wage gap

A lot of the American public feels that the way to fix our educational system is to throw money at it. Yet America spends more on education than any other country and still comes in 25th place in academic performance out of 30 industrialized countries. People used to think that inner cities had bad schools because they had a lower tax base so less money went into the schools. Yet when the state started putting money into the school system the education statistics did not change. Many schools have educational issues because they have bad teachers. In many states after a certain period of time teachers get tenure which prevents them from being fired even if they are not doing their job. So when cuts need to be made many schools follow a policy called "first in first out" where they fire who they have recently hired instead of firing bad teachers. This is an issue for two reasons. First teachers are fired based on seniority instead of performance. Secondly a school would need to fire more new teachers to make up for the salary of firing an old teacher who has been there awhile. Another huge issue is the overhead a lot of schools have. This is often caused by unnecessary administrative positions compensated by high salaries over two hundred thousand per year. Spending money on schools doesn't necessarily make them any better. For example, New Jersey, the state that spends the most money on schools, ranks at the low performing national level for academic performance but not above it. This is proof that our current system is not working.

Defeating Corporate Control

prostitution

Planned Parenthood

A lot of people are against funding for Planned Parenthood. There is a gigantic misconception that the money the government gives to the organization is largely used for abortions. However abortions only account for three percent of Planned Parenthood services. Even though the government is helping pay for some abortions, it is cheaper for them to give pay for an abortion than support with Welfare a mother who cannot afford to take care of her child. The average abortion costs $500 while the cost of raising the average child is over $250,000. Most of what Planned Parenthood does is to provide contraception. This for the most part that is considered non controversial. Contraception helps both sides because it prevents unwanted pregnancies so the decision to have an abortion does not need to be made. Planned Parenthood also focuses on educating children. Education and contraception are the cheapest and most effective ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy. We cannot cut funding to Planned Parenthood; too many people rely on its services. One in three women has used Planned Parenthood's services before. This program is too important to be cut.

cheap food

People in this country often think that if somebody is overweight it is their fault for having no will power. They do not think to consider how economics affects obesity. This is why poor people are more likely to be obese. A teenager whose family is poor is fifty-percent more likely to be obese compared to a teenager who is from a middle or upper class family. Due to the way our food system is set up, it is cheaper for a family to buy a bag of chips than a head of lettuce. So parents who do not have a lot of money will need to feed their kid unhealthy food. Also many inner cities do not have grocery stores so they end up purchasing all their food through convenience stores. As a result poor people often end up paying more for food than the rich or the middle class.

Also the food that's cheaper has been treated with pesticides and various other chemicals. Although there are no health issues with pesticides so far, they may cause health risks in the future.

There have been massive food scares throughout the industry. Normally people people who have money are able to avoid the risks that cause these scares. For example, corn fed beef (which is cheaper than grass fed beef) has been vulnerable to E. Coli breakouts. If a corn fed cow is fed grass within three weeks,85% of its E. Coli would be disappear from its gut. However, farmers continue to use corn feed because it is cheaper. So the economics behind our food system causes health issues.

death penalty

wealth gap

budget cuts

One thing that continues to amaze me is how while politicians are trying to balance the budget they only focus on cutting small programs instead of cutting military spending, social security and medicare where most of the money is being spent. The United States spends more money on our military than the ten countries ranked below us for the most military spending. One easy way to cut the military cost would be to take out our troops from monitoring countries that do not need to be monitored anymore. America has troops in countries that have stable democracies as a result of wars that we fought a long time ago. The United States still even has troops in Germany from World War Two.

Another simple solution for balancing the budget is making small changes to social security. Currently only six percent of the first 100,000 dollars somebody makes is taxed for social security. So a poor person or a middle class person has 100 percent of his or her income taxed for social security whereas a rich person who can afford to pay only pays tax on the first 100,000 dollars. Paying social security on incomes over 100,000 dollars would only affect the richest 10 percent of Americans. Having the rich pay social security on all their income would be a simple way to fix the budget that does not even affect nine out of ten Americans. We need to start putting the big items on the table; cutting corners will not do.

socialist environment

The War on Drugs

Each year the United States spends fifty billion dollars prosecuting, using police force, and jailing people to support the war on drugs. Even though the United States spends a massive amount of money on the war on drugs they still have a higher drug use than countries that have organic drugs decriminalized. In the United States 69.6 % of the population has tried tobacco before, 41% has tried marijuana, 14.7% has tried cocaine, 3.4% has tried crack and 1.5% has tried heroine. In the Netherlands where organic drugs are decriminalized only 67.9% of people have tried tobacco, 15.6% of people tried marijuana, 2.1% of people have tried cocaine and only .3% of people have tried heroin. We learned from prohibition that regulation not banning works.

One of the reasons why the Netherlands has a lower drug rate is because they focus on educating their youth about drugs differently than the United States. In the United States marijuana and meth are both schedule one drugs. We teach children that smoking pot is equally as bad as doing meth. Even though 80% of people agree that marijuana is not a dangerous drug and over 40% of people have tried it at least one in their lifetime. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, The National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education all agree that DARE is ineffective. A study done in Houston Texas found that DARE participants had a 29% increase in drug usage and a 34% increase in tobacco. We need to stop telling kids just say no and start telling them the honest affects of drugs.

Around 50 % of all people who are in jail now are in jail for non-violent drug offenses. In the United States we lock people up when we catch them doing drugs rather than requiring them to go to rehab. Although sending them to jail may temporarily help lock them up it does not help them deal with their addiction issues. If a person is an addict they will continue to do the drug regardless of whether it is legal and those people will continue to be locked up over and over again. However, if we provided free rehab to addicts or used that as an alternative to prisons we would help addicts put their life together and end up spending less money in the long run.

The worst part of the war on drugs is that it is un-winnable. In the 1970’s before the war on drugs heroin cost thirty dollars per a bag and was 5% pure drug. Now it cost four dollars per a bag and is 80-90% pure drug. 74% of people agree that the war on drugs is not working. One of the major issues is that now more and more drugs are able to be made just from stuff you could buy at a local grocery store so illegal drugs are becoming more and more accessible. Since drugs are illegal instead of regulated it creates a black market. That is why it is easier for teenagers to get marijuana than alcohol. We are fighting a war that is un-winnable.

Freakonomics Crime Rate