Forum Post: Straw poll - Which of you OWSers is willing to redistribute your GPA
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 10, 2011, 1:12 p.m. EST by Usefulidiot987654321
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Why should some students get to keep all their grades. Nobody “needs” a 4.0. I worked full-time, went to college full-time & struggled to get B's. Why did I have to bust my butt while somebody else gets to breeze through with much less studying & gets easy A's because he/she happens to be gifted. Why should anyone get to "keep" all of the 1600 on his SAT. Nobody needs an A more than a millionaire needs a second condo in Columbus Circle. After all what’s your is mine & mine is yours. You’d love to socialize work & income – are you willing to socialize your GPA? By the way, enjoying all your Apple gadgets? You know, the ones that are all manufactured in the USA - in Steve Jobs parents garage. Of course, as you know, they are not made with toxic environmentally hazardous Rare Earth Metals mined in China. They are not manufactured in China, nor are they loaded onto a cargo ship & transported via OIL. By the way, ask the Union rabblerouser cronies if they will take the Union pension investments out of the stock market and instead invest them in 3 month T-bills yielding 0.2%.
This is totally irrelevant to anything. I suppose this person is trying to make a point about the people in #OWS but I don't have a clue what it is. I suggest everyone focus on the problem: the incestuous relationship between "our" government and the corporations. Break these bonds and th 99% will finally have a say in our government policy.
You are implying that that like those who work hard to get good grades, the wealthy work to get their wealth. This is partly true, but the wealthy had a lot of help getting to where they are. They had workers educated by the public, they had good roads built by the public, they had laws that kept strong men from ransacking their places of business. The public supports the wealthy much more than it supports those students who work hard for their grades.
No that's not what I'm implying. The notion put out by the OWS anarchists is that the 1% have all the wealth, the connections, the lobbyists & the inside knowledge and the other 99% have to scrape & struggle. Why only aplly this logic to Wall Street. If you are going to measure & redistribute Wall street profits - whether earned or unearned - why don't we apply the same logic to school grades. Johnny came from a nice home, nice area, good parents, silver spoon in his mouth - let's redistribute his grades to the less fortunate
I make over $40,000 a year. I hereby volunteer. Raise my taxes and the taxes of everyone that makes more than me. I can afford it and still have a great life. If you want to take everything I have and redistribute it all, then I'll be upset. But anyone who makes as much as I do or more and complains about a 2% tax hike is an addict and nothing more. I'd say they only care about their own well-being, but a person's well being is more than taken care of even at $30,000 a year or less, so the only excuse is greed. Raise MY taxes! Make it reasonable, make it fair, and use the money well, but if it is for the good of the nation and for the good of those who work hard but make less then me, then I can take the hit!
I'd gladly sell my GPA to pay my mortgage and students loans! Too bad its worthless
There has been a massive "wealth redistribution" that has gone on for the last 30 years. The top 1% now controls over 42% of our entire nation's wealth and the top 10% now controls over 70% of our entire nation's wealth. The bottom 50% now control around 2% of our entire nation's wealth. (University of Southern California Study).
How did this wealth redistribution happen? The middle class is the engine of our economy. The middle class spends their wealth on corporate goods/services and the corporations take that money in as profit. The corporations redistributed the middle class wealth by paying vast majority of their profits out to the executives at the top and shareholders. Middle class wages have stagnated for 30 years while executive wages have gone up 256% in since 1980. Even last year executive compensation went up another 11%. We have not seen numbers like this since the great depression. All of our nation's wealth has been redistributed into the hands of the few.
How did this happen? The middle class was roped into replacing wages with easy credit and loans. So instead of paying people living wages, corporations fooled us into thinking we were doing well and could afford things by giving us easy credit instead of wages. Corporations came up with the brilliant idea that they could loan us money instead of paying us wages. Instead of having wages to buy t.v.'s, furniture, etc. we were given easy loans. So the middle class became a debtor class.
There used to be a tax disincentive to paying out all of corporate profits at the top because in the 1950's income was taxed at 90% over a certain amount money ($2 million in today's dollars) and now that tax disincentive has disappeared. In 1950's the highest marginal tax rate was 90%. In 1960-1970's it was 70%. In 1980's it dropped to 49%. In 1990's dropped to 39%. Under George Bush it dropped to a mere 36%.
We have had over 30 years of massive tax cuts for the wealthy. There is now no tax disincentive to paying out all of the corporate wealth at the top. And there is no employee bargaining power because now less than 7% of all of private sector jobs are unionized.
With no tax disincentive and no employee bargaining power, all of the corporate profits are being paid to shareholders and executives. Why can't you just trust executives to pay people fair wages? In the 1980's our courts ruled that corporate executives only have one duty and that is to maximize shareholder profits. The 1980's ruling single-handedly removed executives from having any duties to their employees, society, or to the company's long-term future. Executives only have one duty and that is to maximize short-term shareholder profits. And executive compensation is usually directly tied to maximizing short-term shareholder profits. This caused companies to not create long-term growth plans and to instead use gimmicks to increase short-term profits.
In fact, instead of executives using innovation, creation, and growth to increase profits and stock prices, executives know that they can do it through easier methods like laying-off workers and cost-cutting like pushing healthcare and retirement costs on workers.
The problems are: 1) deregulation of the banks by the Republican-controlled congress in 1999 (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act); 2) hedge funds are exempt from regulation (and are currently causing the world financial crisis by betting against Greece and other Euro nations and the Euro currency); 3) tax system no longer has a disincentive against paying outrageous executive salaries (highest marginal tax rate has dropped from 90% to 36%); 4) commodities market (oil, gold, food, metals) is exempt from regulation and is now a haven for financial speculators (Republican-controlled Congress exempted it in the Commodities Future Modernization act of 2000); 5) the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations can spend unlimited funds in campaign elections - Citizen's United case (thus politicians on both sides favor the wealthy/corporations) and 6) the rise of corporate/billionaire propaganda media "news." Because of the need to raise massive sums in politics today, we no longer have a party that represents the people. The Democrats have to chase the corporate and big money donors too.
What can we do about this: 1) re-instate Glass-Steagall Act regulating the banks; 2) regulate hedge funds and the commodities market (because the commodities market is not regulated speculation has caused prices for commodities to go through the roof); 3) get rid of the money in politics (have federally funded elections with clear limits on spending and no outside groups allowed to have ads); 4) get rid of 1980's laws stating that corporations' only duty is to maximize shareholder profits; and 5) regulate "news" channels and newspapers (no more "slanted opinion news" masquerading as hard news) and reinstitute the fairness doctrine across all news outlets to ensure that both sides get equal time.
I say put the people in jail who stole their GPA's and rigged the school's computer system to give them false grades. Let the people who really earned their good grades get their just deserts.
But if we need a new more honorable system, perhaps OWS can set the tone & lead by example
I agree with you 100% put them in jail
A more accurate metaphor: I was born with a deficit of GPA points, and struggled to overcome. Then Wall Street and the executives at some major corporations began hording my GPA points even though I was the one who worked hard to overcome obstacles in order to earn them! They started wasting the GPA I worked for on bonuses and high-end corporate spa vacations...
Of course some people's GPA's were also earned based on indigenous people being forcibly removed from their homeland, and hordes of temps paying too much rent worked hard to raise GPA points for someone else...
Or...
My grandfather had a great GPA and SAT score because he cheated on his tests (it was easier to cheat back then) so now I'm automatically given a 1550 SAT and a 3.95 GPA. Getting it to 1600 and a 4.0 is the hard work that I have to do on my own, though!
So why aren't you railing against the Democrat politicians who are supposedly the party of the people, the gatekeepers looking out for the little guy. They legislate the laws, and according to you, they have been corrupted by the corrupt. If the police were corrupt, were paid off by the criminals, and did not enforce the laws then what is the problem to address first - scream about the criminals or replace those cops. What about the 1 Trillion dollars spent in the war on poverty. How about the cultural price tag of a 40% illigitimacy rate & 75% in the black community. When you say indigenous people being forcibly moved - are you including for example somebody's grandmother being forced to sell a house in Bushwick 40 years ago at substantially reduced price because the house next door was set on fire (aka terrorized), feared for her life, fled the the nighborhood area, the area went to hell & it suppressed the price of her house. To make good for "our past sins" , perhaps you should get the ball rolling & write a check to an American Indian tribe of your choice for the "profits" you or your family has made (aka benefitted) courtesy of the U.S. being an economic superpower from 1492 to present. Minimum donation is probablyabout $25,000. Also the illegal aliens jump the line to get in the country (which I dont begrudge them one bit) work as waiters, busboys, checkout cashiers, landscapers, drywall, painters, handyman etc. But what about the family in Vietnam or Ecuador dying to come here but waits & waits & waits in back of the line - as my father did. My grandfather came to U.S., died in WWII on D-day (for this country!) and then my father waited & waited on line to get out of Communist Europe to come to here - is that fair or just? No, it's not fair, it's life. How many of those jobs could be second jobs or even main jobs for everyday Americans getting squeezed by suppressed wages. Why should an illegal immigrant get a reduced California state-subsidized tuition, when an American plays by the rules & is told sorry Charlie, no more money left you. We are losing our country. Stop buying made in China. Stop having kids out of wedlock & suffocating & floodiung the education system with kids (troublemakers) who should be in juvenile detention center. God help our teachers
Families with assets over $5 million have gotten almost all gains in wealth the Last 30 years. Do you really think they did all the work? Check ed Wolff at nyu for more.
Yeah, all you people with A's should work less! Wtf? I don't even understand your point.
I wouldnt expect you to