I agree our educational system is a failure. I just picked up a copy of our local high school’s student newspaper and apparently we are adopting something called the Common Core System (talk about a vague name!) which has “removed the need of requiring the students to take the annual STAR testing”. The newspaper itself was proof of our educational system’s decline: spelling errors on every page and more articles on pop culture than on substantive topics. I graduated from that same high school less than 10 years ago and the paper was much better written back then.
I might also add that the rich have a financial incentive to employ as few workers as possible to reduce their labor costs. This is true regardless of how high wages are because 2 workers will always cost more than 1 (unless of course they are 2 illegals competing against 1 American citizen). Add that to mechanization and you have our current situation where there are simply more potential workers than jobs. Even if we closed the borders, stopped giving China a free pass on currency manipulation, and eliminated the minimum wage, all unions, and all unnecessary regulation tomorrow I doubt we could ever return to the employment levels of the 1950s simply because there is so much less work that needs to be done by humans.
My apologies for the length of my previous post.
Just who are you calling rich? Anyone who owns a mom and pop business is rich? The guy with the gas station? Or any of those businesses around town, those are rich people? The guy with a Subway shop is rich? The electrician or the heating and air guy who wants to add a crew and grow, they are rich?
I think they all would like to be and they all would spread a lot of wealth around getting there, but most aren't close to rich.
Makes me wonder, where does all the hostility to ambition, to working hard and getting ahead come from? Have we so demonized the old work ethic that got us this far? We really do have a bad attitude to go with our sense of entitlement and our enhanced self esteem.
Yet another reason to avoid starting a business here.