Random idea on capitalism/life

[austeane]

What would be the pros/cons to divesting a child's upbringing from their parent's wealth?
Disregarding the initial costs of setting up, and persuading everyone to buy in....
Basically, I was thinking that a lot of the problems with capitalism comes from the poor staying poor and the rich staying rich, or things of that vein.
What if we gave each child in a given area the exact same resources? They would still be raised by their parents, but would get the same quality of eduction, clothing, upbringing, gift allowance, and same starting money when they turn 18. No inheritance, no jobs from parents connections, no private schools/paid tuition/extra tutors.
Lots of the extra money would be poured into the poorer areas, so that all areas have relatively the same standard of eduction and quality of life for the kids. After that, if they get rich from their own making, that's fine.

Fully impractical, but would it be better than the current situation?

[Nights]

Fully impractical, but would it be better than the current situation?

Definitely impractical, but it does sound a bit like communism - in the sense that everyone helps everyone start equal, although not everyone will remain equal thereafter (so a communist childhood into a capitalist adulthood).

Not sure how psychologically or habitually bad that switch could be, but again we're talking impractical.

Interesting idea in theory, though, I'll give you that. Would it be better? Who knows, really.

[Mr. Guru]

Isn't this idea the beginning of time?

[Loch]

What would be the pros/cons to divesting a child's upbringing from their parent's wealth?
Disregarding the initial costs of setting up, and persuading everyone to buy in....
Basically, I was thinking that a lot of the problems with capitalism comes from the poor staying poor and the rich staying rich, or things of that vein.
What if we gave each child in a given area the exact same resources? They would still be raised by their parents, but would get the same quality of eduction, clothing, upbringing, gift allowance, and same starting money when they turn 18. No inheritance, no jobs from parents connections, no private schools/paid tuition/extra tutors.
Lots of the extra money would be poured into the poorer areas, so that all areas have relatively the same standard of eduction and quality of life for the kids. After that, if they get rich from their own making, that's fine.

Fully impractical, but would it be better than the current situation?

I assume the issue you are looking to address is the one of inter-generational social mobility (ie. the ability to move up from your parents' financial bracket). Canada actually has quite good social mobility (relative to other OECD countries) Source

In the broadest sense I would disagree with taking away benefits from children of wealthy families and focus entirely upon providing opportunities to all children. There is pretty good correlation between lack of education and things like poverty and crime... and the government can get support for cutting education spending and increasing police and incarceration spending. D'oh.

Fun topic, pity I'm short on time.

[The Comish]

Fully agree that education is the key to ending poverty, crime, etc. Not sure I agree with taking away incentive for parents to try to garner wealth. I think there's plenty of money that governments can choose to use for funding of higher education, but they seem rather fond of pigging out at the public trough (voting for higher salaries while asking the commoners to buckle down and be fiscally responsible, lol) and spending/wasting money for unnecessary things instead of treating public funds as if it were their own hard-earned money. So, my thoughts on the idea brought forward by austeane are a resound NO, however, there has to be a better way forward if only our "leaders" were focused and made education the key to a contributing, healthy society.

[mojavedesert]

Intriguing idea but my expectation of this is that unfortunately the majority of 18 year olds would profligately waste their allotment of money and fall behind rather quickly. They would complain that they were never given a fair chance and would expect more handouts. Then the cycle rather quickly returns to the status quo.

As for true communism/socialism, since nobody can agree on anything, a leader eventually emerges which to me seems to belie the true spirit of socialism. I refer to the communism based on community, not the communism of violent human rights abuses and murderous rampages of the Stalin era or the Chinese Communist Party.

[austeane]

The idea would be that the extra money not spent on kids would go to their education, raising/lowering every school to the level of an above-average Canadian public school. Giving everyone a good opportunity would be the main idea.

Intergenerational mobility would be a big thing, but it would also eventually lessen the concentration of wealth at the top and at least all the rich people would know what it was like to be not rich.

Assuming that we provided proper money/life education throughout school, and they were given a fair shot, then I think the portion who would waste their money would go down. And instead of an allotment at 18, there could bee increasing yearly allotments from 13-20 or something like that.