Capitalist-Style Wealth Gap: 1 Tech Guy = 1,000,000 Teachers

Capitalist-Style Wealth Gap: 1 Tech Guy = 1,000,000 Teachers

Capitalist-Style Wealth Gap: 1 Tech Guy = 1,000,000 Teachers
As Charles Koch said, "I want my fair share and that's all of it."

As of 01/20/19, the richest six American tech leaders (Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Page, Brin) averaged over $80 billion in net worth. Meanwhile, the 25 million Americans just above the median, many of them teachers, have an average net worth of $78 thousand. That's a difference of a million times. 

For anyone questioning this disturbing truth, the following information should be helpful: There are over 4 million preschool, primary, secondary, and special education teachers; the median teacher age is 41; the median elementary school salary is $57,000; the median wealth of a 41-year-old is only $60,000. So it's probably even worse than a million to one. Consider also that about 77 percent of teachers are female, and that females suffer the discrimination of lower wealth, especially Black and Hispanic women, for whom net worth is in the low HUNDREDS. 

The Los Angeles teachers are striking for better pay, smaller class sizes, the addition of nurses and counselors, and the ending of the rash of charter school openings that suck the lifeblood out of the public school system. They could also be striking for a fairer wealth distribution. A technology boss is not a million times more important than an L.A. teacher. 

Do They Deserve It? Fact 1: The Richest Tech CEOs Had Shady Beginnings 

Bill Gates may be a knowledgable man, but for starters he was lucky and opportunistic. In 1975, at the age of 20, he founded Microsoft with high school buddy Paul Allen. This was the era of the first desktop computers, and numerous small companies were trying to program them, most notably Digital Research, headed by software designer Gary Kildall, whose CP/M operating system (OS) was the industry standard. Even Gates' company used it. But Kildall was an innovator, not a businessman, and when IBM came calling for an OS for the new IBM PC, his delays drove the big mainframe company to Gates, who provided an OS based on Kildall's CP/M system. Kildall wanted to sue, but intellectual property law for software had not yet been established. David Lefer, a collaborator for the book They Made America, summarized: "Gates didn't invent the PC operating system, and any history that says he did is wrong." 

To a large extent Mark Zuckerberg also took his ideas from others. Zuckerberg developed his version of social networking while he was at Harvard. Before he made his contribution, Columbia University students Adam Goldberg and Wayne Ting built a system called Campus Network, which was much more sophisticated than the early versions of Facebook. But Zuckerberg eventually prevailed because of the Harvard name, better financial support, and the simplicity of Facebook. A possible fourth CONTINUE READING: Capitalist-Style Wealth Gap: 1 Tech Guy = 1,000,000 Teachers