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snoodog  ·  2851 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The families that can't afford summer

    The basic issue is this: You don't want it to be expensive to have kids. Those are your future taxpayers. Those are the people who will take care of you in your dotage. That's the workforce, the takers-of-jobs-you're-too-expensive-to-take.

Right those people will be changing your diapers when you get old, and they will also be paying the bills and keeping the world running. If they are miserable they will do their best to share the pain and it will get really expensive for you to keep them out.

    I'll be bald-faced about this: I evaluated that the middle class was doomed about ten years ago and resolved to do everything I can to get pushed up rather than down. Private school? Sign me up. rippin' daycare? Check. Extracurricular bullshit? 100%. I watched my girlfriend back in the '90s - who went to public school - and her little sister - who went to private school - and I watched their friends, their interactions, their hardships.

My wife and I had this talk about sending our kid to private school and decided it wasn't worth it. We would be one of the poorer families in the group and that would really put a chip on the kids shoulder. She went to college with a bunch of Prep-School kids and she said too many of them where entitled arrogant snobs with poor work ethic. She didn't feel like that education gave them enough an advantage to be worthwhile and most of the reason they succeeded was that their parents were so well connected that the could have been illiterate and still landed great jobs.

I dont really think one can buy the kind of education and environment that you describe having when you grew up. Something like that would be worth paying for your kid to have but I just dont think its for sale (or at least at a price that I can afford).