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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:06PM
Aaaah, I get it.
You get to say "The US is way more right-wing thant he civilised world!" with a footnote of where the civilised world is defined as that part more left-wing on my preferred measures than the US.
Instead of throwing around general statements with hidden implications, how about stating straight up what your notion of left and right wing are, what your notion of the civilised world is, and why you chose those metrics?
Since you mention the eastern hemisphere, how about comparisons with some countries in the west? Ireland, that still has an official religion and kind of means it? Argentina, that's awash with protectionism and loves to beat a militaristic drum about the Falklands ... I mean, Malvinas? Jamaica, where anti-gay sentiment makes Mobile, Alabama look like a mecca of tolerance?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @04:46PM
Oh quit the nitpicking. You know fucking well what my metric is: not letting a good 15% of your population be so poor due to dysregulated economics that they have to be on assistance. Not forcing people to choose between rent, food, and medical care. Not throwing people away like trash for being poor.
Basic. Human. Decency. That's my goddamn metric. No nation is perfect, but places like Norway do a hell of a lot better overall than the US does.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @08:18PM
Nits to pick matter in public policy. They matter a lot. Otherwise you're stuck at the level of bumper sticker policy.
And it's funny you should pick Norway, since they're actually gradually rolling back some of their social policies, on the observation that a heavily taxed and demotivated population with low incentive to invest leads to reduced capacity for growth and innovation. Not to mention, their right wing is (partly as a consequence) growing.
You know what else? Cherry-picking Norway as your point of comparison just means the US is far to the right of Norway, and means nothing whatsoever with respect to the rest of the world. So congratulations, you're right about one tiny corner case. The very fact that you have to reach for this corner case shows how weak your general case is.
So let's try this again, shall we? Take three deep, cleansing breaths and repeat after me:
"Politics in the USA is pretty middle-of-the-road in international terms, while being tolerant of lunatic extremes on pretty much all fronts."
There, was that so hard?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 19 2016, @08:54PM
Again: we're only "middle of the road" in international terms because 2/3 of the planet is ratfucking insane. Beware, too, the golden mean fallacy: the truth is not always in the center of two competing opinions. Sometimes it's way the hell off to the side of one of them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:13AM
This is a gold mine.
If you think that 2/3 of the planet is ratfucking insane (to use your pungent phrase) does that mean that 2/3 of the planet thinks that you're ratfucking insane (at least on policy grounds)?
Maybe what seems like obvious common sense to you seems like a really bad idea to a huge number of people?
Maybe what seems like crucially important stuff to you seems disgusting, vile, and possibly outright evil to most of the people out there?
But it's cool. You could very easily be right. So, all you have to do is prove it. Lay out your political philosophy. Be organised, detailed and specific. Hell, submit it to Soylent. Maybe we can figure out how to reshape America in your image? Or, you know, at least according to your ideals.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:43AM
My ideals are simple but they're never going to be implemented, because they would mean too many people who are enjoying their elite status at the cost of making the rest of us suffer to varying degrees wouldn't be able to do that any more. You can't fix sociopathy with technology, and there are some people for whom the feeling of control over others is their driving force.
That being said, we've seen what happens when the standard of living goes up. The problem is that we can't do that with the current production paradigm: our base resources are limited and a lot of our energy production methods are polluting. My policy starts with a massive push for thorium-cycle fission and renewables, with fusion as a hoped-for but not necessary development. Desalinization has to be developed along with it and ideally run in tandem with, say, a thermal-mass solar power plant. Hydroponics and tower farms figure heavily into this too. And something you might call synthesizable housing, more or less "we can basically 3D print standard housing/apartment spaces." Imagine a second Manhattan Project, but with peace instead of war as its aim.
We're going to need some form of basic income, though I would suggest that most of it be in the form of vouchers for specific goods (food, healthcare, etc) rather than straight money, as we know some people simply cannot handle money. This is less because I think this is a good idea in and of itself than because the amount of productive work that needs done is rapidly shrinking as the population continues to grow. Since the end result of that is either mass starvation and riots or a huge welfare state ANYWAY, we may as well be prepared for it and do it right. Personally, I think a lot of people will still choose to work, and ye gods, we will have need of workers for all the above-mentioned infrastructure.
There will also be a heavy emphasis on knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. No one will be forced to learn things past 12th grade, just like now, but I would like to see it become a cultural point of pride to be well-read, rather than today's ignorance. I also want to see people taught to build and repair and create things from early on, and taught to be proud of hands that create and shelter, rather than hands that destroy and rob. The outdoors needs to figure more prominently too.
You're probably assuming I'm a big government type. Quite the opposite, actually; the point of all the above is that it will free people from much of the current system, which is a corrupted, incestuous orgy of dysregulation and cronyism and abuse. The education and engagement parts of this are massively important: we do NOT want a race of idiot Eloi tended to by a Morlock caste, so "everyone" will need to know the basics of how things like a hydroponic greenhouse or a wind turbine work.
Pie in the sky? Sure. I doubt this will happen in my lifetime, or at all; I personally suspect the human race is doomed. But you asked, and I answered.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:51PM
What you're describing isn't a set of ideals so much as a programme for action. This isn't bad, but you're not saying how you would get there. Who gets to push thorium generation? How? Using which incentives, prohibitions and legal structures? What are the limits placed on government, if any? How do you prevent government agents from becoming the new elite? How do you prevent anybody else from becoming the new elite? Why hydroponics and tower farms? What about the limited resources upon which they rely? How are those allocated? How are conflicts adjudicated? How do you assure Pareto efficiency with your system of vouchers? How do you prevent voucher black markets from cropping up? What about commodity black currencies? How do you compensate people who deliver things paid for by vouchers? How do you ensure that they give voucher holders equal priority?
These questions, in case you're wondering, come pretty directly in most cases from world experience with proposals similar to yours, whether you're talking about war rationing systems, attempts to do various forms of alternative farming at grand scale, and alternative legal systems that left lacunae in terms of dispute resolution over access to resources.
To put it another way, you're a meta-level too high. Get down to more fundamental points.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 21 2016, @02:13AM
Yeah, I've thought about all this, and come to the conclusion that the blocker is lack of political will, not lack of technology.
At this point, unfortunately, I think only a tragedy (and I count massive, bloody revolution in this category) is going to allow these changes to happen. Too many people with too much power are too invested in the status quo, and as this seems to be a consequence of human nature, I don't think there's any way of putting a permanent end to that.
There is a reason "may you live in interesting times" is a swear-phrase in Mandarin.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...