For most people snow days are fun but for working class parents it is not as relaxing. When both parents work or do not have sick or vacation benefits they have to find day care services for their children. People without paid time off, single parents or hourly wage earners get hit the hardest with school snow days. School is a safe and reliable place for children to be, and thus some schools were kept open during the winter storms. Especially because some people's homes lost power and heat, they could even get sick if they were home.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/13/school-snow-daysachallengeforlowincomeworkingparents.html
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/13/school-snow-daysachallengeforlowincomeworkingparents.html
3 comments:
This is one example of how a socialist country would be better off with snow days, because parents would not have to worry about the price of day care. Even though East Germany is seen as better unified with West Germany it still has its negatives. Technically poor people would be safer in East Germany or socialist countries because food, shelter and other basic necessities are provided. Capitalist countries create such a big inequality gap that only the rich are really benefiting. Thus in the end what economic system is actually more successful?
I wouldn't necessarily say socialist economy is more successful than the capitalist or market-oriented economies. As pointed out in class, people from East Germany evaluated unification of East and West Germany as positive in some cases (such as traveling, newspaper choices, supply of goods, etc.) and negative in others (such as child raising, rent, etc.). For people with lower incomes, it is true that they may benefit from socialist government which provides them with basic necessities; nonetheless, it may also be the case that they ended up having lower incomes because there were no incentives for them to work hard, or attain higher education and compete in the job market for higher wages. I believe some amount of government planning is necessary to mediate market failures, but not too much that people lose their freedom of choice, or the motivation to try hard.
Poor people can survive in socialist countries because food, shelter and other basic necessities are provided, but in market economy, there are more people better off and their life satisfactions are much higher. Poor people can be as safe as in market economy too.
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