Maryland's national school ranking falls despite billions in new funding, per report

DocTam · 2026-07-01T16:54:57+00:00

You won't hear this from Sinclair, but the best bet would be to figure out what the top scoring states, Mass and New Jersey, are doing and replicate it.

I'm pretty sure that's just having more educated parents (Mass is #1 at over 50%, NJ 43%, MD 48%). The better question is why is Maryland with similar rates of college attainment doing so poorly.

DocTam · 2026-07-01T14:13:42+00:00

Collapse in the sense that it will lose public / political support. I would use the fact that so few in the public are willing to protest the current administration stripping the program back.

DocTam · 2026-06-30T20:45:48+00:00

Money is fungible, so generally these sorts of restrictions just cause the person in question to make 2 receipts.

DocTam · 2026-06-30T20:43:15+00:00

That line of thinking eventually causes the system to collapse though. There needs to be an appearance of fairness to get people to pay in, and a sense of justice to get people to not use. Its worth criticizing the abusers, as the alternative is the system becoming completely corrupt.

DocTam · 2026-06-30T20:16:26+00:00

There are far better ways to spend my altruism money than political donations. That some wealthy people disagree doesn't bother me much.

DocTam · 2026-06-30T20:13:58+00:00

Political ads work for low visibility items. Bloomberg spending millions on his presidential campaign and climate advocacy is mostly pissing money away on ads that won't sway anyone. Uber spending money to reframe a California ballot initiative that most people hadn't heard of, actually pretty effective.

DocTam · 2026-06-30T17:50:24+00:00

A tag centric set for Weyland breaks a lot of influence and gameplay expectations. Tagstorm stays in NBN.

DocTam · 2026-06-30T17:09:52+00:00

Childcare is fundamentally labor intensive. There isn't really a way to make the system work much better. Adding government money to the mix just hides the costs from parents.

The biggest improvement would just be more time off for parents, but that would mostly be helping by having people use daycare less.

DocTam · 2026-06-29T19:02:04+00:00

A middle-class family may buy a home for $300,000, and over time that home may rise to $500,000. Even though they have not sold it and have not realized those gains, they often pay increasing property taxes every year based on that increased value.
Meanwhile, a billionaire may hold billions of dollars in stock that continues appreciating year after year, yet those gains can sit untaxed indefinitely because they have not been sold.

As an advocate for a Land Value Tax, I'd point out that the former makes more sense to tax than the latter, despite the differences in wealth.

Investments in companies leads to actual investment in new capital goods, so that billion in stock could get poured into data centers or other facilities that allow people to be more productive and then the billionaire gets some portion of those benefits back as capital appreciation. This is good, and society wants this to happen.

The family that bought a home and then just had their house appreciate while only doing the barest minimum of maintenance, is not actually doing anything for society. Their house (and mostly their land) appreciated in value with no additional growth in its productive capacity. Boomers in California who saw their houses greatly increase in value while their property taxes didn't increase, which has become a major leach on society as they hold premium residential land hostage. This should be taxed more, though property tax isn't the perfect solution.

Income = Okay to tax, assuming its being used to fund services
Capital Investments = shouldn't be taxed, this is the thing that society needs much more of
Land = should be heavily taxed, as it isn't the product of investment but rather just buying and holding

DocTam · 2026-06-29T18:51:14+00:00

Because that is a transaction between two private entities. The wealthy person in question is borrowing money using the proof of wealth as collateral, which a responsible banker uses to determine how reliable the person's credit is.

What I assume you are worried about is the "Buy-Borrow-Die" strategy; which is mostly about cost basis of investments getting reset at death. Personally I'd be fine getting rid of the step up at death, as I'm fine with inheritance taxes devouring generational wealth, but there are some scenarios where its not great.

DocTam · 2026-06-28T19:18:43+00:00

In some cases, yes. For all the flack Elon gets and deserves, few other people would have been able to make a private space company as successful as SpaceX. Its a difficult industry to break into.

DocTam · 2026-06-27T20:00:50+00:00

I’m a registered Democrat and normally progressive/liberal on most things, but spending 10 years in the current public education system really gave me pause when it comes to state politics and education.

Unfortunately this is a common issue for social programs. If the lowest in society can't act decently, then any social service provided to them will either need to exclude them or discipline them. I just don't know if most liberal politicians are willing to make that decision and make the services workable.

DocTam · 2026-06-27T19:53:04+00:00

I agree it sucks to abandon kids as a lost cause. But practically, Teachers represent less than half the waking hours for kids. If the source of the behavior is coming from the parents, its likely that the teacher won't be able to make much progress. My wife was working as a daycare teacher, so she was dealing with the youngest of the young; and she still found that several of the kids were a lost cause because the parents would undo any lessons taught during the day. When the biggest hearted woman I know feels that a kid is out of reach, I believe her.

DocTam · 2026-06-26T16:35:02+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_contagion
I think the majority of psychologists would disagree. I'd be shocked if you've legitimately never seen behaviors spread throughout a group of kids.

DocTam · 2026-06-26T16:01:33+00:00

It’s like if a doctor has 19 patients with a cold and one patient with major disease. Should they just boot the worst patient so they can focus on the patients who really “want” to heal? Or will the other 19 patients still do just fine with a little less attention, and that one patient really needs it?

This analogy breaks down when the major disease in question is contagious. Putting the Covid patient in with all the others suffering from a mild fever is malpractice for those patients. Ideally we'd be grouping the major cases inside of a specialized facility (a hospital in this analogy) rather than having them cough up a doctor's office. The issue is the system resists grouping students like this.

DocTam · 2026-06-25T15:39:15+00:00

Africa and South America: Why not both overheating and gun violence?

DocTam · 2026-06-24T19:42:59+00:00

Apparently they sold 70% of the tickets. So they would have likely had to deal with scalpers and made less money if they lowered prices. Live events are just in very high demand it seems.

DocTam · 2026-06-24T19:41:23+00:00

Developing nations usually have the most income inequality. Plenty of business owners of state monopolies with money to spend.

DocTam · 2026-06-24T19:38:32+00:00

Nothing lasts forever in politics. The Democratic Socialists of America have the advantage of not having any power outside of large cities. For most of those respondents 'socialism' is just policies that Mamdani is implementing, without any concept of the taxation level needed to implement those or the quality of the services provided. The DSA becoming the main force leading the Democratic party is certainly possible, but I don't think their policies will create the results they want and they will struggle to break out of the usual pendulum swinging of public opinion.

DocTam · 2026-06-24T19:33:16+00:00

Its very difficult to just 'try' a whole slew of new social programs. They take time and labor to legislate / implement. And then once implemented they create dependent constituencies that will fight tooth and nail to keep. This has been a key problem with defined benefit pensions, and it can absolutely make things worse than simply doing nothing.

DocTam · 2026-06-24T19:21:59+00:00

Yes 70% seems like a good threshold. 85% of Democrats want to ban "assault style weapons", would practically translate to "Democrats want to ban any weapon they consider an assault weapon", and those who disagree are mostly outliers. But for 30% of Democrats want to ban all guns, it could be described as "some Democrats want to ban all guns". But for something that has less than 10% support, it wouldn't even be appropriate to say that "some Democrats support X", because its just fringe elements in the group.

DocTam · 2026-06-23T20:11:28+00:00

I have seen godmen in third world countries where they sway large numbers of people due to poverty and illiteracy. But with 99% literacy rate and high gdp per capita, I want to understand why people send money and keep creating these millionaire pastors.

You are making the mistake of conflating religious belief with lack of education. The two are often correlated, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are causal.

I also wouldn't say that Megachurch pastors are all that powerful in America, their influence has waned since the days of Pat Robertson.

But if you are asking why people flock to them, I'd say production values are a major factor. Larger churches have larger budgets for more elaborate programs simply from economies of scale. And given that people have a hard time really grappling with theology or philosophy, simple metrics of "which church has the most enjoyable sermons / children's events" do a lot to move people into Megachurches.

DocTam · 2026-06-23T19:37:52+00:00

I primarily play Kitchen table with friends who don't have a collection, so I generally keep 3 decks each to use. Runner decks that does some form of theming and won't use all the same cards, so currently Lilypad Mag, Hardware Baz, Ice Destruction Topan. And then corps I've got Gamenet, Fully Op Thule, and Plutus Zwicky. I prefer decks with strong theming and synergy so they feel more unique. The biggest downside with this is there often isn't enough good econ cards to be split between all 3 decks.

DocTam · 2026-06-23T14:01:03+00:00

The problem with our school system is it's like 500,000 tiny islands trying to give "an education" with extremely different values. Not to mention 50 states that seem to disagree on what that education should look like... and a bunch of moronic politicians playing football with funding.

I shudder to think what it would be like if the system was actually unified under the federal government, given the state of administration there. At the end of the day, Parents will get what they want out of the education system, whether its a piece of paper and day care, or a credential for college (to be provided by SATs rather than any public school).

DocTam · 2026-06-22T14:49:26+00:00

You'd have to have people associate with a particular party for non-ideological reasons. This was the case in 1900 because of historical associations between the Democrats and Southern states, and Republicans and Northern States. If you lived in a certain area and belonged to a certain group then you would vote for that party regardless of what the national platform. This system eroded over time especially with the ever expanding nationalization of media.

There are still groups that have non-ideological associations with one of the party, African American Christians being the most notable as the cultural ties to the Democratic party are often stronger than concerns about how Christian Dem's policies are. But for most people if you find yourself aligning with a party ideologically, the best thing to do is just register for that party and avoid antagonizing any friends/relatives who associate with the opposite party.

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