Work Hard for Your Grades, Is That Too Much to Ask?

I recently read an article on one of my favorite websites, cnsnews.com that was written by Ron Meyer. This article talked about how students are signing a petition to ‘redistribute’ GPAs, but some are too greedy to lower their grades for others. The idea of GPA redistribution looks at how those who earn higher grades would have to be willing to give their overall GPA points earned, being a lot due to great grades, to those with much less, meaning they earned much lower grades. As a result of this, those with the once high amount of GPA points and hard earned grades will not be so great and hard earned once they are redistributed to students with lower grades. GPA will be more balanced and equal as the students with poor grades, resulting in lower GPA points, will get a boost in points and overall GPA from those points that will get taken away from students with the top 10% in GPA. A student at Carthage college came up with this idea and compared it to the distribution of wealth in our country through taxes.

Photo from Flickr.com by jbenson2

Clearly, most of the response to redistribute GPA points from the top 10% to the rest of the students who have lower GPA’s was not overly positive. I know I, and many of my peers at my University, work very hard for our grades and I certainly wouldn’t want a good grade rightfully earned taken away from me simply because others aren’t working hard enough or putting in the necessary amount of time to succeed.Of course, I can see why students who have lower GPA’s love the idea of redistributing the points in their GPA; they benefit without having to put the time or effort in!

Now is that fair? Well the definition of fair is so skewed that it depends on who you’re asking.  But, from my standpoint, no, I don’t think it is fair to redistribute GPA points especially to students who didn’t work their butts off like I did to earn my grades.

The tax system in the United States works in a similar fashion to this idea of GPA redistribution. For those of you who aren’t familiar with how the distribution of income taxes work here is the most recently updated version:

Tax Brackets 2012     Single                         Married Filing Jointly               Head of Household
10% Bracket               $0 – $8,700                  $0 – $17,400                               $0 – $12,400
15% Bracket               $8,700 – $35,350          $17,400 – $70,700              $12,400 – $47,350
25% Bracket               $35,350 – $85,650        $70,700 – $142,700           $47,350 – $122,300
28% Bracket               $85,650 – $178,650      $142,700 – $217,450         $122,300 – $198,050
33% Bracket               $178,650 – $388,350    $217,450 – $388,350         $198,050 – $388,350
35% Bracket               $388,350+                            $388,350+                                       $388,350+

As the chart demonstrates, those in the lower percentage brackets pay less in taxes than those in the higher percentage brackets. Now is it fair the people earning much more in income have to give a hefty 28%-35% of their income to the government? That is up for some serious debate. One thing I ask while you try to answer that question, if it was you earning a decent amount in income and you know you worked hard to earn that income would you want to redistribute part of your income to those who possibly aren’t working as hard or not working at all?

Tough to answer, I know, because a number of individuals in the country are in fact working harder than ever and still aren’t making above $40,000 a year.

Unfortunately, this issue of taxation leads to other issues regarding our government, which is too big of a topic to tackle in one small article; however the big takeaway is that you should try to work hard for things in life because I know most people hate having a part of their achievement or success taken away from them simply because they have to share it with someone that didn’t put the time or effort in.