$35B could have built some nice transit infrastructure. Just saying

I could see maintenance costs increases being not insignificant over time. Parts/appliances had gone up notably, as has materials and the cost of people to do the work. There’s also some issues with receivables which may end up needing to be written off, and deliberate damage over time. Generally, these do need to be accounted for on a going-forward basis.

That said, none of these should have increased nearly so much as the cost of property and overall rents. They should account for a reasonable increase over time, instead what we see is increased to cover the cost of the mortgage on additional rental properties etc

See there you go, accusing people and putting words in their mouths. Nobody said kids were the problem (or even “a” problem) but not every kid feels the same way and that sometimes has little to do with parenting.

But feel free to go and accuse everyone of being a bad parent because things worked out for your niece. I know more than a few people who were damn good parents and their kids did eventually come out to them, but it took awhile and some digging to get to it while in the meantime those same kids were experiencing real issues in their social life because of it but their parents were unaware of why (though on most cases they know something was off). Once they finally got through it the dialog with their parents was great but it took quite awhile and needless suffering in the meantime. In one case the child was concerned that a rather religious family member (not the parent) would find out and ostracize them. When that family member did find out over the longer course they were actually very supportive, if a bit confused.

Having something in policy one way or the other is idiotic. Some kids might get beatings for having low grades, but that doesn’t mean we don’t decide to keep parents informed about academic performance, it means we should report unsafe home environments and use judgement in other cases.

If the teacher believes there’s a real risk of harm then that should not feel compelled to share that information by gov’t, but at the same time if something is potentially adversely affecting a child they shouldn’t be compelled by black-and-white policy NOT to engage the parents, and early interaction may benefit all sides.

The “all kids who don’t want to talk to their parents must be raised by abusive rednecks” is just a shitty argument. Even adults sometimes have hidden fears or worries that aren’t bounded in reality, but allow unrealistic “what if” scenarios to hold them back. Kids are in a worse state with less personal experience and a bombardment of other people’s opinions, situations, social media and many other factors than can bring anxiety even in the best of home environments.

Yeah but he’s on the wanted list because it’s terrible behavior for a bear. He didn’t even try to pay!

Yeah, this is what gets me. Some parents are shitty, and I can see the issues with this as it’s not unheard of for kids to be kicked out by homophobic parents after being outed, etc

But in the flip side, parents are legally responsible for their kids try increasingly cut off from the information that might be important for caring for those kids. They can ask a doctor to not disclose drug use, and apparently now a teacher not to disclose their gender identity decisions, leaving the parent might be clueless up to the point where it grows into a major issue and blindsides them.

Life isn’t an episode of Leave It To Beaver. Not all kids have daily sit-downs with their parents where they discuss in detail everything about their lives. At a certain point, a lot of kids often start cutting out their parents thinking that it’s part of establishing their own independence, and sometimes -especially with issues of sexuality/etc - they may be embarrassed to bring those forward to their parents.

Do parents have a right to know everything about their kids lives? Maybe not. Parents DO have a responsibility towards help educate their kids, help them navigate life and deal with major life changes and decisions. Educators have historically had a duty to keep parents informed of major developments in school which might affect their children or - if they have evidence the child is at-risk - to report cases of abuse to the appropriate authorities.

It’s a tightrope, for sure, but expecting parents to do their job while potentially withholding vital information is not a good look either, and a lot of decisions from government (on both sides) lately are starting to have a “it’s for the children” authoritarian feel.

I would support my kids regardless of how they choose to identify, their sexual orientation, etc, but when stuff is happening in regards to that I would damn well want to KNOW so that I can support them properly (possibly including learning more myself)

Yeah not sure exactly what a union even has to be “sorry” about in regards to a bunch of evil pieces of shit doing terrible things oversees

I think there was also some threats of beheadings more recently

They could, but that’s still going to take a lot to balance the scales. It should be part of an overall plan for housing affordability

Slumlords and overpriced rentals can be storage issues though. It can be a nice place, but if you’re paying $2k+/mo for a 1b1b that’s way too fucking much even if it’s in good condition