Billionaires coalition pleased with Oxfam report, look for more progress in amassing wealth...
Reacting to the news from Oxfam that the richest 62 billionaires are worth as much as half the world's population, a coalition of the top five billionaires announced today that they were pleased with their progress in cornering so much wealth but "much more needs to be done." Noting that as recently as 2010, it took 388 billionaires to match the worth of half the world's population, a coalition spokesman proclaimed that its goal now was to reduce this number from the current 62 to five: "We will renew our efforts to build our fortunes, " the spokesperson explained. "Our experts are constantly searching for new tax havens, and we will continue our efforts to keep wages down and eliminate costly benefits for workers."
Without the collaboration of the leaders of the two national teachers union in corporate "school reform," the quick success of the billionaires attacks on public schools and public school teachers would not have been possible. As late as July 2010, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, invited billionaires Bill Gates, one of the world's most outspoken teacher bashers, to deliver a keynote speech at the AFT's national convention in Seattle. Above, Gates speaks to the AFT's 3,000 delegates during the Seattle convention, while on Randi's orders cheerleaders for the AFT leadership changed and gave Gates a standing ovation, drowning out protests. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt."We are particularly pleased with our efforts to divert public funds to our corporations, especially in the area of education. We are pleased with our plan and the results: A strong public relations campaign to convince the public that teachers are incompetent, and are, in fact, responsible for most economic problems throughout the world, and a parallel campaign informing the public of the wonders of computers.
We have easily convinced the public that computers are the answer to most of their problems, and will magically improve education. We have also convinced nearly everybody that there is a serious shortage of technically-trained computer-savvy workers, which of course encourages more computer use in schools. It is then a simple thing to begin to replace teachers with computers: We have had great success doing this with flipped classrooms, and ensuring that testing is done online, and the new trend we began toward online competency-based instruction is the next step.
At the same time, we have managed to encourage elimination of due process for teachers as well as seniority-based payraises. With flipped classrooms and competency-based education, we have significantly reduced the need for teachers and increased computer use enormously. This means, of course, that the billions in tax dollars now spent on teacher salaries and benefits will go to our companies, which we think is a much better investment."
Question from a reporter: "Several scholars have said that none of this has any basis in the research: In fact, research comes to opposite conclusions on all these issues: There have been regular reports showing that there is no shortage of technical workers, that teachers are in general quite competent, and that computer-based instruction has not been shown to be effective. Are you aware of this?"
Coalition spokesperson: "These discouraging conclusions do not disturb us because the public has little chance of finding out about them, even though your reports occasionally appear in the media. By the time the public understands the situaton, we will have achieved our goal of bringing our number down to five: The worth of only five of us will equal the net worth of half the world's population."
(At this Bill Gates whispered to an associate, "the worth of only one of us".)
Oxfam report: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined
Inspired by Andy Borowitz: http://www.newsweek.com/borowitz-report-wealthiest-0001-percent-praise-bush-economic-package-135293
By: David R. Stone
A Modest Proposal
Stephan Krashan, please keep writing more satires like this! (Although I know it is much harder nowadays than when Jonathan Swift wrote "A Modest Proposal." Our current economic and political situation is almost too outrageous to be lampooned via exaggeration.)