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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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A $100k job with summers off - for everyone - dream on.
We all love our good teachers, but they’re also a dime a dozen. Every district around here has a waitlist of candidates. College profs typically pull $100k+, but they also have advanced degrees and typically do more, ie with local industry giving the school money. K-12 give me a break.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Google TacoBell.Com....
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Dave: Anyone who does real work deserves real pay.
We are in absolute agreement then.
Perhaps you should think about what mining jobs were like before the UMW, though.
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Anyone who does real work deserves real pay. WTF does this even mean?
If your work generates no economic value, where will the money for your big important job come from?
If your job could be done by a drop-out for less money to create the same value, what will the company do to remain competitive?
As for CEO class pay - greed drives innovation and innovation is why the USA is #1. Suck it.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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If your work generates no economic value...
You mean like, for instance, a CEO?
... where will the money for your big important job come from?
From the people who create the capital by applying their labor to resources. You know the old Smith Barney line:
"We make money the old-fashioned way: we steal it."
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chipper_shredder
Social climber
outinthecuts
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 5, 2018 - 12:58pm PT
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Is the United States "number one"? Many Americans take deep pride in their nation and the truth is that the U.S. has a lot going for it
The United States has the largest economy in the world.
But the United States is also number one in a lot of categories that are not go great. If we ever want to turn this country around, we need to be very honest with ourselves.
We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that it is not a good thing that we are number one in divorce, drug addiction, debt, obesity, car thefts, murders and total crimes. We have become a slothful, greedy, decadent nation that is exhibiting signs of advanced decay. Until we understand just how bad our problems really are, we won't be able to come up with the solutions that we need.
A lot of people that write articles like this have a deep hatred for America. But that is not the case with me. I love the United States. I love the American people. America is like an aging, bloated rock star that has become addicted to a dozen different drugs. America is a shadow of its former self and it desperately needs to wake up before it plunges into oblivion.
If you do not believe that America is in bad shape, just read the list below.
-The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe
-The United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world
-The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin
-The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week
-The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet
-There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far
-There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world
-There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world
-The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world
-The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth
-The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet
-The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world
-Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world
-More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world
-The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined
-The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country, far more .
-The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second
Chip
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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America is the Fat Elvis sitting on a toilet hours on end trying to evacuate the worker bees...CEO"S work so hard that when they fall asleep they continue making money...
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chipper_shredder
Social climber
outinthecuts
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 5, 2018 - 03:29pm PT
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By Paul Buchheit / Buzzflash at Truthout
December 8, 2014, 8:46 AM GMT
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education and financial industries.
1. We're Near the Bottom of the Developed World in Children's Health and Safety
According to a 2007 United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report, the US ranked last among 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.
A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the US 24th out of 30 OECD countries for children's health and safety. It also showed the devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries, the US ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children living in households that are below 50% of the median income).
2. We've Betrayed the Young People Who Were Advised to Stay in School
Over 40% of recent college graduates are living with their parents, dealing with government loans that average $27,200. The unemployment rate for young people is about 50%. More than 350,000 Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010.
As Washington lobbyists endeavor to kill a proposed bill to reduce the interest rates on student debt, federal loans remain readily available, and so colleges go right on increasing their tuition.
Meanwhile, corporations hold $2 trillion in cash while looking for investments and employees in foreign countries, and American students are forced to accept menial positions. Yet, delusions persist about our new generation of would-be workers. Conservatives are all bubbly about today's young entrepreneurs creating their own jobs - jobs that "don't yet exist."
3. The Main Source of Middle-Class Wealth Has Been Largely Wiped Out
American homeowners owe almost as much as the students, with $700 billion of debt over and above the value of their homes.
This removes the only source of wealth for middle America, especially for blacks and Hispanics. Remarkably, for every dollar of non-home wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.
So when minority families were specifically targeted for high-risk, subprime loans that could be re-packaged and sold for a quick short-term profit, most of their assets were erased. Median wealth fell 66% for Hispanic households and 53% for black households. For whites the decline was 16%.
With a disturbing note of irony, Sanford Weill - the banker largely responsible for the reversal of the mortgage-protecting Glass-Steagall Act - was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for "extraordinary accomplishment and a call to serve."
4. We Give Prison Sentences for Smoking Marijuana, but Not for Billion-Dollar Fraud
About half of our world-leading prison population is in jail for non-violent drug offenses. Americans have also been arrested for handing out free food in a park. Mothers in Ohio and Connecticut were jailed for enrolling their kids in out-of-district schools. As of 2003, in California there were 344 individuals serving sentences of 25 years or more for shoplifting as a third offense, in many cases after two non-violent offenses.
How does the market deal with this steady tide of petty crime? It strives for more. The new trend of private prisons is dependent on maintaining a sizable prison population to guarantee profits, with no incentive for rehabilitation.
As the number of inmates has surged, the people who devastated countless American lives "get out of jail free." The savings and loan fraud cost the nation between $300 billion and $500 billion, about 100 times more than the total cost of burglaries in 2010. The financial system bailout has already cost the country $3 trillion. Goldman Sachs packaged bad debt, sold it under a different name, persuaded ratings services to label it AAA and then bet against their own financial creation by selling it short. Other firms accused of fraud and insider trading were Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Countrywide Financial, and Wells Fargo. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the Justice Department had postponed the bribery or fraud prosecutions of over 50 corporations, choosing instead to enter into agreements involving fines and "monitoring" periods.
5. You Can Have Health Care, If You Pay for It
A recent Commonwealth Fund study compared US health care spending to 12 other OECD countries. The data shows that reducing our costs to the median level of spending among the OECD countries would save us $1.5 trillion a year, more than our entire deficit.
Unfortunately, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and hospital administrators won't hear of it. There's too much money to be made. Bypass surgery in the US costs two to three times more than in Great Britain, Canada, France, and Germany. Cataract surgery costs four times more.
That's if you can pay for it. There are currently about 50 million uninsured Americans. At the other extreme are $2,400 oxymoronic penthouse hospital suites complete with butler and grand piano. Or, for those who don't get out much, emergency rooms in the home, with private cell-phone access to "concierge doctors."
Inequality in our country is so severe that 120,000 health care workers could have been hired with the salary paid to one man. That's a $40,000 salary for 40 health care workers for every one of the 3,000 counties in the United States. Instead, $5 billion dollars went to one man who reportedly made his first big haul ($4 billion, in 2007) by conspiring with Goldman Sachs in the above-mentioned short sale subterfuge.
The result of ignoring the health needs of the greater population, according to a report in the Annual Review of Public Health, is that "the health rankings of the United States have declined substantially when compared with other nations."
Conclusion
Privatization simply hasn't worked for health care, mortgage banking, higher education, or prison management. There is little incentive for profit-motivated firms to invest in disadvantaged or underemployed Americans. That's why taxes are necessary - to provide for the common good, and to return some of the gains from 60 years of productivity to the great majority of Americans who contributed to our growth. Unfortunately, the golden door on the Statue of Liberty seems to have an invisible hand holding it shut.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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To be fair you need to realize that all public service employees
(fire fighters, law enforcement, social workers, public health employees, etc.) the great, good and bad ones, all have unions and pension plans that are partially funded by taxpayers.
All public sector unions should be abolished. Where private-sector unions serve to help balance wage collusion on the management side, no such balance exists on the public side. Public-sector unions simply buy politicians and then "negotiate" with a sympathetic employer. No profit motive, no smoke-filled room full of bosses. The taxpayer simply gets screwed by an ever-growing bureaucracy with steadily diminishing accountability.
And teacher's unions are particularly cancerous.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Chipper Shredder, block posting fake news? Many (most?) of the "facts" in your first post above are demonstrably false. E.g. military spending comps, divorce rate, and total number of murders. (We are #7 total murders; #91 world murder rate.)
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Lollie
Social climber
I'm Lolli.
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Lituya,
tell me, I'm curious, how does one come to such a conclusion? You're extremely black-and-white, very hateful against something specific, i.e teacher's unions. It seems to me there must be a personal story behind it. To me there's no logic reasoning in your posts about it, why that would be good for the society, for the United States. How come you hate teachers and their unions so much?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Maybe Lietooya would rather have private charter schools where tax dollars support unaccountable school administrators...? Yes , no...?
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Well, how do private and home-schooled kids perform against their public school counterparts? Can charter schools bridge the gap by making it possible for disadvantaged kids to improve their skills? The only thing standing in the way of results-based standards are teachers unions.
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Lollie
Social climber
I'm Lolli.
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What's a charter school?
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John M
climber
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Well, how do private and home-schooled kids perform against their public school counterparts?
not a fair comparison. Most home schooled kids have motivated parents. Same with most private schooled kids. You can't put all the blame on teachers. You have oversimplified the problem. Education starts in the home.
I suggested years ago the way to balance teacher unions was with a state fund that schools could apply to in order to hire the proper lawyers to fire lousy teachers. It wouldn't take that many cases for the unions to start waking up.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Charter school is a private school bankrolled by the government and sometimes privately owned..
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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I had a GF who taught and was working with the teachers union...She could have worked for the union and made a nice salary but didn't like what the union was doing...On the other hand she didn't like how the republican government was trying to screw the teachers over...Guess there's a compromise somewhere eh...?
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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I suggested years ago the way to balance teacher unions was with a state fund that schools could apply to in order to hire the proper lawyers to fire lousy teachers. It wouldn't take that many cases for the unions to start waking up.
Now that's a great idea. One I've never heard before.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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And lets avoid confusion. Charter Schools are fundamentalist Christian education institutions.
Huh? Simply not true. Union propaganda?
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Lollie
Social climber
I'm Lolli.
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I looked it up. My kids went to one. (You know, here in socialist Sweden). It's exactly as John says. It's a very unfair comparison. They demand a lot of commitment and some work from the parents, and most parents are highly educated and very motivated. One doesn't put one's kids in one if one isn't very interested in their education, have the ability to evaluate which pedagogy appeals to you and suits your kids. (Unfortunately there wasn't any Montessori school nearby.)
Charter schools are good, but it's a fool's game to believe they suit everyone or can replace public school. My kids started out in a small village public school, a very good one, but they closed it due to too few children. Charter schools isn't the answer to anything. They are just one of many possible schoolforms.
(Homeschooling is not allowed here, and I have always been very doubtful of it. Maybe in the lowest grades, but what parent has the width of knowledge required, spanning from science to the arts and languages? Extremely limiting, I'd say.)
Edit: Very few charter schools here are religious in any way and they are publicly audited. There's no way around that, they pull the permit if it doesn't keep up to standard and school law. It's all about pedagogy.
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