If given $1 billion, what would be the best way to improve education in the U.S.? Not allowed to unilaterally change government policy and must spend the money.
Money is not the issue.$1 Billion projects have proven to be insignificant in changing our K-12 system--it's basically been resistant to change for a century.20 years ago--Billionaire Walter Annenberg donated $1B to fix K-12--any sign of a return on his investment?Believe Gates Foundation has put $8B in over the last few years--Bill Gates personally laments they've had minimal impact. Reality is total K-12 spending in America is in excess of $550 Billion a year. Which is why Gates Foundation has little to show for $8B--injected into a system that gobbled up $2-$3 TRILLION over same period of time. Scope and scale also not appreciated. 55 million kids in school; 4+million teachers; 3 Million classrooms. For others who posted specific recommendations--pretend your wish came through--how many classrooms/teachers do you think you can transform/retrain in a year? Be bold--say you could replace/retrain teachers; revamp classroom technology, etc--at the pace of 10,000 classrooms a year.That means it will take 300 years to get done once. Not acceptable. Say 100,000 classrooms a year....then 30 years to complete the task....still not acceptable.Yishan Wong is on the right track--but additional steps are required.......once parents/citizens better understand burden is on them to force true K-12 transformation--from the bottom up....they need to become politically active/elect change agents to control our 15,000 local school boards....only when local elected officials empower brave superintendents and dedicated teachers... can many specific recommendations others posted be achieved. Every President since Ronald Reagan (Nation at Risk/1983) has been committed to improving our K-12 system. Over the last 27 years--the same can be said for every Governor, Senator, Congressman, Mayor, etc. Tens of Trillions of dollars have been spent.Instead, our K-12 system has regressed. Because parents/concerned citizens have not made the connection that the most important vote to cast every 2 or 4 years--is who to elect to run schools in their backyards.
5 manned missions to Mars, including SpaceX, have been announced so far. Will any of the 5 likely make it?
No.The Red Dragon proposal from SpaceX isn't a manned mission. At best, it's a precursor to one. It might some day turn into a manned mission, but it's many years in the future.The Mars Initiative doesn't have a plan. It's just an advocacy group that would like to have a plan.Mars One is a publicity stunt. They don't have anywhere near enough money for it. Inspiration Mars doesn't have enough money, either. And even if they did, it's just for a flyby (props to them for at least taking the landing difficulties out of the loop, which is comparatively realistic), so it's not really a mission to Mars.I'm not even entirely certain who you're naming as the fifth one. If it's Mars-X, they don't even have a real web site. You're not getting any further than Detroit with a Geocities web site.Mars is an insanely difficult problem. Mars is a thousand times further away than the Moon is. The delta-v is ten times higher. The missions are much longer than moon missions, dramatically increasing the need for supplies, and every extra kilogram increases the size and complexity of your rocket. It also means more shielding, which means more weight, and so on and so forth.Just getting a robot to Mars is dicey. And robots are a lot lighter than human beings, by the time you add in all of the extras. And like I said, when you're talking so much extra delta-v, weight matters a lot, and we're only just barely making it as it is.I'm not saying it's impossible. In fact, I'm almost certain we'll get a person to Mars. But I'm equally certain that it's not going to happen within the next decade, and at a cost many times the net worth of even the billionaires you mention. These projects are wonderful aspirations, and might even help drive the invention of the technology that will one day get us there. It will not, however, happen on an unrealistic schedule, and persistence in unrealistic schedules is going to get people killed.This isn't Columbus wandering around using well-established ships going to a place where everything he needed to stay alive was found, and where he expected to find profit on the very first voyage. Curiosity is a wonderful thing, and it will one day get us to Mars. But it's going to first have to lead us to a lot of boring technological advances that will only in aggregate enable people to get to another planet.
What can billionaires do that middle class people don't even know exist?
Meet Bill Gates the richest man of the world and his $123 Million Washington Mansion :-Here are some crazy facts about his house :-A high-tech sensor system helps guests monitor a room's climate and lighting.When guests arrive, they're given a pin that interacts with sensors located all over the house. Guests enter their temperature and lighting preferences so that the settings change as they move throughout the home. Speakers hidden behind wallpaper allows music to follow you from room to room.No other house in the world can match the ground breaking technologies available at Gates’ home.You can change the artwork on the walls with just the touch of a button.$80,0000 worth of computer screens are situated around the house. Anyone can make the screens display their favorite paintings or photographs, which are stored on storage devices worth $150,000.All together, Gates' garages can accommodate up to 23 cars.There are several different garages located at different points around the property. The most interesting one, however, is an underground cave made out of concrete and stainless steel. That garages alone can park 10 cars. Some of the concrete was purposely broken to give it a rough, "deconstructivist" look.The home theatre can accommodate 20 guests in plush seats.It's designed in an Art Deco style, with comfortable arm chairs, couches, and even a popcorn machine for snacking.An enormous library houses a manuscript Gates paid more than $30 million for.The 2,100 square foot library has a domed roof and two secret bookcases, including one that reveals a hidden bar. On the ceiling you'll find a quote from "The Great Gatsby" that reads: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it."The pool also has its own underwater music system.The 60-foot pool is located in its own separate, 3,900-square-foot building. People in the pool could swim underneath a glass wall to come up to a terrace area on the outside.There's also a locker room with four showers and two baths.Source:-Business InsiderNot Just RichImage Source:-Google
How does McKinsey (or Bain/BCG) justify business or first class travel for all of its consultants? Why can some companies do this while others can’t?
I’ll give a different answer: because the consultants really & truly work on the flights. The seat becomes a mobile office. This is not possible in most coach seats - though some ‘economy plus’ make this possible nowadays.The expectation in my office really was that you worked on most flights. Every once in a while someone might nap or watch a movie, but this was the exception to the rule.My observation is based on 7 years working with BCG teams- clearly others might have had a different experience, but I have many data points to back this up.Think about the value of a productive hour and the price premium on the airfare- it isn’t hard to justify if you are truly working.If you have a staff who’s cranking 60–70 hours a week and cutting it close to what is sustainable, losing 4–6 hours of potential productivity is actually a really big deal. Yes, there’s some perk and prestige to this as well, but the utilitarian argument actually holds water.For what it’s worth, I’ll happily take the tradeoff of working less intense hours now and only getting the occasional upgrade.