Separate and unequal
AIG and companies like them have been allowed to cripple America’s economy. Yet for all the taxpayer cash advance money they’ve been allowed to burn through like tin foil in a microwave, there are bigger fish to irradiate.
Keli Goff, author of the book “Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence,” has contributed an editorial to The Huffington Post that points the finger at a malignancy buried deep within the American backside: the concept of social class.
It hurts sitting down and standing up
Goff gets right to the point:
Americans have never liked discussing class status. Unlike our founding cousins over in England where your status is something bestowed upon you by birth, here we believe in a little something called the American Dream; the idea that any person regardless of race, religion or socioeconomic background can become anything they want to be, including president.
But that simply isn’t true for most. “All men were created equal” sounds great, until we open our eyes and see that money has made the smallest percentile in the world “more equal.” Howard Zinn would argue that the drive for profit and exploitation has been the true American way, a thought that is apropos to Goff’s American view.
Money dropping from every wallet
So, Goff asks, do you think Bernard Madoff and Wall Street are big problems? Instead, why not take on something truly damaging to the fabric of the country and the wallets of the taxpayers: the high school dropout epidemic. It has everything to do with each and every one of us. Ponder the following factoids Goff shares:
- High school dropouts cost American over $100 million per year, according to a 2008 study
- One high school dropout in Ohio will cost that state’s taxpayers $200,000 from the time they dropout until they are 65 years old, according to a 2009 study
- Every 29 seconds, another American student becomes a dropout
AIG bonuses of $100 million or more pale in comparison. Goff wonders where the anger is about the number of high school dropouts in this country, victims of the ongoing class war. Think $100 million per year, every year. Then encourage your children to excel in school. Or encourage yourself to keep going. Otherwise, you are a cancer. KEEP READING
Related Video:
The fact that people still believe that there is no such thing as class in America are usually those who are in the upper class echelons. It’s true that you can ascend, but you must be diligent and work very, very hard – but it is attainable. However, a lot of people don’t get that in order to do it, you have to actually try. You can’t just drop out of schooling altogether, and forgo either a college or technical education because of “the man.” That said, there are a lot of disadvantages imposed on us solely for the benefit of those in power, and those that make a lot of money off of us. Thomas Jefferson went to his grave wondering why there hadn’t been another revolution yet.