GPA redistribution

Iriemon says:

Strawman. I never advocated for the USSR system. They generally didn't let entrepreneurs make fabulous income and wealth in the USSR.

We saw laissez-fair capitalism, but that didn't work out so well.

 

An amusing mockery of some Progressive rhetoric and thinking, but GPA is supposed to reflect the level of knowledge and critical thinking of the student and as such is inherent to the individual. Is the OPer saying that real wealth is also inherent to an individual and is therefore sacrosanct?

I am annoyed to see yet another boogeyman post on this subject by a factually challenged member of the right wing, who like to seize on the radical leftist rhetoric of the few as a justification of ignoring the very real truth that in the past 35 years the real wealth of this nation (real wealth being all assets minus all liabilities of an individual/household, adjusted for inflation over the time period in question) has been steadily shifted in favor of the rich and especially the very rich in percentage terms.

I agree that the successful individual should garner rewards for his success, but I don't see why my share of the nations real wealth should stagnate or drop in order to give that individual even more rewards. The real issue is not redistribution in favor of the poor, but rather halting the ongoing redistribution in favor of the rich.

To use the GPA example, what if GPA was redefined so the test questions unfairly favored the background of wealthy students so they got abnormally high GPAs; would the OPer complain if some people called for an equitable system of merit-based scoring instead?

 

It may be claimed: What a difference a Constitution makes. I believe we should be more grateful for the excellent job our Founding Fathers did at the convention with our federal Constitution and supreme law of the land.

 

How about redistribution of political power? Surely the Democrats would support that since they don't like inequality. If there are more Democrats in office than Republicans, then we should redistribute the positions so that there is an equal number of each. Sounds fair, doesn't it?

 

Where/when did we have that fail on us?

 

Taxcutter says:
Then why do you advocate going down the same road as the USSR?

 

It is more consistent. The right claims, by implication, that the wealthiest are not really worth it under any form Capitalism, with any "fair tax".

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I don't. What a difference a Constitution makes. I believe we should be more grateful for the excellent job our Founding Fathers did at the convention with our federal Constitution and supreme law of the land. Any questions?

 

The "politicans" were the "entrepreneurs" in the USSR and they became very wealthy.

We have not seen laissez faire caplitalism or at least not in the United States. During the 19th Century we had Corporate Caplitalism and that didn't work out very well. Today we have Crony Capitalism and it's not working very well either.

 

Taxcutter says:
The Soviets had a constitution. A very socialist constitution, to be sure, but a constitution nevertheless.

 

There would be pandemonium. I don't want that on my conscience.

 

Do you want to elaborate here?

Someone who becomes successful should have to re-distribute their money.

So it's unfair people are successful as that hurts you.

Someone with high grades should have to re-distribute their grades so you are not disadvantaged by their success.

Hardly seems any different to me.

 

While not an issue of education I believe that the Democrats would support a more equitable distribution of power. For example there were more votes for Democrats in the 2012 election of House members so logically the House should have more Democrats than Repubilicans as the House is based upon the population and the popular vote. Only gerrymandering of Congressional districts resulted in the Republicans having more House seats than Democrats in 2012 and, except for the rabid partisan, we all oppose the gerrymandering of Congressional districts which corrupts our political process.

Back to "education" and a fundamental flaw with the GPA is that it doesn't represent knowledge but instead reflects the ability of the person to take a test as grades are determined by tests as opposed to measuring knowledge of the subject. Some people simply suck at taking tests while others excel at taking tests. We find this same problem with IQ tests which only measure the ability of the person to take the IQ test and not their actual intelligence.

 

It may be why I am so grateful our Founding Fathers did an most excellent and most non-ambiguous job, at the Convention for that purpose.

 

Too bad we ignore parts of it (Ninth and Tenth Amendments) and try to subvert parts of it (Second Amendment).

 

We only need to discover a profit motive, under Any form of Capitalism.

 

Sure. Everyone should have the same GPA to even things out.

What next? Everyone deserves equal wealth, banging equal pretty chics?

Life is just wonderful heh?

 

You just hate people who is more successful and having more money than you.

Makes a lot of sense now.

 

"Students have different IQ's; as a result, students with different IQ studying for the same test for equal amount of time will have different test scores.
How is it fair one student receives the lower grade when both students put the same amount of effort into studying?"

And of course when it comes for you to take a flight on a plane or have an operation, you aren't going to care that the surgeon or pilot was a person who received higher test scores thanks to being graded on effort and not outcome right?

 

Special pleading in a vacuum is just that; it could be claimed, that the class will only receive one grade and that the students are tasked with a test for that one and only and final, grade. And, that the students should contribute, from each according to their ability to each according to their need. And, a means of enforcing it among themselves.

 

Who decides what is student's ability and need? You?

 

Do you really think this all occurs in a vacuum? I'm not asking that they give their money to me; I'm asking that massive tax loopholes for the very rich and rich be closed and that they therefore shoulder more of the tax burden that currently falls on the (declining) middle class. I'm asking that that things return to the way they were financially in the 1950s to 1970s (which was a pretty good economic time for the USA) where they did shoulder that greater burden (which didn't exactly bankrupt them, did it?).

There are two tricks to macroeconomics, one of which is that over the longer term generating total and large increases in real wealth for the society is important (the rate of which has been slowing down, by the way) to everyone. The other trick is that in the short term the generation of new real wealth is not that large and that who benefits from that growth in what percentage is a real issue.

In an ideal world of equal benefit if the economy grew by 5% in real wealth, everyone would get their share of that 5% at 5%. If I have $100,000 in real wealth I get $5,000 while Mr Successful with $10 million in real wealth gets $500,000 more. That is hardly penalizing the successful! Now if the system changes and my share (and those like me) only get $2,500 with $500 of the lost money going to the poor and the other $2000 goes to Mr Successful, don't I have a right to be annoyed at the change in circumstance?

 

Special pleading in a vacuum is just that; it could be claimed, that the class will only receive one grade and that the students are tasked with a test for that one and only and final, grade. And, that the students should contribute, from each according to their ability to each according to their need. And, a means of enforcing it among themselves.

The professor should be glad his students can do a good job without him, and free up some valuable time for any other students or projects that may need his direct instruction.

 

I'm beginning to think you are a conservative troll. At least I hope so.

 

I think that would definitely be very cool to do.

 

There is a third trick related to macroeconomics that is often ignored.

Wealth is measured based upon the goods and services that are produced and consumed during the year. That is what the GDP measures. "Investments" don't consume goods or services and are merely the transfer of wealth from one person to another person and are not a component in the growth of the economy based upon the GDP that, by definition, only addresses consumption of goods and services.

So when goods and services are consumed they generate wealth but what happens with the wealth that was created? If it is used for consumption then it improves the economy in the following year but if it is not used for consumption then the economy does not expand. If all of the "wealth" created in a year was put in the "mattress" then that money doesn't drive new production as there is no consumption based upon that wealth. If that wealth is spent on consumption then more production is driven and that increase in production requires more people to accomplish so it creates jobs.

When we address consumption we need to address who, economically speaking, uses the highest percentage of disposable income for consumption and who has the lowest percentage of disposable income used for consumption. When we address this we find that low income households spend 100% of their disposable income on consumption while the very wealthy often spend less than 25% of their income on consumption (usually re-investing the other 75% which does not consume any products or services).

So if we have $1 trillion in GDP growth and all of that income goes to low income households then we'll have an additional $1 trillion is spending that increased the GDP but if that $1 trillion goes to the top 1% then perhaps only $250 billion will be spent on consumption lessening the growth of the economy. Basically given the identical disposable income the "poor" spending money results in roughly four-times the job creation than the wealthy top 1% would generate with their spending because the poor spend it all while the wealthy only spend about 25% as much of that same income on consumption.

Since 2009 the top 1% have received 95% of all the increased income generated by GDP growth which is why job creation is virtually non-existant today. We're not even creating enough jobs to employ the new entrants into the job market that average over 250,000/mo much less employ those that are still being laid off from jobs due to the 2008 Recession.

But comparing education to the economy is problematic in far too many respects. They are apples and oranges. The only similarity they have is that both are based upon ignorant policies. Education continues to use an outdated method of providing knowledge and our tax codes play favoritism for the wealthy based upon crony capitalism where the wealthy top income earners have a substantially lower tax burden relative to income when compared to the bottom 99% of income earners with low income earners having the highest tax burden relative to income of all Americans when all taxes they are subjected to are evaluated.