I have asked several times for anyone who thinks they know something to tell us peons what economic system would be better than capitalism. No one has bothered to answer. I presume they know there is no system which makes as many people prosperous as does capitalism.
Full Definition of CAPITALISM
: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
So for the moment, let us digress to a discussion relative to the OP. The truth is, it is not capitalism which has created such inequality.
When we get past the "pundits" who express lots of opinions without real proof, we can discuss what the REAL problem of inequality is. It can be summed up in two words, CHOICES & EDUCATION. Our education system in the US does not consider the child being educated the reason for the schools to exist. As a result kids are not adequately counseled to follow a path most relevant to the child's capability. European education systems have one of the best ideas of education, as does Japan. Beginning in high school, early on, each kid is tested for what his best achievement can be. Those who are better with hands on trades are aimed in that direction. Those who are better of in Academia, are tailored for the University. Thus they do not waste billions of $$$$s grooming a kid who is not academically qualified toward a college education. Here is where the choices start to go wrong. TEACHERS AND COUNSELORS tend to push for academia, even if the kids are not really up to it.
Zombie - I actually prefer to not designate paths for kids.
Then you are part of the problem.
I was once right of center,
Shame on you.
until the center moved, you know?
I do know. Everything shifted to the left.
Zombie - I understand the logic behind designating students for college prep or vocational paths. The problem is that our service-based economy too often requires college educations for even menial clerical jobs, which of course increases the demand for college education increasing the cost of college education. I would be more amenable to a European style program if we had real career paths for vocational students and did not treat VoTech High School as holding pens. But ultimately, I would prefer young people finding their own path.
It does not help the student to push him the wrong way. Our economy and society has swallowed the academia bit, but that doesn't mean its right, and it can be resolved.
Z - I cannot discern what you mean by this.
I am not surprised.
Z - How many such programs remain? Electricians? Plumbers? Are you suggesting there exists a demand for apprentices that can absorb millions of job seekers? If so, why not offer post-secondary vocational training, to make up for the lack of vocational training in secondary education?
I agree, but instead of a student paying for that post secondary education in a trade, why not he earn a stipend to do an apprenticeship? The list of tradesmen is very long.
Z - Lots of people make bad financial decisions. Perhaps the worst is to be a poor student getting a degree in a field without clear job prospects or further academic pursuits; doing so purely for the sake of having the degree, and then getting deep into student debt.
A large part of my point. Wouldn't it be better for the school through achievement and ability testing to help him choose something more in his favor?
Z -Uhm... What happened to the old critique that schools simply pass the problems onward to the next grade-level by not being strict enough? And we do need more support from home. I think a lack of involvement on the part of the parents, albeit parents tired from working two jobs, is a major factor in poor academic performance. If the parents place no importance on academic performance, then the child emulating the parents will place no importance on academic performance.
Ah, so you recognize that all parents either can't or won't help the kids. So don't you believe that the responsibility subsequently falls to the schools and the teachers?
Z - There are things we as a society can do. Let's not put all the pressure on teachers. We could, as a society, give children in impoverished situations better role models than rappers and misbehaving athletes. We could advance headstart programs. We could end the policy of funding schools based solely on real estate taxes which keeps better funding in wealthier areas. We could dismantle schools so bad that incoming teachers are told to allow the mainstay of the students behave in any manner they choose and focus only on a small subset of children actually paying attention. There is no need to tolerate such failures. If the school is so bad, then maybe those kids need to be sent to different school districts where they can benefit from the influence (and potentially, initially, scorn) of the students in their new school. I actually know a teacher who, upon arrival at their first assignment, was told exactly what I said above and the class was as unthinkably chaotic as described above. The teacher was instructed to ignore the problem and only focus on the small handful of students that sat close to his desk and tried.
You are getting my point, little by little. We as a society need to ensure our school systems do the whole job, whether it is head start systems, better determining a students basic capabilities, seeing to it that we maximize their abilities, maybe by using alternative schools, contracting for specific needs education. What ever it takes. We can't just continue to blame parents, who may be at fault, but recognize that the school is more at fault for letting some students down, thus creating another generation low quintile income students.
There is no need for this to continue. Such a place needs to be dismantled and the students sent to the more affluent public schools.
All schools must be successful, or as you said, SHUT THEM DOWN AND FIRE ALL THE TEACHERS AND STAFF.
Z - Yes, that happens. Do you know how few ladders of upward social mobility we have left as a society? I strongly support programs that produce a workforce eager to seize opportunities and with the skills needed to do so.
GOOD! That was the point of the post to which you responded.
We have a system here in Alabama called "Alternative School." When the kids show signs of falling behind, or of disrupting the class room with bad behavior (usually brought on because the kids do not understand the work) they go to the Alternative School wherein they are immersed in the basics until they are capable of succeeding in main stream education.
Those schools, in my experience, are nothing but holding pens.
You must live in a viper pit of poverty. We take full usefulness of alternative schools to help the students.
When a student falls into them, they can't get back out.
In our small southern community that is not the case.
There are truly disturbed young people who do need to be isolated from the rest of the student body. But if we applied that rule to the situation I described above, what you would have are people born and dying in an "alternative society".
They are doing so now, and the mainstream school is not helping them.
There needs to be a distinction between the situation where the students are only behaving badly because the norm is so bad and the students who have real psychological problems.
The point is to help EACH student according to his needs.
And if we don't make that distinction early, I fear the destructive "norm" will condemn an older student into a minimum-wage life.
That is exactly what our failing public schools are doing now.
Where there is a specific learning disorder, the kids are sent for a period of time to a private education system and helped until they are ready to go back. It usually is accomplished in 2 or 3 hour periods a week, most for less than a semester.
I imagine that depends on the severity of the learning disorder, but I see your point.
BTW, let's not pretend that there are those who would define public school as some exercise in Sociaslism and its failure thereby destined. When I ask that we define Capitalism, it is in no small part such that the sophistry to which I alluded can be avoided.
School is not "socialism". It is really not a social program. It is an essential part of any healthy society. Until we DEMAND that our schools produce high quality education such that all of the kids learn how to live and become trained/educated to lead a successful economic life, we are destined to have even greater inequality in income than we have now. As you can see, it is not the 1% causing the problem of inequality, it is a complacent society.
