The Ways the Newt Gingrich -- The Next President of the United States

[houstonderek]

Cringe away. I don't mind. I should have excluded Russia (a gangsterocracy, basically), the Balkan states (irrelevant) and the Baltic states (meh). Otherwise, the balance of the European states (and the U.S.) all use a similar social market approach to economics. Some just do it better than others (Germany and Austria compared to Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal). Heck, Poland went all Princess Leia on Germany (Help us Merkel, you're our only hope!).

If that offends you, I don't know what to say.

[Ancient Sensei]

A Man In Black wrote:

Okay. I had to stop and walk away, because I read this two times and came away with the impression that you were arguing that people are poor because they are stupid and thus deserve to be poor. That is emphatically not what you mean, but it's worth mentioning that I was initially furious at something you absolutely didn't mean at all. It's worth keeping in mind how that can happen in these threads.

With as much respect as I can muster, you are overlooking the most simple solution. It isn't that 'sometimes people just take things the wrong way'. It's that, all too often, people choose to take things the wrong way. You've put wrong words in several peoples' mouths in this thread. While you have some facts straight, your approach is initially hostile, arrogant, and off-putting. Don't tell people they haven't said anything worth responding too, unless they attack you personally or intentionally miss the boat. Much like the example above, you seem to look for a fight first, and then maybe consdier what was actually said later. We don't need that. Some of us are already married.

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When you compare population explosion in poor communities and evaluate the wuality of cell phone of people working 20 hours a week for $8 an hour, the wealth gap gains some perspective.

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This is 100% BS, don't say nonsense like this. The first part is entirely fictional, no such boom actually exists. The second part is because people who only have a part time job often don't have a fixed address, making having any phone number at all difficult to maintain. That's why that program exists.

Entirely fictional? You should do some reading on generational poverty. Start with Uncle Sam's Plantation. Also, go to Wal-Mart. Poor families have more kids than they can afford. Go to an inner city neighborhood. Read a little about single parent homes and number of kids per household. Research some statistics (and evaluate them together) about early pregnancy, crime and poverty in single-parent or poor families. What does poverty do? Screw up everything. Who stays poor? People born poor whose parents rely on the system to counter their financial mistakes. No one here can really pretend they haven't heard about government intrusions that create difficulty and/or poverty. Marriage penalty. Medicare fraud. Social Security as sole retirement. Divorce to qualify for Medicaid. Increased SSA or other assistance based on number of kids (meaning more kids are had to maintain benefits, which guarantees poverty). Selling food stamps for cash. These things are out of control and they cause two problems: they screw up the economy, and they remove consequences from decisionmaking. Is every poor person a freeloader? Nope. Is every welfare dollar a waste? Nope. Do we want a culture that helps veterans and folks who can't help themselves in a generous but sustainable way? Yup.

Apply that to education: We want kids to want to learn. And we want them to learn discipline and self-reliance. We don't want participation awards. We want ribbons, parental encouragement, and a feeling that the kids did it, not the almighty teacher (who works 9 months a year for more than the average wage and as much as double the benefits of the parents being pushed to worship them)> We don't want free lunches so parents can abdicate their responsibilities. We don't want Sex Ed training that parents should do (and will do if we don't remove the obstacle). We want results from our kids, and not excuses, and that's all we ask of the schools. And if we got those results, maybe we wouldn't have much to complain about in terms of schools and lavish school buildings. But we don't have results. We have failure.

[meatrace]

Ancient Sensei wrote:

We want ribbons, parental encouragement, and a feeling that the kids did it, not the almighty teacher (who works 9 months a year for more than the average wage and as much as double the benefits of the parents being pushed to worship them)> We don't want free lunches so parents can abdicate their responsibilities. We don't want Sex Ed training that parents should do (and will do if we don't remove the obstacle). We want results from our kids, and not excuses, and that's all we ask of the schools. And if we got those results, maybe we wouldn't have much to complain about in terms of schools and lavish school buildings. But we don't have results. We have failure.

While the rest of your post, and most other posts in this thread, have been utter crap, I have to single out this bunch of b!$@$~@%.

F%~~ing what? Oh this old yarn. Teachers ONLY work 9 months a year. Closer to 10, but who's counting. Also they routinely work 50+ hour weeks. And have a higher level of education that the average kid's parents, I'm betting. Why would you bemoan the fact that they make a solid middle-class salary? Seriously, what do you hope to accomplish by pointing out that, oh no, college educated professionals make slightly more than you can get working fast food?

Yes, let's take sex ed out of the schools so that religious nutbags can refuse to teach them about sex. Weren't you just talking about being born poor and single mothers and stuff? Yeah that happens when you don't have a rigorous sex ed program. Seriously what is the argument against having sex ed in school?

Honestly, the biggest obstacle to teachers are the parents. Not directly, but in that they DON'T actively participate and encourage intellectual and personal growth, that they DO impart all sorts of weird preconceived notions on their children that become hurdles to actual education. It doesn't really help that a household relies on two incomes nowadays for the same level of prosperity as opposed to 30-40 years ago.

[BigNorseWolf]

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Actually, BNW, as indicated by my quotation of Dewey many posts above, corporations want well-educated people.

They do... for some positions. They just don't want to pay for them. There are several ways the corps can have their cake and eat it too: import people, let the states run education, set up shop in a low tax low education state and hire people from the better educated states, let people pay for their own tuition etc.

Most of all, you can just let inner city schools go to absolute hell (the ones that haven't already) They're an inefficient use of funds, and aren't necessarily to supply the worker pool.

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It's the progressive view of government that doesn't.

Oh hogwash. Seriously McCarthy the cold war is over.

Where exactly are these socialist values being taught? Science is science, I can't remember a single political argument falling out of literature/english as i was falling asleep, health class?

The only possible chance where you can tilt it towards a socialist agenda (OoooooOOOOoooo) is civics or history, and history at least is more of a collective "Ra ra sis boom ba GooooOOOOo America!" common theology than history.

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Pursuing those goals isn't greed. It's responsible stewardship of the job they're given.

Right. Bribing the government until the ceo is paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries is "good stewardship"

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But fines to the government for no good reaon at all. The government gets involved, and everything becomes less efficient. Minimum wage is another great example.

Yes, because things were great before minimum wage.

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And of course, education. The government gets involved and education sucks more. A series of statistics compiled by the Department of Education between 2001-2003 tell us that American kids in public schools number among the 92nd percentile in science literacy. As fourth graders. They rank at 29% by the time they become seniors. For the same age groups, students fall from 58% to 14% in math. More governemtn, and longer control over our kids' education by that government, is bad for us all.

Ok, so either the curriculum isn't challenging the kids, or there's a liberal conspiracy afoot to keep kids dumb.

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And final myth to dispel is the notion that charter schools only perform better because they cherry-pick their students. I hear that all the time, but then when I provide examples of schools built in specifically poor, under-educated neighborhoods, and illustrate how they smoke their public school competition without selecting students, without gaming the system

They are still gaming the system.

First of all, not every kid in a neighborhood is created equal. You grab the smart kids where ever you go, or at least the ones who's parents are motivated.

Secondly, they are not stuck teaching the very money intensive special needs kids.

Third, if a kid under-performs they go out the door. A public school can't get rid of under performing kids like that.

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Charter school attract students who want to learn, maybe. That is not a detractor form the claim that charter schools do better with fewer resources.

Its a deathknell to your argument that government is the problem, especially when many of these charter schools are GOVERNMENT RUN.

Also consider this: Charter schools get the best teachers. Not all teachers can be the best. Its just a fact of life, some people are better at their job than others. If the charter school model was forced to expand they would see a decline in teacher quality.

Its not that i don't like education reform: I'm all for eliminating the first two years of college and leveling the liberal arts building to cram in more engineers. But eliminating the federal government is not going to be the pancea you think it is.

[A Man In Black]

Ancient Sensei wrote:

Actually, BNW, as indicated by my quotation of Dewey many posts above, corporations want well-educated people. It's the progressive view of government that doesn't. Look at Dewey, and the desire by his crowd to take over education in order to create a docile, easily manipulated workforce. Lenin said "give me your 4-year-olds and I'll make a socialist state". (paraphrase) Marx wrote that public education ranked right up there with seizing private property in the establishment of a social state. Hitler only wanted national standardizing of textbooks.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but the Communist Manifesto and the April Theses stopped being considered "progressive" by time Mao went into power and everyone realized that the governments they proposed were doomed to become totalitarian oppression. Gonna hit us with some quotes from the little red book next?

Most progressives who were born since the October Revolution consider universal education to be pretty important!

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I know of exactly ZERO liberal small business owners that don't have their accoutnants showing as much of a loss as possible every single year. Where's their bold dedication to the collective?

And conservative small business owners are all eager to pay extra taxes any time they can? That's how deductions work, unless it's fraud, in which case it's a crime.

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If Buffet thinks the wealthy should all be paying higher taxes, why doesn't he just pay more than he ought to help everyone out? Maybe he should start by having his companies actually pay their calculated taxes first.

Because dumping a lump of money into the government won't fix the system he sees as broken, just give the government some money. He's only one person, even a fantastically wealthy person, so he can only do so much.

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GOvernment is an obstacle to survival. A rainstorm is nothing to an airline - routine. But LaGuardia darn near closed down last week because airlines can no longer risk a weather delay or other emergency, which will result in huge fines to the government. Not refunded tickets or extended miles or however else a good customer servant would handle disappointed customers. But fines to the government for no good reaon at all. The government gets involved, and everything becomes less efficient. Minimum wage is another great example.

This is nonsense. The airlines are going to fine the government, so the government closed LaGuardia? What? What's going on here? This is why links are helpful: they make sure that people aren't just making things up, give context to allow for people to find alternate perspectives, and also make sure that, if worst comes to worst and the poster is completely incoherent, gives some clues to help people puzzle out what's going on.

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And of course, education. The government gets involved and education sucks more. A series of statistics compiled by the Department of Education between 2001-2003 tell us that American kids in public schools number among the 92nd percentile in science literacy. As fourth graders. They rank at 29% by the time they become seniors. For the same age groups, students fall from 58% to 14% in math. More governemtn, and longer control over our kids' education by that government, is bad for us all.

Contextless numbers are super useful. The 92 percentile of what?

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52% of the staff of public schools are teachers. 80% of the staff or private schools are teachers.

CITATION NEEDED.

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And final myth to dispel is the notion that charter schools only perform better

NO, THEY DON'T PERFORM BETTER AT ALL. I've only linked it in this thread two or three times now!

They just don't! You don't have to come up with some sort of explanation for why charter schools outperform other schools because most of the time charter school students end up with comparable or worse test scores.

houstonderek wrote:

Cringe away. I don't mind. I should have excluded Russia (a gangsterocracy, basically), the Balkan states (irrelevant) and the Baltic states (meh). Otherwise, the balance of the European states (and the U.S.) all use a similar social market approach to economics. Some just do it better than others (Germany and Austria compared to Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal). Heck, Poland went all Princess Leia on Germany (Help us Merkel, you're our only hope!).

That approach to economics is not Austrian, plus you forgot the UK and Scandinavia, neither of which even vaguely resemble France or Germany/Spain. That said, we're starting to get above my punching weight for economic education, though, to the point where I can identify problematic statements but not make affirmative ones. I can only warn you to take what you read on mises.org with a titanic grain of salt, and read what people write in comments there as humor material only.

Ancient Sensei wrote:

A Man In Black wrote:

Okay. I had to stop and walk away, because I read this two times and came away with the impression that you were arguing that people are poor because they are stupid and thus deserve to be poor. That is emphatically not what you mean, but it's worth mentioning that I was initially furious at something you absolutely didn't mean at all. It's worth keeping in mind how that can happen in these threads.

With as much respect as I can muster, you are overlooking the most simple solution. It isn't that 'sometimes people just take things the wrong way'. It's that, all too often, people choose to take things the wrong way. You've put wrong words in several peoples' mouths in this thread. While you have some facts straight, your approach is initially hostile, arrogant, and off-putting. Don't tell people they haven't said anything worth responding too, unless they attack you personally or intentionally miss the boat. Much like the example above, you seem to look for a fight first, and then maybe consdier what was actually said later. We don't need that. Some of us are already married.

I call out my own mistake, one I could never have mentioned and you would never have known, as a mea culpa. You take the opportunity to stick in the knife. That's class.

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Poor families have more kids than they can afford. word salad about welfare, quickly drifting from the main point

Here's some interesting facts. When you control for the other, better education causes people to have fewer kids, and better income causes people to have more.

But it's a tautology that poor families have more kids than they can afford, because they can afford zero. If your solution to generational poverty is to tell poor people to never have kids, that isn't a solution that anyone can actually implement without monstrous implications.

Now, here is the magnum opus of misconceptions about schools.

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Apply that to education: We want kids to want to learn.

Sure.

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And we want them to learn discipline and self-reliance.

Nope. Don't get me wrong, discipline is great. Self-reliance is a Randian whistleword for "asking for help, working with people, and compromising makes you a failure." We could do with less people gabbing on about self-reliance and more people teaching kids cooperation and compassion.

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We don't want participation awards.

Why? They work, if the parents aren't dumping on them and telling the kids that they're worthless. I thought we were teaching kids discipline, not competitiveness. A paycheck is a participation reward.

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We want ribbons, parental encouragement, and a feeling that the kids did it

Oh. These are different from participation rewards... how? I guess the parents aren't dumping on them for getting them!

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not the almighty teacher (who works 9 months a year for more than the average wage and as much as double the benefits of the parents being pushed to worship them)

Talking points! Teachers aren't paid that well, their benefits are about typical for a union job, and who's pushing parents to worship teachers? That's kind of a WTFer.

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We don't want free lunches so parents can abdicate their responsibilities.

No, we want free lunches so cripplingly poor kids can eat and learn instead of starve and not. This is not only a human compassion thing, but also an incredibly effective program.

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We don't want Sex Ed training that parents should do (and will do if we don't remove the obstacle).

Um. Didn't you want to decrease the birth rate among poor families? Why do you think the birth rate is higher when the level of education is lower, hm?

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We want results from our kids, and not excuses, and that's all we ask of the schools.

And also a pony.

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And if we got those results, maybe we wouldn't have much to complain about in terms of schools and lavish school buildings. But we don't have results. We have failure.

A failure of something, anyway.

-edit-

VVV Also that.

[Smarnil le couard]

houstonderek wrote:

Cringe away. I don't mind. I should have excluded Russia (a gangsterocracy, basically), the Balkan states (irrelevant) and the Baltic states (meh). Otherwise, the balance of the European states (and the U.S.) all use a similar social market approach to economics. Some just do it better than others (Germany and Austria compared to Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal). Heck, Poland went all Princess Leia on Germany (Help us Merkel, you're our only hope!).

If that offends you, I don't know what to say.

I believe he meant to underscore that austrian school economics were NEVER used in Austria despite their name, nor in any european countries.

It was forcibly applied to many third world countries by the IMF in exchange for a bailout, each time with absolutely disastrous results for the population in the short and medium term (by this, I mean at least a decade of growing poverty for the lower and middle class).

The only country where Austrian economics seems to have worked according to plan was Pinochet's Chile. Because they DID shrink their labor force (starving to death, summary executions of bothersome leftists and forced exile being favorite means of labor force adjustment).

I don't think that particular economic theory is still taken seriously, but who knows?

[houstonderek]

Smarnil le couard wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

Cringe away. I don't mind. I should have excluded Russia (a gangsterocracy, basically), the Balkan states (irrelevant) and the Baltic states (meh). Otherwise, the balance of the European states (and the U.S.) all use a similar social market approach to economics. Some just do it better than others (Germany and Austria compared to Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal). Heck, Poland went all Princess Leia on Germany (Help us Merkel, you're our only hope!).

If that offends you, I don't know what to say.

I believe he meant to underscore that austrian school economics were NEVER used in Austria despite their name, nor in any european countries.

It was forcibly applied to many third world countries by the IMF in exchange for a bailout, each time with absolutely disastrous results for the population in the short and medium term (by this, I mean at least a decade of growing poverty for the lower and middle class).

The only country where Austrian economics seems to have worked according to plan was Pinochet's Chile. Because they DID shrink their labor force (starving to death, summary executions of bothersome leftists and forced exile being favorite means of labor force adjustment).

I don't think that particular economic theory is still taken seriously, but who knows?

Well, that was more the Chicago School variant (Friedman), but yeah, that's pretty much what I meant.

And, actually, Pinochet moved toward some of Allende's ideas towards the end of his reign, as Chile was pretty much going nowhere in the '80s.

Nice one about the IMF. To quote myself from another thread:

"...we should stop supporting the World Bank and the IMF. Both just retard the ability of nations to grow organically, and force them to accept Western style "open" markets at a time most aren't developed enough to not be completely exploited by us."

Edit: Oh, and forgot to add: Um, Scandanavia and Great Britain most definitely do have social market economies. They just vary in degrees from the German "norm".

[meatrace]

houstonderek wrote:

Well, that was more the Chicago School variant (Friedman),

Damn you to hell, Milton Friedman

*shakes fist*

[Smarnil le couard]

houstonderek wrote:

Well, that was more the Chicago School variant (Friedman), but yeah, that's pretty much what I meant.

And, actually, Pinochet moved toward some of Allende's ideas towards the end of his reign, as Chile was pretty much going nowhere in the '80s.

Nice one about the IMF. To quote myself from another thread:

"...we should stop supporting the World Bank and the IMF. Both just retard the ability of nations to grow organically, and force them to accept Western style "open" markets at a time most aren't developed enough to not be completely exploited by us."

Edit: Oh, and forgot to add: Um, Scandanavia and Great Britain most definitely do have social market...

Agreed, Chicago school is the evil spawn of austrian economics. Both treat the labor pool as an adjustment variable, blissfully ignoring the social consequences of their policies.

And I'm offended : what about the french norm? (just kidding).

Just for the sake of our discussion, some posts ago, it seems that the OECD just released new statitics about healtcare in rich countries. Administrative costs (mostly private) are way higher in the US than anywhere else..

[houstonderek]

Smarnil le couard wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

Well, that was more the Chicago School variant (Friedman), but yeah, that's pretty much what I meant.

And, actually, Pinochet moved toward some of Allende's ideas towards the end of his reign, as Chile was pretty much going nowhere in the '80s.

Nice one about the IMF. To quote myself from another thread:

"...we should stop supporting the World Bank and the IMF. Both just retard the ability of nations to grow organically, and force them to accept Western style "open" markets at a time most aren't developed enough to not be completely exploited by us."

Edit: Oh, and forgot to add: Um, Scandanavia and Great Britain most definitely do have social market...

Agreed, Chicago school is the evil spawn of austrian economics. Both treat the labor pool as an adjustment variable, blissfully ignoring the social consequences of their policies.

And I'm offended : what about the french norm? (just kidding).

Just for the sake of our discussion, some posts ago, it seems that the OECD just released new statitics about healtcare in rich countries. Administrative costs (mostly private) are way higher in the US than anywhere else..

And Austria was one of the founding nations of the OECD, you know, just to throw that in.

[A Man In Black]

houstonderek wrote:

"...we should stop supporting the World Bank and the IMF. Both just retard the ability of nations to grow organically, and force them to accept Western style "open" markets at a time most aren't developed enough to not be completely exploited by us."

This is a headscratcher. What do you think that the World Bank and the IMF do? Not why they're bad, not the nasty consequences of their actions, but in your own words, what purpose do you think they serve?

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Um, Scandanavia and Great Britain most definitely do have social market economies. They just vary in degrees from the German "norm".

Another headscratcher. Again, we're starting to punch above my weight, but if you mean Freiburg economic thinking, yeah, that's continental Europe and Scandinavia, but it's not post-Thatcher UK or Mediterranean Europe or the Baltics or Russia or most of the former USSR. So if you mean continental Europe and Scandinavia (with some influence in Canada, actually), that makes more sense. The UK is much more neoclassical, as is the US.

Of course, Freiburg economics require a strong government and strong, national trade unions protecting the social welfare and promoting economic growth and fair competition. So I'm thinking we might not be on the same page here, unless I've grossly misunderstood your politics.

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And Austria was one of the founding nations of the OECD, you know, just to throw that in.

Austria does not practice Austrian economics and never has. It's was (derisively!) named by classical economists (who, at the time, were mostly French and German) because the proto-Austrians lived in Vienna.

So what Austria does has nothing all to do with the nationality of Misters Mises, Menger, von Wieser, etc. If they had lived in Reykjavik, it would be called Icelandic economics.

[houstonderek]

I have no idea what you think my politics are, so I couldn't tell you.

Mediterranean Europe doesn't know what they are from day to day. Italy post-Berlusconi will look radically different than it did with him running the show. Spain took a complete 180 in the post-Madrid bombing elections. Greece hasn't had a stable government since Leonidas, as far as I can tell.

But, they've all tried to do what their big brothers up north do. They just aren't very good at it. I think it interferes with the womanizing and wine debauches. Or maybe it's just something about olive oil. Who knows? (I'm of Italian descent, don't trip).

Great Britian? Eh. They make neoclassical noises from time to time, but they're still a social market nation.

And, yeah, I wasn't throwing in the Austria thing about the OECD because of Mises, I was just throwing it in because I thought it was neat the dude brought up the OECD, Austria was a founding member, and we happened to be discussing Austria. *shrug*

[A Man In Black]

houstonderek wrote:

I have no idea what you think my politics are, so I couldn't tell you.

Well, in this thread you've decried the evils of the NEA and the USED (and broadly US administration of schools in general), yet I think you were just defending Freiburg economic thinking, which fundamentally requires strong government maintenance of social welfare programs (like education) and strong, national worker's unions (like the NEA).

So I'm pretty sure I've completely misunderstood something here.

[houstonderek]

A Man In Black wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

I have no idea what you think my politics are, so I couldn't tell you.

Well, in this thread you've decried the evils of the NEA and the USED (and broadly US administration of schools in general), yet I think you were just defending Freiburg economic thinking, which fundamentally requires strong government maintenance of social welfare programs (like education) and strong, national worker's unions (like the NEA).

So I'm pretty sure I've completely misunderstood something here.

Actually, if you've really followed my posts for a while, I have professed admiration for Central European trade unions. They actually do a good thing. I just think American unions are counterproductive. They're poorly managed, riddled with incompetence and generally protect the union before they protect the workers.

And the USED also is a joke. Europe does a much better job of not wasting tax payers money. They get a hell of a lot more bang for the buck (if you didn't notice, I mentioned that Austria spends a comparable amount per student and gets much better results than we do. As do most European nations, some of whom spend a couple thousand less per student than we do).

I just hate inefficiency. And our government is horribly inefficient. As are our unions.

[A Man In Black]

houstonderek wrote:

Actually, if you've really followed my posts for a while

Uh, no, not really. I read this thread. I also drew a line from wanting to abolish the USED to hating the NEA to professing admiration for the Austrian school of economics, Mises and all, that's all. Oh well, live and learn.

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Eh. [The UK] make neoclassical noises from time to time, but they're still a social market nation.

You know, I'm gonna shut my mouth. You're not British, neither am I, but this board totally does have politically-inclined Brits, so we're only going to embarrass ourselves following this path. Let's not.

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And the USED also is a joke. Europe does a much better job of not wasting tax payers money. They get a hell of a lot more bang for the buck (if you didn't notice, I mentioned that Austria spends a comparable amount per student and gets much better results than we do. As do most European nations, some of whom spend a couple thousand less per student than we do).

I just hate inefficiency. And our government is horribly inefficient. As are our unions.

Okay.

It's not the USED's fault that the US education system is inefficient. It doesn't actually run the schools or anything. Bear in mind, the USED is a relatively recent invention, and their main mandate is to manage disbursement of federal moneys to schools and would-be students. They also enforce civil rights laws and have a bit of a role in special education. The US educational system is run by the states, and if the USED were abolished, then either the federal government would need to stop giving money to the states for schools, or would need to form a new bureaucracy to manage the way in which it does so, probably as part of the Department of Health and Human Services again. (Before 1979, HHS was the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.) Love them or hate them, that is one of the things hires bureaucrats to do: administer accounts payable. NCLB is a trainwreck, but that's probably its own post's worth and I may have posted it already, can't be arsed to check.

I'm curious, though. What do you have against the NEA? How would you make US unions more efficient?

[Smarnil le couard]

houstonderek wrote:

Mediterranean Europe doesn't know what they are from day to day. Italy post-Berlusconi will look radically different than it did with him running the show. Spain took a complete 180 in the post-Madrid bombing elections. Greece hasn't had a stable government since Leonidas, as far as I can tell.

But, they've all tried to do what their big brothers up north do. They just aren't very good at it. I think it interferes with the womanizing and wine debauches. Or maybe it's just something about olive oil. Who knows? (I'm of Italian descent, don't trip).

Not tripping, but you are quite unfair to those countries.

Granted, Berlusconi is a clown, but he changed nothing in the grand scheme of things: essentially he abstained from making bothersome decisions.

In Spain, regardless of which party runs the governemnt (Socialist Party or Popular Party), the policies stay quite far left from your point of view. They are plainly in the european tradition of social welfare-soft capitalism.

And Greece problem isn't a lack of political stability, it's TOO MUCH political stability. The power goes back and forth between two parties (PASOK and... I don't remember the other one at the moment) ran by powerful families, so convinced that they own the place that they have done absolutely nothing for the country for decades (sounds familiar?). Greeks from the street work as much as you and I, but their politicians are a sad joke.

They are saddled with a aberrant tax code inherited from the military junta, where the most powerful players, that is the orthodox church and the shipping industry, are exempted from absolutely ALL taxes (that includes businesses owned by the church. I'm not speaking about tax free donations here). So the burden falls squarely on small businesses and middle class families, who in retaliation do their best to evade tax... Somehow, nobody worked up the courage to put up a more efficient taxation system, and it's no wonder that the greek government has trouble financing itself.

Add to this some book cooking (with the kind help of our Goldman Sachs friends) to hide some debts under the rug, et voila !

[houstonderek]

Smarnil le couard wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

Mediterranean Europe doesn't know what they are from day to day. Italy post-Berlusconi will look radically different than it did with him running the show. Spain took a complete 180 in the post-Madrid bombing elections. Greece hasn't had a stable government since Leonidas, as far as I can tell.

But, they've all tried to do what their big brothers up north do. They just aren't very good at it. I think it interferes with the womanizing and wine debauches. Or maybe it's just something about olive oil. Who knows? (I'm of Italian descent, don't trip).

Not tripping, but you are quite unfair to those countries.

Granted, Berlusconi is a clown, but he changed nothing in the grand scheme of things: essentially he abstained from making bothersome decisions.

In Spain, regardless of which party runs the governemnt (Socialist Party or Popular Party), the policies stay quite far left from your point of view. They are plainly in the european tradition of social welfare-soft capitalism.

And Greece problem isn't a lack of political stability, it's TOO MUCH political stability. The power goes back and forth between two parties (PASOK and... I don't remember the other one at the moment) ran by powerful families, so convinced that they own the place that they have done absolutely nothing for the country for decades (sounds familiar?). Greeks from the street work as much as you and I, but their politicians are a sad joke.

They are saddled with a aberrant tax code inherited from the military junta, where the most powerful players, that is the orthodox church and the shipping industry, are exempted from absolutely ALL taxes (that includes businesses owned by the church. I'm not speaking about tax free donations here). So the burden falls squarely on small businesses and middle class families, who in retaliation do their best to evade tax... Somehow, nobody worked up the courage to put up a more efficient taxation system, and it's no wonder that the greek government has trouble...

Eh, I think you're too soft on them. ;=)

[houstonderek]

A Man In Black wrote:

The post above which wouldn't fit.

Ok, I'll stop talking about the U.K. Maybe Mr. Watson can chime in on the subject.

As to unions. Hmm. Between squandering their members pension funds (don't make me site the bazillion sources for that), pricing themselves out of the global market (UAW before the recent shake up in Detroit, the steel industry, etc) by not recognizing a changing paradigm, seventy plus years of mob influence (the big bust in NYC recently? Quite a bit of union racketeering in those indictments from a supposedly "dead" mafia), blindly protecting incompetent workers, ridiculous job pool benefits (again the UAW, some of the AFL/CIO), and generally being oblivious to self preservation, I can't think of a thing wrong with them.

Now, companies have quite a bit of the blame for a lot that went wrong as well (GM and Chrysler not rolling with the times and continuing to crank out gas guzzlers during the crisis in the '70s, designing uninspired crap in the '80s, clinging to SUVs and big trucks that sold well in the $0.99 a gallon '90s well into the "gotta take out a mortgage to fill the tank" 2000s), the whole Pullman debacle that made unions a good idea in the first place (see also: just about every industry in the 1800s), etc, but, after a certain point, when labor had the upper hand, they needed to lay off the gas. And they didn't.

Now, the crisis a couple of years ago with GM and Chrysler reigned in the UAW, so those makers might get on track again, we'll see. And maybe that union learned something (it's kind of odd that, right now, Deep South non-union shops (Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, etc) pay better than Detroit union shops (Detroit went from an average of $28 - @$70 with benes - an hour to a starting wage of $15 an hour).

[Paul Watson]

Mr Watson will do his best to contribute but the discussion is already at the margins of my competency. What do you want to know?

[houstonderek]

Paul Watson wrote:

Mr Watson will do his best to contribute but the discussion is already at the margins of my competency. What do you want to know?

Basically I was arguing that the UK runs their version of the social market economy that many of the Continental countries indulge in. aMiB, if I get his argument correctly, says it's closer to our neoliberal system.

Neither of us are Brits, so we agreed to stop talking about it as we're pretty much observing from a distance. I invoked your name as you're the most frequent poster on these type threads from said island kingdom.

[Comrade Anklebiter]

A Man In Black wrote:

I'm not sure if you noticed, but the Communist Manifesto and the April Theses stopped being considered "progressive"

Hey--those are both great reads!

And you're wrong about The Communist Manifesto. Some of the European socialist parties (revisionist traitors, imho, but I bet they still qualify as "progressive"--a word, I hate, btw) still trace their roots to Marx so pbbbt.

Mao did suck, though.

[Paul Watson]

houstonderek wrote:

Paul Watson wrote:

Mr Watson will do his best to contribute but the discussion is already at the margins of my competency. What do you want to know?

Basically I was arguing that the UK runs their version of the social market economy that many of the Continental countries indulge in. aMiB, if I get his argument correctly, says it's closer to our neoliberal system.

Neither of us are Brits, so we agreed to stop talking about it as we're pretty much observing from a distance. I invoked your name as you're the most frequent poster on these type threads from said island kingdom.

We're a lot closer to the European model than we like to think. The mere existence of something like the National Health Service says we're not neoliberal. Also, with a lot of the rules noe coming via the European Union mechanism (which a large part of the media hates with a fiery passion) we're probably going to stay that way. We are however much more laissez faire than most of Europe and as you've said, we make a lot of noises about being neoliberal. The current government is trying to cut spending and get the market more involved so they are probably more neoliberal than the country as a whole.

As always, the UK is caught between two horns. We want European level services and American level taxes. So far, this circle hasn't been squared.

[houstonderek]

Thanks for the clarification. It makes sense, since Adam Smith and John Locke had such an influence on our early politicians. I'm sure they are still admired by some in the U.K.

[thejeff]

I think it has less to do with the UKs early politicians and more with changes since the '80s. The UK had a very robust, very European like model, which Thatcher began to dismantle. Since then the trend has continued, just not as aggressively.

If the UK is not as far gone as the US, it's because they had farther to go.

The current government has pushed strong austerity measures to deal with the economic crisis and is, as any Keynesian would have predicted, dropping back into recession.

[Comrade Anklebiter]

houstonderek wrote:

As to unions. Hmm. Between squandering their members pension funds (don't make me site the bazillion sources for that), pricing themselves out of the global market (UAW before the recent shake up in Detroit, the steel industry, etc) by not recognizing a changing paradigm, seventy plus years of mob influence (the big bust in NYC recently? Quite a bit of union racketeering in those indictments from a supposedly "dead" mafia), blindly protecting incompetent workers, ridiculous job pool benefits (again the UAW, some of the AFL/CIO), and generally being oblivious to self preservation, I can't think of a thing wrong with them.

Now, companies have quite a bit of the blame for a lot that went wrong as well (GM and Chrysler not rolling with the times and continuing to crank out gas guzzlers during the crisis in the '70s, designing uninspired crap in the '80s, clinging to SUVs and big trucks that sold well in the $0.99 a gallon '90s well into the "gotta take out a mortgage to fill the tank" 2000s), the whole Pullman debacle that made unions a good idea in the first place (see also: just about every industry in the 1800s), etc, but, after a certain point, when labor had the upper hand, they needed to lay off the gas. And they didn't.

Now, the crisis a couple of years ago with GM and Chrysler reigned in the UAW, so those makers might get on track again, we'll see. And maybe that union learned something (it's kind of odd that, right now, Deep South non-union shops (Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, etc) pay better than Detroit union shops (Detroit went from an average of $28 - @$70 with benes - an hour to a starting wage of $15 an hour).

I missed the big NYC bust, what was that all about?

There was an article I posted while you were away, Citizen HD, by a guy named Greg Shotwell (I think) who runs some kind of rank-and-file UAW newsletter called something like Live Bait and Ammo. I don't really know who he is, but I found the article posted on two different socialist sites.

Anyway, he made the claim, and I don't know whether it's true or not, that contract after contract, the UAW contractual raises were quite modest. Why they ended up making so much money was that the UAW had an iron-clad cost of living clause and, unlike almost every other working American, as inflation and costs rose throughout the seventies and eighties, the COLA clause kept kicking in.

I don't know how true it was/is, but EDIT: if true, what it indicates to me is that, far from keeping the pedal to the metal, the unions were only maintaining the standards that they had already won while the rest of the American working class saw their wages depreciate in value until now you need both partners to work three or four jobs in order to pay for health care, housing and a possible college education for your children.

(We just got a COLA raise at UPS this past summer--19 cents, woo hoo!--but I won't get it until I'm out of progression--2 1/2 years from now, boo hoo! Another UPS-related tidbit that I can't help but think of everytime you counterpose American vs. German trade unions: When UPS first began operations in the Federal German Republic in the 70s, they met with the union (don't recall the name, sorry) and laid out what they demanded of their employees in America. The German union said "You hire twice as many people and we'll think about doing it.")

The decline in the postwar American economy that began around Nixon's time was met, time and time again, with the major American unions accepting "two-tier" contracts where new hires were sold out so that the old-timers could keep their awesome contracts. (I don't think the UAW ever had any such two-tiers until very recently--the same Shotwell article claimed that when he was hired in the late 70s/early 80s he made top rate in 30 days!!! I am quite jealous.) Anyway, I find it hard to reconcile what you claim about unions in the seventies with what my comrades taught me when I was a young goblin militant, but I doubt we'll ever agree on this issue.

Although as a shop steward, I do blindly defend incompetent workers, partly because I'm socialist, but mostly because it pisses the bosses off! Hee hee!

[Ross Byers]

I removed a post. What people do in other parts of the internet is their business.

[Don Juan de Doodlebug]

Ross Byers wrote:

I removed a post. What people do in other parts of the internet is their business.

[Scurries off to Bang Brothers]

[Frogboy]

thejeff wrote:

Remember that everything, including finding a job, uses your credit rating now.

The bigger problem in my opinion is that there are too many people looking for work and not enough jobs because of our economy. When employers can be as picky as they are now, yes some people will get singled out.

Frogboy wrote:

"correct the problem free of charge"? You do realize that doctors can make mistakes they cannot correct, right? The most obvious being death.
Should that just be "Sorry, we made a mistake. We'll won't charge you for this visit."? Or, short of death should there be any compensation for being permanently crippled? Short of free treatment, which that doctor may not be able to provide, it...

There's no silver bullet that will fix any complex problem. Expecting automatic perfection from our doctors is unreasonable. We ask (no demand) their services with the expectation that nothing will ever go wrong. Those kinds of services are not going to be affordable to everybody. Unwieldy lawsuits are one of the bigger problems, IMO.

It doesn't surprise me that tort reform doesn't work in a bubble, especially one that is smaller than the bubble that encompasses many health insurance companies. They still have to support patients in other states.

Tort reform does lower the cost of insuring a person. If this doesn't solve the problem then there is another one or more that need worked out.

Quote:

A safer and preferable environment that doesn't perform any better on average? That's what we're up in arms about? Is it possible that there are way more parents that want their children to go to these charter schools because they mistakenly believe, as you did, that these schools are better? In the great free-market school utopia you envision, I wonder how much of the budget will be spent on the advertising budget. Will that be a better investment than actually improving the schools?

Charter schools are another small bubble that can only fix part of the problem. I've been to both public and private schools and in more than one district. There is a big difference in education level between inner city public schools, private schools and some suburban public schools.

One of the biggest problems that I have been arguing against is the one size fits all nature of our education system. I personally do not care for the age-based structure of our school system as age has almost no bearing on what a child can learn or how quickly they learn. My son would get a much better education at a Montessori school. Many other children would as well. Most of us do not have this option available and I don't understand why we are actively fighting against good ideas that could emerge in a privatized business model. We take way too long to adapt in this country.

[A Man In Black]

houstonderek wrote:

As to unions. UAW, UAW, and UAW again

So. What about the unions that aren't UAW?

[thejeff]

Frogboy wrote:

thejeff wrote:

"correct the problem free of charge"? You do realize that doctors can make mistakes they cannot correct, right? The most obvious being death.
Should that just be "Sorry, we made a mistake. We'll won't charge you for this visit."? Or, short of death should there be any compensation for being permanently crippled? Short of free treatment, which that doctor may not be able to provide, it...

There's no silver bullet that will fix any complex problem. Expecting automatic perfection from our doctors is unreasonable. We ask (no demand) their services with the expectation that nothing will ever go wrong. Those kinds of services are not going to be affordable to everybody. Unwieldy lawsuits are one of the bigger problems, IMO.

It doesn't surprise me that tort reform doesn't work in a bubble, especially one that is smaller than the bubble that encompasses many health insurance companies. They still have to support patients in other states.

Tort reform does lower the cost of insuring a person. If this doesn't solve the problem then there is another one or more that need worked out.

I know it flies in the face of what you think is common sense, but where it has been tried Tort reform does not lower the cost of insuring a person. Nor does it lower the costs of actually providing the healthcare. Yes, that does mean there are other problems. It also suggests that tort reform isn't a solution. That we shouldn't start with the thing that doesn't work and then look for other things. Maybe we should look at other countries who have lower costs and better outcomes?

Nor do you win huge sums of money in malpractice cases when the doctor wasn't perfect. You win huge sums when the doctor did something egregiously wrong. Are there exceptions? Sure. The system isn't perfect. Some get money that they shouldn't. Some don't get money that they should.

[A Man In Black]

Frogboy wrote:

The bigger problem in my opinion is that there are too many people looking for work and not enough jobs because of our economy. When employers can be as picky as they are now, yes some people will get singled out.

When you're looking for a lousy job to get off of unemployment and have a devastated credit rating, you can't get a job unless they're desperate to hire.

Frogboy wrote:

There's no silver bullet that will fix any complex problem. Expecting automatic perfection from our doctors is unreasonable. We ask (no demand) their services with the expectation that nothing will ever go wrong. Those kinds of services are not going to be affordable to everybody. Unwieldy lawsuits are one of the bigger problems, IMO.

The problem is that your solution is laughable. Not only will it not significantly affect health insurance costs at all, not only will it leave people who are genuinely wronged by doctor negligence or error without any recourse whatsoever (except a free coupon for a procedure to try and fix it, I guess), but it doesn't address why malpractice suits need to exist in the first place. If medical procedures are a business transaction, then medical providers are liable for the damage inflicted by their negligence, so that victims aren't stuck with the bills for someone else's negligence! If I'm put in a wheelchair for the rest of my life because of a hospital's negligence, then not only do I have the bills for whatever procedure to contain the damage from that error, but I also have the loss of income and various other expenses from being in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

Your tort reform lowers the cost of malpractice insurance at the cost of telling people who suffer from malpractice to suck it up. I'm assuming you're completely unaware that this is the case, because if you aren't, that'd be a stunning lack of human compassion.

Quote:

One of the biggest problems that I have been arguing against is the one size fits all nature of our education system. I personally do not care for the age-based structure of our school system as age has almost no bearing on what a child can learn or how quickly they learn. My son would get a much better education at a Montessori school. Many other children would as well. Most of us do not have this option available and I don't understand why we are actively fighting against good ideas that could emerge in a privatized business model. We take way too long to adapt in this country.

It's not as though private schools don't exist to experiment with these models. If they're so vastly superior (they're not, Montessori education is massively influential in American education as it is, but whatever, no sense letting facts get in the way), did your children not go to them because you couldn't afford them? Were you exactly $3000 short? If they're so vastly superior, what about all the parents who are more than $3000 short? Screw them?

[A Man In Black]

Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

And you're wrong about The Communist Manifesto. Some of the European socialist parties (revisionist traitors, imho, but I bet they still qualify as "progressive"--a word, I hate, btw) still trace their roots to Marx so pbbbt.

Mao did suck, though.

Of course their roots are linked to Marx. Marx clearly identified a tension in industrial societies. But Ordoliberalism/Freiburg economic thinking (what most people are talking about when they say "European socialists") rejects Marxist decentralization and Soviet-style totalitarianism in favor of a government that seeks Ordnung von Gesellschaft und... um... Wirtschaft (if I'm remembering correctly, this is kind of from memory): social and economic order, where a strong state mediates the free market and protects the social order from its excesses. (This perspective is not hugely surprising considering the pioneering minds for this thinking are post-WWII Germans.) The free market has a place because it efficiently creates economic growth, but the freedom of the market must be tempered with both the need to keep the market efficient and preserve the social order. Efficiency demands regulation to prevent free market patterns that impair efficiency, like concentration of wealth, monopolies, cartels, etc. Preserving the social order, in this case, means offering a social safety net and offering universal social services and infrastructure.

Also, why is a goblin defending the written word?

[houstonderek]

Shouldn't a goblin be espousing the virtues of Bakunin?

[houstonderek]

A Man In Black wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

As to unions. UAW, UAW, and UAW again

So. What about the unions that aren't UAW?

I think the history and corruption of the Teamsters is fairly well known, so that really doesn't need much explanation by me.

I've had personal run ins with the SEIU, as in, couldn't get a decent job in NYC because I'm not much of a joiner.

The ILWU crap that went on in Seattle earlier this year was pretty indicative of their M.O. Not pretty.

I mostly focused on the UAW because they're the most visible and storied example of union excess. And the easiest to contrast with the state of non-union shops opened by foreign auto manufacturers in the south. The only plant Toyota tried to close when they were tight was the union shop in California, their other plants actually hired more workers during that time (I almost moved to San Antonio to work at the truck plant there - I have SAP experience relevant to what they do).

Some unions do some good, but a lot of them haven't been the best stewards of their member's interests (see: quite a few underfunded pension plans due to organized crime robbery and donating pension funds to political causes - again fairly well documented).

I just think they need to look towards how German unions operate (they're not afraid to strike or put it to their employers, but they are also flexible enough to change as economic situations dictate, i.e. back off when things get tight). Our unions tend to be way too adversarial and rigid. It took a near disaster to get the UAW to bend, for instance.

[spalding]

houstonderek wrote:

I just think they need to look towards how German unions operate (they're not afraid to strike or put it to their employers, but they are also flexible enough to change as economic situations dictate, i.e. back off when things get tight). Our unions tend to be way too adversarial and rigid. It took a near disaster to get the UAW to bend, for instance.

I don't think you are completely off course here, but I would point out that the companies in the USA haven't exactly been shining examples of virtue towards workers either. For the most part they have been tight fisted during the good times and tyrannical during the bad. Such behavior does tend to push others towards aggressive stances too.

Now again -- I'm not meaning that this is all the business's fault either. Simply put that both sides have been fairly noxious over the pass several decades.

Also many of the pensions were company ran affairs for the unions in question, it is only recently that we have seen this switch to the pension plans being covered, controlled and ran by the unions. The company ran plans that were turned over were woefully underfunded, and companies without unions have had similar problems with pension plans in the past too.

[houstonderek]

Well, the pension funds for the UAW, Teamsters and quite a few of the AFL/CIO unions have been union controlled for quite some time. I can site way too many racketeering indictments going back nearly 50 years involving the mob and pension fund abuse for your statement to be accurate. Unless, by recently, you mean the early '50s...

[A Man In Black]

houstonderek wrote:

I think the history and corruption of the Teamsters is fairly well known, so that really doesn't need much explanation by me.

Fair enough. I don't think many people will defend the Chicago machine. (Obama, for example, carried a lot of cachet in Illinois because of his role as a complete outsider from Chicago politics.)

Quote:

I've had personal run ins with the SEIU, as in, couldn't get a decent job in NYC because I'm not much of a joiner.

You don't like unions because... you don't like unions. "I didn't feel like joining the SEIU" speaks more to you than it does to anything else.

Quote:

The ILWU crap that went on in Seattle earlier this year was pretty indicative of their M.O. Not pretty.

Contract negotiations break down, strike called, strikebreaking efforts tip off near-riot. There are two narratives, here, and one of them is that the dockworkers got screwed. It's pretty risible to try and claim that the ILWU was responsible for one incident where workers crossing picket lines led to vandalism (not even violence, but damage to property) when the entire argument of the dock owners was that the dockworkers weren't and couldn't be represented by ILWU.

Quote:

Some unions do some good, but a lot of them haven't been the best stewards of their member's interests (see: quite a few underfunded pension plans due to organized crime robbery and donating pension funds to political causes - again fairly well documented).

Okay. First off, citation needed. Because I see a lot of vague generality and armwaving and no claims I could actually get any details on.

Next up, are you trying to make the point that American unions are exceptionally corrupt compared to other organizations of their size? Other American organizations? Labor unions of other countries? Do you think that an Ordoliberal model would reduce this corruption?

Corruption sucks, but lots of systems are corrupt. It's just that when big systems are corrupt, it's more newsworthy, so it creates a bias that large systems are somehow more corrupt than small ones.

Quote:

I mostly focused on the UAW because they're the most visible and storied example of union excess.

I'm not hugely sympathetic to UAW, but there are people who are, and place the blame for the US auto industry at the feet of the people who ran it into the ground, and aren't sympathetic to people who demand that the union workers accept more of consequences of the incompetence of management when they're insulated from the benefits of the competence of management. So don't go pretending that your argument is done and made to me when Anklebiter is here making his argument.

Quote:

I just think they need to look towards how German unions operate (they're not afraid to strike or put it to their employers, but they are also flexible enough to change as economic situations dictate, i.e. back off when things get tight). Our unions tend to be way too adversarial and rigid. It took a near disaster to get the UAW to bend, for instance.

Bear in mind, the German constitution backs the right to unionize, and the German government will drop a sledgehammer on strikebreaking efforts. Reagan's air traffic controller debacle, on the other hand, is still in living memory. American unions will go to the mat to protect their members and their own existence, because they aren't offered any guarantee that anyone else will do so. I mostly just see a huge case of familiarity breeding contempt, unless you have a previously-unrevealed intimidate knowledge of German labor unions.

I'm also still curious what's wrong with the NEA. Your one stated problem with it, that it defends too many government bureaucrats, is not only false, but it's the opposite of the truth. NEA members are teachers or school administrators (or students/retirees from same), and the vast, vast majority of NEA members are certified (or are training to be or used to be certified) teachers. Not only that, but the NEA, both as an organization and at the individual member level, detests No Child Left Behind, which is the biggest bureaucratic boondoggle in American education since bussing.

[houstonderek]

My point about the SEIU has more to do with closed shops than anything. The corollary to saying unions have a right to exist should be that I, as an individual, should have the right to negotiate my own terms with an employer if I so chose, and not be forced to join a union in order to work in certain industries.

Probably thousands of pages of union/mob corruption, some from actual sources and not just the usual gang of right wing idiots.

One example of my problem with the NEA and other teacher's unions. NY TImes, most of the people writing the OP/EDs can hardly be called conservative hacks. No industry is composed of 99% competent people anywhere.

I don't know what else to say. Sure, there are problems on both sides of the equation (I agree 100% that NCLB is horrible), but just because one side is horrible, it doesn't mean the other side isn't as well. There is plenty of blame to go around for the state of our education system, and teachers should be held accountable for their part in the mess, just like everyone else. I just get tired of some people seemingly always giving teachers a pass. There are bad teachers (if I had to guess, maybe up to a quarter of them, based solely on the amount of incompetence I've seen in industries I've worked in), and it should be easier to weed them out, imo. Make room for some fresh blood that may be better at teaching our kids,

[spalding]

Your claims of sole responsibility being on the unions are incorrect:
Some reading

Also the problem is not limited to union pensions -- all pensions are having (and have been having) the same problems. The automakers were complaining that their contractual responsibilities for pensions and healthcare had been dragging them down. Either it was their responsibility or it was not, can't have it both ways. Many unions had Defined benefit pensions that companies have since simply dropped onto the government (so much for responsible corporate citizens) (warning this is from a major union website so it is not unbiased)

Again it isn't like this is a 'union problem only' either:
Corporate pension troubles
and more of the same

For more information in general on pensions and a look at some of the troubles to come: Information on the different forms of pensions plans

[Aretas]

N.G. would destroy B.O. in every way. Like in the movie Sexy Beast were Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) handles Gal Dove (Ray Winstons) character.

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmoApbjQKd4&feature=related

LOL LOL!

[Kirth Gersen]

I taught high school from 1995-2001. With a bachelor's degree, halfway to a master's, and professional certification, I started at $19,000/year. During the year I worked 60-hour weeks. During the summer months I was supposedly "off" I typically worked 35-40 hour weeks because the contract stipulated "additional duties as assigned by the administration," and you can bet they assigned them. When "merit-based pay" was announced, I got excited. When it was implemented, I quit, because it was based solely on the improvement in your kids' mean standardized test scores from one year to the next. The first year my students' scores were among the best in the state, which meant, according to the "merit" rubric, that I was the worst teacher in the state when they stayed at that level the next year.

Tell me how good public school teachers have it. I make 2-3 times the pay for half as much work in insustry. I have recurrent nightmares that I have to go back to teaching.

[houstonderek]

Abraham spalding wrote:

Your claims of sole responsibility being on the unions are incorrect:

Some reading

Also the problem is not limited to union pensions -- all pensions are having (and have been having) the same problems. The automakers were complaining that their contractual responsibilities for pensions and healthcare had been dragging them down. Either it was their responsibility or it was not, can't have it both ways. Many unions had Defined benefit pensions that companies have since simply dropped onto the government (so much for responsible corporate citizens) (warning this is from a major union website so it is not unbiased)

Again it isn't like this is a 'union problem only' either:
Corporate pension troubles
and more of the same

For more information in general on pensions and a look at some of the troubles to come: Information on the different forms of pensions plans

Interesting. Your Hudson Institute source completely contradicts your Jack Rasmus source as to how effective unions are at securing pension funding. Like, 180 degrees opposite.

I'm going to pretty much chalk up the other two sources as being just about as useful as posting Cato Institute sources, for obvious reasons.

[houstonderek]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

I taught high school from 1995-2001. With a bachelor's degree, halfway to a master's, and professional certification, I started at $19,000/year. During the year I worked 60-hour weeks. During the summer months I was supposedly "off" I typically worked 35-40 hour weeks because the contract stipulated "additional duties as assigned by the administration," and you can bet they assigned them. When "merit-based pay" was announced, I got excited. When it was implemented, I quit, because it was based solely on the improvement in your kids' mean standardized test scores from one year to the next. The first year my students' scores were among the best in the state, which meant, according to the "merit" rubric, that I was the worst teacher in the state when they stayed at that level the next year.

Tell me how good public school teachers have it. I make 2-3 times the pay for half as much work in insustry. I have recurrent nightmares that I have to go back to teaching.

We already had this discussion. South Carolina isn't the rest of the country. I posted salaries HISD offers for Bachelor's and Master's degrees back then. They're not bad at all. My friend Kat has been teaching in Ft. Bend now for three years and makes over $50k teaching art.

Different states, different pay.

[A Man In Black]

houstonderek wrote:

My point about the SEIU has more to do with closed shops than anything. The corollary to saying unions have a right to exist should be that I, as an individual, should have the right to negotiate my own terms with an employer if I so chose, and not be forced to join a union in order to work in certain industries.

This is completely contrary to Ordoliberal thought. The "right" to negotiate your own terms with an employer is only the right to seek your own short-term benefit to the detriment of all. The only reasons they have to negotiate with you instead of a union that includes you is either to give you a better offer in order to discourage people from being in unions at all (unionbreaking activity), or in order to offer you a job to exclude union members (again, unionbreaking activity), or because you will underbid union members (causing a race to the bottom). Freiburg thinking completely rejects labor as a fluid good to be traded on an open market by individual actors, because the consequences are damaging to the social order.

German economic thinking results in closed shops. "Right to work" is a uniquely American concept, and serves no purpose other than to weaken unions.

Quote:

Probably thousands of pages of union/mob corruption, some from actual sources and not just the usual gang of right wing idiots.

I'm not going to do your research for you. I've already conceded that the Teamsters were corrupt, and the first five pages were all Teamsters/Chicago machine/Hoffa/Mafia/Daley.

Quote:

One example of my problem with the NEA and other teacher's unions. NY TImes, most of the people writing the OP/EDs can hardly be called conservative hacks. No industry is composed of 99% competent people anywhere.

Wow! That is a a shockingly great article. The lone exception is Steve Perry's added-after-the-fact essay, which is transparently self-serving, disappointingly heavy on rhetoric, short on how he'd implement his solutions, and worst of all, completely off-topic. Contrast it with Don Soifer's essay, which is equally critical of the teacher's unions, but much less bombastic and much more practical. Oh well.

Anyway. I'm a bit disappointed that you quotemined it for misleading statistics; doubly disappointed that you quotemined the introduction. Reread Charles Merril's essay for a little bit more context.

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I don't know what else to say. Sure, there are problems on both sides of the equation (I agree 100% that NCLB is horrible), but just because one side is horrible, it doesn't mean the other side isn't as well. There is plenty of blame to go around for the state of our education system, and teachers should be held accountable for their part in the mess, just like everyone else. I just get tired of some people seemingly always giving teachers a pass.

What sides of an equation are you on about? This isn't a matter of "Either X or Y screwed up the education system; there are lots of reasons for poor education outcomes in the US, and lots of solutions for these reasons. Which solutions get funded is as important as how much money spends on these problems.

Nobody wants to give bad teachers a pass. Instead, the goal is to get kids a better education in the most efficient way possible. Improving the quality of teachers is one way to do that, and weeding out incompetent teachers is in turn one way to improve the quality of teachers, but it's not the only way. Too frequently, arguments to somehow weed out bad teachers treat it as some sort of ideology—often, one far divorced from improving education outcomes—to the point that it gets pushed over more efficient methods of improving education outcomes. For example, NCLB.

On top of all of this, you're never going to see any public service union treating any law that forces them to give ground with anything but the greatest suspicion because too many of them remember PATCO. Up to you who you want to blame for that.

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There are bad teachers (if I had to guess, maybe up to a quarter of them, based solely on the amount of incompetence I've seen in industries I've worked in), and it should be easier to weed them out, imo.

For one, if I had to guess, that number is 100% bullcrap you just made up on the spot. Don't make up statistics to make a point. For another, there are methods to weed them out, even in the New York City school district, if you'd read the article, as many teachers exit the system before tenure by methods other than outright termination. For YET another, it should be easier, but educating kids should be easier, governing the country should be easier, making everyone happier should be easier. It isn't, so let's focus on realpolitik.

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Make room for some fresh blood that may be better at teaching our kids.

What fresh blood? That's an obstacle the New York article only deals with glancingly because it's about the largest city in the entire United States. Many cities have difficulty removing any but the most grossly incompetent teachers because there's just nobody else to hire, to the point where they've had to put people to work teaching in a field unrelated to their original education because, well, otherwise the class wasn't going to get taught.

This goes back to the whole "teachers aren't paid very well" thing, though.

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Tell me how good public school teachers have it. I make 2-3 times the pay for half as much work in insustry. I have recurrent nightmares that I have to go back to teaching.

Well, if you had worked as a teacher for about 20 years, you'd be making around as much as you make now.

-edit-

The New York Times is exceptional in that its online comments are the only ones on the entire internet worth reading. Now, take this with a grain of salt, but a former NYC Board of Education prosecutor claims that it's simple incompetence preventing the NYC BOE from terminating teachers, not the teachers' unions. Food for thought.

[Kirth Gersen]

houstonderek wrote:

South Carolina isn't the rest of the country. I posted salaries HISD offers for Bachelor's and Master's degrees back then. They're not bad at all. My friend Kat has been teaching in Ft. Bend now for three years and makes over $50k teaching art. Different states, different pay.

Virginia, but same difference. Also, Ft. Bend is hardly a benchmark -- Sugar Land and the surrounding area includes some of the wealthiest townships in Texas. People teaching in other districts pray to get reincarnated as a Ft. Bend ISD teacher in their next life. Using an art teacher there is doubly disingenuous: "Fort Bend ISD has been named one of the top 100 School Districts in the Nation for a Fine Arts Education, according to a nation-wide survey of public and private school programs."

[houstonderek]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

South Carolina isn't the rest of the country. I posted salaries HISD offers for Bachelor's and Master's degrees back then. They're not bad at all. My friend Kat has been teaching in Ft. Bend now for three years and makes over $50k teaching art. Different states, different pay.

Virginia, but same difference. Also, Ft. Bend is hardly a benchmark -- Sugar Land and the surrounding area includes some of the wealthiest townships in Texas. People teaching in other districts pray to get reincarnated as a Ft. Bend ISD teacher in their next life.

HISD isn't bad either, actually. I'm sure some districts in rural West Texas have crappy pay, and the Valley isn't the greatest place to teach (although Brownsville, for some reason, is apparently a U.S. chess hotspot for high school kids with mad game).

Basically I was just saying not all situations are every situation. Had you started your teaching career here, you might still be teaching, who knows?

[Kirth Gersen]

houstonderek wrote:

Basically I was just saying not all situations are every situation. Had you started your teaching career here, you might still be teaching, who knows?

Doubt it -- getting paid straight time for overtime (rather than not at all) makes a difference, too. And unless class sizes are a LOT smaller here, I have no interest in continuing to try to teach a lab science to 36 kids in a room intended for 20. Also, the automatic assumption from most people that all teachers are freeloaders who can't make it in the real world starts to grate after a while, you know? (Although, in all honesty, some of my so-called "colleagues" weren't qualified to clean out the test tubes.)

[spalding]

houstonderek wrote:

Interesting. Your Hudson Institute source completely contradicts your Jack Rasmus source as to how effective unions are at securing pension funding. Like, 180 degrees opposite.

I'm going to pretty much chalk up the other two sources as being just about as useful as posting Cato Institute sources, for obvious reasons.

Actually it was me taking the middle ground instead of being an extremist. They don't contradict each other at all they simply address different points.

Many union pensions are in trouble. It would be stupid to not admit that.

Many pensions and retirement programs across the board are in trouble -- it would be just as stupid to ignore this and say it's only an union problem.

Also to say, "Well unions always do bad evil things" is just as stupid as saying, "All corporations are evil monoliths that want to crush and control everything and will do anything they want in order to get their way including breaking the law" -- even with all the evidence that such is true.

However I can easily see that talking to you is much like talking to Fox News -- it doesn't matter what is said you'll hear what you want.

[houstonderek]

A Man In Black wrote:

This is completely contrary to Ordoliberal thought. The "right" to negotiate your own terms with an employer is only the right to seek your own short-term benefit to the detriment of all. The only reasons they have to negotiate with you instead of a union that includes you is either to give you a better offer in order to discourage people from being in unions at all (unionbreaking activity), or in order to offer you a job to exclude union members (again, unionbreaking activity), or because you will underbid union members (causing a race to the bottom). Freiburg thinking completely rejects labor as a fluid good to be traded on an open market by individual actors, because the consequences are damaging to the social order.

German economic thinking results in closed shops. "Right to work" is a uniquely American concept, and serves no purpose other than to weaken unions.

And political contributions by unions are pretty much as well. The SIEU is notorious for using their member's dues for political purposes. I prefer not to have to pay money that would go to support a candidate for either major party. Personal preference. Again, German unions are better in that respect, as I guess their political process is better in that respect. American campaign financing needs a huge overhaul (all the money from all sides make the system corrupt - corp dough, pac dough, lobbyists, unions, etc).

PATCO: They did break the law. Of course, Taft-Hartley was bad law as well (loyalty tests? really?), but, what can you do? They could have repealed it during Carter (Dem pres, Dem congress), Clinton (first two years, Dem pres, Dem congress) and Obama (ditto his first two years). But they didn't.

Teachers: Yeah, one of the opinions in the NYT article was whack (I guess it was Perry's, don't remember). But, it was the only sane article that wasn't a bunch of right wing wackos that looked at the situation critically.

Again, I never claim that management isn't a problem. I'm just saying labor brings a lot on themselves as well.

Germany has a completely different paradigm than we do. And they're not locked into a stupid two party system, either. I just like the way they do business, and I think the way we do it, all around, all the players, is ridiculous.