The GAP - Part VII

We've not yet recovered.  Today, more than twenty million previously employed are unemployed or in part-time work as a survival option.  Actual recovery will take decades, it appears.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is doing quite well in the aftermath of the Great Recession.  Salaries and bonuses are good.  Attempts to reign in the 'too big to fail' institutions have stalled; you can ask your congressman why.  Indictments for causing the worldwide economic collapse remain at zero.

From the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, "Nonfarm payrolls fell by more than 8.7 million, or 6.3 percent, and the number of unemployed climbed to 14.7 million over the course of the recession, peaking at 10 percent of the nation’s labor force in October 2009. Further, many workers faced extended bouts of unemployment or left the labor force altogether. The ranks of the underemployed (those who want a job but can only find part-time work) and frustrated job seekers (those who become discouraged and give up looking for work) rose to 12 million, a 94 percent increase. In July 2013, four years after the recession is deemed to have ended, labor underutilization remains intractably high: 11.5 million people are unemployed and an additional 10.6 million are underemployed or frustrated."

The GAP between rich and poor continues to grow.  It affects everything from academic performance of children to employment, health, and life expectancy.

While this inequality is now quite clear in the U.S., it is strongly evidenced in countries around the world as well.

The Impact on Education?

The inequality GAP self-perpetuates through many factors but perhaps most troublingly via the impact it has on the quality of available education.

The only way for a small group of people to become obscenely rich is for huge masses of others to be kept quite poor.