Yet another pointy head has offered yet another bad idea cloaked in good intentions-check out
Let's Close the Gap in Education. . One of our core ideas at UNT Dallas is to value critical thinking. Well here is a great chance to exercise some critical thinking, read the article and here we go.
The author states that overpaid CEOs and investment bankers pay inheritance and income taxes so their wealth diminishes over time. Hello, has the wealth of the Kennedys or Rockefellers diminisehed over time? Who are all those well heeled dripping with diamonds old folks in Town and Country magazine anyway. Robert Rubin who lately presides over the train wreck formerly known as Citicorp boasted he made $100 M while he was on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs. Does anyone think Robert's wealth is going down? Such folks hire the best cpas and tax attys to make sure this does not happen.
Leave it to a liberal to punish success. Spot someone or something with money and by golly, it is evil. Mr. Allen's target is the trust funds of wealthy colleges. He charges that places like Harvard and Princeton use their wealth to 'raid and scoop up' the best teachers at poorer colleges. And they offer the best high school students the best deals in terms of scholarhsips. Without further ado, he deems that this should not be happening, something must be done.
Now stop and think, what are the assumptions here? At a minimum, wealth equals academic excellence, that teachers from poorer schools actually have a chance of being hired at places like Harvard, and that 'fairness should reign supreme.' Somehow Mr. Allen will manage to be 'fair' in re distributing the ill deserved wealth of Harvard et al and in classic Robin Hood fashion, equitably let the other schools have their 'fair' share.
Well, let's please put a stop to the nonsense that Harvard et al are 'better schools.' Yes the teachers are paid more and are more likely to come from a name school themselves. Please remember these are the teachers that chased Larry Summers out of his Harvard Presidency for offering some down to earth reasons for the lack of more female teachers. The notion that Harvard is snooping around Tarleton or Sam Houston State is so laughable I can't believe he made the statemet. But what Harvard et al really all about is not better education but better fraternity. John Kennedy (Jack and Jackie's good looking late son) roomed in a house at Brown with Cristina Amnanpour. Her husband has worked for the State Dept, see how this works? Admission to Yale is tantamount to a degree from Yale. Bill Clinton did not arrive for his first year at Yale Law until after the Presidential election in 1972, and he passed the semester, how did that happen? And go figure, think of the best teacher you ever had, was he or she the best paid? Denzell Washington has just directed a fine movie about the Wiley College Debate Team in the 1930s, you can bet the Wiley endowment could have used some help from Harvard, but win they did.
Many more colleges are gearing up their development programs and most will not ever catch the well to do Ivy League Schools. But take their endowment earinings by tax? Come on! They earned it, they should get to keep it. And besides such money can fund projects far beyond the reach or the typical small private or even large state university. And, okay, let's suppose you did pass this tax on endowment earnings? What is the threshold of a rich endowment? Tens of millions, hundreds, a billion, what? That will surely be an arbitrary decision.
Okay, having made that arbirary decision of the sub endowment schools, who is eligible? Will Mormon and Catholic schools be on the list, or Baptist and Methodist? How about for profit schools like University of Phoenix, they are certainly serving lots of folks! Large state schools, small state schools, on line or brick and mortar, the list goes on .
This kind of thinking is the same that took money from all of us to build that Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska for Ted Stevens so it could serve a few dozen Eskimos. No thanks Herb, Harvard does lots of things I don't like, but it still does not give me the right to steal their endowment income.