Is Tech Billionaires' Educational Philanthropy a Bug Or a Feature? 154
Long-time reader theodp writes: Some education watchers have adopted a wait-and-see response to Jeff Bezos' two-pronged $2B pledge to aid the homeless and to establish preschools for low-income children (Mark Zuckerberg's The Primary School interestingly prefers 'em even younger, noting "we admit students at or before birth"). Not so Audrey Watters, who presents her misgivings in a blog post, titled, "It's Like Amazon, But for Preschool" (tl;dr: read her URL), wondering what a chain of preschools that "use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon" might look like, considering Amazon's own labor practices. She asks, "Are private preschool chains really the path we want to pursue, particularly if we believe that access to excellent early childhood education is so incredibly crucial? Can the gig economy and the algorithm ever provide high quality preschool? For all the flaws in the public school system, it's important to remember: there is no accountability in billionaires' educational philanthropy." Sharing Watters' concerns is author Anand Giridharadas, who argues in his new book Winners Take All that the wealthy pursue social change without uprooting the systems that produce inequality. Bezos has a "a stark opportunity to be a traitor to his class, to actually think about giving in ways that transform the system atop which he stands," Giridharadas said. "It is great to be a winner who gives back. It is even better to be a winner who thinks about how winners can take less."
Are you being deliberately dense or what (Score:4, Insightful)
Educational philanthropy has nothing to do with philanthropy. The theory of public education has only one blunt response to "why do we teach people how to read?": because they make better factory workers. So now the tech sector is attempting to shift the economy away from making stuff, and to do that they have to buy out all the schools that take kids and turn out factory workers, and replace them with code academies, GM-style.
None of this, not a single iota of it, is actually in any way intended to help mankind.
Re:Are you being deliberately dense or what (Score:4, Interesting)
Education by itself in its own little bottle does little to improve human kind. Those are the mythical academics who sit posh furnished college offices and debate the abstract idea of the day. No matter how smart you are if you are not contributing to the rest of the world you are useless.
Education for the longest time had a factor of one degree or an other to prepare people to be useful to the outside world.
Before Public Education, the masses just learned how to do what their parents did. Farming mostly. Then with the move from aquaculture to industrial the general population needed still that was one reserved for the few and rich, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. So Public Schools were put in to insure we have a workforce able to handle the new jobs. K-8 Education was good enough to get you a job worthy middle class. High school education would get you an office job, or at least a Foreman/Supervisor role. College well that is upper management material.
Now that we are moving from an industrial economy to a technical/service economy. K-8 is worthless, High school will get you some low end job, College Degree you may get Middle Class.
The issue is the fact that these new jobs require less general education and more focused education. In many ways it is unfair to have kids make life decisions at an early age on what direction they should go, however if the Education System was altered to allow for more focused learning with majors before college and even high school. I expect we can get the skills needed a little easier.
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In the 1970s, a high school education got you an entry level job for a few years, then you wound up a supervisor, then could wind up a manager. A college degree of -any- major would get you something decently paying, where you could afford a decent house, etc.
Until 2008, if there were a recession, you could just wait it out, go get yourself a master's, and come out with a higher paying job.
This stopped after 2008. I see college grads in STEM majors getting $35k/year jobs. It matters far more that you kno
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For me this seemed to be the case more in 2003 after the Tech-bubble popped and Out sourcing went overboard. Granted I went to try to get my masters degree during this time only to get it after 2008 where I feel like I have to be the jerk (I usually stop myself because it sounds like I am jerk) that says HEY LISTEN TO ME I AM THE GUY WITH THE MASTERS DEGREE IN THIS VERY TOPIC HERE just because the guys who go a foot hold before 2008 are in charge, however are just going the stupid way and not listening to m
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I worked with a guy who's master's thesis was in SQL query optimization. He didn't know how to read a query plan, or even what one was and why you'd want to read it.
Needless to say, he couldn't optimize a query to save his life.
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I guess no one explained to him that advanced education is an investment, and can be a bad investment from a practical standpoint. The reason why no one explained it to him was because the education system is a business which prioritizes completion of one's payments towards an advanced degree, but in no way ensures ROI.
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There are a lot of people who say that public education must be killed, that we can't afford it.
What fucked up community do you hang out with? A lot of people may be saying that public education needs to radically change, but almost no one is saying the nation should stop funding public schooling to save tax dollars.
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Those are the mythical academics who sit posh furnished college offices and debate the abstract idea of the day.
Yeah, I like my academics sitting in unfurnished offices!</sarcasm>
Sorry, I'm not trying to make a real argument there, but I don't really agree with you very much. I mean, yes, education needs to have some eventual application to the real world in order to be useful, but that doesn't mean that education should simply be vocational. Some of the effects on the worlds are indirect and take time, but that doesn't make them useless.
I don't even think that the goal of educators should be to "improve hu
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The issue is the fact that these new jobs require less general education and more focused education.
That's largely not true. The attitude of society has changed considerably but the actual knowledge required has not (although technology means that the details have altered e.g. we no longer show people how to look up stuff in a library - all science papers are now online). Companies used to value university graduates with a deep, broad understanding of a particular subject because these people can draw on their education to handle new situations and come up with innovative and different solutions to probl
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A nominal summary of the evolution of the concept of education, but your conclusion implies that the previous paradigm can still be applied in the near future.
Advancements in AI just means that there will be less entry level educational level jobs available, and even less blue collar level jobs. (e.g. - AI will remove the need for human MD degrees, and already is impacting the paralegal field; with more fields to come. When self-driving vehicles become reality, that's 15% of the overall employment economy
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perhaps a thousand are still remembered by civilization.
Are you one of those people who completed a "useless" degree in philosophy, and can list a thousand philosophers off the top of your head? I'd guestimate there's probably less than 100 names that could be considered philosophers (and that's throwing in prominent religious figures) that actually had significance in the advancement of that field.
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Educational philanthropy has nothing to do with philanthropy.
Feeding starving people has nothing to do with philanthropy, it's an entirely selfish act intended to prevent those starving people from killing you and taking your food.
Giving homes to homeless people has nothing to do with philanthropy, it's all about putting them somewhere so you don't have to look at them.
Saving piglets from drowning in a pond has nothing to do with philanthropy, it's a selfish act to ease your guilt.
Etc., etc. Those children who went to school are already well-familiar with th
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More accurately, they want to get the government to pay to teach people to read so that we have more people who meet the bar to be a factory worker and can thus lower wages in a more competitive (for workers) job market. They almost never put their own actual money on the line, and when they do it's because they're buying influence and power (see Gates donating money on the condition that a school use all MS products).
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That's an extremely bad example you've used there - devos was given that job so that she could destroy public education, to remove it as an alternative to corporate and religious charter schools.
Corruption is not the definition of democracy, it is the bane of it.
BTW, you missed the previous poster's point. which was not that philanthropy is inherently bad (although it often is - whether it's a self-serving sham for tax-dodge purposes, or to dress up religious or corporate indoctrination as some kind of se
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Capitalists.
Originally, they only cared about being able to hire workers that could manage the basic tasks in a factory. They invested "leadership" in public schools to produce said workers. Eventually society decided that primary schools were most economically run training their children to be factory workers, because that would ensure they would be hired for a job. Now, capitalists are disgusted with the factory workers coming out of public education, because they're useless for their knowledge factori
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That and having a a full 6 hours away from your parents without crying.
At this age, most learning is from exploring and not so much structured classes. A good preschool would be setup for allow a lot of learning, with the teacher using gentile guidance to prevent the child from making false connections. Such as seeing a turtle and thinking it is a rock, and learning some rocks can grow feet and a head and walk away.
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The absolute, most critical part of preschool is getting young kids to learn to do what they're told and not question authority.
You and I appear to have attended different preschools.
FIGHT THE SYSTEM (Score:2)
No one is going to tell ME where I can deposit my urine, MAN!
Futile attempt (Score:3)
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Re:Futile attempt (Score:5, Insightful)
How did Jeff Bezos bilk [merriam-webster.com] "millions of normal folks for their hard earned $$'s"?
Tax abatements and shelters, lobbying for legislation that equates to special treatment, regulatory capture - you know, the typical Evil-American-Corporation stuff.
In fairness, all that stuff is only half on him, the other half of blame lies with our elected "representatives" who would rather make sweetheart deals with corporations than actually, you know, represent their constituents.
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So those are features available only to Bezos and Amazon, they don't apply to all businesses and/or individuals?
... typical Evil-American-Corporation stuff.
Did you even read past the first three words of my post? Doesn't seem like it.
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Victorian Factory Owner (Score:2)
In fairness, all that stuff is only half on him...
You are missing a part though that is entirely on him. If he wants to really help low-income people a good place to start would be by paying his employees a living wage instead of a minimum wage. His attitude smacks of the old Victorian factory owners in the UK who would make tons of money off the back of their workers while paying them a pittance and would then turn around with their profits and fund "charitable" initiatives e.g. decent housing which came with additional requirements such as no drinking,
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<quote>How did Jeff Bezos <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bilk">bilk</a> "millions of normal folks for their hard earned $$'s"? I'm curious how he conned people into giving them his money via fraud.</quote>
Just in case, you have not realized - system is designed, probably by accident and self-perpetuating with all kinds of fairy tails - trickle down theory, work hard and you succeed, etc. with the dreams showing perpetually on flat screens.
Research on normal folk
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Why would they feel guilty? They created something people wanted to buy and got rich for it. They have no guilt to soothe, but they have money and they need to invest in something.
And they know that poor, uneducated people won't produce the employees they need in the future, they may not even produce interesting customers. So they invest in education not only to improve their public image, but also to ensure a brighter future for the world their company and themselves will be part of, preferably a big part.
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd vote people to congress who'd be willing to actually tax the 1%, they wouldn't need to do this.
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Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
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Social Security has a flat rate for everyone up to about $128,000 [irs.gov]; everyone's income is taxed at the exact same rate to that point, no one has a "bigger bite" or a higher marginal rate to that point. Above $200K, there is a special tax (which does NOT increase a person's retirement benefits) applied to income.
And of course this all assumes we consider Social Security as a plain tax (which it is) rather than as a forced retirement program (which many like to claim it is, but in fact it is not).
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$1 to those on the margins is a big bite.
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Add more income brackets (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, maybe we could fund our civic institutions without having to resort to "charity" from billionaires, and in a way which is held accountable. Even more effective, however, would probably be to root out tax evasion and offshore banking.
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The problem is that people with over $1 million annual revenue seldom have "income"... they have at best capital gains... often those are overseas and in tax shelters. Many "buy" things with "loans" which they "default" on by loosing a security (stock or a bond). The have huge cash flows with no tax liability. Magic how that works.
Once you can afford to pay your accounts and lawyers $100k/year, taxes seem to disappear.
Oh, they do pay for lobbying congress and buying local politicians however. That isn't che
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Capital gains are taxed [nerdwallet.com] once you break $38,600 in income - long or short term capital gains. And for many people, capital gains taxes are at a level about the same as their regular income tax rates.
For overseas income, IF you live exclusively overseas then you MAY get up to your first $97,000 [irs.gov] in income tax-free in the US, provided you paid taxes overseas. All income above that rate is taxable in the US, regardless of where you live. So overseas income is still taxable.
And loans that are forgiven are tax [forbes.com]
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no wealthy individual pays that 37 percent rate. with deductions, exemptions, loopholes and funneling money overseas, they pay much, much less. less as a percentage of gross income than most with incomes far less.
one high-profile example: warren buffet (who i suspect plays 'by the book' with regards to taxes, with no shady bullshit conjured up by wall street criminals) is noted as saying his secretary pays higher percentage of income to tax than he does. (buffet has also said people like him should pay more
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Or just create money and give it to people. (Score:2)
The US Federal Reserve can create as much money as the US Treasury needs to borrow and is obligated to buy US Treasury bonds from the US Federal government as a buyer of last resort... meaning unlimited money with the "cost" of free money being the potential for inflation, especially on imported goods.
And before people get all snippy with me... that is exactly what the Federal Government has been doing up to hundreds of billions of dollars or even a trillion dollars each year for a period of time without ra
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Why have brackets? Seems stupid and creates anomalies on the boundaries.
Have a function that is asymptotic to both 0 (at the low end) and 60% (at the high end). A single function. Tax the nth dollar/pound/zlotty at the nth point on the curve, excluding benefits.
There are now no discontinuities, you don't have to have a book the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica to do your taxes, and you have an absolute guarantee you don't lose money by getting a raise.
Seems simple.
But won't people leave? Sweden charges 6
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Why have brackets? ... Have a function that is asymptotic to both 0 (at the low end) and 60% (at the high end).
I actually like this idea (continuous function) a lot, but even though plugging in 1 number into a single equation is a lot simpler, it might actually be easier in practice to amend the laws by just adding a few more discrete brackets. However, I'd argue that a continuous function should be asymptotic to 100%. For example, if you earned a trillion dollars a year, then most of the income in the multi-multi-billion range would be taxed at > 99%. Yes, this is a disincentive to maximize income, and since the
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Here [wikipedia.org] are the tax brackets in the US. Why stop at 37% for income greater than $500,000? We could several more brackets, for example:
Then, maybe we could fund our civic institutions without having to resort to "charity" from billionaires, and in a way which is held accountable. Even more effective, however, would probably be to root out tax evasion and offshore banking.
Because we tried that before. Didn't work so hot. (ref the Beatles "Taxman")
There aren't enough people that rich to make that much of a difference. And the situation isn't static; they won't keep making taxable income just so you can take it all.
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"Here's the problem with that: if you ACTUALLY manage to tax those people at those levels they'll find a way to move away from the taxation, either by moving their business to somewhere with more reasonable taxation levels, fraud, or reducing their business to a tax level they're comfortable with."
Here's the problem with that: yours is a nice theory. What about hard facts? All along the 50's top tax stayed at 90%. Repeat with me: 90%. Did the rich guys fly to Germany, Australia, Japan, UK...? nope!
More:
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You are comparing apples to oranges. Yes: today the government gets more per capita than back in the fifties... because it basically didn't collect money but from a minority.
Today it collects much more... and the bulk of it is from middle class earning. Both the top marginal tax -and the effective percentage for people earning more than 200.000 2018 US$ is at an historical minimum -and that's what we were talking about here.
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Here is the actual data...
I think everyone should see the following before believing anything about what is published about tax rates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The cool thing about the interent (Score:2)
As for what I would change, bring back the 90% marginal tax rate on income over $21 million a year, make stock buybacks illegal again (Reagan legalized them in the 80s leading to CEOs paid in stock so they could use lower capital gains to dodge higher income, that wouldn't work if you couldn't pump & dump).
Money is power. We're letting too few people have too much power. To counterbalance the government getting some of that power make voting
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Sweden opts for 60%.
Exemptions mean the billionaires pay less than their secretaries. Exemptions are supposed to encourage good behaviour. In fact, they don't. Besides, we pay government to look after civics and we can hold them responsible. We can't hold billionaires responsible and we have no stake in their vision.
Exemptions must be eliminated and taxes adjusted accordingly so that the working and middle classes aren't hurt.
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Don't forget Dividends are from corporate profits--they're not deductible--and are taxed at 35% first.
Well, they were before the horrible TCJA.
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Half-Lying with Statistics (Score:1)
There are generally 4 kinds of taxes that affect billionaires or their families directly:
1. Personal income tax
2. Capital gains tax (stocks)
3. Inheritance tax
4. Sales tax
Sometimes various statistics exclude one or more, often to mislead the reader. Therefore, one has to check to make sure all are considered.
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It's notable that any stock awards are taxed as income at the award price: if Amazon gives him $1M in equity, he pays full income tax on $1M. If it's worth $1.2M later and he sells it, then he pays capital gains on $0.2M of income.
It is infuriatingly-difficult to escape the tax man. This is by design.
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Actually, with the income the top 1% have divided among the other 99%, you get $135 per person per year. It's not a lot until you start deciding who gets it and who doesn't.
We can build a universal dividend that pays $6,000 per person per year, make Social Security stronger (and solvent), and create a foundation under our welfare system, obliterating all homelessness and hunger almost immediately. That's actually a $300 billion tax cut (2016 model).
It's also not hitting the distribution problem, alth
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They are kind of the same thing. "Tax law" includes or excludes any rules that can lead to "loopholes". "Loophole" is not a formal thing with an objective metric. It's generally considered a practice that looks like somebody is trying to circumvent the intention of the law-makers.
One way to reduce loopholes is to require a minimum payment. Thus, if the minimum percent for a billionaire is say 35%, and they take a bunch of deductions that would otherwise go beyond the 35%, they still pay 35%.
The real question: what's the real motivation? (Score:5, Insightful)
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rubbish, the public school system also is turning out mostly slaves and crowd followers
if a student is interested in being a terrorist, they should be free to pursue that?
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AH, so you're a product of the public school system I see. Also you react like a terrorist.
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Beware the Privatization of Education, lest we end up with a generation that's trained like slaves would be trained
You've already been voting against your own interests since the new deal if you are in the US. Most modern citizens are politically ignorant. If anyone has been voting for any establishment party they don't know how government works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The real motivation.
1. To lower his tax bill.
2. Good PR for the Tech Billionaires
3. Make some sort of political statement
Trying to train kids today to be Tech Employees for your company in 20 years would be a failing goal. The industry changes too fast 20 years ago. Amazon.com sold books nearly exclusively 20 years ago. If Amazon was to do this 20 years ago to bring up future low level amazon employees, they would be focused on a Lot of Library Science Skills with some HTML and server side programming, whe
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For-profit education will only ever be to boost profit, never education.
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Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
The bug is not how billionaires waste their money. At least someone else gets a slice of the pie. The bug is the media's excessive coverage of celebrities, including billionaires. The assumption that celebrities know more than your average expert in a field that the celebrity is not in, is pervasive and pernicious in idiot-centered celebrity culture.
Food and shelter? (Score:3)
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... Why would he be allowed to have his own preschool curriculum when this is already laid out by people who know much much more about childhood education? If he wants to open preschools, that's great, but stick to the current curriculum. Anything else is just scary.
Because public schools today are just so overly awesome there couldn't possibly be room for improvement, right? We just need to throw more money at them. Or maybe, with those billions of dollars he might just do what a lot of rich, successful people do and hire some folks who know what they are doing to manage the details. Now, he may very well have some ideas of his own about what sort of things youngsters might need to know in order to grow up to be successful, you know, being rich and successful himself
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Teaching people to read, write and do math is a mostly solved problem.
The real problem seems to be teaching kids who are poor, have a parent in jail, a parent who is chemically dependent and with neither parent having much of an education to begin with.
A lot of education has been corrupted trying to educate those kids, plus all the behavior management problems when schools are loaded up with all poor kids with behavior problems.
Gotta try it (Score:2)
The only way to find out what works is to try things. I find the statement about accountability ironic, because The Gates Foundation is highly data driven. The linked summary there demonstrates it.
Bill Gates has a(nother) plan for K-12 public education. The others didn't go so well, but the man, if anything, is persistent.
Isn't that exactly what you are supposed to do if your first plan doesn't go well? The fact that you know it didn't go well means they are keeping account!
Are private preschool chains really the path we want to pursue, particularly if we believe that access to excellent early childhood education is so incredibly crucial?
New ideas are always tried privately first.
"use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon" might look like, considering Amazon's own labor practices.
That's an ad-hominem attack. If there is a specific problem with the plan, bring it up. In all fairness though,
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That's... just not true. Sure, there is a lot of experimentation in private industry. But there's also a some well done governmental experimentation, and certainly excellent "trying of ideas" in public universities.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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That is why government should fund schools and provide a list of minimal standards at age 18, but otherwise have no say in how they are run. Only governments have the money needed and only governments have the power to ensure education of high quality is available to all regardless of circumstances.
Is this how it is done?
To an extent, yes, in Europe. It needs improving, but they have the right general idea.
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http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/early_years/2012/12/head_start_advantages_mostly_gone_by_third_grade_study_finds.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/21/we-have-no-idea-if-universal-preschool-actually-helps-kids/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.97da5f555210
https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/01/preschool_helps_kids_but_how_m.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/05/studies-shed-light-on-fleeting-benefits-of-early-childhood-education
https://www.theguardian.com/science
Comment removed (Score:3)
Buying a Reputation (Score:3, Insightful)
1: Steal money off people by getting them to pay your share of the tax bill
2: Give some of that money back as a "gift" with your name in big lights.
3: Go back to blackmailing states to not implement minimum wage laws.
4: Count the money!
It's an ancient scam.
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getting them to pay your share of the tax bill
That's not how taxes work. If I do a bit of artful tax planning and manage to pay less, you don't have to pay more. The gov't just has to get by on less.
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getting them to pay your share of the tax bill
That's not how taxes work. If I do a bit of artful tax planning and manage to pay less, you don't have to pay more. The gov't just has to get by on less.
That's quite far from the truth.
Looks like (Score:2)
Which doesn't surprise me considering she thinks preschool franchise chains are a new concept or aren't wide spread already.
That said if any of the upper class actually wanted to actually help make a difference they would just DO it and not make a publicity stunt about announcing the consideration of starting discussions about forming a committee to pick a team to asses the idea of startin
Curious... (Score:2)
...there seems to be a concerted effort in the media to deprecate what's an astonishing act of generosity.
"Oh that? That's only like $1500 to him!" Well, I can tell you, not a lot of people even give $1500, so it's still generous, to say nothing of the fact that money is absolute: his dollars have the potential to do MASSIVE good even though they aren't individually meaningful to him. They're still meaningful and useful to others.
And let's be clear: the wealthy have ALWAYS donated to try to polish their
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It's not the amount that concerns people. It's the stunning and abysmal failure of for-profit education and the disaster that are academy schools.
Education is essential. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is vital to produce better workers, yes, but it's also vital to improving life expectancy (polyglots are resistant to dementia, for example), improving democracy and preventing blind subservience promotions.
An educated person can walk through the woods and know what is safe to eat. Yes, bushcraft is education. Those who think otherwise restrict education in order to create a category they can hate. I say can, because education isn't restrictive. Education is anything that shines a light on the ignorance and turns it to understanding.
An educated person has the skills to learn any new skill they so choose, for their own use or any other.
Education can never be achieved through for-profit schools. Their focus is on maximizing income, not learning.
Bezos doesn't care about the homeless (Score:3)
Strategic philanthropy (Score:2)
Charity related to the business, seems like a win win
Tech companies funding education seems like a prime example
Grocery stores supplying food banks or sports teams promoting physical fitness programs also fit the concept.
You can't undermine your power (Score:2)
The issue with giving to the point where you render yourself impotent is that you've rendered yourself irrelevant.
Now what comes after you might carry on the good work or whatever but they may not. in fact, what comes after may totally subvert everything you were trying to do.
But you can't stop it once that happens because you started by rendering yourself impotent.
If Bezos is a good guy... theoretically... then you want him to retain power. If he's a bad guy then he's not going to give up his power.
You see
Re:Relative to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not disagreeing that their are problems with today's unions. But the real issue is all the political pressure put on teachers.
They have to walk tight ropes around History and the roll of religion, racism, the times we have done bad things and good things, then Science coverage of Evolution, Geology, and now if the earth is even round! They are politicians elected into office and the school board, who have no idea about education and push sweeping changes, trying to cut the budget. There are parents who think they are Mr(s) bigwig and try to fire the Teachers just because their kid isn't as special as they thought, or the kid needed to be punished for their actions.
Unfortunately without the union taking a lot of the political heat for the teachers, we would just see massive turnaround in teachers, just because it would be a matter of time until anyone did something to piss someone off politically or personally.
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Unions are why you know how to type and aren't dying from a lung disease acquired down a mine.
Technology has moved on, yes, but it wasn't moved on by industry. It was moved on by the democratization of knowledge.
If you get health benefits (probable in the U.S.), remember that unions started off as health insurance brokers who made money by reducing accidents at work. So your health insurance is really from a (traditional) union.