“The results in this book imply that once children’s basic material needs are met, characteristics of their parents become more important to how they turn out than anything additional money can buy.” Ah. So you favour paying "their children's basic material needs" and then providing support so the parent(s) can go out and contribute to society? Sounds liberal to me.
Or, are you just wishing the problem away, or actively working towards that?
I commend folks like you for your service - I don't want to give clicks to NYT, I have a policy of not even upvoting NYT and WaPo links these days.
But could someone put a further warning on these pieces? Like "Warning: David Brooks" or "Warning: Bret Stevens" or "Warning: Ross Douthat". That would keep me from wasting my time on very poorly thought out and written pieces.
Yes, it's ad hominem, it's also a reasonably reliable heuristic in cases of terminal punditry.
user- · 9h ago
What an absurd take. Because of some half-assed attempts to hand out small sums, the conclusion is that money doesn’t matter and the fallback is vague talk about culture?? A few hundred dollars helps but i dont know why that study is a big deal to the author. The limited impact is obvious. What is the connection to the vague rambling about investing in values and why biden lost because of spending in red states??
Besides a bad overall point, what a badly written article.
> As a society, we are pretty good at transferring money to the poor, but we’re not very good at nurturing the human capital they would need to get out of poverty.
What a crock.
cratermoon · 9h ago
> As a society, we are pretty good at transferring money to the poor,
Or, are you just wishing the problem away, or actively working towards that?
But could someone put a further warning on these pieces? Like "Warning: David Brooks" or "Warning: Bret Stevens" or "Warning: Ross Douthat". That would keep me from wasting my time on very poorly thought out and written pieces.
Yes, it's ad hominem, it's also a reasonably reliable heuristic in cases of terminal punditry.
Besides a bad overall point, what a badly written article.
> As a society, we are pretty good at transferring money to the poor, but we’re not very good at nurturing the human capital they would need to get out of poverty.
What a crock.
Pull the other leg, David.