The Already-Wealthy Really Do Owe the Poor

I was reading the Sunday edition of the New York Times yesterday when I ran across this article:

Things We Learned in 2016

It listed 45 different items that readers of the newspaper might have learned in the last year. I thought number 22 very instructing and insightful:

Sixth graders in the richest school districts are four grade levels ahead of children in the poorest districts.

It was from this article:

Money, Race and Success: 

How Your School District Compares

This statement/fact has so many ramifications for people, individually, but for societies as a whole, it's difficult to know where to begin or end but I'll try.

First, it proves the idea of noblesse oblige quickly, firmly and completely. The idea that the wealthy, the already-wealthy have an obligation to help those with less is driven home here totally. The formal definition is 

"the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged."

Since those "privileged" or again, wealthy have much, they rather "owe it" to the "less privileged" to assist. Part of that is just due to quantities---quantities of wealthy, of money, in our modern societies. If a person is "loaded" and has more than they could possibly spend, it seems easy, obvious and incumbent on them to help those who are of small means and struggling. This is especially true, it would seem clear, if that "struggling" includes being homeless, starving, sick or what have you.

This also seems easy and true if the person is both wealthy and either a moralist--as I'd think we all should be--or, more, a Christian or Jew or of any religion that believes in helping the poor. Sure, again, this seems easy and obvious.

But it's more than that. It's much more than that.

What becomes true, just from that one, brief sentence and fact is that the already-wealthy have many, many advantages--financial, social, educational, etc.--given to them, and from birth up, that if they didn't assist the less fortunate, the poor or what have you, it would only perpetuate horribly the divisions between the two groups of people, those "haves" and "have nots." This seems self-evident, too.

This makes it easy to see why those with money keep piling on more and more, frequently, if not usually, while those of lesser means get less, to begin with, but then also are able to save and keep less, over time. It's what makes the "1%" of a nation, of a society, grow and grow their wealth.

Offers and possibilities snowball up for the wealthy by virtue of money and education and contacts, at least, while the costs of being less fortunate snowball against "the little guy." It's a system built to go for the wealthy and against the poor. And sure, to an extent it's just human nature but it's not right and we need to acknowledge it and correct for it, each of us, let alone as a people, as a nation, again, as societies.

This isn't about the poor mooching off the wealthy or not pulling their own weight or their expecting, demanding easy things from those that have, either. As the old saying goes, if only work made people wealthy, African women would be the wealthiest of the world.

One of the great things about all this, though, about the fortunate helping the unfortunate is that, besides making one feel good, besides the fact that it is, as just one example, the "Christian thing to do", it also helps the society, too. Any person who is helped with some food, say, might well avoid going to a hospital later or, in another example, might not steal--and risk getting caught and arrested. They may not try to rob a store and should that happen, things get much worse for all involved right there.

Then there's helping a person with education. Or a job. Both certainly help the area, the town, the city, the region, the state, the nation. They help with the person's health, their expenses. Heck, they help the different government's tax coffers. The benefits here snowball upward, positively, as well.

So there's every reason in the world why the already wealthy should help the unfortunate, the poor, the sick. It's good for that person and their family, sure.  But it's also great for the society and those benefits come back to that wealthy person. The healthier, wealthier and stronger our societies are, the better it even is for the wealthy. Their own companies will likely do better. Their own city, county, state and nation will do better.  That, in fact, then is the "rising tides help all boats." Not tax cuts for the already-wealthy. That does nothing but make the rich, richer.

So, yeah, the rich owe the poor. Don't ever think they don't.  

They owe it to themselves to help.

Links:

It's expensive to be poor | The Economist

8 Ways Being Poor Is Wildly Expensive in America

It's getting more expensive to be poor - The Washington Post

It Is Expensive to Be Poor - The Atlantic

​The high cost of being poor - CBS News

How Expensive It Is to Be Poor - The New York Times

Being Poor Is Too Expensive - Lifehacker

Shockingly small 'crimes' that can land you in jail

From the Washington Post: The US Defense budget, in charts

The Washington Post does their readers--and the nation, I'd propose--a terrific service in January by having an article on:

America's staggering defense budget, in charts

I'll only post a few here, the most glaring and important, to me:

The United States spent 20 percent of the federal budget on defense in 2011.

All told, the U.S. government spent about $718 billion on defense and international security assistance in 2011 — more than it spent on Medicare. That includes all of the Pentagon's underlying costs as well as the price tag for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which came to $159 billion in 2011. It also includes arms transfers to foreign governments.

Defense spending has risen dramatically since 9/11. (no surprise)

The United States spent more on its military than the next 13 nations combined in 2011.

Ordinary Americans want to cut defense spending far more than is already on the table

What we spend on defense is obscene--morally, sure, but even regarding logic and fiscal and economic sustainability. What we spend on "defense", I contend, only weakens the nation, taking away from both what we spend on infrastructure and the people but also taking away from our own nation's coffers and economic stability.

I think it important to keep in mind what took the now-former Soviet Union down.

It was spending on defense.

The exact opposite of what should happen in our government

There is a report out today from The Washington Post, telling how, since President Obama has been so successful raising campaign cash last time and so far, in this campaign, that the Republicans are--naturally--trying to end the public funding system completely. Well, sure. Ending the public finance system for our elections fits their needs and wants. It that much more likely that the wealthy people and corporations, with all their lobbyists and money, will further their ugly, corrosive hold on American politics, campaigns, elections and so, our government. It's stupid and irresponsible. The only way the American people will get their government back is when we do away with "campaign contributions." Until we do, our legislators will be guided by who gives them money and the more for them, the better for them but the worst for our political system and government. Until we do away with these bribes known as campaign contributions, our legislators, their legislation and so, our government will be owned by the rich and corporations. They won't legislate for the country. They will legislate for their "sponsors". It's got to end. We have to stop this. We must demand an end by going to a wholly government-funded campaign system. Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-white-house-candidates-abandon-public-funding-republicans-look-to-end-system/2011/11/28/gIQA5doM6N_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Man, I hope this is true:

Study: Liberal brains bigger in areas dealing with complexity, conservative brains bigger in area of fear

Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.

"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.

As both proof and an example, I think we could start, for instance, with Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney.

Have a great weekend, y'all.

Links:  http://www.americablog.com/2011/04/study-liberal-brains-bigger-in-areas.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americablog+%28AMERICAblog%29;

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iISI7ifh-AjUE3ejyC1wQmwFrMFw?docId=CNG.61c886c438708471a9f4ea23070fa70c.3a1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2011/04/06/AFNEgnqC_story.html

On nuclear energy, safety and careless inaction

From The Washington Post today:


In 2006, a National Academy of Sciences committee recommended two simple steps to prevent spent nuclear fuel from catching fire: putting old, cool fuel next to the new, hot fuel discharged from a reactor, and adding sprayers that could dispense water if the cooling water in the pool was lost. But no such action has been taken, either in the United States or in Japan — where the most deadly danger at Fukushima nuclear plant since the recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami has been the risk that uncovered spent fuel in the storage pools would catch fire, spreading radioactive material miles downwind. Nor has much of the older spent fuel been moved out of pools into safer dry casks made of steel and concrete — another possibility to reduce the risk.


Two recommended steps--just two--and we, the US and Japan, at minimum, have done neither.


Doesn't seem very wise, does it?


Link to original post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-we-can-reduce-the-risk-of-another-fukushima/2011/03/23/ABpyI3KB_story.html

When, exactly, did we decide to demonize teachers?

And for that matter, why?

And what good purpose does this serve?

We all agree we want our kids to do well.

We know our schools have to work.

Maybe it makes sense to support the people that make those institutions successful.

Yeah, that would be the teachers.

Instead of trying to crush them, singularly and as a group, what with their diabolical unions, maybe it makes sense to support them.

The following was written by Linda Darling-Hammond, who is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University and was Founding Director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.  

The first ever International Summit on Teaching, convened last week in New York City, showed perhaps more clearly than ever that the United States has been pursuing an approach to teaching almost diametrically opposed to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations.  

In a statement rarely heard these days in the United States, the Finnish Minister of Education launched the first session of last week’s with the words: “We are very proud of our teachers.”   Her statement was so appreciative of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and commitment that one of the U.S. participants later confessed that he thought she was the teacher union president, who, it turned out, was sitting beside her agreeing with her account of their jointly-constructed profession.

There were many “firsts” in this remarkable Summit. It was the first time the United States invited other nations to our shores to learn from them about how to improve schools, taking a first step beyond the parochialism that has held us back while others have surged ahead educationally.

It was the first time that government officials and union leaders from 16 nations met together in candid conversations that found substantial consensus about how to create a well-prepared and accountable teaching profession.  
And it was, perhaps, the first time that the growing de-professionalization of teaching in America was recognized as out of step with the strategies pursued by the world’s educational leaders.

Evidence  presented at the Summit showed that, with dwindling supports, most teachers in the U.S must go into debt in order to prepare for an occupation that pays them, on average, 60% of the salaries earned by other college graduates. Those who work in poor districts will not only earn less than their colleagues in wealthy schools, but they will pay for many of their students’ books and supplies themselves.

And with states’ willingness to lower standards rather than raise salaries for the teachers of the poor, a growing number of recruits enter with little prior training, trying to learn on-the-job with the uneven mentoring provided by cash-strapped districts.  It is no wonder that a third of U.S. beginners leave within the first five years, and those with the least training leave at more than twice the rate of those who are well-prepared.  

Those who stay are likely to work in egg-crate classrooms with few opportunities to collaborate with one another.  In many districts, they will have little more than “drive-by” workshops for professional development, and – if they can find good learning opportunities, they will pay for most of it out of their own pockets.  Meanwhile, some policymakers argue that we should eliminate requirements for teacher training, stop paying teachers for gaining more education, let anyone enter teaching, and fire those later who fail to raise student test scores.  And efforts like those in Wisconsin to eliminate collective bargaining create the prospect that salaries and working conditions will sink even lower, making teaching an unattractive career for anyone with other professional options.

The contrasts to the American attitude toward teachers and teaching could not have been more stark.  Officials from countries like Finland and Singapore described how they have built a high-performing teaching profession by enabling all of their teachers to enter high-quality preparation programs, generally at the masters’ degree level, where they receive a salary while they prepare.  There they learn research-based teaching strategies and train with experts in model schools attached to their universities.  They enter a well-paid profession – in Singapore earning as much as beginning doctors -- where they are supported by mentor teachers and have 15 or more hours a week to work and learn together – engaging in shared planning, action research, lesson study, and observations in each other’s classrooms.  And they work in schools that are equitably funded and well-resourced with the latest technology and materials.  

In Singapore, based on their talents and interests, many teachers are encouraged to pursue career ladders to become master teachers, curriculum specialists, and principals, expanding their opportunities and their earnings with still more training paid for by the government.  Teacher union members in these countries talked about how they work closely with their governments to further enrich teachers’ and school leaders’ learning opportunities and to strengthen their skills.  

In these Summit discussions, there was no teacher-bashing, no discussion of removing collective bargaining rights, no proposals for reducing preparation for teaching, no discussion of closing schools or firing bad teachers, and no proposals for ranking teachers based on their students’ test scores.  The Singaporean Minister explicitly noted that his country’s well-developed teacher evaluation system does not “digitally rank or calibrate teachers,” and focuses instead on how well teachers develop the whole child and contribute to each others’ efforts and to the welfare of the whole school.

Perhaps most stunning was the detailed statement of the Chinese Minister of Education who described how – in the poor states which lag behind the star provinces of Hong Kong and Shanghai – billions of yuen are being spent on a fast-paced plan to improve millions of teachers’ preparation and professional development, salaries, working conditions and living conditions (including building special teachers’ housing)  The initial efforts to improve teachers’ knowledge and skills and stem attrition are being rapidly scaled up as their success is proved.

How poignant for Americans to listen to this account while nearly every successful program developed to support teachers’ learning in the United States is proposed for termination by the Administration or the Congress: Among these, the TEACH Grants that subsidize preparation for those who will teach in high-need schools; the Teacher Quality Partnership grants that support innovative pre-service programs in high-need communities; the National Writing Project and the Striving Readers programs that have supported professional development for the teaching of reading and writing all across the country, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which certifies accomplished teachers and provides what teachers have long called some of the most powerful professional development they ever experience in their careers.

These small programs total less than $1 billion dollars annually, the cost of half a week in Afghanistan.  They are not nearly enough to constitute a national policy; yet they are among the few supports America now provides to improve the quality of teaching.  
Clearly, another first is called for if we are ever to regain our educational standing in the world:  A first step toward finally taking teaching seriously in America.  Will our leaders be willing to take that step? Or will we devolve into a third class power because we have neglected our most important resource for creating a first-class system of education?

Want good students?

Help create and keep good teachers.

It's not that complicated.

Links:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/23/959413/-An-incredibly-important-piece-on-teaching-and-education

http://store.tcpress.com/0807749621.shtml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet

Truly, nothing is sacred and everything is for sale--or purchase

This from The Washington Post, yesterday:


Interest groups vie for a moment of Obama's time in State of the Union address

By Peter Wallsten and Anne E. Kornblut

Washington Post Staff Writers 

Sunday, January 23, 2011; 12:22 AM

It has been a frenetic few weeks for the country's leading oil industry group: Lobbyists for the American Petroleum Institute have repeatedly phoned the White House, cajoled agency higher-ups, even bought big newspaper ads touting the virtues of oil and natural gas.

The goal of all this activity isn't to win support for a crucial piece of legislation in Congress, but something much narrower - convincing President Obama to say something, anything, complimentary about Big Oil in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Could that be more disgusting?  Just when I think I've heard everything and that it couldn't get or be any worse, you hear something like this.

Companies, corporations, their lobbyists and money, buying "mentions" in the State of the Union address.  I don't care who the president is at the time, no matter the party, this should not be allowed.  If it takes legislation to do it, so be it.  We need to get corporate money and money of all kinds, like this, out of our government and in all forms and all areas, from the Executive Branch to the Legislative to the Judicial.

We need to get working on this.

Link to original story:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012203368.html?wpisrc=nl_agenda

The latest on Afghanistan and President Karzai

Did you see this? The latest news out of Afghanistan is that President Karzai now wants to "impose rules restricting international involvement in anti-corruption investigations." One of his underlings also said the following: "The management will be Afghan, and the decision-makers will be Afghan, and the investigators will be Afghan," Mohammad Umer Daudzai, Karzai's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Foreign advisers, most of whom work for the U.S. Justice Department, will be limited to "training and coaching, but not decision-making," he said. And then Karzai will put in his own, hand-picked staff for the agencies, too, I'll wager and they'll share the take. If it were any place but Afghanistan, you can understand why a leader would want to maintain internal control and not let outsiders in. But this is Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai is overseeing millions and billions of American tax dollars flooding into his country, because of this stupid war there. Last month he fired the corruption investigator. The guy was getting too close to the truth. I have said here before and I will say again, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is fleecing his own country by stealing from us, from the US right now. No one's talking about it in our government because they don't want to undermine the average person's support for the war. But years from now, we'll find out this thief took millions of dollars, at least, for himself, his family and friends and supporters, before he left office and that country. He's likely making like a bandit right now, as long as the American dollars flow in. We deserve to know what's going on over there--we can handle the truth--and we need to push this guy to do the right thing for his own people and for us, too. Link to original stories: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/08/AR2010090805935.html?hpid=topnews; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/world/asia/29afghan.html

Which military dictatorship?

Okay, so first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made big news for a couple of days with her quote and claim that maybe Iran was becoming a military dictatorship .

After I heard that, I thought (I may have said aloud), "Well, shoot, they could claim that of us."

And of course they did : "'They themselves' (the US) 'are involved in a sort of military dictatorship and have practically ignored the realities and the truths in the region,' Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, according to ISNA news agency."

And you know what?

They have a point, just not in the way they went at it.

Actually, they have a few points.

Look at the facts :

--The US outspends the entire world in military weapons, offensive and defensive. We spend 41.5% of all military outlays in the entire world ($607 billion);

--China (5.8% or $84.9 billion), France and the UK (each at 4.5%) and Russia (4.0%) make for 18.8% of the world's total defense spending;

--The next 10 countries combined, after our spending, only comprise 21.1% of the world total;

--The rest of the world's countries, again, combined, spend 18.6% of the world's total on defense spending and arms

Sure, we have a government that is "in charge" of our military so we're not officially a true military dictatorship.

Yet, anyway.

But the fact is, we don't seem capable of cutting back on our defense spending in any way. Our government leaders want the military/industrial complex firms booming in their districts to keep up their employment rolls.

Further, no one leader or political party wants to be seen as the one person or group who "weakened" our country, even if it just means wisely cutting back on defense spending that is far out of control.

It seems that the military corporations are the leaders of our country. They're the ones who are "in charge" of controlling our military. The Department of Defense works closely together with them to insure that they're budgets--and so, our spending--is high.

And no one dare ask if all this spending--deficits be damned--makes any sense for the future and well-being of the country.

Additional link on worldwide military spending:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures