• Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Not all conservatives are that way. I support free meals at schools. It makes sense. It’s investing in our children.

    Cutting is a complicated topic. The general consensus is throwing money at a problem isn’t the way to solve it all the time. So I’m not for or against spending on schools until we know what problem the money will solve. If we can’t show a benefit then it shouldn’t be spent.

    Kansas City spent over a billion dollars trying to fix their schools and it didn’t work. Wasted money.

    Cutting law enforcement? Most conservatives want more law enforcement.

    Also don’t confuse the people who are shit stains with an old school conservative like myself. They’re not the same thing.

      • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        That’s money in 1980 dollars. 15k per year was a lot of of money. A house was about 20-25k.

        • Chapo0114 [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          That’s an exaggeration. The median price for new construction in 1980 was $64,600. [1] As for existing housing stock, the median home value in 1980 was $47,200. [2] As housing prices are heavily right skewed, the prices of cheap housing is far closer to the median than the price of expensive housing. Based on a cursory overview of some charts, it seems like the bottom 20% of houses are no more that 30% cheaper than the median, putting them in the $30k range.

          • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            We are talking Kansas City. Not a general area like the Midwest.

            My parents home was 20k in 1975. My grandparents homes were about 10k in the same time frame.

            Kansas City was very cheap at the time. Yes there were more expensive homes but in the 1980’s working class families didn’t have McMansions.

              • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                The data isn’t relevant since it’s not for the area defined. We are talking about a specific geographic area. Kansas City proper.

                Due to the white flight of the 70’s housing prices declined or only grew fractionally.

                When my grandparents died, each of their homes only sold under 20k in the late 90’s early 20’s.

                Comparing the price of home across the Midwest has nothing to do with the price in East Kansas City or SE where I went to school

    • TheForkOfDamocles@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      You should look past the Cato Institute’s analysis of the KC schools situation. For example, the summary and conclusion sections of this article from the University of Michigan law school show that the conservative criticisms are based on myth.

      • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I lived it. I have not see the Cato analysis and I can speak from experience and the watching the news.

        The goal was to desegregate the schools. That failed. The second goal was to increase test scores. That failed.

        I’ve only skimmed the article you’ve posted but I’ve found numbers errors. It’s fifty pages, so it’ll take some time to get through it. They’re twisting things to silly extremes like minimizing the amount of money Kansas City has to spend.