Preschool children doing activities.

According to this Harvard reviewed article, investments made in childhood education may be one of the best investment decisions as it provides value to not only to the investor but to society. However, fellow Sauder Student Alexander De Iaco’s take on this publication reveals he is against government investments into early education. Alexander’s blog post sparked my interest as it reminded me of a Reddit thread I read on the bus earlier this week. The post was a question asked about what major issue we should be concerned about as society with one of the top-level comments was on how flawed society’s perception of education is. The combination of the article, Alexander’s insight as well as my personal knowledge allowed me to provide my view on this topic.

I agree with Alexander’s point that governments should not be spending lavishly on the people as though it provides social benefit, the costs on the hard-working class will simply go up and it’s at a remarkably high rate already. Furthermore, this opens another great discussion on taxation which I will not dwell on much for the sake of the word limit but in short, taxation should not be as high as it should already according to this source and my firsthand experiences. According to the source, Canadians are paying above the OCED average, with the average taken on the richest 35 nations on the planet. Additionally, it seems like our government does not really know how to tax their citizens as well nor spend their tax revenue with examples including Trudeau’s plan to implement a special tax on retail employee’s discounted purchases when retail employees tend to make around minimum wage and the Liberal government spending over $20 000 on Snapchat filters. This and witnessing my parents pay almost 10% of their income on property taxes alone as well as myself having to drive all the way across the border to avoid a 30% duties charge on my online purchases from American companies selling Canadian made products simply makes me shoot down any arguments on tax additions. Another point of Alexander I would like to touch base on would be how early education, although significant to a child’s development can be informal too. Personally, I did not attend pre-schooling and as a Sauder student, I feel that decision didn’t mar my growth. In fact, I can relate many more of my current issues with poor experiences I had in high-school rather than my early childhood. Additionally, it is reading that is considered most important for childhood development, ridding of the “need” for a formal childhood education.

Word Count: 433

Imagery Source: Children’s Campus

Last Friday, my friends and I decided to get together and relax downtown rather than head to a Halloween-themed party as we thought that was a better idea as we were dead tired from the two midterms and major assignment we had to endure just the week prior. For dinner, we decided to eat at a fast-food restaurant we never tried before. When we walked through the door to the establishment filled with decorations resembling the 1960s, we immediately noticed a man throwing out almost an entire hamburger into the rubbish bin rather than taking it home as leftovers. This left me pondering about the vast amounts of food our society wastes on a daily basis.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that Canadians waste an estimated 40% of their food each year with households taking up just under half of the amount wasted while corporations are responsible for presumably the other chunk. This is a major issue to consider as not only is it unethical to simply disregard food while some parts of the world are starving, it creates losses well into the billions for both businesses and households alike. Simply speaking, it just doesn’t make sense for businesses to disregard absolutely fine food. Not only does doing so drain away potential revenue, it is, at least in my opinion, appalling to throw waste food while many people across the globe barely has enough to eat. In fact, while Canadians lost $31 billion worth of food last year, approximately 9 million people perished from starvation in the same year, a number greater than the Holocaust (not saying that the Holocaust was not a horrific event of humanity in any way). It simply blows my mind this issue is not as heavily addressed as it should.

Furthermore, limiting food wastes can potentially create secondary markets and deduct losses of businesses. As seen with Walmart recently, they have cut their losses from their consumables inventory by 20% since CBC Marketplace exposed the company of throwing away food by the tonnage, a remarkable accomplishment. Additionally, as noted by current shopping habits such as the increase in popularity with thrift stores and decline in purchases of expensive jewelry, society is currently at a stage where superficial concepts such as bruises on fruits and food a few days over the best before date don’t really matter anymore. Thus, it makes no sense for corporations to continue wasting food when they can still generate revenue and benefit society by selling food they’d wasted instead.

Word Count: 414

Imagery Source:

-http://seedsfoodmarket.ca/theOffice/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/15951717452_1fb8ef310e_o.jpg