Just like when people are trying to sell you something, they call it an "investment"; people trying to implement government spending programs call it "spreading opportunity".
Some government programs really do spread opportunity, but that requires close examination and criticism; I don't just buy into it because a politician calls it opportunity. Is college an opportunity? It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in life; but it can also just subsidize a partying lifestyle and a phony major for four years. It depends on the college, the student, and the structure of the opportunity.
It's hard to tell the difference between spreading opportunity and spreading results. It often requires looking at the details, measuring along the way, and it is often different for different people.
Yeah, probably one of the strongest arguments for both Progressive Tax and Basic Income is that the current system is deeply broken, and despite doing a lot of good, carries a solid amount of waste along the way.
I do think it's important to remember that a lot of mess of social spending programs happened, at some point, for good reason. You can give everyone $12k/year, but it won't take long for people in SF to ask for an extra housing subsidy to counteract real estate prices, followed soon by rallies against eugenics when lower income Americans don't get extra children subsidized.
I'm not at all against social spending, or necessarily against any of it's alternatives, but as a software engineer, I sometimes have difficulty remembering that problems like this don't exist in a closed system and resist top-down design.
It's not just that it creates financial waste. Phony opportunities are dead ends that take other opportunities off the table.
If you have only a few plausible opportunities, you are likely to make them count. If you have a hundred but 50 are phony, you will waste your time, feel entitled to results (hey, I went to college, I deserve a good job!), and become discouraged.
Quite optimistic thinking, some kids might not have ANY opportunity at all and the 1 shot at college will change their world and ours for the better, or not, but at least there was an opportunity.
I wouldn't call college, or any person educating/bettering themselves, a waste/phony, I think it pays dividends throughout life. Does it immediately help? Not likely, but life is long and a right educated mind (or humbled person) will turn it to good for them and the people around them the best they can in most cases.
An educated populace leads to more opportunity I believe across the board and smarter authorities as people question more. However, we love those short term metrics and calling out single failures that overpower the successes.
It's a dynamic system and everything depends on everything else. Of course.
But some people have the opportunity at time t-10, another at t-9, ..., t, and then still have no results at time t+1.
Or, labelling a huge category like "college" as an opportunity ignores the details about how good of an opportunity it is versus other things that could be done eith those resources.
>> It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in life; but it can also just subsidize a partying lifestyle and a phony major for four years. It depends on the college, the student, and the structure of the opportunity.
Agreed but that really is like an investment. Typical returns investors are looking for are 10x their investment. Investing in 10 companies 9 might lose money while one makes money and covers the rest. VC use this to spread risk and accept failure as part of some investment, so should spreading the opportunity and subsequent results of any plan. There are lessons in success and more lessons in failure which make them better, same with people in many cases.
With allowing people an opportunity to go to college who want to, you probably get 1 in 10 or even 1 in 100 that might end up bring more opportunity and economic benefits than all the others combined, just like investment in companies. If some part of their success was luck, luck is spread around more.
The problem is people focus on the failures and not the successes or the dim spots and not the bright ones, same thing happens when you talk about welfare, healthcare and others, we focus on the failures not the successes.
I guess it is a glass half full or glass half open sort of thing. I tend to think that people that get an opportunity that they might not have otherwise had, do very well or try to and have some responsibility to make good on that help. On the flipside, a bunch of entitled kids get the benefits and may not have the same drive to do good in life as they haven't seen the bad enough.
There might be 9 out of 10 opportunities squandered but just one has to be successful that can pay for the others and make the others worthwhile. It is good to criticize but also may not be something that is obvious in the short term regarding success rates.
Luck plays a factor into the outcomes quite heavily but lack of opportunity usually ends how we expect it, better to have some chance of improvement than none.
Some government programs really do spread opportunity, but that requires close examination and criticism; I don't just buy into it because a politician calls it opportunity. Is college an opportunity? It can be a huge opportunity to get ahead in life; but it can also just subsidize a partying lifestyle and a phony major for four years. It depends on the college, the student, and the structure of the opportunity.
It's hard to tell the difference between spreading opportunity and spreading results. It often requires looking at the details, measuring along the way, and it is often different for different people.