My father came here from El Salvador.
When he lived in El Salvador, he lived in a shack with a dirt floor and corrugated tin roof.
How is it, even sven, that I am where I am today, given that “…education, and the oppertunities that go with that, are based largely on the economic and social status of the family you happen to be born into?”
Yeah, but Rick, but, but, but… but there are poor people in America! They’re rotting on people’s couches, for g-d’s sake! Have you no more sympathy than to cruelly cross a picket line?
Now that Shayna has me wriggling in the crushing grip of reason…
Fun’s fun and all, but while you guys are kicking even sven for having the temerity to suggest that educational opportunity is based on income, you may want to chew on this study from The Educational Resoures Institute. In part, the study found:
And, yes, Bricker, the same is largely true in Canada.
Which is the cart, and which is the horse?
In other words, if it’s possible to transcend the barriers created by barrios, so to speak, then do people that fail to do so bear any responsibility for failing to do so?
Did you look at your cite?
“The college participation rate in 1994 for students from the lowest quartile of family income was 58%”
Look at that again. The number was 58%. Meaning MOST students in the lowest quartile had some secondary education!
!!
Meaning, even poor people go to college in America.
How does that square with your assertion that poor people are turned away, kicked on, and oppressed for even daring to hope that they might get an education?
Poor people CAN get an education. And according to your cite, MOST of them DO. OK, 9 out of 10 rich kids get some college, and only 6 out of 10 poor kids do. That doesn’t exactly seem scandalous, does it?
**
I just started reading this thread, and hit this little gem, so I apologize if it has been addressed before. Oh, the irony.
Which is to say, not at all.
even sven, I’m not any huge success in life like say Mr. Burd. But I’m doing ok, pretty good even. I’ve run a few companies, held senior management positions at a few more, been a Director for companies, been on the board of advisors for others, and been an informal advisor to senior management for many others. I’ve sold companies to other companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. (not that I got all that money mind you, but I’m in those circles). In my life, I’ve created hundreds of jobs, which have paid (to date) perhaps 75 million dollars of salaries to people.
Now let me tell you some particulars about my past:
Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m a bit of an exception. It’s a rarity to see others in my world without degrees. Many many of them come from places like Yale and had wealthy families. But many of them didn’t come from extraordinary wealth.
And by the way: I’ve eaten oatmeal too. And it sucks. I really feel for you. But if you look in the ways that you can do good, you’ll do good. If you concentrate on how the world sucks and is unfair, it’ll stay that way.
It’s possible to get out of the ghetto…assumeing your mom doesn’t get put in jail for her cocaine habit mere months after you graduate high school, leaving you with a young sister to raise. Assumeing your parents didn’t immigrate here illegally and expect you to earn your keep by working at a far away print shop- leaving you to drive without a license or insurance, which leads to a car accident and a $20,000 debt to pay off at 16. Assuming you arn’t tracked into a remedial class because you have a Mexican last name. Assuming somebody bothers to tell you about things like SATS and college application essays (we arn’t born with that information, you know, and somebody who has never been exposed to college wouldn’t have any clue that they had to do these things). Just because it can be done every once in a while doesn’t mean everyone can do it. There are some obsticles that are just too big, no matter how good a person you are.
These are all my friends. It’s only a stroke of luck that I didn’t run into something that’d be a dealbreaker on my way to college.
And how can you honestly believe that class isn’t tied to education? One person in ten years at my high school got into Stanford (Ivy Leagues are out of the question). That means no matter how hard you work, even if you are valedictorian, if you go to my high school, you basically don’t have a chance. Whereas at my boyfriend’s high school it was unusual for people to go to a school as “low” as a top tier state university. That doesn’t even factor in things like that poor people often work minimum wage jobs (don’t have the connections for nice ones) instead of the internships and volenteer work that look good on an application. Or that poor high schools don’t offer the counciling that is essential to knowing what to do for college applications and empasizing a college preperation cirriculum. The list goes on and on.
What assertion was that? I said that even sven’s claim that educational opportunity was “based largely” (her words, not mine) on socioeconomic status was not without merit. Did I say that poor people were “turned away” from education? No. Did I say that poor people were “oppressed for even daring to hope that they might get an education?” No either. And I’ll appreciate if you take that claim back, thank you very much.
Do people of lower economic status get fewer chances in education? When I researched my earlier post, I looked at over a dozen studies of the relationship between educational opportunity and earnings. Not one suggested, as more than a few have here, that social status had little to nothing to do with level of education. Indeed, I can’t think of a single serious expert on the subject who does–liberal, moderate, or conservative. After, all, many conservative educationalists are touting school vouchers as a way of lessening inequality in primary and secondary education. Now, if there is no inequality, what do we need the vouchers for?
Every survey I read said that the US and Canada have come a long way since the 1940’s and 1950’s in giving chances for education to the poor. Does that mean we have a perfect system? No, we are a long way from saying that. The report I cited noted that a much higher proportion of students from the lowest economic quartile either attended two-year community colleges or dropped out of school, usually due to lack of funding.
And, for the record, I know perfectly well that poor people go to college in America. You see, I work as a university fundraiser. I was lucky enough to benefit from scholarships and financial help when I went to school. In my job I’ve seen first-generation immigrants, kids from welfare families, students who were the first in their family to go to college. And I don’t say that to boast about my work, because I didn’t go into it for martyrhood. I say it because I know what getting educational opportunity means for people. And I know it didn’t come about by accident.
We can’t raise all the money we need to fund all the students who are qualified to attend our school. Apart from a handful of places, nobody can. So we’ve got to turn students who can’t afford us away. There’s a phrase in a lot of college admissions departments, “There’s always room for one more full pay.” If you’ve got the money and the inclination, you’ll get into a place–sure, not Harvard or Yale, but a place. That’s the kind of opportunity the poor don’t get.
Bricker, when I worked at my last job, I sometimes worked with a student worker who grew up poor in Mexico, and moved to East LA when she was 16. Her father didn’t speak English, her mother wasn’t alive any more. She graduated top of her class. There are a lot of stories like hers. But whereas most of her friends from her high school weren’t going to college, most of the people I knew from HS were. Does that mean the kids in my high school were smarter, more motivated, and better equipped for the real world? I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it. We’re working on fixing that inequality. But we’re not completely there yet.
Bricker and Bill H., I’ve got nothing but respect for anybody who works hard and succeeds. I don’t hate successful people, I’m no fire-breathing communist who wants CEOs up against the wall. I happen to work with a number of CEOs and business leaders in my job. But cut even some slack. She’s had four job interviews this week! It’s not like she’s sitting on the couch eating Cheetos. And, Bill, when you were working at below minimum wage (been there myself), didn’t you feel frustrated as hell too, maybe even a little bolshie? Even P. J. O’Rourke, court jester to the right, had his Maoist period in college when he felt impoverished.
To sum up: people from disadvantaged backgrounds do not get equal educational opportunities. This is not a political statement, this is fact. (Even President Bush initiated “No Child Left Behind” to try to shore up opportunities for the poor.) If someone can prove that wrong, I’ll gladly eat my words, because I’m interested in the truth, not partisanship or bluster. If not, there’s nothing more I can add here.
Duke wrote
Actually, I don’t recall pushing down or discouraging even sven, and in fact I even offered a couple of encouraging words. My arguments in this thread have been with (what I consider) the unfair practices of unions, and (what I consider) the unfair bashing of senior company execs.
Hell yes. And if someone wants to rant during troubled times, that’s fine. But I take these sorts of discussions as considering how the world should be run. My position is that unions are bad, corps are good, and what the market sets as compensation for anybody is fair. And generally that’s always been my view, even in darkest times. Not that I celebrated CEOs then, but I was more concerned about how I was going to make it than worrying about how the man was holding me down. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that I’m more liberal now than I was then, especially concerning spending on education.
Well, I agree, but I’ll be precise in what I agree about. Those born into poverty have a tougher time being successful than those born into riches. For a lot of reasons. The biggest by far is that their parents and peers are poor. The second is that their education is lesser, which is also partially because part of your education happens at homes and their homes are not geared towards success. (is that a Tony Robbins line or what?)
However, I feel that if one really wants to, one can find a good education in most places in America. And I feel one can be successful coming from even the lowest places here. Yes the odds are against you coming from poverty, but it’s not impossible and there are alot of structures in place to help those that really do want to do better (scholarships, etc.). And things are a whole lot better than it was in the past.
It’s a bit sad how art imitates life.
Thank you, Oh Tax Guy, it’s so nice of you to deign and such. Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they’re fucking stupid. So shove it up your butt, asshole.
(1) Here’s how a corporation works: shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board of directors picks the CEO. The board of directors have a duty to do what’s best for the company, so if they pick a shitty CEO simply because he’s a golfing buddy, then the shareholders can sue the board and win damages.
This is how a corporation is SUPPOSED to work. Some of them do work that way. All of them follow the form, but many subvert it. Frex, in ANOTHER corporation I worked for, they went through three CEOs during my four-year tenure there. One of them was fired for pressuring the CFO to cook the books and make the corp. look more profitable. He wasn’t SUPPOSED to do that, but he did that. A LOT of CEOs get ahead by breaking the rules as much as they can get away with. Sometimes it works out to their and the corp’s advantage. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they get caught at it by someone in a position to do something about it. Sometimes they don’t.
(2) Just because a CEO gets paid a lot of money in one year an during that same year the company’s performance takes a nosedive doesn’t mean that the CEO is an overpaid loser who doesn’t know how to run a company. The CEO must decide which risks to take and how to position the company to do best, and sometimes, despite the CEO’s best efforts, shit just doesn’t work right. Now, if a company underperforms its competitors year after year, this could be used as evidence that the CEO sucks and needs to go, but you can’t just say "CEO X made a billion dollars in 200X while his company went bankrupt! I could do that! Waah!"
So, there’s no relation that any mere mortal can detect in less than, say, 5 years, between a CEO’s efforts and a corporations
success. My, you are a CEO’s DREAM shareholder.
(3) There’s no magic relationship that must exist between how much CEOs make and how much the other workers in the company make. Each group is competing for a job in a totally different market, and each group has different skill sets and different sacrifices it will make for the corporation. Just because CEOs make a billion (or 250 or 12 or 0.4) times the salary a factory worker makes doesn’t mean shit.**
I counter with the notion that current CEO salaries have very little to do with their worth to the corporation, and everything with how much they’re ABLE to get from the corporation. That is, if I were an assembly line worker making widgets, and I were able to get $500,000 a year for doing so, of course I’d do so. But that wouldn’t mean my labor had suddenly become worth $500,000 to the corporation. It would just mean I’d found a seam in the economic regimen and exploited it. Same with CEOs.
In any event, there are a lot of people writing in the biz press who think CEO salaries are WAAAAY out of line, it’s not just something I made up. Once again, you are a CEO’s DREAM shareholder.
(4) Earlier you said that American CEOs make much more than CEOs in other countries, and you somehow think this is a bad thing for America. Have you had a chance to take a look at the similarities and differences between the economy in America and the economy in most other countries? Here’s a start: we’re doing pretty damn well over here.
Apples and oranges, my man. The CEOs in foreign corporations are operating in different economies than we have here in the U.S. Their skills might make U.S. corps perform even better than our corrent crop of CEOs, if they had our economic engine to play with.
(5) It sounds like at its core your position is based on your hurt and resentment stemming from you experiences at one company. Maybe it would be better if you based your opinions on facts and sound theory and such instead of your animosity an paranoia.
Argumentum ad hominem. Peddle it elsewhere, taxboy.
Thank you, Oh Tax Guy, it’s so nice of you to deign and such. Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they’re fucking stupid. So shove it up your butt, asshole.
(1) Here’s how a corporation works: shareholders vote for the board of directors, and the board of directors picks the CEO. The board of directors have a duty to do what’s best for the company, so if they pick a shitty CEO simply because he’s a golfing buddy, then the shareholders can sue the board and win damages.
This is how a corporation is SUPPOSED to work. Some of them do work that way. All of them follow the form, but many subvert it. Frex, in ANOTHER corporation I worked for, they went through three CEOs during my four-year tenure there. One of them was fired for pressuring the CFO to cook the books and make the corp. look more profitable. He wasn’t SUPPOSED to do that, but he did that. A LOT of CEOs get ahead by breaking the rules as much as they can get away with. Sometimes it works out to their and the corp’s advantage. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they get caught at it by someone in a position to do something about it. Sometimes they don’t.
(2) Just because a CEO gets paid a lot of money in one year an during that same year the company’s performance takes a nosedive doesn’t mean that the CEO is an overpaid loser who doesn’t know how to run a company. The CEO must decide which risks to take and how to position the company to do best, and sometimes, despite the CEO’s best efforts, shit just doesn’t work right. Now, if a company underperforms its competitors year after year, this could be used as evidence that the CEO sucks and needs to go, but you can’t just say "CEO X made a billion dollars in 200X while his company went bankrupt! I could do that! Waah!"
So, there’s no relation that any mere mortal can detect in less than, say, 5 years, between a CEO’s efforts and a corporations
success. My, you are a CEO’s DREAM shareholder.
(3) There’s no magic relationship that must exist between how much CEOs make and how much the other workers in the company make. Each group is competing for a job in a totally different market, and each group has different skill sets and different sacrifices it will make for the corporation. Just because CEOs make a billion (or 250 or 12 or 0.4) times the salary a factory worker makes doesn’t mean shit.
I counter with the notion that current CEO salaries have very little to do with their worth to the corporation, and everything with how much they’re ABLE to get from the corporation. That is, if I were an assembly line worker making widgets, and I were able to get $500,000 a year for doing so, of course I’d do so. But that wouldn’t mean my labor had suddenly become worth $500,000 to the corporation. It would just mean I’d found a seam in the economic regimen and exploited it. Same with CEOs.
In any event, there are a lot of people writing in the biz press who think CEO salaries are WAAAAY out of line, it’s not just something I made up. Once again, you are a CEO’s DREAM shareholder.
(4) Earlier you said that American CEOs make much more than CEOs in other countries, and you somehow think this is a bad thing for America. Have you had a chance to take a look at the similarities and differences between the economy in America and the economy in most other countries? Here’s a start: we’re doing pretty damn well over here.
Apples and oranges, my man. The CEOs in foreign corporations are operating in different economies than we have here in the U.S. Their skills might make U.S. corps perform even better than our corrent crop of CEOs, if they had our economic engine to play with.
(5) It sounds like at its core your position is based on your hurt and resentment stemming from you experiences at one company. Maybe it would be better if you based your opinions on facts and sound theory and such instead of your animosity an paranoia.
Argumentum ad hominem. Peddle it elsewhere, taxboy.
I tried to read it, but found it very dull.
Resistance is futile. You WILL be assimilated!
It’s strong supporting evidence. If CEOs and their shareholders were engaging in mutual backscratching, you would EXPECT to see this to a large degree, and as the article demonstrates … you do. Is this proof positive? No, but it’s hard to get direct evidence of collusion – you just about have to get one or more of the colluders to testify. Not likely when there’s so many benefits to being in on the mutual backscratching thing.
Your second cite defies your position utterly, except as pertains to mutual funds. It inveighs against the practice of mutual fund directors being hamstrubg by corporate ties instead of responsive to investor concerns, but it acknowledges, in its very first paragraph, that (now, at least) corporate boards are standing up for investors and taking a hard line against executive greed.
It demonstrates that SOME boards are taking a stand, not all of them , and a paints a pretty clear picture of the background of widespread corporate greed which made some boards take such a stand.
Your third cite discusses Dick Grasso’s compensation as head of the NYSE. Nowhere in it can be found even the slightest whiff that Grasso was selected improperly. The entire thrust of the article is that nothing improper was done as regards Grasso’s selection or compensation. Grasso is painted as a victim of the CEO compensation hysteria even though he did nothing wrong.
Yeah, I agree, that was the picture that was being painted. I think most sane folks would agree that his salary was incredibly enormous. I really think these people have to stop thinking in terms of “price=value” in terms of CEOs. This doesn’t hold for manufactured goods, why should it hold for CEOs?
What possible support do any of those citations have for your position that CEOs are chosen improperly, based on “old school” or golf course associations, rather than on merit?
Cite 1 establishes the interlocking directorships, a strong sign of “Old school” collusion
Cite 2 establishes widespread greed and corruption, a strong sign that merit isn’t what’s driving CEO selection
Cite3 is an example of how inflated CEO salaries have become, and inflated salaries is another sign that the big boys are manipulating the system for their own good, not the shareholders.
My last name is quite obviously Hispanic - it even has an ñ in it. I have been in the position, in early schooling, of being offered ESL classes and the assumption that I would be taking a vocational-tech courseload.
But the library was open to all. I took it upon myself to discover things there. No one took me to the library and said, “Read!”
I admit that I got a boost in high school guidance counselor attention – but that was only after I was a National Merit Finalist in the PSAT - for which no one helped me study. That event made sure that I was on college mailing lists and that there was no dearth of information about college application procedures and financial aid.
Addressed to Bill, but I’d like to answer.
When I was in my freshman year of college, a condition of my financial aid was that I work for the school. These jobs were (legally!) paying less than minimum wage. I earned $2.15 per hour at a time when the minimum wage in the “real world” was $3.85.
My job was in the food service area - the cafeteria hall. The “plum” jobs were serving food during meals. I did not have a plum job. My job was to wake up at 4:00 AM and go to the cafeteria kitchen. I would turn on the deep fat fryers, wait for the oil to get warm enough so that it wouldn’t be too viscous, and then suck the oil out through a vacuum-like attachment that had a fliter in it. This removed the particulate matter that had accumulated from the pervious days’ frying and allowed the re-use of the oil.
Having done this for all the fryers, I would then top off the fryers with fresh oil, and dump the crap caught by the filter, turn off the fryers, clean and stow the vacuum device, and be on my way to my 8:00 AM Calculus class.
EVERY DAY I did this. I smelled like old frying oil whe I came to class. My clothes began to smell like it. Nothing could get the smell out. I finally decided to stop ruining clothes, and had a few rotating outfits that I wore for fryer duty.
I was not happy with my job. But I did not rail at the injustice of the upper class keeping me down, nor did I demand better working conditions or suggest that society had an obligation to educate me at no cost. I understood that I had agreed to this Faustian bargain when I took the aid. I didn’t know exactly what work I’d be doing, and I understood at all times that I was free to leave and surrender the aid as well as the job. I stuck it out.
I can’t speak for you, or for P.J. O’Rourke. But for myself, I always understood some key points:
Yeah, it was pretty nice when we all got here and found that huge economic engine running all by itself.