Economic Inequality: What's it about?
 

If you look at economic inequality, at it's core, has everything to do with our education system. And beyond that, it's parents that can't and won't put a support system in place that fosters free thinking, innovation, and success. They were brought up to think they can't succeed, etc. and that parenting philosophy is propagated perpetually. Generation after generation of idiots, pessimists, assholes, and "I can't, and you can't either".

Parenting is at the core of economic inequality. Perhaps corporate cronyism and bailouts represent a minuscule subset of economic inequality, but by no means are those issues affecting the country like parents who shouldn't be parents and our education system.

If these OWS protesters want to do something real productive, why don't they lobby to have the teacher's unions eliminated? Right now teachers put kids through the system like DMV workers processing car registrations. No accountability, and little motivation to really make an impact and go above and beyond because they're protected by the union.

I really think OWS is barking up the wrong tree with their inequality agenda. Doesn't seem like they've given it enough thought, because even if you eliminate government handouts... it still doesn't put everyone on an even keel of economic opportunity. As long as you have a small minority of parents that support their children's success... and the majority of parents continue not to... you'll always have a system that is fundamentally economically unequal.

Anyone who decides that they can't is right. As soon as you decide it's someone else's fault and you can't do anything about about own life, failure is guaranteed.

its a reality that not everyone is going to be an innovator or even very successful. its just not going to happen. of course kids should not be taught in a way that stops them from believing in themselves but rather they should have some kind of back up plan for survival while striving for bigger success. i have no idea what getting rid of teachers unions would do. they don't dictate curriculum. government wants worker bees, not leaders to fill the various mediocre jobs that need to be done out there.

And this is the flip side of the token...

Corporations want worker bees, so they'll sponsor all sorts of educational development in the name of creating a better work-force.

But you're right, success is like the Olympics... How many people compete, and manage to win the Gold? Probably less than 1%.

How many people succeed at becoming professional musicians? Probably less than 1%.

How many people succeed at becoming professional basketball or football players? Definitely less than 1%.

And there's no way in hell we're going to somehow bring the 99% up to those levels. The opportunity is there currently. I think it's really short sighted to focus on the most successful and treat them like they've been given an unfair hand. But the unfair-disadvantage, if one can actually be quantified... is probably at the parenting level. And as long as we've got kids having kids at age 15 years old, and people with zero income having kids... I really don't think that's a problem that can be fixed.

Why doesn't OWS talk about that? lol

the income gap has a lot more "core" causes then just education & parents. Other cores are work ethic, innate IQ, the safety of the neighborhood. To say just fixing schools or parents is overly simplistic.

i guess OWS could advocate for increasing accountability in teacher performance. Its not really the core of their cause, which is corporatism, the excesses of capitalism, & how wealth is able to bend public policy in their favor.

the inequality is not so much the issue as is the issue of the middle class being unable to climb. Free trade & globalism is causing less educated or able labor to compete with slave & child labor. middle class homeowners are stuck in underwater mortgages, unable to sell their homes because banks engineered an overheated real estate market. Taxes, tolls, gas prices, health care prices do nothing but rise, but paychecks do not rise.

Its easy for the 99% to see that the combination of technology & capitalism are tilting the playing fields to the benefit of multinational corporations, & the government should be working to protect workers from the excesses of capitalism, not amplifying them with policies like tax breaks for outsourcing labor, & 15% tax rates on cap gains.

To simply hand the educational problems of this country off onto the teacher's union is a very short sighted take on what is wrong. Sure, there are bad teachers who are protected by the unions, but most of them are simply doing what they are told to do. Most schools now get paid based on test scores and how many kids they graduate. This means most teachers are now just trying to teach the kids how to score well on the test and herd them through like cattle. Nobody is held back or fails. When my nephew was in 8th grade he had a total of 6 classes per semester for a total of 18 classes his 8th grade year. He fail 15 of them. He only passed PE. They still sent him on to high school. My brother was told by the school that they will not hold anyone back without express directions from the parents. In high school he failed almost all of his classes his freshman year, about half his classes his sophomore, half his classes his junior year and then was finally expelled about three months into his senior year. Still, he was given 6 different "packets" that he could do for different classes and if he did the work in them and turned them in on time he could still graduate. So basically his mom and girlfriend did most of the work for him, he turned them in and graduated. It is sad because he is basically illiterate and yet has a high school diploma. In his case the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of his mom and grandma who never disciplined him and always just did his homework for him and he is going to have a hell of a difficult time succeeding in life now.

When it comes down to his case it a shortcoming in parenting, not union teachers that were the problem. Also, the system in general is now built in such a way that those kids who don't work hard or have a decent parental system behind them do have trouble succeeding. Add in the extreme costs increases of the educational system and now we have an entire generation that will see its college graduates leave school with a degree to enter the job market that are $50-$100K in debt so the deck is already stacked against them.

There are many other issues as well, but I think if we are going to maintain a strong middle class in this country we need to see a restructuring of the educational system and we needed to greatly lower the cost of getting a college a degree. If costs continue to rise we will see fewer and fewer people go that route at a time when we need more and more people heading into fields that need degrees.