[MD] [Bulk] Re: empathy

[david buchanan]

 Dan said:
...my property taxes keep going up and up... they've basically doubled in five years. There are many others who feel the same way. The state is losing population. ... If I don't continue to pay increasingly exorbitant property taxes, they'll take my house and sell it to someone else for a fraction of what its worth. And looking at my tax bill, by far the largest chunk of my property taxes goes to the school district.

dmb says:
Well, it won't be much of a consolation to you but funding schools through property taxes is a very rotten deal for the schools too. What happens, of course, is that neighborhoods with big, expensive homes can collect a lot more more than the areas with lots of rental units, apartment building and modest houses. With that kind of system, the rich kids get the best schools and poor kids get the worst ones. That would be bad enough but the effects of poverty almost always make it harder to teach poor kids and they need more than the average level of resources, not less. It's like giving the best medical care only to those who are already healthy. 

I knew this instinctively as a kid because we moved around a lot, basically went to a different school every year. By the time I was ten years I could tell what the school would be like just by looking at the size of the houses and such. If they were small, I knew school would be "easy".