David Brooks Sandwich Column

[clubgop]

Yep, it's all about tomatoes.

As life has gotten worse for the rest in the middle class, upper-middle-class parents have become fanatical about making sure their children never sink back to those levels, and of course there’s nothing wrong in devoting yourself to your own progeny.
It’s when we turn to the next task — excluding other people’s children from the same opportunities — that things become morally dicey. Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution recently published a book called “Dream Hoarders” detailing some of the structural ways the well educated rig the system.
The most important is residential zoning restrictions. Well-educated people tend to live in places like Portland, New York and San Francisco that have housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities.
These rules have a devastating effect on economic growth nationwide. Research by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti suggests that zoning restrictions in the nation’s 220 top metro areas lowered aggregate U.S. growth by more than 50 percent from 1964 to 2009. The restrictions also have a crucial role in widening inequality. An analysis by Jonathan Rothwell finds that if the most restrictive cities became like the least restrictive, the inequality between different neighborhoods would be cut in half.
Reeves’s second structural barrier is the college admissions game. Educated parents live in neighborhoods with the best teachers, they top off their local public school budgets and they benefit from legacy admissions rules, from admissions criteria that reward kids who grow up with lots of enriching travel and from unpaid internships that lead to jobs.
It’s no wonder that 70 percent of the students in the nation’s 200 most competitive schools come from the top quarter of the income distribution. With their admissions criteria, America’s elite colleges sit atop gigantic mountains of privilege, and then with their scholarship policies they salve their consciences by offering teeny step ladders for everybody else.
I was braced by Reeves’s book, but after speaking with him a few times about it, I’ve come to think the structural barriers he emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.

It's the 1%'s fault! It's the banksters' fault! It couldn't ever be us.

Lets talk about tomatoes.

Your right, but thats democracy. Nimby and the intellectual ivory tower types burying the headline are professionals at that and burying their heads up their own asses.

[clubgop]

Capacol is considered upper class?

It is when you know it is gabagool, you fucking princess.

I don't buy antipasto in Manhattan, so apparently I'm a lowly IAP. Culture appropriating bastards. I want to see them chow down on pigs feet. In gravy - oh sorry, I meant pomodoro.

Touche, you know Im Jewish, so aint eating that shit. I knew a Jersey girl could play with the boys at ball busting.

[clubgop]

Stewed tomatoes are delicious, shut it.

If that's what you're into man whatever, but...room-temperature blood clots in a can = blorf!

You don't just grab them out of the can, you fucking dork. Put them in a pizza, or spaghetti sauce.

We got this, Mr. Earl Ray's bbq.

[Mercury]

Your right, but thats democracy. Nimby and the intellectual ivory tower types burying the headline are professionals at that and burying their heads up their own asses.

Yeah, that's basically it, and a good way to put it. Thx.

[Viktorthepirate]

Wow.

"So I went to this gourmet sandwich restaurant with my high school diploma friend. The poor fool couldn't figure out the menu. So with great magnanimity I took my friend to a Mexican restaurant."

What a fucking tool.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Yep, it's all about tomatoes.

As life has gotten worse for the rest in the middle class, upper-middle-class parents have become fanatical about making sure their children never sink back to those levels, and of course there’s nothing wrong in devoting yourself to your own progeny.
It’s when we turn to the next task — excluding other people’s children from the same opportunities — that things become morally dicey. Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution recently published a book called “Dream Hoarders” detailing some of the structural ways the well educated rig the system.
The most important is residential zoning restrictions. Well-educated people tend to live in places like Portland, New York and San Francisco that have housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities.
These rules have a devastating effect on economic growth nationwide. Research by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti suggests that zoning restrictions in the nation’s 220 top metro areas lowered aggregate U.S. growth by more than 50 percent from 1964 to 2009. The restrictions also have a crucial role in widening inequality. An analysis by Jonathan Rothwell finds that if the most restrictive cities became like the least restrictive, the inequality between different neighborhoods would be cut in half.
Reeves’s second structural barrier is the college admissions game. Educated parents live in neighborhoods with the best teachers, they top off their local public school budgets and they benefit from legacy admissions rules, from admissions criteria that reward kids who grow up with lots of enriching travel and from unpaid internships that lead to jobs.
It’s no wonder that 70 percent of the students in the nation’s 200 most competitive schools come from the top quarter of the income distribution. With their admissions criteria, America’s elite colleges sit atop gigantic mountains of privilege, and then with their scholarship policies they salve their consciences by offering teeny step ladders for everybody else.
I was braced by Reeves’s book, but after speaking with him a few times about it, I’ve come to think the structural barriers he emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.

It's the 1%'s fault! It's the banksters' fault! It couldn't ever be us.

Lets talk about tomatoes.

Your right, but thats democracy. Nimby and the intellectual ivory tower types burying the headline are professionals at that and burying their heads up their own asses.

Ok. Get more specific about "zoning restrictions". Redlining was a definite thing before the 70s, and it still has effects today. But if he's talking about putting housing projects on expense real estate, then the taxpayers would be paying the difference.

If he means 'why can't I build a cheap ass house in a nice neighborhood', why would you? Property taxes would eat it alive.

[doc_loliday]

There are big time zoning problems. The rich in San Francisco won't let you build, (but who is responsible for this?) and it causes rent to skyrocket. In any case it won't solve the problem. Putting poor kids in rich schools won't fix the problem because the problem isn't related to money. It's a family/cultural problem. Overwhelming the area with the poor will just cause the people with means to leave.

[heydaralon]

This is one thing that Republicans absolutely get right. Their policies might not always work, but family is crucial to success in children. My sister's husband went to some piece of shit hood school in Little Rock, and he now makes 80k per year programming. Shockingly, his parents did not rely on the school or government to raise him, and took it upon themselves to push him towards success. If your family doesn't value education and does not care about your future, or is not around, it really doesn't matter what school you go to. There are exceptions and outliers, and many poor people with shit families succeed, but all these problems start in the home. It might be a chicken and egg thing, where people will argue that this tax policy or this government cut caused this area to be shitty and have shitty families, but trying to pretend that giving school administrators a raise, or putting this section 8 in the rich part of town is going to fix a cultural mentality is naive. Putting shit inside a golden toilet doesn't make it smell or taste any better.

[clubgop]

This is one thing that Republicans absolutely get right. Their policies might not always work, but family is crucial to success in children. My sister's husband went to some piece of shit hood school in Little Rock, and he now makes 80k per year programming. Shockingly, his parents did not rely on the school or government to raise him, and took it upon themselves to push him towards success. If your family doesn't value education and does not care about your future, or is not around, it really doesn't matter what school you go to. There are exceptions and outliers, and many poor people with shit families succeed, but all these problems start in the home. It might be a chicken and egg thing, where people will argue that this tax policy or this government cut caused this area to be shitty and have shitty families, but trying to pretend that giving school administrators a raise, or putting this section 8 in the rich part of town is going to fix a cultural mentality is naive. Putting shit inside a golden toilet doesn't make it smell or taste any better.

There is a matter of degrees here. We have seven tax brackets here, if I can manage to shut out the middle income strata of $153,100 to $233,350 with bullshit that isn't red lining, that isn't section 8 housing, and we are not talking about people who could not afford property tax, it is a clear demarcation of the kind Brooks is talking about. Gandalf the white standing astride the bridge yelling "You shall not PASS!"

[Fife]

Re: NYT Prickism:

Recently I took a United States President to dinner. Insensitively, I led him into a gourmet restaurant. Suddenly I saw his face freeze up as he was confronted with dishes like homard bleu and ingredients like tomate and olives noires. I quickly asked him if he wanted to go somewhere else and he anxiously nodded yes and we ate at McDonald's.

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/07/tr ... jules.html



NEED MOAR TENDIES OVER HERE