Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by guihong

1. The minute you set up the neediest classes to benefit the most from inequalities, you no longer have a fair society. In fact, the upper classes (if you will) are being discriminated against. You will never have "fair". You can have "equal opportunity".

Just....no.

It seems to me that a system like Aj described above would eventually make the need for such a system obsolete. As I'm sure you're aware poverty is usually generational, as is education / access to higher education. By helping Lynn out you're creating an environment for her where her children will require less of a leg-up than she did, her grandchildren even less, until eventually the playing-ground is level in terms of access. It's controlling the things that -can- be controlled.

4. Again, if I were the queen of education, the only way to gain equality of education and resources would be to abolish federal government involvement in education altogether. All schools are private businesses with x dollars per student-no exeptions. Those that fail to deliver a quality product (i.e. literate adults able to attend college or get a job), fail. Thanks to the teachers union, it is will nigh impossible to weed out bad ones, so that's (the union) gone under my plan. It's been shown to work in some of the worst neighborhoods in this country.

This would be WORSE for low-income neighborhoods than it already is. You're aware of how poorly the "healthcare for profit" debacle has gone in your country, I presume?

How do you expect low-income families to pay to run the schools that their children will go to?

Interestingly enough, Finland has free education for everybody. This includes post-secondary education. It is, as I'm sure you would have deduced, run by the government. And guess what else? Finland is tied for the number one spot on the Education Index portion of the Human Development Index that the UN does every year. Looks like government involvement in Education has gone -very- well for Finland.