An Unfortunate Education
It seems that the call to action in my last post actually worked and drew in some comments (thank you for that!). As promised, I will continue using this blog for a while longer. If I keep getting comments (and maybe some comment debates) I will keep posting. This post is a bit long so I apologize for that–I will keep future posts shorter. Without further adieu, I present to you my first actual post.
I shall dispense with the names to protect the innocent (and moronic) but will say that my cousin is in the 7th grade at White Pine Middle School here in good ol’ Saginaw Michigan. While spending an evening conversing with the family over pizza, my cousin and her friend began discussing their social studies class woes. Apparently, the teacher finds it appropriate to degrade the class and one day even wrote “worst class ever” on the chalkboard. He has even said he “feels sorry for this country because you kids are the future.” I’m fairly certain this is no way to treat 7th graders. That seems like something we can all agree on. Although these types of comments are disturbing, something just as disturbing is what he is teaching to our youth.
During one discussion the teacher proclaimed that outsourcing is bad and minimum wage is good. I realize everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but really? Nobody wants to pay high prices if they can avoid it. If a company can use outsourcing to give you a lower cost, is that not a good thing? And don’t start with domestic job loss. What the teacher was actually referring to was offshoring although he incorrectly labeled it as outsourcing, but I digress. Yes, an individual may suffer temporary displeasure from outsourcing/offshoring but by saving money the business can lower costs. This can result in actually saving jobs because the company may have otherwise had to fire employees that they couldn’t afford. Outsourcing/offshoring is a good thing and needs to be controlled by the free market.
What about minimum wage? By forcing higher minimum wages the government actually stops businesses from hiring more employees. Let’s pretend that minimum wage is $10 and you, as a business, have $10 available to hire help. You can only afford to hire one person because of the government mandated minimum wage. If there were no minimum wage and the free market determined that fair compensation for that position was actually $5, you could now afford to hire 2 employees. With the government forced minimum wage you were able to hire one less person which resulted in one more unemployed individual. If that person was willing to work for $5 why shouldn’t they be allowed to? By the government stepping in and “helping” people they are actually hurting others.
No wonder people vote the way they do–they are being fed this sort garbage in middle school when they are just plain too young to know any better.
Originally writing this post in the heat of the moment may have resulted in misspellings, grammar mistakes, or just plain hard-to-follow thoughts. So, how about a few videos in case my incoherent rambling didn’t make sense.
John Stossel – The Minimum Wage Doesn’t Work
It is a shame that the future of our country is being taught by such narrow minded individuals… Comments?
Tags: education, free market, john stossel, minimum wage, outsourcing
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
7 Responses to “An Unfortunate Education”
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February 21st, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Preaching to the choir here
February 21st, 2010 at 9:29 pm
I knew in your case I would be
It’s that whole Northwood thing.
February 21st, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Well, the even sadder thing, in my opinion, is that teachers like this will still have a job next year, while teachers like me get laid off because we have a broken tax system and educational spending plan in the State of Michigan.
I’ll never understand why some people choose to go into teaching, clearly it isn’t this guys passion. True, it is an incredibly stressful job but it is also extremely rewarding. I love challenging my students to examine their viewpoints and build strong opinions based on their own beliefs not mine. Sometimes my kids get mad because I won’t tell them my opinion, but I like them to form views on their own without my influence.
This guy needs to go find a job where he doesn’t have to interact with other life forms.
February 21st, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Very nicely stated Christina. It truly is a shame that we don’t have more teachers like you giving these students the proper education and life skills they need to be successful. Instead, we have people that cut them down and don’t teach them anything (unless you consider being talked down to a life lesson).
February 21st, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Another point to add, offshoring is not a bad thing, jobs that can be easily performed overseas should be, this frees up our labor force to use our brains and innovation to move forward to the next “big” thing.
February 21st, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Another excellent point. Of course, there are some people that don’t want to use their brains to advance but they should just be left in the dust anyways. We can’t hold the entire country back from progressing just because some people don’t want to advance with us.
February 21st, 2010 at 10:43 pm
If we want to be the greatest country in the world we need to use our brains, innovate, and constantly evolve.