Friedman in the news

Today, March 1^st, an article was posted on cnn.com over the issue of education. The issue revolves around the amount of students who are dropping out of school. The article states that the “trend in schools graduation rates are below 60 percent.” President Obama is granting $3.5 billion in attempt uplift 5,000 schools within five years. Some of the negative components that are adding to this problem are underperforming teachers, and lack of parent involvement. Obama states that these problems are planned to be approached in this whole process. In the article Obama states “Roughly 1.2 million students drop out of school every year, according to the White House. About half of the dropouts are Latino or African-American.” (Obama, cnn.com) From this high number of drop out students our country as a whole looses $320 billion a year. Because our country is loosing money from this, I believe this is Obama`s reason for putting money into the education department to try and get it back on track. Along with trying to turn education around for financial purposes, it is also so those who have a chance to get an education actually receive one, and a good one. Those students who are in school now, are the future for our country, and therefore are in need of a good education.

Milton Friedman would agree with what Obama is doing. I think he would approve of his involvement in trying to better the education system. Although he believes the government should be limited to national defense, he also believes that the government should address the issues that the market cannot control. I believe Friedman would say if the government didn’t take control of this, education would just continue to get worse and worse. As citizens we are obligated to pay taxes, and a portion of that goes towards schools. If people didn’t pay those taxes because they didn’t use the schools, the whole education system would go down the drain.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/01/obama.education/index.html

Marx in the news

On February 14, 2009, an article was posted on msnbc.com stating how many public schools are suffering from financial problems. The public schools federal funds are being have been suffering through out the whole recession, but this is the time when things are beginning to get worse. “Experts say the cash crunch will get a lot worse as states run out of stimulus dollars.” Although the financial cuts are hitting the classrooms in many negative ways, such as larger class sizes, fewer classes to choose from, and slim to none summer school programs, they are leading to tremendous amounts of job losses and much smaller pay checks.

These financial cuts on education are occurring all over the states, but California is especially struggling, and parents are worried their kids will not receive the education they need. Although teachers have already been cut from their jobs, the state of California states that “the worst is yet to come because the state ahs already handed out most of its $6 billion in stimulus money.”

I believe that California, along with all the other states, are so in debt that they don’t know where to place the stimulus money they are receiving. The thing that struck me the most was in the article they said how these cuts are hurting poor and needy kids. Education is all these kids might have a chance of getting at the moment, and these financial cuts are affecting them tremendously.

Marx look on this situation would be that it is unjust that these teachers’ wages are being cut. The result in their wages being cut may cause them to struggle with their costs of living. Even though they are still doing the same amount of work and working the same hours, they are getting paid less. He may also argue on the fact that because of the division of labor, which would be different teachers teaching different subjects, causes an increase in unemployment. If one teacher taught all subjects they would have no choice but to keep the teacher employed.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35395750/ns/us_news-education//

Locke in the news

On January 26 Toyota announced they will stop selling, as well as producing eight of their current models, due to a recall on these cars. The recall was for a sticking accelerator pedal, and Toyota believes its essential to take them off the market until the problem is solved. This has become such a dramatic action due to the fact that two of the cars recalled were best sellers in the country. These two cars were the Camry and Corolla. Along with the Camry and Corolla, the other cars that were recalled were the RAV4, Matrix, Avalon, Highlander, Tundra, and Sequoia. Although not much attention from the media has been brought upon this situation, it has indeed affected Toyotas company.

Although Toyota has put in tremendous amounts of their labor in order to produce these cars, Locke would agree that they have gone against the natural law. It isn’t just about utilizing a product and adding your labor to it, but rather putting it to good use and not wasting it. Instead of the company taking their time to make the product and check it thoroughly, they must have rushed through the process and in the end the cars had a fault on them. Instead of Toyota having quality set in their minds while making the cars, they were thinking profit instead. The more cars they produced in a shorter amount of time they would sell and profit more off of since two of the cars were the top selling cars in the country. If Toyota had taken the extra time to do extra tests or examine the cars a few more times they could have prevented this recall all along.

Link: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/01/toyota-halts-sales-of-eight-models-including-camry-and-corolla-over-acceleration-issues/1

Aristotle in the news

An article posted on January 12, 2010 in USA Today states that patients are willing to pay for “boutique” doctors. Primary care physicians are taking their practices from a traditional doctors office, to a more first class premiere service. The doctors are cutting their offices down from thousands of patients, to a couple hundred. Although the amount of patients the doctor sees is being cut down, the price to see these doctors sure is not. The cost to see one of these “boutique doctors” ranges anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 a year, sometimes even more. Some might question what these people are getting out of a doctor for that kind of money, and the answer to that is quality care. During a regular physical the doctor will usually spend no more then ten minutes in the room with you, as with this service you would receive up to an hour of the doctors time all to yourself. The time spent with the doctor is more attentive and also you receive access to the doctors during their after hours.

Some patients believe spending the extra money every year is well worth it because they leave their doctor visit with all their questions answered without being rushed through out their visit. Through out the country there are only 146 of these physicians, and therefore the need for them is rapidly growing. Although this may seem like a great way to receive the attention you want from your doctor, some are disagreeing with this process and saying it’s the wrong way to go about, and that it truly shows how out of order our healthcare system really is.

Aristotle would not agree with this new approach doctors are taking. One of the characteristics of the natural art of acquisition is limits, and this new way of healthcare succeeds the limits we essentially need. Sure we may all want a doctors attention for an hour or more, but we do not need that hour for them to treat our needs. Aristotle might also argue that since the art of acquisition is secondary to the art of management that the doctors are switching to this way of healthcare to make more of a profit off people.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-01-12-boutique-doctors_N.htm