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A Need For Change

The United States was not based on the idea of capitalism, it was based on the idea of freedom of expression and the freedom to self govern.  If you check the Declaration of Independence there is no mention of Capitalism and only passing mention of business at all.  Corporations in their modern form were only chartered in the 1800’s and even then were heavily regulated and controlled in the amount of power they held.  The US was based on the idea of small businesses, controlled by individuals who were directly involved in their communities, and so had a stake in the well being of those communities.

As for capitalism, what the corporations in general and banks in particular are running is not capitalism,  if it was, those large banks would now be out of business due to the bad decisions that they made.  Remember the big bailouts?  Capitalism on the way up, socialism on the way down.  Most major corporations are the recipients of corporate welfare in the form of ridiculously low tax rates and outright government subsidies.  The political system has been high-jacked by the corporations and politicians will only pass laws that are in favor of their corporate masters.  Capitalism is about investing money in businesses in the community in order to create jobs that will allow the people to buy your products and in that way generate a profit.

I have nothing against people being compensated for their efforts, if they are doing something that will genuinely help society, but the current system where the major business  is all about shipping jobs overseas to generate higher profits and gaming the markets to just to line their own pockets had nothing to do with helping society.  It is just greed, plain and simple.

There needs to be a change in the way that business is run.  The control of the corporations needs to be removed from the rich and placed in the hands of the workers.  This way the workers would be able to control their own destiny and keep jobs in their own community.  There also needs to be an end to corporate welfare, and in particular, subsidies to wildly profitable corporations such as the oil companies.

There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way corporations are ruled.  In the current system, corporations are required by law to maximize the profits of the shareholders at the expense of everything else.  There needs to be a change where the corporations are required to serve the community in which they are based.  They need to create jobs for their local population and to preserve the environment in which they operate.  I think that you would find that a large number of corporate leaders would like to do what is right, but they are restricted in what they can do by the requirement to maximize shareholder value.  That law only benefits the few that invest in the corporation, and in most cases those individuals are not in the community that will be affected and so have no interest in preserving that community.

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Education Reform

The current education system is severely broken.  In the lower levels it is being degraded to little more than a baby sitting service.  Students are not allowed to fail, and there is no way to maintain control within the classroom.  The teachers are underpaid and the students don’t have to learn basic skills unless they are motivated to do it themselves.  I find it hard to believe that someone can go through 12 years of school and still come out functionally illiterate.  Only 73% of high school graduates can read at a basic level, and in the Black and Hispanic communities the results are even worse.

Education is quite often the means that the poor can raise themselves up to a higher standard of living,  yet it is in the poor communities that the school budgets are being cut and the schools allowed to fall further into disrepair.  There needs to be a move towards putting extra funding into the poorer areas so that those students can go on to higher education.  There also needs to be role models in those schools to show the students, particularly at an early age that by staying in school that they can get ahead.

Another part of the solution is the need for a change in the funding model for higher education.  Right now, only the rich can afford to go to college or university, since the tuition rates are so high.  Or the student is burdened with massive student loans, which quite often end up keeping them from raising their standard of living, which was the reason for going to university in the first place.   University should change to a model where the grades determine the cost of tuition.  If you can attain a high average, you don’t have to pay any tuition, poor students, or those that are just there to party would pay a higher tuition.  This would allow the bright student from a poor area to attend university and not be burdened by student loans when they graduate.  There are scholarships currently available, but there are too few of them and they are focused on the wrong students.  A large number of scholarships are based on proficiency in sports, not academics.  Most scholarships should go to the student who will benefit from the access to higher education, not the student that is good at catching a ball, who will do the minimum required to pass their education and will take the easiest course they can find.

There also needs to be more encouragement for students to enter trade apprenticeships.  There is a growing shortage of skilled tradesmen, but most students that go on to higher education are discouraged from going into a trade, instead they go to university and graduate in fields that are oversupplied and end up working dead end jobs just to pay off the massive student loans.  Had the same student gone into a trade, they would have had a secure job, and the possibility of starting their own business once they got some experience.