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Donald Trump and Angela Merkel will join 2,500 world leaders, business executives and charity bosses at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland which kicks off on 23 January. High on the agenda once again will be the topic of inequality, and how to reduce the widening gap between the rich and the rest around the world.
The WEF recently warned that the global economy is at risk of another crisis, and that automation and digitalisation are likely to suppress employment and wages for most while boosting wealth at the very top.
But what ideas should the great and good gathered in the Swiss Alps be putting into action? We'd like to know what single step you think governments should prioritise in order to best address the problem of rising inequality. Below we've outlined seven proposals that are most often championed as necessary to tackle the issue – but which of them is most important to you?
- Provide free and high quality education
- Raise the minimum wage
- Raise taxes on the rich
- Fight corruption
- Provide more social protection for the poor
- Stop the influence of the rich on politicians
- Provide jobs for the unemployed
Do you think these ideas are enough, or are there any better ideas to close this wealth gap ? You too can participate and vote for the idea that, you think, works best.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @03:34PM (14 children)
They could always lessen those qualifications. They obviously aren't working.
I know a fair number of ex-teachers. They don't stay unemployed. My bet is that if schools were more pervasively to come up with non-dysfunctional work environments and incentives to hire and keep good teachers, then some of those ex-teachers would come back.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday January 21 2018, @05:26PM (10 children)
Like perhaps reasonable pay?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @05:51PM (9 children)
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday January 21 2018, @06:29PM
"should" is not "is".
It's another case where distribution needs to be fixed.
In a school district near me, the Superintendent got a pay rise this year, but the teachers? No money for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:01PM (7 children)
Ah yes, the typical khallow disconnect from reality where opinions can be carried to term without the slightest hint of factual support.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @09:54PM (6 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @09:59PM (5 children)
Again, you have no clue about reality. You are looking at a chart and making a LOT of assumptions. The actual teachers are the ones not getting decent pay, being overworked and understaffed. I'm sure quite a bit of money could be more efficiently used instead of squandered on superintendent salaries and redundant textbook purchases. That however is a different conversation precluded by your ASSUMPTIONS which make the conversation impossible.
You and your ilk have a long way to go learning about actual reality before we can have much of a productive conversation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @11:41PM (4 children)
In other words, I'm using data and you're just pulling stuff out of your ass. I grant that there may be problems with the data or how I'm interpreting it. But merely asserting that there are problems without supporting the claim in any way is not something I take serious.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday January 22 2018, @02:10AM (3 children)
Perhaps it would be helpful to point out that the US has some of the widest wealth disparity in the developed world. This extends through most business in the US (how much do you think the average Amazon worker is paid?).
This trend can reasonably be expected to continue through the education system, with the majority of funding ending up at the executive level, and only scraps remaining for the teachers at the bottom.
Explain to me how this little piece of school funding distribution [businessinsider.com] improves academic results?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 22 2018, @05:48AM (2 children)
While that is in part true, US teachers do get paid well over normal wages (for example, glancing at Bureau of Labor Statistics data by state confirmed that both California and Texas teachers were paid on average well above average wages for the state).
Meh, I don't buy that as a whole though I believe there are examples of such disparity. Government is not the business world.
First, it's coaches not teachers. Their job is not to teach, but to entertain. Second, we're ignoring the vast revenue generation that takes place in these sports venues. For example, the top person on that list, Nick Saban made $7.1 million in 2015 (had to check the original source for that information). The next year, he made [forbes.com] $7.9 million and generated a profit for the University of Alabama of $46 million which buys a lot of education staff and resources. That's the academic results he delivers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @08:13PM (1 child)
Ah yes, education as an entertainment industry. I'm so glad our societal priorities are in good hands!! /sarcasm /barf /stupid
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:21PM
So nothing to say about how much non-entertainment education one can buy with $46 million?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 21 2018, @07:43PM (2 children)
They do -- and have. I taught in public and private high schools for a few years. When I started teaching at a public school, I walked in off the street with a degree in a different field and was in a classroom teaching the next week. I was granted an "emergency permit." Why? Because the state I was teaching in opened its school year with thousands of vacancies. No: not "unqualified" teachers in classrooms -- thousands of classrooms that have substitute teachers in the classroom as their only teacher from day one. Substitutes often have NO training -- often you only need a high school diploma. And there were thousands of classrooms in that state that year who had subs as their only teachers.
So when I walked in with a college degree -- partly because I had heard the stats on the radio and was appalled by them, so I decided I wanted to do something about it -- they were thrilled to have me. And I was told that over the next three years I needed to fill my "deficiencies" and obtain certification, though I think that could be extended by another year or two if absolutely necessary. I did attain certification, through an "alternative certification program" meant to fast-track teachers to certification, rather than requiring them to take a bunch of education classes in college. Instead, I spent most of a summer doing 9 to 5 classes and random other stuff over the course of two school years, but I also saw the general caliber of most of the other people trying to get science certification... and, frankly, most of these people were science majors who couldn't find a job elsewhere because they were so incompetent... so they were trying teaching. I was horrified to imagine some of them in classrooms.
I was doing this right around the time that No Child Left Behind got passed, which supposedly required "highly qualified" teachers in every classroom... which ultimately meant that at first they were kicking the emergency permit folks out of classrooms because they couldn't legally teach anymore, and instead had substitutes with NO qualifications whatsoever. Then most states found ways around the language of the law to allow them to keep doing what they were doing before.
Yeah, because I believe the stats are still that around 50% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years. So even many of those who bother with certification may not last longer.
Bottom line is that if you have any vague qualification that might make you a science or math teacher (the person the first school hired along with me had a psych degree and was immediately put in a math classroom), you can probably walk into a classroom in many states already with pretty low bars. In southern states in rural schools or in nasty urban centers, you may be able to walk in and teach in other fields as well. (All 50 states have reported "shortages" in the beginning of the academic year in at least some areas.) So, I'm not sure how to "lessen those qualifications" when we have such a crisis that tens of thousands of classrooms nationwide (probably more) are already filled with people that don't even have the minimum requisite qualifications...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 21 2018, @09:56PM (1 child)
That's how.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:32PM
The ever amazing Republican solution at work!! Are things not working out quite as you'd planned? Stop trying to fix the problem and just wallow around in despair! The lowest common denominator is usually the cheapest anyway!!!
Suck a dick you turd.