http://www.getsmartaboutbanks.com/2010/11/bill-moyers-welcome-to-the-plutocracy/comment-page-1/
Here’s Moyers explaining the fight. It is not about teachers. The huge profits made in America the last few years with increased productivity and offshoring has gone to the top. Those at the top want control of everything. The intent is to remake the country. They have been doing it on a steady and clear basis.
Deficits were caused by cutting taxes, corporate tax avoidance, and unfunded wars. It was not due to teachers unions in Wisconsin.
John…
I know you will crawl out of your skin in disagreement with what I am about to say 
Teaching is different.
I know, I know…You’re jumping out of your skin at that statement.
However…if teaching was privatized and the people using the teachers were the only ones paying for them I would agree with you.
However, teaching is socialized. That makes them different. Go to any college…especially upper end ones and ask students if they are thinking of going into teaching. You will be laughed off campus. Teaching as a profession is thought of as a joke by most, if not nearly all. Why? Well, the pay of course…and respect. However, with pay comes respect in the U.S…
Teaching requires higher education. So…who do you get as teachers? You get the bottom of the barrel. Back when I was in teaching I saw stats that said half of all teachers come from the lowest 25% of college grads. When I took the GRE, the group that scored the lowest and by a HUGE margin…were education majors.
So, I am of the opinion that teachers are grossly underpaid, not overpaid. Sure, you can cut their pay…let inflation erode it etc etc…but that doesn’t mean you get less teachers…you just lower your standards.
Let’s take a different example. Let’s pick on Medicine. Say you socialized it completely and then paid doctors $30K a year…let inflation erode that over time. Don’t have promotions/pay increases so their salary never can really arise past entry level* What kind of doctors are you going to get? No, you don’t have to have a shortage…just make it really easy to become a doctor. Get your doctors from the lowest dredges of the student body. You can probably even cut their pay and still have enough doctors but does that mean they were overpaid? No…they were grossly underpaid.
Now, the doctor example doesn’t really work because if you have bad doctors, people will die. Teachers don’t have that benefit. Their teaching benefits many and over long term. It is hard, if not impossible, to see. If little Johnny didn’t become a doctor because he didn’t have a great teacher…who is to know?
Privitaizing education completely would stop this. However, we as a society have decided that free education for everyone is a prioriy. This means teachers are socialized…and it means teachers are different. You cannot analyze teacher pay by Capitalism/market forces alone**
*and before you claim BS…I was THERE. It was that way for teachers.
** I know, blasphemy!
What the heck does that even mean? (And the web site does not explain, as far as I can see.) Once someone is unemployed, he’s no longer a public sector worker. He’s not a worker at all.
Besides, plenty of people switch from the public sector to the private sector or vice-versa all the time. My wife worked for Merrill Lynch for quite a few years; now she is a public school teacher. So it’s not like these are two different classes of people we’re talking about.
So when my wife was between careers, was she an unemployed private sector worker or an unemployed public sector worker?
Where was she employed prior to becoming unemployed? Was she fired for cause, RIF’d, or resigned. Lots of factors to consider.
Let me get one thing straight. My OP had nothing to do with closing the deficit by increasing taxes on the rich. Sam was just pretending it did. It had everything to do with comparing the amount the deficit could be reduced by reducing the salaries and benefits of state workers versus an equivalent increase of taxes on the rich. Both solutions might well be necessary, and Democrats in general seem to support both spending cuts and tax increases. And increasing the amount state workers have to pay for benefits - or decreasing their salaries - is effectively equivalent to a special state worker tax.
The question was why is the impact on the economy of an increase of the taxes of the rich horrible, but an equivalent increase on taxes for the middle class desirable?
No, I would say that you are misinformed. Look at this pdf document. - particularly page 7. General fund spending has dropped as a percentage of income since 1980 - showing some spikes during recessions, as can be expected. Page 9 shows how California ranks against other states in spending as percentage of income. It is only in the top 10 in prison spending, which is hardly the fault of liberals. It ranks 23 in total expenditures and 27th in general fund expenditures.
I happen to know lots of teachers, and they are all paying for classroom supplies. Yes, students send things like tissues for the class at the beginning of the year also. But you donating supplies does not mean the teacher isn’t paying also.
The poor with students in the school may not be able to donate quite as much as we do, and the teacher costs would be higher. Is that a good thing?
The crisis today is not the result of out of control spending, it is the result of a severe drop in revenue, made worse by the relatively small amount of property tax revenue, which is more stable, as a result of Prop. 13.
I’ve got plenty more figures if you want.
Property tax example. I bought my house 15 years ago. Since that time its value has doubled (even in the downturn) and our family income has gone up about 70%. My property taxes have gone up about 10 - 15% at most. Two doors away my neighbor bough hiis house 30 years ago. He pays about 1/5 of what I do. His house is a bit smaller, but not by much. His daughter bought the house between us. I’m not exactly sure what she pays, but her house is exactly the same size as his and she pays I suspect 7x what he does, and more than we do for a bigger house. Sane? Not hardly. And businesses, who never die, get the same break.
ETA: It says page 9 on the document, but the comparison is on page 10. Also check out the school comparison on page 13 of the pdf.
Look, the Republicans and conservatives did everything they could to cut taxes for the rich by forcing the extension of the Bush tax cuts. They can’t now go in and say it would be fair to go and cut wages for middle class people. That is simply not fair by any reasonable standard. (I await the unveiling of new, unreasonable standards, however.) It is theft. It is robbery. And it is morally wrong.
Congratulations! You did a pretty good job of supporting the position on gross mismanagement of the CA budget all by yourself there.
While the population rose by 5 million over the past decade to a now whopping 40 million, despite people leaving in droves over the past few years. I find it interesting this one “fact” is not mentioned.
Things like on page 9 seem to indicate CA is not much different than any other state in terms of overall expenditure percentages, by “personal income.” Why not as a matter of state revenue as opposed to personal income? Maybe they are considered basically the same thing in CA.
They go on to show CA has even less state employees per capita than other states. Where did the money go? Are they really that well paid in CA?
I also wonder how much the folks at cbp.org spent producing the report, and why they felt compelled to even do so in the first place.
How could things be so bad when the CA government seems to be doing so good on paper? :dubious:
I’m not arguing that teachers are overpaid. I honestly don’t know, but I suspect that some states overpay and some state underpay. Somehow we figure out how much to pay cops, firefighters, military people and all those are “socialized”, too. But for some reason it seems we get stuck on teachers’ pay. Beats the hell out of me why.
If that’s the case (and I tend to agree that it is, but we haven’t supported the assertion at this point), I would venture that the job roles of the police, firefighters and military are all more defined and far less amenable to ideological dispute than the job of public school teachers. In business economics terms, the intrinsic value of the respective products of law enforcement, fire fighting and national defense is widely and evenly established in the marketplace, while that of primary and secondary public schooling is not uniform across politically influential groups.
The biggest problem with teacher’s unions is not the pay - it’s union rules around compensation, promotion, and firing. At least, from a parent’s standpoint that’s a big problem.
The typical union structure is a disaster for industries where the union workers are professionals or knowledge workers. Union rules work fine for people who are really completely interchangeable, where there is no room for differences in individual productivity, initiative, or intelligence.
An auto assembly line where everyone follows rote procedure is a perfect example of a job where union rules around promotion and seniority can make sense. If the nature of the job doesn’t allow the worker to distinguish himself against his peers, and if a worker with 20 years of experience is no more productive than one with five (or may be less productive due to age-related health issues), you need some system that rewards people for staying and prevents employers from just firing people as they age and replacing them with new blood. Sure.
But teaching, nursing, and other jobs are different. In these jobs, there is a huge difference in value from worker to worker. The difference in educational outcomes between good teachers and bad teachers is vast. Bad nurses kill people, or infect them with sloppy procedures, or increase risk to patients by not doing their rounds properly or charting properly. The great nurses innovate, improve procedures, comfort patients, etc.
In these types of jobs, treating all workers the same, promoting by seniority only, and making it almost impossible to fire the bad apples really damages the efficiency of the system. In any job where differences between workers can be large, you absolutely want to pay for performance, fire those who aren’t up to the job, and in general set up incentives that lets the best workers rise to the height of their ability and eases out those workers not suited to the job.
In private sector jobs, the turnover at the entry level can be quite high, as people are hired and let go as they find out they’re not qualified or capable of doing the job. The ones that are good stay on and are rewarded and promoted so that they have increasing impact in the organization. The non-productive workers eventually discover that they are never going to be promoted and leave to find work they are better at, or they are laid off or fired. And everyone knows that their employee reviews will make or break their careers, and that helps motivate people and keep them working.
Consider what happens in a private sector job when a recession hits - layoffs occur, and the people who are laid off are typically the ones who provide the least amount of value to the company. So the work force shrinks, but the people left have higher average productivity, making the company leaner and stronger. Then when the economy comes back, jobs open up and the company brings in fresh blood to fill the gaps. This churning process over time increases the average ability level of all the workers in the company.
But in a seniority system, that doesn’t happen. What happens is that when a recession hits (assuming the government doesn’t just borrow money to keep everyone employed), the youngest workers are let go, because they have the least seniority. The average quality of the workers doesn’t increase - but the average age does. Then when the economy recovers, more young teachers are hired. At the end of that process, the average quality of teachers is no better than it was before.
None of these incentives exist in the public school system. Everyone who’s put a kid through school or who went through school knows that there are some really bad teachers in there, and some really great ones. The most frustrating thing in the world is to see that great, young motivated teacher who loves the kids leave in frustration or be the one who is laid off because of lack of seniority, while the mean old lady who’s burned out and just marking time until retirement is untouchable.
In my personal experience, my favorite teachers were the young ones. They were the ones who were still idealistic, who had the energy to go the extra mile for the kids, who still remembered what it was like to be a kid, and who didn’t yet have families of their own pressing on their time. It was usually the older burned out teachers who sucked. Yet we have a system that retains the old ones at all cost no matter how good or bad they are, and sheds the young ones, no matter how good or bad they are. It’s simply crazy.
If you really care about the kids and not protecting the big labor unions, you should absolutely want to see a system that allows a constant influx of new teachers, incentivizes the best ones to stay and thrive, and kicks out the ones who are detrimental to your child’s education.
She was laid off from Merrill Lynch as part of a RIF, then decided to get a teaching credential, then became a teacher.
And I myself at one time was a public employee – I was a scientist at a national lab. Then I was layed off, and a few months later found a job in private industry. So when I was unemployed, was I an unemployed public employee or an unemployed private employee? I just don’t understand how it makes sense to split workers up like that.
The unemployment characterization follows the prior employment. Even after that is established, how they are counted is open to debate. There are many people working low wage jobs just to make ends meet who really consider themselves unemployed, and basically are for for all practical purposes.
Well I guess they have to make a formal definition somehow if they want to divide workers in this way, but it certainly makes no sense if one saw what I was actually doing. I had been laid off from the national laboratory, which I suppose made me an “unemployed public worker”. But I was looking for employment exclusively in the private sector.
Voyager, some time ago in another thread you gave a very well worded defense for a progressive tax system rather than a flat tax. I did a search for it recently because I wanted to read it again. I found a couple of threads , but, if you have time, do you remember what thread that was, or do you have a reading suggestion along those lines. THanks
Also, what are your thoughts on a flat tax with very large personal and child deductions to protect the poor.
I get your point , and agree that there has to be something that judges teachers and motivates them to keep doing a good job. However; Seniority ought to count for something, rather than nothing. We can’t have older employees being let go too easily. That could develop into a cruel society.
I think there needs to be a series of reviews , based on certain criteria. Performances will vary among employees and while you shouldn’t be forced to retain someone who is doing a bad job, it can’t be a free for all either.
People have been let go fairly often to avoid giving them a pension.
Exactly. Ever since then thing in WI got rolling I’ve been thinking about the rhetoric about the tax cuts at the end of last year. Conservatives are eager to defend 10% increase on the union boogy man almost ignoring the fact that these really are middle class working families, but just a few weeks ago, raising the tax rates 4% on the wealthy was inconceivable. I don’t quite understand the argument.
This isn’t even remotely true, and it has been pointed out to you in other threads. I’ll assume that you just don’t look at the links you are provided with when they debunk your assumptions.
Here is a list of contributions from public sector unions in 2010. The largest was the National Education Association with $3.6M. Three other public employee unions spent over $1M on lobbying last year.
The top five public sector employee unions spent just under $9M on lobbying last year.
The last place organization on the list of the top 20 spenders on lobbying last year was Pfizer, who spent $107M. The 20th biggest spender on lobbying Congress spent 11 times as much as the five biggest public employee unions combined.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, hardly a friend of public employees, spent nearly $750M by itself on lobbying. The list of spenders of over $100M on lobbying is full of defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and the health care industry.
Your assumptions on spending on lobbyists are not only wrong, but they are wrong by orders and orders of magnitude. This is one of those articles of faith on the right that isn’t in the same zip code as the truth.
If the “customer base” was really “captive” in the sense that it had to accept whatever product the company decided to foist on it and pay whatever price the company decided to charge for it, then that would indeed be a nice deal for the company.
But that’s not how public schools operate. Legislatures mandate the outcomes that the schools are expected to produce, and determine the amount of money that they get to produce them. And if the money is inadequate to make the outcomes happen, or if there are other factors interfering with the success of the outcomes, then the school systems are vilified as incompetent.
I don’t think that’s a situation that a lot of companies would really love. Which perhaps explains why we don’t see private companies tripping over each other to provide the public with universal general schooling.
I think you’re way overoptimistic in assuming that salaries for, e.g., cops and firefighters aren’t vulnerable to the same kind of disputes and conflicts that often affect teachers’ salaries.
St. Louis firefighter pay negotiations break down
County firefighter contract negotiations come to an impasse
Firefighters, police start contract talks
Police, firefighters gather to march on state Capitol in protest to repealing labor negotiations law
City’s talks with union sputter as firefighters balk at pay freeze
Police Union Sues To Cut Firefighters’ Pay Link
This sort of dispute is endemic among all civilian public employees. (It doesn’t work that way for active military, for different reasons.) It’s not just teachers’ pay that we “get stuck on”.
What it is, AFAICT, is that teachers serve as convenient scapegoats when someone wants to complain about the costs of public employees’ salaries and doesn’t want to appear critical of our heroic boys in blue or our courageous firefighters.
Moreover, teachers tend to be more politically liberal than police or firefighters, so they’re the natural targets for complaining about government spending.
Sure, police and firefighters are sucking on the public teat just as much as the teachers are. But when liberals receive taxpayer money they’re seen as lazy parasites, whereas when non-liberals receive taxpayer money they’re seen as somehow not really meaning to do it or not really approving of it, so it’s forgivable.
“Could develop into” he says. :rolleyes: