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income inequality debate

Your definition of "trust the families" and mine aren't in the same ballpark. I don't hedge on who gets to choose their schools.

I trust the families, I don't trust the choices available. Assuming 60% of our schools are "good", then 100% of students can't attend those 60% of schools regardless of what the family wants. I want education policy that does more than throw up its hands at those 40% of schools.
 
I trust the families, I don't trust the choices available. Assuming 60% of our schools are "good", then 100% of students can't attend those 60% of schools regardless of what the family wants. I want education policy that does more than throw up its hands at those 40% of schools.

100% of students should be in the top 1% of schools.
 
I'm not impressed enough with your needy, self-serving conclusions to ask you to defend this statement, but I am awed that you don't believe there is a causal connection between single parenting and income disparities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ers-and-poverty-is-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/

"It's tempting to look at the tidy pattern above and conclude that the breakdown of marriage causes poverty, perpetuating inequality. "

It's true that marriage can bring stability and emotional benefits to the children of middle- and upper-class families. But that's not because the institution of marriage itself is universally beneficial. It's because certain kinds of marriages are beneficial, such as those between adults who don't have to worry about getting evicted, who can afford to pay their medical bills, who don't contend with the surrounding stresses of violence or joblessless or having to get to work without a car.

"The problem," Ohio State sociologist Kristi Williams recently told me, "is that there’s no evidence that the kind of marriages that poor, single parents enter into will have these same benefits."
 
I'm not impressed enough with your needy, self-serving conclusions to ask you to defend this statement, but I am awed that you don't believe there is a causal connection between single parenting and income disparities.

I'm awed that you don't realize that's not what the article was about. If two poor people get married, they don't just become rich. They're just two poor people.
 
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between this and the healthcare thread there is some serious causal connection fail on the boards today. TGIF
 
More like (many, many, many) societal confounding factors making any statistically significant causal connections difficult to draw IMO.
 
More like (many, many, many) societal confounding factors making any statistically significant causal connections difficult to draw IMO.

Do you really think that? You think it is a toss up as to which choices are better for your lifetime prosperity?
 
Do you really think that? You think it is a toss up as to which choices are better for your lifetime prosperity?

If marriage is a guaranteed step toward success, why is our divorce rate so high?
 
Do you really think that? You think it is a toss up as to which choices are better for your lifetime prosperity?

That's not what I said. I didn't draw any conclusions one way or the other. I don't think just by labeling something "marriage" really impacts too much. Did you read the article I posted on the last page?
 
Millions of millions of coincidences. Of course.
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ers-and-poverty-is-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/

"It's tempting to look at the tidy pattern above and conclude that the breakdown of marriage causes poverty, perpetuating inequality. "

It's true that marriage can bring stability and emotional benefits to the children of middle- and upper-class families. But that's not because the institution of marriage itself is universally beneficial. It's because certain kinds of marriages are beneficial, such as those between adults who don't have to worry about getting evicted, who can afford to pay their medical bills, who don't contend with the surrounding stresses of violence or joblessless or having to get to work without a car.

"The problem," Ohio State sociologist Kristi Williams recently told me, "is that there’s no evidence that the kind of marriages that poor, single parents enter into will have these same benefits."
 
If marriage is a guaranteed step toward success, why is our divorce rate so high?

That seems to me to be a deliberate misstatement of anything I've ever argued. Why?
 
I never said it's a toss up or not. I have no idea what it is and I don't think we have enough studies or evidence to prove one way or the other. To your question I guess if I had to pick whether or not I think there's a meaningful causal connection between the two I would say no because I think marriage and income are both dependent variables rather than marriage being an independent variable.
 
I never said it's a toss up or not. I have no idea what it is and I don't think we have enough studies or evidence to prove one way or the other. To your question I guess if I had to pick whether or not I think there's a meaningful causal connection between the two I would say no because I think marriage and income are both dependent variables rather than marriage being an independent variable.

Wow.
 
So you haven't read the article I posted.

I got two reps from people saying "doesn't matter he won't read it anyway" and shockingly (not at all) you haven't read it.

Not that I expect you to read anything that deviates from your life-long obsession with telling us that two-parent households and personal responsibility are the only way we can turn things around as a society.
 
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