> reason for the cessation in funding is because of recent political changes

The reason is Zuckerberg and Chan have no backbone. These are individuals who command the resources of small nations. Yet their insecurities win out every time, rendering them powerless to take a stand on anything and instead wander to the beats of others’ drums.

Yea.. I should have qualified my words "in the world as we used to understand it" or something.

the difference is that one is from elected officials (however flawed, clearly, there is some measure of representing the people's interests in theory at least), and the other is just an individual's decision, not even pretense of representing the people's opinion

>I don't think we can claim that either is strictly more reliable than the other

In the article it was schools that were defunded. Does the government have a history of consistently funding schools?

Governments have a degree of democratic accountability - the current US government could be kicked out or not in 4 years depending on the will of the people.

Billionaires paying very little tax are forever ( certainly more than a lifetime as the wealth is handed down over generations ).

On your first part I'd do exactly the opposite so please don't speak for me... Given the fact that the number 1 cause in the USA for "unnatural" deaths of school age individuals is now shootings (not cars like in other developed countries) I feel like the expression "when the game gets tough the tough get going should apply. Personally I feel like it's the bil(mil)lionaires new "game" of getting the credit but not doing the commitment.

On the second part {speculation} Because maybe not so rich people lived there before the area became so expensive or moved there for job opportunity + safe place to raise kids ?

If you do a quick Google / chatgpt you'll see that the cost of living compared to median income is extremely bad... So not the worst place but certainly not the best...

Education is one.

Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all.

Painting with a very broad brush, the US is the most charitable country in the world, yet we lag behind many other countries according to various measures of human welfare.

Is it clear the charity approach is more efficient? My sense is many non-profits prioritize fundraising and have the bloat of executives who's main function is to schmooze donors.

I'm sure there are good nonprofits/charities. And there's definitely inefficient public offices that are mainly interested in politics.

My point is "seems less efficient" is kind of weak ground to be asking others for evidence

Charity is essentially voluntary. So, in terms of persistence to need, it's highly variable. Some problems demand commitment which charities cannot commit to.

Charity incurs oversight burdens. The UK has a long story about failures in charity, the charity commissioner has had to intercede many times. It would be wrong to assume there are no oversight costs, the thing is that to the charity they may look like externalities. They have to be borne, the state bears the cost.

Charities also usually cannot intercede politically to fix the situation demanding their charitable work. So, charities are excluded from lobbying in some ways, where governments reflect the will of the people and are subject to both good and band consequences.

Charities are abused. Churches for instance. Why do churches qualify for charitable status, when they (in most economies where they are or have been) are established entities with massive landholdings and wealth?

In the end, it's a matter of philosophy. Without being patronising, I tend to think right wing people who believe in personal responsibility and low taxes favour charity because it gives them discretion, to give or not, as a function of how they feel about the recipient, and left wing people who believe in the state as a construct reflecting popular will believe in state functions to implement the burdens individuals cannot manage for themselves.

I say that because my very good friends who donate highly tend to be right wing and tend to make moralising statements about diabetes being a function of a lack of personal self control and so do not fund interventions to prevent diabetes in the working poor because "they lack self control" and also chose not to fund womens reproductive rights on similar grounds "chastity is its own reward" -Bill and Melinda Gates were exceptional in ignoring the fundamentalist christian lobby which came into the room in the Reagan "just say no" years, and funded contraception and abortion in Africa regardless.

Maybe first find out why it is not just "we" but whole world moved to far lower tax rate in last six decades.

> We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.

"We" can tax every breath of every person alive but we are not going back to 50s for sure.

But would higher taxes nationally result in better funding for education? We are in a climate where coming to a agreement on what is acceptable in classrooms nationwide seems to be impossible.

> We also need to tax interest, capital gains, dividends etc. at the same rate as wages.

How about we first bring back pensions and 30 year jobs before we try and fix that?

Of course, this won't be popular on the HN crowd, but I'll say it anyway: What we need is securities tax.

Absolutely any conversion, collateral, or divestiture of securities need to be taxed at the rate of those securities at that time. A lot of plutocrats are playing the system by just basing their loans and the collaterals thereof, and their payments for things, on stocks and securities because they are "unrealized gains".

If securities are enough of a bearer instrument to give loaners confidence for otherwise no-collateral loans, they're enough of a realized gain to be taxed when you use them for a purchase - or alongside one.

Perhaps tax code can gamify building more funding/naming more schools so Chan can keep throwing money at education. At this point probably easier to appeal to 0.01% vanity/legacy than properly tax them.

It’s not clear to me what anyone means by broken. Difficult maybe.

Cracks show up when viewed from a lens of "wait...was that domination-oriented, dualistic, whitewashed, imperialistic, nationalistic, colonial indoctrination in the form of education?".

Yeah, you’re talking about money, but the important thing for a kid is losing their entire context. It feels like being fired, but without understanding why. Money is entirely beside the point.

Are you a parent?

It's still a very bad situation to abruptly need to find a new school, even if you get a pathetic $1000 coupon for a school which costs much more than that.

It's their money and I agree that they have a right to use it however they want, or change its use for their own reasons.

That said, I think you're grossly underestimating how hard it can be for some of the families that were using this school to find an alternative that doesn't cause their kids problems.

With that in mind I'd say there is a sort of moral imperative to preserving a context you created when it's designed for helping vulnerable kids and families. Not a legal rule I'd agree with, but an ethical imperative that shouldn't cut things off without more sustained effort and only a modest cash payoff as compensation.

Given the absolutely colossal fortune of the Zuckerbergs, they could have funded and worked to improve this program for as long as they wanted to, with nary a visible dent in their assets, but (in my opinion during one very convenient space of time) they just decide "nope, fuck it. Here's some cash kids"

>said Chan had grown distant in recent years as the school’s academic performance faltered

If you've invested the amounts we're talking about here, and made the statements they made about their investments at the get-go, and have the vast resources they have for tweaking and improving these programs, then you can, you know, put a bit more into making them work, instead of shutting them down in one very conveniently timed political climate. It's their money and they can do whatever they want with it, but the whole thing reeks of political expediency either out of spinelessness or shallow original motives.

>>The East Palo Alto project was the billionaire couple’s second major intervention in a city’s education system, after a controversial 2011 gift of $100 million to the Newark public schools. Some experts and community members claimed that the money was largely squandered.

Yeah, the dangers of investing anything in Jersey. Tony Soprano laughs in his grave.. Joke aside, that much earlier project seemed like one very inexperienced attempt that was mishandled right from the start. Giving that much money to a bunch of ambiguously honest bureaucrats is just asking for disaster. Especially when you as the donor have zero internal presence in or real experience with the system you're donating to.