j.r. leonard

Vermont majorly improved average school quality by moving from property tax base to state pool and redistribute. They are looking to overturn it 20 years later bc rich communities don’t like it.

Which may be an argument about the limits of liberal Utopianism.

Arguing the limits of liberal Utopianism has been my whole point Just because you’ve designed the perfect plan on paper, doesn’t mean it’s going to weather the economic and political realities of the world. You should be constantly updating your priors based on results

The political environment in the US is particularly toxic to getting gov't to do certain types of things, which is why handing out money is often a good default measure. That being said, it doesn't have to be that way, and having the gov't succeed more pushes against that view.

I think that’s an understatement. There is a history of racism and white supremacy that compromises the government’s ability to deliver public services equally and efficiently And it doesn’t get addressed enough because it doesn’t map well into existing left-right politics

You can’t talk about housing and education without noting that the existing structures are there to allow certain people to retreat into enclaves explicitly designed to limit those people’s interactions with other people not wealthy enough or white enough to be there

That also might be why a majority minority city did public housing better than more white dominant regions.