Sunday, May 20, 2012

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (Part 4)


Conclusions
In this series of blogs I have found that there could be a some common denominators that fit into the three issues, and those are education, health, background, and I could include race into the equation as well.
Education is a major factor that allows the possibility of upper mobility. Having my daughter and wife in college I can see the high cost of education. With higher education cost increasing at a much higher rate than inflation or the cost of living, and republicans trying to cut education and thus making it harder for people to borrow to go to school this only concentrates the power in the very few at the top, and therefore making sure that upper mobility becomes almost impossible, except for rare cases such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, or other extremely successful individuals. When looking at education I know that there other models out there in the world, with many countries having free or very affordable universities.
Health. We think of it, and treat it as a commodity. It isn’t. Most people go about their business and don’t follow the stock market or the cost of other commodities on the stock exchange. But they do know how precious their health is, and that, if need be, they will lose their house and other material goods when their health and life is on the line.
Background. We talk about liberty, but if someone is born from parents who live in the “wrong” neighborhood their education is going to be limited compared to the child born in the “right” neighborhood. Now that child did not chose to be born in that family and that neighborhood, it just happened. Same thing could be said about race. Many people say let us dismantle the public education and fund private or charter schools. There is no proof that charter schools are better. They just simply make somebody wealthy, usually at the cost of public education. A woman that I used to work with used to say I don’t want my taxes going to the poor neighborhoods, I want them only for my town. The way the system is setup through property automatically creates a different tier of education, and thus discriminates “legally” against the people that are not able to afford a better area.
In conclusion, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are all greatly tide up with the education possibilities and what doors can be opened in their lifetime to achieve the pursuit of happiness that people would like. Same can be said with the health that people can receive and at what cost.
I, for one, as a believer, think of my happiness coming from knowing that, although I did nothing to deserve it, somebody died for me, and through that forgave my sins, no matter how big those are, through that demonstration of love I have liberty of my sin, as it is not through the constitution but through my creator and my savior I receive these rights, here in the US and anywhere else I may live.

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