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Whirlpool (the appliance manufacturer) donated washers and driers to schools and increased attendance.
According to Whirlpool's research, one in five school children report difficulty finding clean clothes to wear to school. It turns out that offering free in-school laundry services to kids with attendance problems increases their attendance.
When compared to factors like economic opportunity, unemployment, and institutional racism, laundry seems pretty inconsequential in the fight to keep kids in school. But while that might be the case for their parents, for a ten-year-old who already has the odds stacked against them, having nothing clean to wear to school could be the deciding factor in whether or not they want to face their classmates that day.
I can remember my grandmother telling me that she thought lunches in schools were a wonderful innovation, because they didn't have anything like that when she was a girl, and many children couldn't come because they wouldn't have lunch. I'm sure back then nobody thought of lunch as something school should provide. Now apparently laundry is the next big innovation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @09:33PM
Lots of people say that spending more money on schools doesn't improve outcomes. This story illustrates why that is true: In the worst school districts the neighborhood poverty is so pervasive that many children simply lack an adequate foundation that we take for granted - clean and warm clothes, functional shoes, food in their bellies, healthy homes (lead paint, mold, poor lighting, insufficient heating, etc). Spending money on school resources doesn't usually fix those problems. Money is not magic pixie dust.
But when you address those foundational problems, it makes the children able to receive the benefits of education. And once they are ready for it, increased spending on educational resources does improve outcomes. [npr.org]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Wednesday August 17 2016, @09:52PM
lack an adequate foundation that we take for granted ... But when you address those foundational problems
It turns out that offering free in-school laundry services to kids
That post was nice progressive signalling and I acknowledge your anonymous devoutness to the progressive religion but personally I suspect its more like absolute shit tier mothers bellowing something in a drunken rage at 6am like "GD it you're going to school today because I'll be damned if I'll spend my crack money on laundry detergent for your clothes so you gonna do the free washing at school". And of course I pick on the mother in this example because coincidentally enough the groups that excel at failure in general also tend to excel at single-parent-hood so the kids have no father figure in their lives of any sort, which surely has no impact on why their boys grow up all F'ed up in the head and go straight from school to prison.
I'm not sure a cultural strategy of helping shit tier mothers reproduce their genes by having the successful people pay to wash their kids jeans for them so they got more money for crack is a smart policy or makes sense in a general sense.
On the other hand.... Via the usual genetic methods of reversion to the norm and occasional mutations I'm sure some of the kids with worthless mothers are a better genetic bet than their mothers were, so maybe under that doctrine its worth investing in the kids, in that on average they can't be as worthless as absolute bottom tier mothers. I'm not completely against the idea and acknowledge it has some minimal level of value and isn't entirely bad. Just mostly bad.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:10PM
> I suspect its more like absolute shit tier mothers
That post was nice racist signalling and I acknowledge your anonymous devoutness to the bigotist religion
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:16PM
Shitty single moms come in all colours, you come off sounding more of a bigot than him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:24PM
I love it went fools bite on the pedant trap. Shows that they've got no actual rebuttal.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:28PM
the groups that excel at failure in general also tend to excel at single-parent-hood ...
so they got more money for crack
If you can't hear the dogwhistle in phrases like those then you are probably a bigot too.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:41AM
We don't have enough information in front of us to indicate what percentage of affected kids have crack-addicted parent(s).
More likely, the fact that many states offer a minimum wage below the poverty line means that low-educated but hard working parents trying to do their best simply can't afford those things that we take for granted. Food, or laundry? Books, or hot water?
I would be very interested to see a state-by-state comparison of minimum wage levels versus percentage of people living in poverty (or using this laundry service)...
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:05AM
I can only hope you reincarnate poor in the inner city somewhere. Poor and black, and female for preference. At this point I don't even think you're trolling; you say this shit because you really do believe it, not to cause reactions.
What's the opposite of virtue signalling? Because whatever it is, you're doing it. And I can't help but notice that people, like you, who accuse others of "virtue signalling," don't seem to have any themselves. Is that envy? Or perhaps that gives you more credit for self-awareness than you deserve...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:01PM
The problem isn't with the programs themselves- far be it from me to cast aspersions on people who want clean clothes- but at some point you'd expect total spend to decrease relative to population as more and more people are lifted out of poverty.
That hasn't been the case, and in fact there is a near exponential increase in welfare spending.
That isn't helping people out of poverty but creating dependency.
Further, I think upon The Soul of Man under Socialism and can't help but think these things long-term do more harm than good, either by putting band-aids on gross injustices so the will to address them never rises or the aforementioned dependency problem.
In this regard, it isn't addressing a foundational problem, but in fact bread and circuses, even if it is for a good cause.
(Score: 2) by http on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:37AM
This increased welfare spending you bemoan is spent in a fight against a system that systematically removes money from people who produce wealth and gives it to people who already have more money - and that theft is growing, too.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:55AM
You say fight the system. I say enables it.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday August 18 2016, @03:23AM
I understand that much of the increased welfare spending is going to the working poor. You have low wages, businesses that pay as little as possible and actually teach their workers how to collect welfare so the government subsidizes those low wages. Thus you end up with the super rich such as the Walton's who have the government subsidizing their business.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:10AM
You wanna know what the foundational problem is? Starvation wages. Companies like WalMart having economies that rival entire countries in the second world, and paying their workers such utter shit that they're dependent on government aid...in other words, forcing the taxpayers (that's you and me) to subsidize their business model.
Don't think of it as "I'm being forced to pay for poor people;" what's really happening here is "I'm forced to subsidize Wally World's profits with my taxes." It's exactly the same with the people bemoaning illegal aliens taking their jobs: no, buddy, the greedheads are withholding the jobs from you and giving them to the illegals. Place the blame where it's due.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @05:01AM
Hey, thought experiment!
Instead of those people working crap jobs for crap wages, we smash the system! Now they work no jobs for no wages, and yippee, we're not providing a subsidy for Walmart! No, sir, we're virtuously paying the good folks just what they should have because they're flat broke and the alternative is them stealing our shit and killing us. That's the ticket!
Or do you really think a minimum wage of *insert big number here* will suddenly make it all sweet? No, the Waltons of this world will do less business, hire fewer people, and not be displaced by an army of Mom-and-Pops because they will still undercut the small players by a huge percentage. They'll just have higher rates of automation, lower headcount, higher salaries but quite likely lower total payroll.
If you want to break the pattern, you need to break up the big boys, not try to get them to play by a set of rules that is something they will always work around. Unions won't even do it because the unions are themselves monolithic.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 18 2016, @05:08AM
You're making a few unwarranted assumptions as to how I'd go about this... :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:06AM
I'm not going to defend big corporations apart from saying that there is a private solution to corps' bad behavior that doesn't involve the threat or use of force: disassociation, ala boycotts.
By using the phrase "starvation wages" you ignore the fact that huge chunks of entry-level workers' paychecks are stolen via the threat of force by governments, and imply that businesses (not just big corps) should be forced at gunpoint to raise wages.
Rather than debate the economics of the situation, I'll cut to the chase and state that if your solution involves pointing guns at people to make them agree with you, then YOU are the problem. This shouldn't be news to you, as you've made your affection for threatening the lives of people who disagree with you quite plain: " neutralizing you might be appropriate [soylentnews.org]" -Azuma Hazuki
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday August 18 2016, @12:26PM
Easy to say when you live in an area with alternatives to Walmart or enough money to travel to alternatives. Some people have no other choice now that Walmart has replaced all the local shops. It's either they buy at Walmart or travel miles to the nearest alternative. Gas isn't free and most of these areas have zero public transportation if they lack a vehicle. Walmart knows this and uses it to their advantage.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 18 2016, @07:41PM
Don't confuse Mr. Self-owned Man with facts and logic; those are for Commie pinkos who hate America and the Free Market (TM).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:40AM
Why should you trouble yourself with facts and logic when you can just take comfort in planning the murders of all who disagree with you?
After all, I don't ever intend to "[tie you] to a stake on the Florida beach as the waves come in [soylentnews.org]". (You might get shot by me while trying to tie someone to said stake, though. What are your feelings on gun control, I wonder?)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @05:12AM
You're right, that would be unconscionable and immensely cruel. To the sharks. What was I thinking?!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @05:56AM
Granted, but you're overlooking the core concept which is "stealing is wrong no matter who does it". Mega-corps like WalMart in particular are notorious for obtaining big tax breaks for new stores, a venue only open to WalMart due to the theft taking place from WalMart's smaller competitors. It's obviously much easier to make a profit if you can steal and get away with the crime.
In short: if I don't have the authority to take any of your paycheck at gunpoint, neither can I delegate authority to do that same thing to a government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:02PM
> By using the phrase "starvation wages" you ignore the fact that huge chunks of entry-level workers' paychecks are stolen via the threat of force by governments,
You have a remarkably exaggerated definition of "huge."
The Tax Policy Center estimates that, on average in 2015, households in the lowest income quintile (the bottom fifth) will owe federal taxes equal to 3.6 percent of their incomes, much lower than the average 19.8 percent tax rate for all households.
— http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-does-federal-tax-system-affect-low-income-households [taxpolicycenter.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:35AM
When I last slung boxes off trucks for MegaCorpo, my fifty-cent-above-min-wage paycheck had a hell of a lot more missing from it than 3.6%. You're "forgetting" about all the other hands in others' pockets, such as:
- FICA (6.2%)
- medicare (1.45%)
- states' fingers (from 0%-insane% for just "income")
- "employer pays" items, which is a lie as those are taken directly off the top of pay offers made to employees: the employee ALWAYS pays these (6.2% + 1.45%)
Best-case scenario, using your number of 3.6% for "federal taxes", the working schmucks are still robbed of 18.9% of their production.
So I was correct the first time. One fifth of my production as a min-wage working stiff was stolen from me via threat of force, and supporters of that paradigm are the problem!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 18 2016, @07:35PM
Oh hey, it's you again :) Welcome back, Mr. Self-owned Man!
For what this is worth, I'd much rather neutralize you by cutting you off from mass communication than actually killing you, even though, historically speaking, that would be the Christian thing to do, Mr. Self-owned Man. Personally I'd enjoy your impotent, anguished frustration more than your physical suffering, but that's just me.
And I have news for you: violence is the failure mode of society. If it gets to the point that riots and violence are happening, something has broken. If you don't want that kind of violence, fix what's going on. Your idiotic posturing for the wealthy is fooling no one.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:51AM
I... see. So you are sadistic as well as murderously-inclined.
By contrast, I don't wish ill on anyone. I'd prefer fraud, theft, assault, etc. be punished with restitution, if applicable after a swift trial weighted so that "better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer". It doesn't occupy much of my mind-time that criminals such as the Clintons (and eminent-domain-Trump, for that matter) wander free; when I become aware of criminal behavior, I do my best to disassociate from them, neither seeking vengeance nor helping them in any way I can control. My primary felt emotion when such criminals come to mind is sadness. Incidentally, it's the same I feel for you at this moment.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @05:11AM
Sure. You're fooling no one, Mr. Self-owned Man. Here's some Kleenex, here's a mirror, here's a bottle of hand lotion, and here's--this is important, there is NO WAY you can succeed without this--a microscope. Have fun, and try not to make too much noise.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @05:45AM
There's no fooling intended. My cards have been laid face-up on the table from the first time I knowingly responded to one of your posts. [soylentnews.org] I didn't expect to show you my "game plan" just to turn around and use it against you, but I also didn't expect effectively all semblance of reason to exit your writings: I know very few people who can construct even a shadow of a defense for the use of violence as a means to conduct a society, and yet you seem to be just such an advocate while simultaneously being unaware of that and revelling in it.
The hope is, after you realize that all you've got is a quiverfull of juvenile ad hominem to spitefully hurl, you will attempt an honest examination of your premises. It's not easy, but, speaking from experience, it's better to have tested, broken, and rebuilt premises than live a life in a fog of blinding rage because "all those other idiots refuse to conform to my worldview for no good reason whatsoever"!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @04:52PM
Hey, did you know that if you burn enough strawmen in life, they all wait for you in hell? I hear they tie you upside-down to a pole and shove hay up (well, down...) your ass and take bets as to how long before it starts comin' out your nose!
You know, your precious Jesus had a lot to say about people like you. He called them "whited sepulcher," meaning a thin veneer of respectability and civility over a heart full of corruption. Just because you work hard at presenting a superficially "cleaner" impression doesn't mean you're actually a decent person. You seem more interested in scoring rhetorical points and "standards signalling" (i.e., pretending to virtues you don't actually have) than thinking any of this through.
I have news for you, Mr. A. Coward: violence is the foundation of the nation-state. What is government but monopolized violence? You sit there self-righteous and smug, and the blood of literally millions of Indians is crying out for vengeance under your feet. The fossil fuels used to keep our electronics running have, metaphorically, a good percentage of blood mixed in with them. What stinking hypocrisy.
THAT is what I mean by you're not fooling anyone. "Self-owned man" indeed; as the kiddies say, you played yourself.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @07:57PM
For someone aware of how easily questionable assumptions can be made [soylentnews.org], you sure do make a lot of them.
I don't recall claiming to be a "decent person", merely one trying to converse with reason rather than invective. I've engaged you to try to draw out your premises for scrutiny, as well as present my own for attack, and it's briefly worked in the case or two before you chose to revert to blind ad hominem.
Insofar as the USA is concerned, government is legally a list of enumerated powers delegated to it from normal individual people as evidenced by its creation at the Philadelphia Convention. (I realize that there are people who would like government to have a monopoly on violence, but it [prohibitionists.org] does [oathkeepers.org] not [wikipedia.org].) Violence itself is a merely a tool like any other, one which can be used in response to violence, which is the proper mechanism by which government enforcers use violence in response to a crime: a victim could personally use violence in response to others' initiation of violence, but the authority to do so is regularly delegated to government enforcers via calling 911, etc. Doing so can also help eliminate the appearance of vengeance rather than seeking justice/restitution/etc.
When US government agents act outside of the scope of an individual's authority, those actions are literally criminal. If it is wrong for me to ambush native American villages and slaughter the women and children, what do you think my view would be of government agents doing the same thing?
Curious that you mention use of fossil fuels use for electrical production as last I'd checked there was a functioning prototype Molten Salt Reactor [wikipedia.org] fifty years ago which used thorium as a primary fuel, suggesting that modern MSR designs such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor [glerner.com] should be a no-brainer [youtube.com] in terms of safe, efficient, inexpensive electrical power with the high reaction heat as a beneficial means to drive the Fischer–Tropsch process [wikipedia.org] to turn thorium-bearing coal into synfuels for existing infrastructure. The barrier to this approach: criminal threats by government agents to use violence against anyone who pursues MSR tech.
The dominant theme running through my posts is: "if I as a normal person do not have authority to do a thing, then neither can I delegate authority for that same thing to anyone else", directly leading to my accusation that US government is almost entirely literally criminal. I'm tired of the thousands of "leaf" issues that clutter up the USian socio-political landscape: should I have a magic wand and make any one of them disappear, would there be any significant improvement in the average USian's life? Abortion, energy, foreign wars, domestic wars (drugs), corrupt "justice" system, gun control, resource utilization, social programs/wealth redistribution/gov-as-charity: no. The problem underlying all of these and more seems to be a government acting outside the bounds of its authority. Few people would be happy with a society where other people weren't constantly threatened with violence to conform to some mutated standard of conduct produced by criminal government, but I for one won't shed a tear at the distress of people who can no longer own other people by proxy. I don't ever expect to see an earthly utopia, but I'm trying to hone and propogate the message that a slave-free USA would be a definite improvement in addition to being the only lawful course.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @08:57PM
Okay, that entire wall of text condenses down to one premise:
> "The dominant theme running through my posts is: "if I as a normal person do not have authority to do a thing, then neither can I delegate authority for that same thing to anyone else"
How Do You Know That (TM)? You've stated this as an axiom; I challenge that idea.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @09:06PM
If it was presented as an axiom, it by definition is presumed to be self-evident. If there is a flaw, by all means do point it out.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @09:42PM
Oh no. Burden of proof's on you, buddy-boy. YOU stated this, YOU prove it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @10:12PM
You're demanding I prove a negative? I know of no flaws with my assertion, otherwise I wouldn't present it as fact. If you see a flaw, feel free to point it out, otherwise you're merely uttering "nuh-uh!" as a retort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:47AM
I hesitate to make this post, as it seems quite condescending in principle, and redundant in form. However, as it is one step above describing the definition of common English words, it may have been what you were wanting me to provide:
1. If I do not already have a given thing in my possession, I cannot give said thing to anyone else.
2. Authority is a quality which I am able to possess.
3. Therefore, I cannot give authority which I do not already possess to anyone else.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:49AM
Okay, put it another way: what DO you have the authority to do, WHERE do you, or other people, get this authority, and what backs it up? What you want to avoid here is committing some sort of circular-reference fallacy.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:55AM
For my purposes here, attempting to determine where the bounds of legitimacy lie in terms of normal USians and the choice of proper responses in light of repugnant behavior by government agents, those questions are irrelevant. The creation of the US Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention was done with only the authority the delegates themselves had, and the authority they had was only that which they possessed as individuals, since, as I believe I've shown, authority not posssessed cannot be delegated.
Circular references work in my favor in this case, as either:
- the Constitution was properly created via the authority of an individual (and thus is limited to being no greater in authority than its creator)
- or the Constitution was a creation devoid of authority and thus limits, creates, nor protects nothing and nobody (e.g. established through force/violence alone), and all who operate behind its facade are literal criminals no different than fraudsters, muggers, kidnappers, and murderers
In both cases the existing US fedgov activity is almost (if not completely) entirely outside the bounds of law, thus literally criminal, and that is the root cause of the vast majority of the US' socio-politcal problems. (Once this is recognized, the legitimacy of the current US gov vanishes into the thin air it came from, allowing people the freedom of mind to choose how to conduct themselves when faced with literal criminals rather than being shorn or slaughtered as sheep. I reject the initation of violence, instead propose a peaceful course of resistance via disassociation, which could untilmately result in starving the criminal beast without a shot needing to be fired as fully 75% of the US fedgov budget is taken in via personal income tax returns [taxpolicycenter.org]. Recent history has shown the traditional forms of peaceful redress, such as voting, protesting, and voicing concerns to elected officials have all been subverted. Peaceful success is unlikely, but still possible before resorting to civil war.)