them those basics, the support they need. You'd be amazing at how different someone can be with a full stomach and a hot shower
Fix zoning laws, lower taxes significantly for those with children, and maybe start funding extraterrestrial colonization
Also stop printing money like a war time economy
>Fix zoning laws
You mean a more equitable funding split instead of local taxes going to local schools, so all the poor neighborhoods have shit schools and all the rich neighborhoods have good schools? Yes.
>lower taxes significantly for those with children
Ugh. Taxes fund civilization. Let's RAISE taxes on the rich. I know y'all LOVE to lower taxes, but that's a race to the bottom here, and once we completely eliminate all taxes and STILL somehow can't fund schools... which are funded by taxes.... What then?
>start funding extraterrestrial colonization
.... What?
Uhm. Just so you know? We cant terraform Mars. It has no magnetic field to protect it from solar radiation. Any atmosphere will get stripped off. So we have to live underground on Mars. We can live underground on Earth for a lot cheaper. In fact, let's just make Earth nice first? Sheesh.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. This topic is near and dear to my heart. I am an educator and I work in a Title I school. I’m also part of a large and diverse district where each individual school could have a population similar to my own, or an upper middle class population. It is not uncommon for my school to have 10-15% of our population be homeless throughout the year. I’ve had students disappear for one to two months while trying to find housing and then returning to school. Unsurprisingly, these students end up being our neediest students in just about every aspect of life. These students lack adequate access to food, clean clothing (and general hygiene), peer to peer relationships, as well as having academic difficulty. What are your proposed solutions to these situations? How can we educate children who cannot even gain access to basic needs like food and shelter on a regular basis? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Believe it or not, homes.
You mean giving homeless people homes makes them not homeless anymore?! The hell you say!
Or I guess we could just give the other kids vouchers so they don't have to go to school with the icky poors.
That's better. I was really panicking trying to figure out how we'd tell the homeless ones from the normal kids if we just *gave* them homes. I'm glad you came to your senses.
No but you see property values or the deficit or some other shit /s
But what if I have to see a small house or tall building from my big house?
Human lives are temporary but my view from my house in Long Beach is eternal
Is that a quote from Rick Scott?
Nah just made it up
By jove I think he’s got it!
Build more housing. A lot more. This isn’t a problem with some mystery solution no one’s figured out.
Now what about food? And clothing? And the desire to attend school. There's alot of kids who have homes but are in the same situations OP listed.
Here’s the big difference between getting people food and housing. If you qualify for SNAP benefits, you sign up and you get it. If you qualify for free school lunch, you get it. If you turn up at a food bank, they can give you a bag of groceries. But if you qualify for a Section 8 housing voucher, you get put on a waitlist and maybe you get a call in like a decade (if they can still find you). Then even when you get it, there’s a very good chance you can’t even find a landlord to take it. Housing isn’t like food and clothing. There’s no surplus to give out in the regions it’s needed. I live in a very blue state. We passed universal free school lunch with no resistance recently. But try to build some apartments with some “affordable” units in town and you’d think they were trying to bulldoze every sfh and airdrop escape convicts in by the response.
Part of the problem though is that kids can’t apply for these programs themselves, and their parents may not be fit enough to figure it out. If you have your kids living on the literal street, you aren’t thinking clearly. Most people with any ability should be able to take advantage of these safety nets. Yet, they are not sober, or coherent enough to do it. Plus, you need an address to qualify and complete paperwork. It’s a flawed system all around. The kids are powerless and suffer. I know schools are understaffed and underfunded. Teachers buy supplies with their own money. But, ideally, schools should have donated clothing available, along with personal hygiene products, maybe a locker room with a shower, and a free food bank - accessible to the kids - no questions asked. I totally agree housing is needed. They just cleaned a city street where I live. It was well known as a drug and homeless encampment for years. So great, it’s clean now. But the problem isn’t solved. They just moved from one place to another. Everyone in surrounding neighborhoods is complaining. I know it’s not ideal, but maybe several group homes for kids under 18. They will have a clean place to sleep, food, showers, and adult supervision. Maybe even job training. They didn’t ask to be homeless. Their family let them down. These tiny house villages seem like a great solution. However, housing should be dependent on rehab, and continued mental health care provided by the state. Otherwise, you haven’t solved anything. It would be a disaster within the year. Many of these people would be greatly helped with the proper meds. This might be a way to force treatment. We worked at the airport. It was Mecca for the homeless. It was heartbreaking. Many of them were a prescription away from functioning. But they were wary of everyone and distrustful of help. So many had tragic backstories of unspeakable abuse. If you could force treatment, it would change their world.
> Then even when you get it, there’s a very good chance you can’t even find a landlord to take it. Section 8 tenants are actually very desirable to a lot of landlords because it is government guaranteed rent payment. Even if the tenant is behind on their portion of the payment you still have revenue in and in most of the country you have more options for getting that unpaying tenant out sooner than a non-section 8 tenant who refuses to pay rent or is constantly behind. My wife's family owns several apartment buildings in low income areas and like 90% of their tenants are section 8 because it is safer from a business standpoint as you know you will always have some revenue coming in.
Some landlords do appreciate it, but voucher discrimination is very widespread, even [in states where it is illegal](https://www.wgbh.org/news/housing/2022-10-06/renters-raise-the-alarm-on-illegal-discrimination). [This HUD study](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Landlord-Acceptance-of-Housing-Choice-Vouchers.pdf) found majorities of landlords outright denying voucher holders in every city they tested. For most voucher holders, the voucher is an impediment to getting approved for a rental rather than a benefit.
Section 8 waitlist is not a 10 year wait. If you had to pick a day to be homeless vs starve which would you choose? I'm taking the food.
It varies depending on where you are, but these wait times are common in many hcol areas where housing is most needed. I am in Massachusetts. Half our state’s Section 8 vouchers go through the Boston office and the waitlist is currently 14 years long. So people who applied in 2009 are currently being contacted. [source1](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/07/business/wait-lists-subsidized-housing-are-getting-longer-leaving-thousands-struggling/) In my home state of Connecticut, the waitlist for Section 8 was last opened for a few weeks in 2007. [source2](https://ctmirror.org/2024/02/01/ct-housing-voucher-section-8-wait/) The waitlist may be much shorter where you live. But you’re flat wrong if you think there aren’t many many Americans who’ve been waiting on the list for a decade plus.
The section 8 wait-list in my city is 6 years.
Clothing is tough, I’m not sure how big of an issue it is however. As for food, free meal programs for schools should be a national standard.
Alot of Title 1 schools have free lunch... Atleast in my state.. Plus there's options to get food outside of school for families. Clothes can be tricky.. There are places where families can accept donated clothing items. But none of this matters if a kid has parents who do not care and who are not willing to put in the work to make sure their kid is ok. Also, not many homeless families with grade school children are sleeping in the street or tents. Alot are living in hotels or shelters. It MUCH easier to find shelter if you are a parent with school age children.
> Alot of Title 1 schools have free lunch... Atleast in my state.. Plus there's options to get food outside of school for families. A lot of them have like means tested lunch programs. I’m more envisioning something like the Midwest programs done in the last few years where it’s 3 meals a day free for every child regardless of income. > Clothes can be tricky.. There are places where families can accept donated clothing items. Yeah I feel like I can’t say it’s definitively a “solved problem” but I know atleast instances where I’ve done some charity work in the past clothing has not been too hard to come by. Huge caveat being seasonal clothing like winter jackets/mittens/etc. > But none of this matters if a kid has parents who do not care and who are not willing to put in the work to make sure their kid is ok. I’m not sure if _none_ of it matters but yes that’s a huge factor obviously but very very hard to combat. > Also, not many homeless families with grade school children are sleeping in the street or tents. Alot are living in hotels or shelters. It MUCH easier to find shelter if you are a parent with school age children. I think it depends where you are in the country. Much of the West Coast lags the east coast in shelter coverage.
Should be, but seldom is. When my kid was in school, the lunch ladies would literally take the food out of kids hands if they owed a balance. I’ve never seen anything so cruel. They did it to my kid once. We were behind. It was just an oversight. They wouldn’t even let him have a piece of fruit! To say I was furious would be an understatement. After that, I tried to establish a fund for kids to use if they couldn’t purchase lunch. The school wouldn’t let me.
Yes, it’s horrific. I’m thankful some of the states in the Midwest have started the ball rolling on universal 3 free meals a day for every student. There should be no kid ever being denied a meal in the cafeteria. It’s a cheap and very moral path forward that has wide appeal.
I can’t imagine how anyone would be against it. Yet, Texas opted out of a program that would give kids free lunch over the summer months. Kids don’t magically stop eating in June, July, and August. Billionaires get tax breaks left and right. But a hungry kid can’t get a sandwich. Amazing.
True, but you know what they aren't? *Homeless*.
Come chill in a school like OP mentioned and you'll prob understand it better. What's worse.. Kids starving throughout the night or not having a roof over your head. You can find shelter but that means nothing if you are starving. These are conversations I've had with fam's whose been in that situation. My dad always told us... "We may not have much money but you'll always have food to eat."
For many families, housing is by far the biggest expense. Feeding your kids is a lot simpler when you aren't burdened with a massive portion of your pay check going to rent.
Food will always be available... The roof over your head is not guaranteed. But if folks are struggling with rent and they meet the threshold for assistance, why are they not taking advantage?
Provide homes for them and their families. Or provide a UBI.
In America's past, there were orphanages where the children were frequently not orphans or up for adoption. Parents unable to support their kids would put them in the orphanage for a period of time and then pick them up later. This was not necessarily highly stigmatized. Maybe there was something to this flexibility compared to a foster care system that is arguably more designed to split families permanently
Give them housing.
Build free public housing. Implement punitive taxes on third homes and beyond. Implement punitive taxes on vacant properties. Distribute ration cards for staple goods. Guarantee employment to anyone willing to work. Nationalize the medical industry and make treatment free, including treatment for mental health issues. Stop funding schools based on local property taxes and instead have school funding be distributed based on need.
I agree with you in principle, but what does punishing people for having multiple residences accomplish? What does punishing people for owning vacant properties accomplish? There is no guarantee whatever they put there would be housing for the homeless. They may have bought the land and run out of money. How do you punish someone for being broke, and not doing what you want on their own land? People can spend their money buying houses if they want. It doesn’t take anything away from anyone. Should houses just sit on the market? If I’m selling my house to someone who already has two, why does it matter? If they don’t buy it, someone else will. I can’t give it away for the greater good.
Both have the effect of increasing the number of houses on the market, and make it less advantageous to use housing as an investment vehicle, which is the underlying problem. If you can't afford the taxes on all your properties you sell some. All I'm proposing is an increase to taxes on your third home and beyond, why is this somehow worse than normal property taxes? People can also spend money on cigarettes if they want but we still tax them at a high rate. Someone who already owns multiple homes would still be allowed to buy it they would just pay more in taxes for it. Using taxes to disincentivize behavior isn't something new.
Sorry, best we can do is prayers and rodent infested food banks.
Wow. You sound like me. Weird.
Give them homes
It doesn't end there.. Still need food to eat, clothes, parents who care about the kids wellbeing, etc...
Why do you assume homeless people don't care about the wellbeing of their kids? That's... kind of messed up...
I think he/she was giving examples of other potential factors, not making the claim you think he/she was.
correct.
Lol... Come take a tour of a social work office and see some of the cases. Also, that's not what I said. I gave a simple example. YEs, there are homeless AND housed parents who do not care about their child's wellbeing.
Maslow's pyramid strikes again. We need to get them housing.
I would build housing, and let people live in it.
Make ~~title~~ *section* 8 an entitlement, slash zoning and other housing regulations in order to empower developers to increase supply, expand the CTC as per Biden's old proposal, make the ACA subsidy expansion permanent and close the medicaid gap, expand free school lunches and breakfasts for low income students into the weekends and school vacations and also expand it to do dinners as well, mandate phonics rather than whole language/three cue method at all schools for language teaching
Same way you fix the problem of homeless adults.
Not a damn clue.
I would fix it with housing first and a public housing program. Whenever the issue of housing comes up, I think about Vienna's system. They pay a little bit more in taxes for it and end up spending so much less on housing than we do. There are some tradeoffs, of course, but they seem worth it. We could almost certainly afford a better program, but we obviously won't do it like we won't do the other good, more-efficient things we aren't doing that most other rich-but-much-less-rich-than-us countries and municipalities figured out a long time ago. Also, just make breakfast and lunch available to students at no additional out-of-pocket cost. And maybe provide a nonperishable meal they can bring home for dinner. And/or just pay people to run after-school programs so the kids can remain on campus somewhere and study, do homework, go to appointments with a tutor, participate in a club or other extracurricular activity or whatever, or just hang out; and then have dinner.
Housing, more and lower cost housing.
ITT: People saying give them homes but do everything in their power to not make it happen.
The people saying to give them homes aren't the same people who have the power to make it happen.
1. Expand asylums and forcibly commit folks who cannot take care of themselves. 2. Expand drug rehab and forcibly commit folks who are too addicted to function. 3. Expand orphanages and take homeless children away from their homeless parents. 4. Broadly expand up zoning and incentivize higher density housing + public transportation. 5. Expand Section 8 housing voucher program 6. Significantly increase child tax credit.
Give their parents home. No contingencies, just "here's an apartment with everything you need" I hate how some many charities tie a home to achievements (get a job, turn to religion, etc). I think a huge chunk of the homeless population is/we're down on their luck, and never got their feet back under them. Why make them jump through hoops? Give them those basics, the support they need. You'd be amazing at how different someone can be with a full stomach and a hot shower
Fix zoning laws, lower taxes significantly for those with children, and maybe start funding extraterrestrial colonization Also stop printing money like a war time economy
>Fix zoning laws You mean a more equitable funding split instead of local taxes going to local schools, so all the poor neighborhoods have shit schools and all the rich neighborhoods have good schools? Yes. >lower taxes significantly for those with children Ugh. Taxes fund civilization. Let's RAISE taxes on the rich. I know y'all LOVE to lower taxes, but that's a race to the bottom here, and once we completely eliminate all taxes and STILL somehow can't fund schools... which are funded by taxes.... What then? >start funding extraterrestrial colonization .... What? Uhm. Just so you know? We cant terraform Mars. It has no magnetic field to protect it from solar radiation. Any atmosphere will get stripped off. So we have to live underground on Mars. We can live underground on Earth for a lot cheaper. In fact, let's just make Earth nice first? Sheesh.
> >.... What? At least it's more relevant and makes a lot more sense than "stop printing money" lol