As I mentioned in my post, teaching does not reward good performers (and it doesn’t punish bad performers). It rewards seniority. This means that switching from the private sector is likely a bad idea for good performers, since they won’t be rewarded for their high quality work. The relative equality of teachers’ pay, no matter what subjects they teach, also means that becoming a novice teacher is likely a bad idea for those in hard science, math or engineering fields. I am definitely not opposed to paying some teachers much more than what they are currently earning.
I’ve applied to 5 districts, to over 100 teaching jobs. I’ve e-mailed and called principals, and showed up at their schools (some as much as an hour away) with fresh resumes.
Not only has not one single principal acknowledged me or my application, but none have even had the decency to call or email me back.
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Thanks, Snowboarder. Sam’s posts are so full of despicable half-truths, pernicious innuendo, and fallacious assumptions that I cannot respond to them calmly or reasonably. That’s a personal failing, I admit, but it’s gonna keep me out of this thread.
The amazing thing is that not only does Sam not admit to himself that this thread is a humiliating failure on his part, he will actually post something else just like it in a week or two.
He’s using the conspiracy theory playbook. A crumb of evidence, even from seventy years ago that supports your pre-conceived notions is worth more than the consensus of all currently working experts.
Actually the whole premise of wealth redistribution ,is to take it from the poor and middle class and give it to the very rich. That can be done through a tax cut for the rich. It can be done by making home loans available to the risky and foreclosing on them looting their finances during the process. It can be done by gouging the credit card users. It can be done by passing a TARP program and then deciding not to buy toxic assets, but to ladle money to the thieves that looted the banking system to give them another shot at the treasury.
That is what the Shrub did. that is what Paulson did. And now the banks are gouging consumers with outrageous fees and interest rates.
The bankers speculated their lying asses off and failed miserably. But we made them better that whole. They should be in jail. Where is your moral message to the bankers? They created the mess and are getting well rewarded.
Wow. You guys are amazing. Your ability to skirt substantive points and nitpick trivial details, then to declare the other side not just wrong, but embarrassingly so, is just phenomenal. Well done.
I posted several recent papers written by top-flight economists, published in the most prestigious journals, and you dismiss it with a hand wave.
My OP was not embarrassingly wrong. You guys just decided to unilaterally declare it so. The only ‘wrong’ thing in it was a quote from Reuters that the administration denied.
I’m beginning to think that the level of outrage displayed by some of the characters in this forum is inversely proportional to their ability to refute substantive arguments they don’t like.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/8/3/102433/0738 Every single republican admin since Reagan has governed as if deficits don’t matter. Reagan said it, Bush said it, Rove said, Cheney said it. Don’t hang the deficits on the Dems when cranking up deficits are republican economic policy. The only time they matter is when the Dems get in, then the lying repubs scream about deficits and claim to be fiscal conservatives. You would have to be blind or retarded to accept that.
Clinton fixed the deficit mess. That is what Dems do. But Obama was left with an economic disaster that required enormous expense to save the financial system. You must know that much.
Letting the stupid Bush tax cuts for the rich expire would be a big help to correcting the deficits. But, the Repubs are fighting it tooth and nail. What does that tell you about how serious they are about addressing the Bush deficits? Listen to Boehner call it a tax raise .
And of course, we know when those job losses took place. The recovery may be exceedingly weak tea, but things were heading in a much worse direction just a year and a half ago.
It never would have passed if it hadn’t included a sunset provision to make it seem less devastatingly profligate than it actually was. Now, of course, proponents of welfare for the rich want to call the expiration of these provisions a tax increase, because they know that the majority of Americans won’t remember otherwise.
So saving 140,000 teaching jobs = economic craziness? Only in right-wing looneytown.
PS You do realize that this bill is deficit neutral, right? As in, it doesnt add a penny to your frickin deficit that you are all of the sudden so goddamned worried about.
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I’m beginning to think that the level of outrage displayed by some of the characters in this forum is inversely proportional to their ability to refute substantive arguments they don’t like.
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You’ve been a member since 1999, and you are only BEGINNING to think this?
The entire argument is whether or not this will really cost 140,000 jobs. And it won’t. What we’re REALLY talking about is scaling back wage increases for teachers - wage increases that the private sector isn’t getting in the first place. Go read the post I entered about Oklahoma.
The public unions pull this shtick all the time. Give them 500 billion to pay for a 5% pay raise, then once they have it, try to cut 100 billion of it. Their answer will be, “Fine - we’ll lay off a bunch of teachers and your kids won’t get educated properly.” But of course, they could just roll back 1 or 2 percent of the pay increase they just got instead.
And when Oklahoma teachers wanted more money for pay increases, they claimed that the extra money would be deficit neutral because there was enough waste and fraud in the system that they could clean it up and it would be self-financing. But a much smaller cut in funding? Oh, there’s no slack in the system anywhere! All we can do is lay people off!
It’s the oldest negotiating tactic in the book, but it keeps working for them because they have a compliant media favorable to their cause and a whole lot of partisans willing to tell the tale on their behalf.
What is telling is the degree to which this post of yours has been essentially ignored. I was looking forward to see a rebuttal, but I guess none exists.
I haven’t sifted through all the claims and counter claims, but even if what you say is true, it’s hardly unique. Republicans claimed that a tax cut for the wealthy would be good for the country, because they would invest the money and create jobs. So they got the tax cut, and unemployment is now through the roof. Let the tax cut expire? On, there’s no slack in the system anywhere!
Well, I’ll be! I was thinking it was those financial whizzers and Wall Street fatcats who were overpaid and parasitic, but it turns out, all along, it was teachers and the their death grip on the American economy. Good thing somebody was here to connect the dot!
What are teachers pulling down now? Eleven, twelve million a year? Ha! Suck on that, you Goldman Sachs shmucks!
No. The problem is banks who caused the mess and got trillions of dollars are trying to gouge their customers. They are jacking up credit card rates regardless of how well you have paid your bill. They are jacking up and creating new fees to fleece their customers. They have gotten money so cheaply ,that they don’t need to take any risks at all. They buy treasury bonds, gouge their customers and watch the money pour in. The whole idea of making the banks stable was to get the system moving again. The banks took the money and refused to lend.
What do you do to get the economy moving? CM found they have to bypass the banks. They have to increase sales by lending money to purchase cars. The banks wont do it. They are not giving money to any risk at all. Why the hell would they?
The problem was caused by the banks and it is continuing because of them. Obama wanted the banks to make mortgages affordable to keep people in their homes. They would have been paying mortgages . The banks would be getting payments every month. The banks seem to quite content foreclosing. It has become easy after the first million or so.
