Archives for category: Inequality

I think we are beginning to understand the real purpose of Corporate Reform. The 1% and their minions repeat ad nauseum that school choice will fix all education problems, lift the poor out of poverty, and no new taxes are needed. Indeed, they have pushed for tax cuts and cheered on deep cuts to public education. We are watching a generation of defunding public schools, refusing to invest in teachers’ salaries, and a massive transfer of resources from the public sector to private institutions.

Jeff Bryant explains it here.

“Recent news stories about wealthy folks giving multi-million donations to education efforts have drawn both praise and criticism, but two new reports by public education advocacy groups this week are particularly revealing about the real impact rich people have on schools and how they’ve chosen to leverage their money to influence the system.

‘The Education Debt’

“The first report, “Confronting the Education Debt” from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools examines the nation’s “education debt” – the historic funding shortfall for school systems that educate black and brown children. The authors find that through a combination of multiple factors – including funding rollbacks, tax cuts, and diversions of public money to private entities – the schools educating the nation’s poorest children have been shorted billions in funding.

“One funding source alone, the federal dollars owed to states for educating low-income children and children with disabilities, shorted schools $580 billion, between 2005 and 2017, in what the government is lawfully required to fund schools through the provisions of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

“The impact of not fully funding Title I is startling, the report contends, calculating that at full funding, the nation’s highest-poverty schools could provide health and mental health services for every student including dental and vision services, and these schools would have the money to hire a full-time nurse, a full-time librarian, and either an additional full-time counselor or a full-time teaching assistant for every classroom.

“State and local governments contribute to underfunding too by keeping in place tax systems that chronically short schools, particularly those that educate low-income students, mostly of color. Two school districts in Illinois are highlighted – one where 80 percent of students are low-income and gets about $7,808 per pupil in total expenditures, while another, where 3 percent of students are low-income, spends $26,074 per student…

“In the meantime, while the nation’s education debt expands, the accumulated wealth of the richest Americans continues to grow. During that time period the federal government was shorting schools billions, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest individuals grew by $1.57 trillion, the report notes.

“There is a direct correlation between dwindling resources for public schools and the ongoing political proclivity for transferring public dollars to the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations,” the report declares. “The rich are getting richer. Our schools are broke on purpose.”

This is the context for Bryant’s discussion of the NPE Action Report, “Hijacked by Billionaires.” The 1% buy control of state and local races so they can advance their tax-cutting, budget-cutting ideas and promote school choice.

“What motivates these wealthy people from exerting their will in the electoral process varies. They are bipartisan politically. Some are directly connected to the charter school industry. Others have expressed disdain for democratically controlled schools and argue, instead, for school governance to transfer to unelected boards. Some are motivated by their hatred of teachers’ unions. While others believe strongly that public education needs to be opened up to market competition from charters.

“But what billionaire donors all have in common, the report authors write, is their devotion to blaming schools and educators for problems posed by educating low-income children. Instead of using their political donations to advocate for more direct aid to schools serving low-income kids, wealthy donors “distract us from policy changes that would really help children,” the report argues, “such as increasing the equity and adequacy of school funding, reducing class sizes, providing medical care and nutrition for students, and other specific efforts to meet the needs of children and families.”

Their one unifying idea is lower taxes.

His third example is a new book about how predatory elites subvert democracy.

“Rich people are playing a double game,” writes Anand Giridharadas in his new book ‘Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.’ “On one hand, there’s no question they’re giving away more money than has ever been given away in history … But I also argue that we have one of the more predatory elites in history, despite that philanthropy.”

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Philanthropy, Privatization

Why Philanthropy Is Bad for Democracy: An Interview with Anand Giridharadas

By dianeravitch

August 28, 2018 //

This article expresses our frustration with arrogant, clueless billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Betsy DeVos, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings, the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and Mark Zuckerberg. We have long known that they don’t like democracy. It gets in the way of their grand plans to change the world. Why should we—the targets of their plans—have any say? Those of us who are not billionaires think that they should stop rearranging our lives. We don’t want them to disrupt our lives and our institutions. We believe in the idea of one person, one vote. We are losing faith in democracy because these plutocrats have more than one vote. They use their vast resources to buy elections and, what is even cheaper, to buy politicians.

Anand Giridharadas frequented their circles, mainly at the Aspen Institute, which made the mistake of inviting him to join them as a Fellow. He confirms what we suspected. These people are a threat to democracy. They think they are “doing good,” but they are destroying democracy.

It begins:

“In 2015, the journalist Anand Giridharadas was a fellow at the Aspen Institute, a confab of moneyed “thought leaders” where TED-style discourse dominates: ostensibly nonpolitical, often counterintuitive, but never too polemical. In his own speech that year, Giridharadas broke with protocol, accusing his audience of perpetuating the very social problems they thought they were solving through philanthropy. He described what he called the Aspen Consensus: “The winners of our age must be challenged to do more good, but never, ever tell them to do less harm.” The response, he said, was mixed. One private-equity figure called him an “asshole” that evening, but another investor said he’d voiced the struggle of her life. David Brooks, in a New York Times column, called the speech “courageous.” That lecture grew into Winners Take All, Giridharadas’s new jeremiad against philanthropy as we know it. He weaves together scenes at billionaires’ gatherings, profiles of insiders who struggle with ethical conflicts, and a broader history of how America’s wealth inequality and philanthropy grew in tandem.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Democracy, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Walton Foundation

Beware the Elites Who Want to Change the World.

By dianeravitch

August 28, 2018 //

This is an unusually good opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times a few days ago.

Think Gates, Zuckerberg, Walton, Hastings, Koch, and many more who use their wealth to impose their ideas on what they consider lesser lives.

The author is Anand Giridharadas.

Please note the mention of charter schools, a bone used by the elites to distract us from wealth inequality and the necessity of providing a better education for all.

It begins:

“Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful.

“Change the world. Improve lives. Invent something new,” McKinsey & Company’s recruiting materials say. “Sit back, relax, and change the world,” tweets the World Economic Forum, host of the Davos conference. “Let’s raise the capital that builds the things that change the world,” a Morgan Stanley ad says. Walmart, recruiting a software engineer, seeks an “eagerness to change the world.” Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, “The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.”

“At first, you think: Rich people making a difference — so generous! Until you consider that America might not be in the fix it’s in had we not fallen for the kind of change these winners have been selling: fake change.

“Fake change isn’t evil; it’s milquetoast. It is change the powerful can tolerate. It’s the shoes or socks or tote bag you bought which promised to change the world. It’s that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools for all. It is Lean In Circles to empower women — not universal preschool. It is impact investing — not the closing of the carried-interest loophole.

“Of course, world-changing initiatives funded by the winners of market capitalism do heal the sick, enrich the poor and save lives. But even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.

“What their “change” leaves undisturbed is our winners-take-all economy, which siphons the gains from progress upward. The average pretax income of America’s top 1 percent has more than tripled since 1980, and that of the top 0.001 percent has risen more than sevenfold, even as the average income of the bottom half of Americans stagnated around $16,000, adjusted for inflation, according to a paper by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

“American elites are monopolizing progress, and monopolies can be broken. Aggressive policies to protect workers, redistribute income, and make education and health affordable would bring real change. But such measures could also prove expensive for the winners. Which gives them a strong interest in convincing the public that they can help out within the system that so benefits the winners.”

There is more, if it is not behind a paywall.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Fake, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Privatization, Walton Foundation

The Walton Family Increased Its Net Worth by $5 Billion Today

By dianeravitch

March 19, 2018 //

It was a good day for the rightwing Walton Family.

The family’s net worth grew by $5 Billion. In one day.

“Walmart shares rose 4.5% after the announcement on Tuesday that projected the company’s U.S. e-commerce sales would increase 40% in the next fiscal year. Rob, Jim, Alice, Christy, and Lukas Walton saw their combined net worths climb to $140 billion as a result of the increase in the company’s stock price.”

Income inequality and wealth inequality gets worse every day. Read the book “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Happier.”

We are not a happy society.

Categories Billionaires, Inequality, Walton Foundation

Clint Smith: GOP Tax Plan Hurts Poor Kids, Worsens Unequal School Funding

By dianeravitch

February 22, 2018 //

Clint Smith writes in The Atlantic that the underlying cause of educational inequality is unequal funding of children who are poor. Instead of getting more funding and smaller classes, their schools are systematically underfunded as compared to the schools attended by the wealthiest children.

The GOP tax plan will worsen this inequality. It creates pathways to enrich rich families and take from the public schools that serve the neediest children.

It is a reverse Robin Hood plan: steal from the poor, give to the rich.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/the-new-tax-laws-subtle-subversion-of-public-schools/552356/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20180209&silverid=MzM0NTY0NzMyNzIyS0

Categories Accountability, Funding, Inequality, Privatization, Republicans

Christine Yeh: Forget Grit. Focus on Inequality.

By dianeravitch

January 16, 2018 //

This is the most sensible commentary I have read about “grit.” It was written by Christine Yeh of the University of San Francisco.

The notion that kids in poverty can overcome hunger, lack of medical care, homelessness, and trauma by buckling down and persisting was always stupid and heartless, exactly what you would expect to hear from Scrooge or the Koch brothers or Betsy DeVos.

She writes:

”Grit is an easy concept to fall in love with because it represents hope and perseverance, and conjures up images of working-class individuals living the “American dream.” However, treating grit as an appealing and simple fix detracts attention from the larger structural inequities in schools, while simultaneously romanticizing notions of poverty…

“Perhaps this idea of grit resonates with so many people who believe in the popular American adage that if you work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, then you can achieve anything. This belief unfortunately, assumes that individuals have the power, privilege, and access to craft their own futures, regardless of circumstance and systemic barriers.

“Statistics on educational access consistently reveal vast differences in resources in affluent versus poor neighborhoods. Predominantly white, middle- and upper-income school districts tend to spend significantly more money per student than the districts with the highest percentages of marginalized students. Our poorest schools also tend to have large class sizes, unsafe school transportation, damaged and outdated facilities, and high staff turnover. All of these conditions directly contribute to low educational outcomes and underscore the link between access to school resources and improvements in students’ success. Schools that focus on grit shouldn’t ignore structural inequities because they assume that regardless of your race, class, or social context you can still triumph.

“To be sure, there have been many examples of poor students possibly using their grit to overcome the greatest of odds—such as unstable housing, our troubled foster care system, and community violence. And there are probably advantages for teaching students to persevere and stick with a goal while facing challenges and obstacles. However, the responsibility of a great education should not be placed on the individual student to achieve through grit. Rather, schools need to build their own type of grit—that is, a long-term investment and goal, a stick-to-itiveness—to serve all students, but especially those in the margins.

“Educators need to resist the temptation to hyper focus on singular qualities—such as grit, self-esteem, or IQ—as quick cure-alls for our nations’ education problems and identify meaningful changes that tackle discrepancies in student resources. We don’t want to teach grit as a skill without making larger systemic and contextual changes in schools that promote equitable conditions for success…

”Numerous educational research studies demonstrate that schools that provide culturally relevant curriculum—including books by authors of color, critical explorations of histories and social movements, and school-based programs that creatively foster positive identities and cultural empowerment—dramatically increase students’ engagement in school, bonding with teachers, and academic achievement. These practices work because students feel connected and represented as a meaningful part of school, and subsequently they develop a focus on future goals. These ideas may not conform to the recent movements on character education and, more specifically, on teaching grit, but they do embody the lives and stories of many targeted and vulnerable communities. The notion of grit has certainly spurred important discussions about the nonacademic experiences and skills we want our students to have, but it has often obscured the very conditions that created educational inequities in the first place.”

Categories Inequality, Poverty, Students, Stupid

2017: A Great Year to Be Very, Very Rich

By dianeravitch

December 30, 2017 //

Our reader, who identifies herself as Carolmalaysia, posted this comment:

She writes:

I can understand why Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates need tax breaks. Thank you, Republicans, for making this possible.
……………………….
The world’s 500 wealthiest people got $1 trillion richer in 2017 | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The world’s richest people got a whopping $1 trillion richer, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. That’s about four times the gains they made last year.

That data comes courtesy of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks and ranks the world’s 500 richest people. It attributes much of the economic growth to the stock market’s record-high year. (The MSCI World and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes grew about 20 percent this year.)

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, clocked in as the world’s richest person, gaining $34.2 billion in wealth. (Mr. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates came in at No. 2. Mr. Bezos is worth about $99.6 billion, according to Bloomberg. Mr. Gates is valued at $91.3 billion…

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2017/12/27/The-world-s-500-wealthiest-people-got-1-trillion-richer-in-2017-Jeff-Bezos-Bill-Gates/stories/201712270146

Categories Billionaires, Inequality

Susan Lee Schwartz: What Has Happened to Us? Why the Callous Indifference to Others?

By dianeravitch

December 28, 2017 //

Susan Lee Schwartz writes:

“I cannot relax as I listen to the cold, callous conversations among our people and hear that monster who passes as a leader.

“You go††a see these sycophants applauding the cruel tax bill. “There was a festival of flattery on the White House lawn today to celebrate the passage of the Republican tax cut bill,” Lemon said. After playing a clip, he couldn’t hold back the chuckles any longer. “Oh my god, is that SNL?” Lemon asks.

“But it wasn’t fantasy. This man leads, even as the television puts forth a torrent of violent images and aggression, and video games offer kids target practice.

“Selling callous, cruelty is the business model. Even the commercials are nasty.
What a surprise that crime is up and so is drug addiction. Coping with life in America, today, makes relaxing hard to do, especially when one ha to chose between putting food on the table, and paying the rent, let alone buy-in medical care, or education for a kid.”

This is the triumph of libertarian thought. Take care of yourself, no one else. If they suffer, Tough. It’s God’s will or fate or bad luck. I am not my brother’s keeper. This is not Christian. Jesus would reject those who preach indifference to suffering in His name.

Read Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains.” Read Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money.” Read Gordon Lafer’s “The One Percent Solution.”

We live in an era of greed, selfishness, ruthless power, and injustice, one in which the rich and powerful want more for themselves. Less for the needy. They happily put their boots on the backs of the poor and occasionally throw them a penny.

Categories Inequality, Inequity, Injustice

The U.S. Has the Highest Rate of Child Poverty in the Developed World

By dianeravitch

December 25, 2017 //

On Christmas Day, it is traditional to remember those who are less fortunate and to resolve to make the world better for them, not just to offer charity.

It is important to recognize the growing inequality in America and the return of extreme poverty and to understand why this is happening.

This article by Premilla Nadasen of Barnard College helps us understand what has happened to our great country.

The New Deal enacted programs that reduced poverty and enabled many to rise into the middle class.

But something changed. Many things changed. Over several decades, the social safety net built to strengthen our nation and spread hope and opportunity has been shredded by the rich and powerful.

“Since the 1970s, the safety net has been diminished considerably. Labor regulations protecting workers have been rolled back, and funding for education and public programs has declined. The poor have been the hardest hit. With welfare reform in 1996, poor single parents with children now have a lifetime limit of five years of assistance and mandatory work requirements. Some states require fingerprinting or drug testing of applicants, which effectively criminalizes them without cause. The obstacles to getting on welfare are formidable, the benefits meager. The number of families on welfare declined from 4.6 million in 1996 to 1.1 million this year. The decline of the welfare rolls has not meant a decline in poverty, however.

“Instead, the shredding of the safety net led to a rise in poverty. Forty million Americans live in poverty, nearly half in deep poverty — which U.N. investigators defined as people reporting income less than one-half of the poverty threshold. The United States has the highest child poverty rates — 25 percent — in the developed world. Then there are the extremely poor who live on less than $2 per day per person and don’t have access to basic human services such as sanitation, shelter, education and health care. These are people who cannot find work, who have used up their five-year lifetime limit on assistance, who do not qualify for any other programs or who may live in remote areas. They are disconnected from both the safety net and the job market.

“In addition to the reduction of public assistance and social services, the rise in extreme poverty can also be attributed to growing inequality. To quote the U.N. report: “The American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion, as the U.S. … now has the lowest rate of social mobility of any of the rich countries.” In 1981, the top 1 percent of adults earned on average 27 times more than the bottom 50 percent of adults. Today the top 1 percent earn 81 times more than the bottom 50 percent.

“Declining wages at the lower end of the economic ladder make it harder for people to save for times of crisis or to get back on their feet. A full-time, year-round minimum wage worker, often employed in a dead-end job, falls below the poverty threshold for a family of three and often has to rely on food stamps.”

Do we want America to be the Land of Illusion, no longer the Land of Opportunity? Are we prepared to do something about it?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Poverty