Should teachers work to undermine rebellious kids? New research says rebellious kids more likely to succeed

Should oppositional defiant disorder be stamped out by teachers?

Researchers say this disagreeable personality trait displayed by Bill Gates as a kid may predict success in adulthood

Shana Lebowitz
Yahoo Business Insider
Feb. 18, 2016

(CBS/YouTube) Bill Gates as a kid. 

Around age 11, Bill Gates started to become a problem for his parents.

As his intellectual capacity grew, so did his argumentativeness. He refused to do the things his mom asked of him, like cleaning his room and showing up on time to dinner, according to The Wall Street Journal.

It came to a head one night when Gates was about 12 years old. The "tempestuous" know-it-all got into a "nasty" shouting match with his mother, according to The Journal, and his father threw a glass of water in his face. Soon after, Gates told a counselor: "I'm at war with my parents over who is in control."

Gates' adolescent behavior might seem like nothing remarkable — many of us went through similar stages of rebelliousness without growing up to be multibillionaires.

Yet a new study, published in the journal Developmental Psychology and cited by the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that there is in fact a connection between defiance and rule-breaking in adolescence and earning a high income later in life.

Back in 1968, nearly 3,000 sixth-graders living in Luxembourg took intelligence tests and answered questions about their feelings toward school. Their teachers also filled out questionnaires about the students' behavior. At the time, researchers assessed the students' family background as well.

In 2008, researchers revisited this data in order to see which childhood traits predicted career success and income. They were able to get in touch with 745 of the students, who were now about 52 years old.

Some of what the researchers found wasn't especially surprising. For example, more studious kids (as rated by teachers and by the kids themselves) went on to land better jobs.

But the researchers were surprised to find one childhood characteristic — beyond IQ, parents' socioeconomic status, and the amount of education the students attained — that predicted higher adult income: rule-breaking and defiance of parental authority.

At this point, the reason why rule-breaking preteens go on to become high-earning adults is unclear. The researchers say it's possible that people with rule-breaking tendencies are more inclined to stand up for themselves, which could lead to greater financial success.

Meanwhile, other research has yielded similar findings: One study found that agreeable (i.e. nice) adults tend to make less money than disagreeable adults. And Malcolm Gladwell argues in his book "David and Goliath" that entrepreneurs like Apple founder Steve Jobs and IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad were more successful because they were disagreeable, allowing them to take social risks and decline requests that weren't in their best interests... (read more HERE)

Jobs are not at the top of the Republican agenda;campaign contributions flow from health insurers and banks

Industry giving to GOP House leadership
Washington Post
Jan. 21, 2011
The new House committee chairmen have in many cases received campaign donations from the industries their panels oversee.



72 super PACs spent $83.7 million on election, financial disclosure reports show
By T.W. Farnam
Washington Post
December 3, 2010

The newly created independent political groups known as super PACs, which raised and spent millions of dollars on last month's elections, drew much of their funding from private-equity partners and others in the financial industry, according to new financial disclosure reports.

The 72 super PACs, all formed this year, together spent $83.7 million on the election. The figures provide the best indication yet of the impact of recent Supreme Court decisions that opened the door for wealthy individuals and corporations to give unlimited contributions.

The financial disclosure reports also underscore the extent to which the flow of corporate money will be tied to political goals. Private-equity partners and hedge fund managers, for example, have a substantial stake in several issues before Congress, primarily the taxes they pay on their earnings.
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"Super PACs provide a means for the super wealthy to have even more influence and an even greater voice in the political process," said Meredith McGehee, a lobbyist for the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for tighter regulation of money in politics.

American Crossroads, a conservative super PAC that outspent its peers, pulled in six- and seven-figure donations from the financial industry. That included $500,000 from Anne Dias-Griffin, founder of the Aragon Global Management hedge fund, and her husband, Kenneth Griffin, founder of the Citadel Investment Group hedge fund.

Crossroads, which was founded with the support of Bush administration adviser Karl Rove, raised $70 million, much of it used to support 10 Republican Senate candidates and 30 Republican House candidates...



Corporate contributions have surged for new Republican leaders in House
By Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam
Washington Post
January 22, 2011

The new Republican leaders in the House have received millions of dollars in contributions from banks, health insurers and other major business interests, which are pressing for broad reversals of Democratic policies that affect corporations, according to disclosure records and interviews.

72 super PACs spent $83.7 million on election, financial disclosure reports show
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New Republican lawmakers are hiring lobbyists, despite campaign rhetoric
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Incoming GOP freshmen rapidly embracing big-money fundraisers
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Campaign cash: Who's spending where in 2010


Much of that money flowed to the GOP chairmen overseeing banking, energy and other key committees - leaders who will play a central role in setting the House agenda over the next two years.

The impetus behind such largess is simple: Many companies and industry groups hope House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other Republicans will succeed in rolling back Democratic policies they find objectionable, including environmental and Wall Street regulations.

GOP lawmakers took their first step in that direction Wednesday by voting to repeal President Obama's health-care overhaul law. Major health-care firms and their employees gave Republican leaders at least $5 million over the past two years, including well over $2 million to Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data...



Petty Bickering Trumps Jobs Need as Republicans Vote to Repeal Health Care Reform
by Mike Hall
Jan 19, 2011

What do Republicans do with their first big chance as the U.S. House majority? Address the economy, create jobs? Nope. They vote to repeal health care reform. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the action “signals that they won’t let go of old grudges to do the work of the people.”

The nation is in its 20th straight month with unemployment above 9 percent. The electorate in November told lawmakers to “focus less on petty partisan bickering and more on jobs, jobs, jobs,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

But in their first significant action since taking majority control of the U.S. House, Republicans chose bickering instead of jobs and threw a huge hunk of red meat to their right-wing backers today by voting (245-189) to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The action came, although repeal has no chance of succeeding—the Senate will not take the measure up and President Obama has said he would not sign it...

It's time to tax the rich: Clinton did it and the economy took off

It's time to tax the rich
Contrary to the Republican mantra, Clinton did it and the economy took off.
LA Times
By Moshe Adler
November 17, 2010

The final two years of the George H.W. Bush presidency brought a creeping recession, with an unemployment rate that increased from 5.6% in 1990 to 7.5% in 1992. In June 1992, just five months before the elections, the rate reached 7.8%, and Bush lost his reelection bid ("It's the economy, stupid").

What did the new president do about the economy? President Clinton in 1993 proposed to raise the highest marginal tax rate immediately from 31% to 39.6%. In a Wall Street Journal article, Martin Feldstein, the former chief economic advisor to President Reagan and then as well as now a professor of economics at Harvard, opined that "Mr. Clinton's proposal to raise the marginal tax rates of high-income individuals would hurt incentives, weaken the economy and waste investment dollars."

This was, of course, a reincarnation of the GOP's trickle-down theory — tax cuts for the rich would eventually benefit the middle and lower classes. But Republicans did not let the fact that the Reagan tax cuts had decimated government services and created huge deficits stand in their way. Claiming that it was wrong to raise taxes on the rich in the middle of a recession, every one of them, in both houses, voted against it. Forty-one Democratic representatives and six Democratic senators joined them. The tax increase passed by only the narrowest of margins. In the House the vote was 218 to 216, while in the Senate the increase passed with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Al Gore.

And what were the consequences? In the seven years that followed, the unemployment rate decreased steadily, every single year, until it reached 4% in 2000...

Second-generation Latinos struggle for a higher foothold

Second-generation Latinos struggle for a higher foothold
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 7, 2009

Javier Saavedra slumped his burly frame into a worn, plaid couch in the cramped basement room he shares with his girlfriend and their 2-year-old daughter, his expression darkening as he ticked off all the wrong turns that had gotten them stuck below the economy's ground floor.

Raised by Mexican immigrant parents, Saavedra was a gang member by 13, a high school dropout by 16 and a father by 21. Now 23, he has been trying to turn his life around since his daughter, Julissa, was born.

But without a high school diploma, Saavedra was unable to find a job that paid enough for him and his girlfriend, Mayra Hererra, 20 and pregnant with their second child, to move out of her parents' brick home in Hyattsville.

Even the dim, wood-paneled room piled with baby toys and large plastic bags of clothing was costing them $350 a month.

"I get so upset with myself," Saavedra said. "I should have a better chance at a job [than our parents]. I want to be helping them with their bills, not them still helping me."

Millions of children of Latino immigrants are confronting the same challenge as they come of age in one of the most difficult economic climates in decades.

Whether they succeed will have consequences far beyond immigrant circles. As a result of the arrival of more than 20 million mostly Mexican and Central American newcomers in a wave that swelled in the 1970s and soared during the 1990s, the offspring of Hispanic immigrants now account for one of every 10 children, both in the United States and the Washington region.
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Largely because of the growth of this second generation, Hispanic immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren will represent almost a third of the nation's working-age adults by mid-century...

Should we educate the bottom half of our population?

Our current education system is the best in the world--for those on the top rung of our social ladder. It is barely adequate for those in the shrinking middle class: we are clearly not a nation of thinkers. But our system condemns half of our population to near-illiteracy and economic failure. This seems to be the goal of those who believe that the poor are undeserving of the same opportunities as the rich. But why do the rest of us go along with this?

I have found many little geniuses among the poor children I have taught, and a hunger for learning among all of the children I have taught. For thousands of years, civilization has flourished on the backs of laborers. Why not continue the practice of keeping half the population in quasi-servitude?

Because the rest of the world is educating millions of people who are ready to take away from the United States the title of Biggest Economy in the World.

We need to offer a good education to ALL our population if we wish to continue to dominate, our even compete successfully in, the world economy. We simply don't need as many laborers as we used to. There are too many people competing now for the shrinking blue collar labor market.