and the Ewoks too. And so did every kid who saw those movies. Meesa think yousa stinker!

the problem is it's easy to get funding to build housing for disadvantaged people because it's a cash cow for developers. It's _much_, _much_ harder to get funding for the kinds of long term services that dirt poor people need to succeed, let alone get through the sorts of things they'd need to have secure and stable jobs (e.g. protection for local industries, Unions, workers rights laws, etc). We put people into homes without giving them any means to support themselves or the home we put them in. You saw this with the projects in the 70s when we moved a ton sharecroppers into the city and then Regan got elected and all the funding to help build them up got cut. You're seeing it today with those ghost towns built in China. It's the same thing. Cronyism builds the housing and demand for low taxes abandons it and the people in it.

the reason we're not seeing an increase in testing scores (which is what you mean by "discernible improvement") is because we've allowing more and more people into higher education since the 70s. Basically we started a "war on poverty" and stopped abandoning the poor to their fates. Before they wouldn't even make it into high school, let alone college. No schooling for disadvantaged children meant no test scores for disadvantaged children.

A little googling and you'd easily find this article explaining it. But it's much more fun to complain about paying taxes (which is the subtext of your post) than look at root causes...

Yeah! Because using your own [massive disparity of] wealth to [give an unfair advantage to] your own children is EVIL!

FTFY.

I live in Phoenix, Az, and you'll literally see $1 million homes next to trailer parks. The funny thing is there's no bleed over. The poors stay in their neck of the woods and keep their misery to themselves. I'm guessing whenever one of 'em gets out of line the local sheriff goes down and busts everyone's heads. That's one of the unstated benefits of our drug policy. Just about everyone I knew who was poor used drugs to cope, and it made it really easy to bust them if the cops wanted to...

I think they kiddies call It call "Street Legal"

it's been the only way anti-death penalty folks could make even the slightest bit of progress in the States. The problem is how our politics work, which is all about getting people to vote and vote for you. The pro crowd will vote against you if they think you're against the death penalty. They'll see you as "soft" on crime. For the most part the anti-death penalty crowd doesn't care. They've got other issues that matter more than how they perceive your stance on crime.

From Wikipedia:

The AFL-CIO was a major component of the New Deal Coalition that dominated politics into the mid-1960s.[8] Although it has lost membership, finances, and political clout since 1970, it remains a major player on the liberal side of national politics, with a great deal of activity in lobbying, coordinating with other liberal organizations, fund-raising, and recruiting and supporting candidates around the country.

If you haven't heard anything from them it's because you haven't been listening. They are very active on workers rights.

And there's two sides to the coin. Why should you benefit from their hard work campaigning for higher wages without contributing to the fight? Read up a little bit about the history of the American Work pre-Unions. What was the phrase? Nasty, brutish and short.

False equivalency is False

You've never belonged to a Union, have you? Go ask the AMA and the Bar how much Their dues are worth.

and I'm not so sure I want to eliminate those regulatory hurdles. Fukushima isn't exactly a distant memory. Talk to me when it's dirt cheap to run a nuke plant safely or when CEOs go to jail for 20+ years for running one unsafely. For now there's too much risk that some assclown will come in to cut safety & pocket the resulting profit and get off scott free.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/16/venezuela-now-has-toilet-paper-but-no-breast-implants.html.

Jokes aside, they did have shortages. The gov't saw the problem and reacted to it. Problem solved. You'll note no one's talking about their TP shortage anymore. See, that's kinda the idea behind socialism. You see a problem and then instead of waiting for some phantom invisible hand to solve it you actually _do_ something.

Just more personal "personal responsibility" politics that complete ignore reality. Goody. Where do I begin?

Not everyone has the chops to make it through college. Their brains don't work that way. But there's nothing for you in life if you don't make it through anymore thank to outsourcing and a complete lack of protection for local industry. How do these guys whose brains _can't_ comprehend AP credits galore compete with a guy in China working 70 hours a week breathing carcinogens?

Then there's the parents. Half the country goes out of it's way to keep people from opting out of parenthood in any other way than abstinence. Try being lower income and getting birth control or a vasectomy in Alabama and let me know how that works out for you. But once again, "Personal Responsibility" politics to the rescue! Ignore the fact that sex is a basic human drive on par with eating/breathing. Ignore the fact that when you're dirt poor with no hope it's hard to say no to the few sources of joy you have in your life. It's so much easier to look down on the little hussies and the dead beat dads, ain't it? It absolves you from the moral implications of abandoning 70%+ of the populace to their (very miserable) fate.

Schools can fix a _lot_ if we let them. Schools can and should act as parents when parents _can't_ because our God damned society didn't equip the parent with the skills and resources needed to do so. This doesn't mean schools _replace_ the parent either. It means they support the parent. This is what it means to have a society and civilization and not "I got mine, f**k you".

as you think. Most of the fed's budget is made up of taking care of old people (Medicare/Social Security) and the Military.

Also don't forget, it's better to punish a 1000 innocent men than risk letting 1 guilty one go free.