跟TED演讲学英文:How state budgets are breaking US schools by Bill Gates

news2025/1/11 7:57:39

How state budgets are breaking US schools

在这里插入图片描述

Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_how_state_budgets_are_breaking_us_schools

Speaker: Bill Gates

Date: March 2011

文章目录

  • How state budgets are breaking US schools
    • Introduction
    • Vocabulary
    • Transcript
    • Summary
    • 后记

Introduction

America’s school systems are funded by the 50 states. In this fiery talk, Bill Gates says that state budgets are riddled with accounting tricks that disguise the true cost of health care and pensions and weighted with worsening deficits – with the financing of education at the losing end.

美国的学校系统由 50 个州提供资金。比尔-盖茨在这次火热的演讲中说,各州的预算充斥着掩盖医疗保健和养老金真实成本的会计伎俩,赤字不断恶化,而教育经费则处于亏损状态。

Vocabulary

riddle with:充满;全是

gimmick:美 [ˈɡɪmɪk] 花招;手法;噱头

pension: 美 [ˈpenʃn] 养老金

pension costs 养老金成本

perpetuate:美 [pərˈpetʃueɪt] 保持;使永存;

It perpetuates deficit spending. 它延续了赤字支出。

shortfall:缺少,赤字

liability:负债,债务;责任

growing healthcare costs and pension liabilities 不断增长的医疗成本和养老金负债

blatant:美 [ˈbleɪtnt] 公然的;明目张胆的

This is so blatant, so extreme. 这是如此明目张胆,如此极端。

generosity:美 [ˌdʒenəˈrɑːsəti] 慷慨;大方;

the looming challenges:迫在眉睫的挑战

Transcript

Well, this is about state budgets.

This is probably the most boring topic

of the whole morning.

But I want to tell you, I think it’s an important topic

that we need to care about.

State budgets

are big, big money –

I’ll show you the numbers –

and they get very little scrutiny.

The understanding is very low.

Many of the people involved

have special interests or short-term interests

that get them not thinking

about what the implications of the trends are.

And these budgets

are the key for our future;

they’re the key for our kids.

Most education funding –

whether it’s K through 12,

or the great universities or community colleges –

most of the money for those things

is coming out of these state budgets.

But we have a problem.

Here’s the overall picture.

U.S. economy is big –

14.7 trillion.

Now out of that pie,

the government spends 36 percent.

So this is combining the federal level,

which is the largest,

the state level and the local level.

And it’s really in this combined way

that you get an overall sense of what’s going on,

because there’s a lot of complex things

like Medicaid and research money

that flow across those boundaries.

But we’re spending 36 percent.

Well what are we taking in?

Simple business question.

Answer is 26 percent.

Now this leaves 10 percent deficit,

sort of a mind-blowing number.

And some of that, in fact, is due to the fact

that we’ve had an economic recession.

Receipts go down,

some spending programs go up,

but most of it is not because of that.

Most of it is because of ways

that the liabilities are building up

and the trends,

and that creates a huge challenge.

In fact, this is the forecast picture.

There are various things in here:

I could say we might raise more revenue,

or medical innovation will make the spending even higher.

It is an increasingly difficult picture,

even assuming the economy does quite well –

probably better than it will do.

This is what you see

at this overall level.

Now how did we get here?

How could you have a problem like this?

After all, at least on paper,

there’s this notion that these state budgets are balanced.

Only one state says

they don’t have to balance the budget.

But what this means actually

is that there’s a pretense.

There’s no real, true balancing going on,

and in a sense, the games they play to hide that

actually obscure the topic so much

that people don’t see things

that are actually pretty straight-forward challenges.

When Jerry Brown was elected,

this was the challenge that was put to him.

That is, through various gimmicks and things,

a so-called balanced budget

had led him to have 25 billion missing

out of the 76 billion in proposed spending.

Now he’s put together some thoughts:

About half of that he’ll cut,

another half,

perhaps in a very complex set of steps,

taxes will be approved.

But even so,

as you go out into those future years,

various pension costs, health costs go up enough,

and the revenue does not go up enough.

So you get a big squeeze.

What were those things that allowed us to hide this?

Well, some really nice little tricks.

And these were somewhat noticed.

The paper said, "It’s not really balanced.

It’s got holes.

It perpetuates deficit spending.

It’s riddled with gimmicks."

And really when you get down to it,

the guys at Enron never would have done this.

This is so blatant,

so extreme.

Is anyone paying attention

to some of the things these guys do?

They borrow money.

They’re not supposed to, but they figure out a way.

They make you pay more in withholding

just to help their cash flow out.

They sell off the assets.

They defer the payments.

They sell off the revenues from tobacco.

And California’s not unique.

In fact, there’s about five states that are worse

and only really four states

that don’t face this big challenge.

So it’s systemic across the entire country.

It really comes from the fact

that certain long-term obligations –

health care, where innovation makes it more expensive,

early retirement and pension, where the age structure gets worse for you,

and just generosity –

that these mis-accounting things

allow to develop over time,

that you’ve got a problem.

This is the retiree health care benefits.

Three million set aside, 62 billion dollar liability –

much worse than the car companies.

And everybody looked at that

and knew that that was headed toward a huge problem.

The forecast for the medical piece alone

is to go from 26 percent of the budget

to 42 percent.

Well what’s going to give?

Well in order to accommodate that,

you would have to cut education spending in half.

It really is this young versus the old

to some degree.

If you don’t change that revenue picture,

if you don’t solve what you’re doing in health care,

you’re going to be deinvesting in the young.

The great University of California university system,

the great things that have gone on,

won’t happen.

So far it’s meant layoffs,

increased class sizes.

Within the education community there’s this discussion of,

"Should it just be the young teachers who get laid off,

or the less good teachers who get laid off?"

And there’s a discussion: if you’re going to increase class sizes,

where do you do that? How much effect does that have?

And unfortunately, as you get into that, people get confused and think,

well maybe you think that’s okay.

In fact, no, education spending should not be cut.

There’s ways, if it’s temporary,

to minimize the impact,

but it’s a problem.

It’s also really a problem for where we need to go.

Technology has a role to play.

Well we need money to experiment with that,

to get those tools in there.

There’s the idea of paying teachers for effectiveness,

measuring them, giving them feedback,

taking videos in the classroom.

That’s something I think is very, very important.

Well you have to allocate dollars

for that system

and for that incentive pay.

In a situation where you have growth,

you put the new money into this.

Or even if you’re flat, you might shift money into it.

But with the type of cuts we’re talking about,

it will be far, far harder

to get these incentives for excellence,

or to move over

to use technology in the new way.

So what’s going on?

Where’s the brain trust

that’s in error here?

Well there really is no brain trust.

(Laughter)

It’s sort of the voters. It’s sort of us showing up.

Just look at this spending.

California will spend over 100 billion,

Microsoft, 38,

Google, about 19.

The amount of IQ in good numeric analysis,

both inside Google and Microsoft

and outside, with analysts and people of various opinions –

should they have spent on that?

No, they wasted their money on this. What about this thing? –

it really is quite phenomenal.

Everybody has an opinion.

There’s great feedback.

And the numbers are used to make decisions.

If you go over the education spending and the health care spending –

particularly these long-term trends –

you don’t have that type of involvement

on a number that’s more important

in terms of equity, in terms of learning.

So what do we need to do?

We need better tools.

We can get some things out on the Internet.

I’m going to use my website

to put up some things that will give the basic picture.

We need lots more.

There’s a few good books,

one about school spending and where the money comes from –

how that’s changed over time, and the challenge.

We need better accounting.

We need to take the fact

that the current employees, the future liabilities they create,

that should come out of the current budget.

We need to understand why they’ve done the pension accounting

the way they have.

It should be more like private accounting.

It’s the gold standard.

And finally, we need to really reward politicians.

Whenever they say there’s these long-term problems,

we can’t say, "Oh, you’re the messenger with bad news?

We just shot you."

In fact, there are some like these:

Erskine Bowles, Alan Simpson and others,

who have gone through and given proposals

for this overall federal health-spending state-level problem.

But in fact, their work was sort of pushed off.

In fact, the week afterwards,

some tax cuts were done

that made the situation even worse

than their assumptions.

So we need these pieces.

Now I think this is a solvable problem.

It’s a great country with lots of people.

But we have to draw those people in,

because this is about education.

And just look at what happened with the tuitions

with the University of California

and project that out for another three, four, five years –

it’s unaffordable.

And that’s the kind of thing –

the investment in the young –

that makes us great, allows us to contribute.

It allows us to do the art,

the biotechnology, the software

and all those magic things.

And so the bottom line is

we need to care about state budgets

because they’re critical for our kids and our future.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Summary

In his speech, Bill Gates brings attention to the importance of state budgets, despite the topic often being perceived as boring. He emphasizes the significant impact state budgets have on education funding, which is crucial for the future success of children. Gates highlights the concerning state of many state budgets, revealing a large deficit and problematic financial practices that obscure the true financial challenges facing states. He stresses the need for increased scrutiny and understanding of state budgets to address long-term liabilities and ensure adequate funding for education.

Gates delves into the complexities of state budgets, pointing out the discrepancy between spending and revenue, which has led to substantial deficits. He uses California as an example to illustrate how budgetary tricks and unsustainable practices have contributed to financial crises. He emphasizes the systemic nature of the problem, affecting not only California but also numerous other states across the country. Gates highlights the looming challenges posed by growing healthcare costs and pension liabilities, which threaten to undermine education spending and investment in the future generation.

In conclusion, Gates calls for greater transparency, accountability, and informed decision-making regarding state budgets. He stresses the need for better tools, such as improved accounting methods and accessible information, to enable citizens and policymakers to understand and address the financial challenges effectively. Gates emphasizes that investing in education is essential for the nation’s prosperity and urges collective action to ensure adequate funding for education and address the pressing issues facing state budgets.

后记

2024年5月9日17点54分于上海。

本文来自互联网用户投稿,该文观点仅代表作者本人,不代表本站立场。本站仅提供信息存储空间服务,不拥有所有权,不承担相关法律责任。如若转载,请注明出处:http://www.coloradmin.cn/o/1656796.html

如若内容造成侵权/违法违规/事实不符,请联系多彩编程网进行投诉反馈,一经查实,立即删除!

相关文章

JavaScript 动态网页实例 —— 数值处理对象

前言 Math对象用于进行数学运算。其属性是数学中一些常见的常数值,在程序中可以直接使用。Math对象的方法很多,主要完成一些常见的数学运算,如三角函数计算、乘方、开方、求对数等。在 Math 对象的方法中,除了random()之外的所有方法都需要一个或几个参数,并且其用法基本…

白酒:白酒香型与品质消费的关系及影响

云仓酒庄的豪迈白酒作为中国白酒的品牌,其白酒香型与品质消费的关系及影响备受关注。随着消费者对品质的重视程度不断提高,了解白酒香型与品质之间的关系对于云仓酒庄和消费者都具有重要意义。 经云仓酒庄豪迈白酒分析,白酒香型与品质消费的关…

Kubernetes——基础认识

一、简介 1.Kubernetes是什么 Kubernetes 是一个全新的基于容器技术的分布式架构解决方案,是 Google 开源的一个容器集群管理系统,Kubernetes 简称 K8S。 Kubernetes 是一个一站式的完备的分布式系统开发和支撑平台,更是一个开放平台&#x…

视频号小店不直播怎么出单?这里面的秘密,一篇文章全曝光!

大家好,我是电商糖果 这两年关于视频号搞电商的话题度非常高,也吸引了很多商家入驻。 视频号因为背后巨大的私域流量池扶持,所以它的转化率非常高。 根据官方发出来的战报,我们也可以看出它的数据是翻倍增长。 在2024微信公开…

linux性能监控之atop

1.atop的安装 atop也是一个功能强大的linux服务器监控工具,数据采集包括:cpu、内存、磁盘、网络、进程等 系统未自动安装的,我们还是添加阿里源后,直接yum install -y atop即可 2.atop的配置 [rootk8s-master ~]# cat /etc/sys…

【Java EE】网络原理——UDP

目录 1.应用层 2.传输层 2.1端口号 2.1.1端口号的范围划分 2.1.2一个端口号可以被多个进程绑定吗? 2.1.3一个进程可以绑定多个端口号吗? 3.UDP协议 3.1UDP的格式 3.1.1 UDP的源端口号 3.1.2 UDP的目的端口号 3.1.3 UDP长度 3.1.4UDP校验和 3…

互联网洗鞋工厂实现新时代下的家庭洗护服务;

互联网洗鞋工厂实现新时代下的家庭洗护服务; 拽牛科技洗护系统以智慧城市系统为依托,洗鞋工厂为中心,利用互联网+社区服务商模式,实现了新时代下的家庭洗护服务, 将客户﹣﹣社区服务商&#xfe63…

为什么说TailwindCSS是2024 年前端最优的 CSS 框架?

如果有一本圣经,大家都按照圣经的标准写网页,那世界将更加的标准化和美好。这本圣经就是TailwindCSS。 什么是 Tailwind CSS? Tailwind CSS 是一个流行的 CSS 框架,旨在帮助开发者快速构建现代化的、响应式的 Web 界面。与其他 …

苏州金龙何以成为塞尔维亚中国客车第一品牌?研发向上服务助力!

5月7日至8日,一场举世瞩目的会晤在塞尔维亚举行。作为塞尔维亚中国客车第一品牌,苏州金龙海格客车也为当地民众绿色公共出行提供了“中国力量”。 目前,苏州金龙海格客车在塞尔维亚保有量近200台,是在塞尔维亚保有量最大的中国客车…

Springboot项目使用redis实现session共享

1.安装redis&#xff0c;并配置密码 这里就不针对于redis的安装约配置进行说明了&#xff0c;直接在项目中使用。 2.pom.xml文件中引入需要的maven <dependency><groupId>redis.clients</groupId><artifactId>jedis</artifactId><version&g…

PyQt5 解决界面无响应方案

文章目录 前言版本案例解决方案QThreadQTimer 局部变量创建异步线程导致 UI 未响应如果 QTimer 不使用 self.time 写法 个人简介 前言 在PyQt5中&#xff0c;GUI线程通常指的是Qt的主事件循环线程&#xff0c;也称为主线程。主线程负责处理GUI事件、更新UI界面等任务。在PyQt5…

学习CSS3动画教程:手把手教你绘制跑跑卡丁车

学习之前&#xff0c;请先听一段音乐&#xff1a;等登&#xff0c;等登&#xff0c;等登等登等登&#xff01;没错&#xff0c;这就是我们当年玩的跑跑卡丁车的背景音乐&#xff0c;虽然后来有了QQ飞车&#xff0c;但还是更喜欢跑跑卡丁车&#xff0c;从最初的基础板车&#xf…

js逆向,参数加密js混淆

关键词 JS 混淆、源码乱码、参数动态加密 逆向目标 题目1&#xff1a;抓取所有&#xff08;5页&#xff09;机票的价格&#xff0c;并计算所有机票价格的平均值&#xff0c;填入答案。 目标网址&#xff1a;https://match.yuanrenxue.cn/match/1目标接口&#xff1a;https://ma…

KVM:无法检查 QEMU 二进制文件 /usr/bin/qemu-kvm: 没有那个文件或目录

报错信息&#xff1a; 解决方法&#xff1a; 将qemu的安装路径添加到系统的环境变量中&#xff0c;以便于系统可以正确的识别qemu的位置 在此之前可以先查找一下安装的路径&#xff1a; [rootlocalhost ~]# sudo find / -name qemu-system-x86_64 /usr/share/bash-completi…

大数据面试题 —— 数据仓库

目录 数据仓库是什么数据仓库和数据库的区别为什么要对数据仓库分层数仓分层&#xff0c;以及每一层的作用维度建模的三种模型范式建模、维度建模维度建模过程&#xff0c;如何确定这些维度 ***维度模型的各个维度之间是怎么聚合的聚合过程的数据倾斜怎么解决&#xff1f;数据质…

2024年最新【SpringBoot2】开发实用篇-测试_springboot2 test(1),2024年最新2024春招BAT面试真题详解

既有适合小白学习的零基础资料&#xff0c;也有适合3年以上经验的小伙伴深入学习提升的进阶课程&#xff0c;涵盖了95%以上软件测试知识点&#xff0c;真正体系化&#xff01; 由于文件比较多&#xff0c;这里只是将部分目录截图出来&#xff0c;全套包含大厂面经、学习笔记、…

AI论文速读 | 2024[IJCAI]时空解耦掩码预训练的时空预测

题目&#xff1a; Spatial-Temporal-Decoupled Masked Pre-training for Spatiotemporal Forecasting 作者&#xff1a;Haotian Gao ; Renhe Jiang&#xff08;姜仁和&#xff09; ; Zheng Dong ; Jinliang Deng (邓锦亮); Yuxin Ma ; Xuan Song&#xff08;宋轩&#xff09; …

Python软件安装使用

一、搭建 Python 环境 需要安装的环境主要是两个部分 : 运行环境: Python 开发环境: PyCharm 具体详细安装见此篇博客&#xff1a;Python安装教程 二、创建一个项目 a) 创建一个项目 b) 选择项目所在的位置 , 并选择使用的 Python 解释器 . 注意 , 一般情况下 , PyCh…

活动回顾 |观测云 AI Agent 探索实践

亚马逊云科技“构建全球化软件和互联网新生态——ISV 行业”论坛上&#xff0c;观测云产品架构师刘锐发表了题为“AI Agent 可观测性探索与实践”的主题演讲&#xff0c;不仅展示了观测云在人工智能领域的前沿技术&#xff0c;更强调了在日益复杂的系统环境中&#xff0c;实现有…

软件设计师笔记(一)-基础要点

本文内容来自笔者学习zst 留下的笔记&#xff0c;虽然有点乱&#xff0c;但是哥已经排版过一次&#xff0c;将就着看吧&#xff0c;查缺补漏&#xff0c;希望大家都能通过&#xff0c;记得加上免费的关注&#xff01;谢谢&#xff01;csdn贴图真的很废人&#xff01; 目录 一、…