Stephen Colbert funds every teacher requested grant in SC

So this is pretty cool. Stephen Colbert is helping to personally fund every single teacher requested grant in his hometown state of South Carolina totaling around 800,000. Its pretty cool to see people with money like this giving back to their home towns.

I saw that. That's good stuff.

Good on him. Now fuck The Late Show and run for office!

That's awesome. Hope they do good work with it.

Imagine what schools in the world would be like if even 1% of the richest gave 1% of their income, every other year, to the schools in their country.

Oh sorry, I'll keep my socialist communist agenda to myself... :(

That TV is fucking huge.

Jesus, can you stop supporting the betterment of the education of our youth?

They already get taxed in the top tax bracket.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow: LOL yeah and it works great right! Literally nothing wrong with Schools in the world, especially in America. Definitely the amount of taxing and the allocation of those funds was perfected long ago. I was just joshing you know? Absolutely nothing better can be done!

Super cool! Though, it isn't solely Colbert funding everything if the other partners were matching funds.

@geraltitude: Blame the rich some more.

This is a common misconception. They do get taxed at a high bracket but only on the highest part of their wealth. Maybe their first billion in earnings gets taxed at 3 times the normal rate (In the US that's very doubtful, it would be so much lower or they would just avoid the tax altogether.) but everything below that is undertaxed.

The rich do not feel the same hurt from taxes as the average person, they get off super easy. Taxing them at a higher rate wouldn't be communism, it would just be sensible. It needs to happen.

@mikemcn: They "get off super easy" because no matter how much they get off they feel good with how much they're making. The other classes will never be happy with the rich being happy with how much they keep. I'm just a first full time job worker, but I'll never understand everyone wanting the rich to pay an unequal amount just because they have more money. Get over it, they pay their share. If they don't want to donate, they don't have to. They will always make enough to be comfortable and then some.

Expecting people to pay a disproportionate tax for their disproportionate wealth is heinous. I just send all my money to the Cayman Islands and forget about it personally.

Let's race yachts later today.

well i think it's easy to understand, you just don't subscribe to the idea that those who have more should take of those who have less. and for the record- i think general discontentment with the earnings and taxing of the rich has more to do with concentration of wealth in the united states than a perceived resentment towards success. money flows towards money- and if you look at trends from post ww2 to today- it's resoundingly clear where wealth is congregating.

it's established that it's significantly easier to make more money once you have money. people don't remain in poverty for generations simply because they're lazy.

to be back OT- i think this is fucking rad. the dude is so low key about this stuff too- says a lot about his intentions. it reminds me of when jack white did this.

That's pretty cool, Colbert comes off as just a genuine good and smart guy.
And I'm all for helping the places you come from, given you feel they deserve the help I guess.

Looking forward to his talk show, I think the majority if not all late night hosts are goofs and am looking forward to seeing someone who is quick witted take over a slot.

That's really cool of him.

Also: some people have the idea that the economy in the real world works like in SimCity. You just pump more money into X and X gets better. Or like RPGs: you pump points into one area and you get better at it.
Well, unfortunately that's not how this works.

Of course one could argue that test scores on their own are not enough to assess progress... but the fact still remains that more money=/=better results.

First off, good on Colbert. It's always nice to see philanthropy. The ironic part is, if Colbert fairly claims these donations against his taxes like many other wealthy and charitable Americans do, suddenly he'll be among the supposedly evil rich getting "tax breaks". In reality, not only do wealthy Americans like Colbert lead in voluntary charitable giving (the top 5% are responsible for 42% of contributions to charities), they also bear a greatly disproportionate amount of the tax burden (with the top 10% paying 70% of income taxes and around half of all taxes). Hell, even the White House (in a pathetic obfuscation attempt to support Obama-proposed wealth redistribution measures) admits that the wealthy are paying more than their share by virtually every measure, and laughably tries to cherry-pick some select wealthy who pay low tax percentages without acknowledging WHY they pay low taxes (massive philanthropy). I'm guessing that early next year when Colbert will file his now-deservedly low 2015 taxes, if the public gets wind of that, all the socialists who are praising him now for supporting education will immediately turn on him and act like he's the antichrist.

I simply do not understand how someone could be for wealth redistribution. It's rooted in sheer jealousy, and is just shy of panhandling. It's people wanting money for nothing, and on a fundamental level, it disincentivizes success. Why excel if it just means you're going to have to hand more and more of what you've earned to people who didn't earn it? This is literally the scariest question for America's future. Socialist ideals are eroding capitalism. Bringing down the top does not raise the bottom. Penalizing effort (further) is an awful idea that ends terribly. FWIW, I'm not an overly wealthy man. I've done fine for myself to be able to afford everything I need and many toys on top of that. Everything I desire beyond that is pure gravy and serves as personal motivation to better myself to reach that end. In other words, I don't feel like a guy who drives by in a Ferrari owes me something. I say, "nice Ferrari", think about how I'd like the ability to afford something like that some day, and resolve to work harder. I think that's a FAR more productive attitude than whining about someone else's success and sticking out an open palm as if you deserve a piece of their pie. If you don't buy into that, well, consider that the U.S. becoming the world's most powerful, successful country via capitalism makes a pretty strong argument that we should stick with it.

@notnert427: I got a solid chuckle out of that, thanks.

I think you're confused. The rich =/ governments. We're all to blame.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow: What would be a fair percentage for the rich to pay in terms of federal income tax?

@notnert427: I agree with everything in your post. I'd like to pose you these question:

Are you happy with the American school systems?
Could it be better?

The answer for me is No, I'm not happy. And Yes, they could be better.

At a high level, I do believe the solution is more money. But that's not to say that more money =/ more taxes. Largely I believe it is an allocation issue. But the rub is this: you can never allocated taxes in a way to make everyone happy. If I say less military spending, people will burn me alive. If I say less health spending, people will say I have no compassion. If I say less infrastructure spending, people will say I'm unrealistic. Something has to give right?

Ultimately, my stance is that School & Health are the most important things that humans can do for other humans, full stop. If I have an issue with America and Schools is that it seems everyone is more than happy to let Schools be as low on the list is they are.

The fact that America is "the world's most powerful, successful country via capitalism" exactly why I am ashamed of the school system. It is not good enough. Full stop. Does anyone in America really look at schools and think it couldn't be better? They don't need more money. We don't need to allocate spending differently. There are no problems.

Colbert's money is filling a gap. That there is such a gigantic, massive gap is a problem. Or it is for me at least.

No, I'm not happy with the overall state of the school system, but I disagree that more money is "the" solution. The root of many of the problems starts at home with kids coming in unprepared and unmotivated due to sub-par parenting. Then you have teachers often just going through the motions, many of whom probably didn't start that way, but just became jaded and apathetic over time. Money doesn't fix those issues. Not that I think schools don't deserve more funding (they absolutely do); I just don't think it's a cure-all. I fully support Colbert here and think this is an awesome move, and I would agree that lacking funding on the governmental end is an allocation issue. Personally, I think a ton of fat can be trimmed from govt., and that's where I'd have it come from. We don't need redundant departments like the DPS, DMV, DOT, etc. all basically doing the same thing, and we don't need two employees taking two 15-minute smoke breaks an hour; we need one that's worth a shit, but that's another topic entirely.

Ultimately, I think less of the blame game needs to be played and more people need to be asking themselves what they can do to make it better. For parents, it starts by teaching their children some work ethic and giving them the tools to excel before they go to school, not dumping their kid on the school system and expecting the school to do the work raising them. For teachers, their part is keeping the passion and finding ways to make learning interesting, not leaning on a textbooks or powerpoints. For everyone else outside of the system, Colbert's on the right track in helping give schools the resources to succeed, but translating that to results isn't a given. I wish it were that simple.

@notnert427: I agree parenting is a huge part (the biggest for some) of it, but the truth is kids spend more time with teachers than with parents in many cases. And teacher's attitudes are just the same as in every industry. Sure, teacher's don't work in the summer and some people think that is nice (it's financially more complicated than that) but asking teachers to be passionate is the same as asking any low paid employee to be passionate. I feel there is a weird romantic ideal for teachers. As if all those people are just there to pass on their love of knowledge no matter the cost. It's just not like that. Some teachers are true blue from-the-heart teachers, and if you've been lucky to have had even 1, you know what a huge difference they make. But I look back at my life and count maybe 2 teachers out 30 that I would qualify like that. In a capitalist society money is what attracts skill. Passion is too rare. Smart people are convinced out of being teachers. Consider this very popular, very pathetically short-sighted cliche: "those who cannot do, teach". As a culture we have denigrated teaching a lot. And again, the people who graduated from school with me and who over the years became teachers are the last people I would hope to do that. But the barrier to entry is generally low to become a teacher. Getting a job is a bit harder. If you look at Universities and fancy colleges, they pay the "good" teachers and passionate presidents relatively large sums of money. Because they have to. In today's world people believe they should be paid fairly for their abilities. So, if you want high skill and high passion, you either need money, luck, or not to be in a society where money is everything. I can't pay my mortgage with passion. Everyone needs to pay to live, everyone needs a job - so why not teach? It's just a 9-5 to many people, and to expect it not to be is unrealistic. You can't change that without upending our whole culture.

I feel there is this idea that Teachers should be real smart, real hard working and real passionate. Those people got other jobs. Teaching is especially frustrating because you have every little control. You talk about departments like DPS, DMV, DOT, etc. But individuals rarely control that. In some cases, neither do principals or even school boards. I speak from some industry experience here, though I am not a full-time teacher.

Anyways, money is not the cure-all, not by a long shot. Parenting, and a culture that actually prizes education, would go a long way to do good. But I just can't see real change without more money (and better management of that money). The change you are asking for, which is a change in the personalities of parents and teachers - I agree with - but honestly in America this kind of cultural change seems very far away, and I don't have a clue how you kickstart that.