perfidy

Ross, I think a better explanation is that the President's people are counting on US not to know the difference between average and median.

Two questions, one unrelated:
1) Since people tend to feel the pinch of lower real wages acutely, what are the chances of this becoming an election issue? (I say not very high because it's too complex to explain in a soundbite, even though it's an actual problem for lots of people (me)).

2) Teachers' unions are very powerful and not always benevolent. That being the case, why do all the public school teachers I know make NO money, get NO respect, have NO latitude to teach students creative curricula, and have NO desire to stay on in teaching beyond the next year or so? You'd think a big powerful union would be able to do better than that for its members.

1) Not terribly high, because the real taxation issue is somewhat different: Lowering taxes for the rich means higher taxes for the poor and middle class, and therefore a reduction in savings rates. That reduction in savings rates has serious negative effects: It keeps people on the paycheck-to-paycheck treadmill, forcing them to make use of high-priced credit to absorb shocks, and it dramatically cuts into the ability of the upper-middle class and lower-rich class to generate their own capital. Because the taxation system is increasingly designed to prevent generation of your own capital, you are forced to rely on those who have it (investors). It's a bad feedback loop. Remember that when taxation rates on the wealthiest Americans are cut from 30% down to 15%, YOU are picking up the tab. Government didn't shrink.

This is why income mobility is approaching historical lows.

After cutting the taxes for the wealthy by vast amounts, you can be sure that there will be constant griping and whining from the other side when those tax rates are readjusted that "taxes are being raised on average Americans".

2) Corruption in capital budget handling for the school system. I am very curious about the burdened cost, per square foot, of schools. I don't know what it is, but I can try and find out. My gut feel is that when a teacher gets paid $30,000 a year to sit in front of 30 kids, and the school system's budget per kid is around $10,000, $270,000 went somewhere. Where the heck did it go?

The schools barely have books. They're hollow shells with playgrounds and road signs telling us not to speed. What do we pay per square foot?

" Because the taxation system is increasingly designed to prevent generation of your own capital"

There you go again. That's a terribly unfortunate and potentially disastrous effect of current policy and circumstances that you are mistaking for a goal.

Do you think, that if thirty sets of parents got together, each chipping in $10g, they could hire a teacher, provide classroom space, books, educational impedimenta, etc. - and end up with a better supplied, higher quality education than provided by the public schools? Consider that many costs are one-time, or at least infrequently recurring.

If I remember it straight, communities used to approach education that way - they'd hire in a teacher, provide the one room schoolhouse, and all was gravy. Certainly, there are economies of scale to be had in mass purchases of supplies, and books, etc. Even in buildings. But does that balance, let alone outweigh the cost of the bureaucratic monstrosity that exists in every school? Doubt it.

Oh Johno! If only you knew... Around here in DC, a local teacher's union leadership is being sued for mismanaging funds. (I forget which jurisdiction. Buckethead, help me out here.) The unions mean jack shit in the worst off school districts. They can't even fight off Edison taking over in places like San Francisco and Philadelphia. On the other hand, when you come from a good school district, from the richest county in the state (ie Montgomery Cty in MD), your union has fought for you to get tenure in 2 years, a living wage, and salary increases. The only thing they can't get for you is curriculum autonomy. You're stuck teaching crap to meet some state-level standard that barely has relavance when kids can't get enough food to eat at home, or barely have competent English skills because their parents aren't from America.

It's a travesty.

Parents do pony up $10G per kid and obtain a high quality education ... in private schools. In DC, for example, the better private schools cost more than $10G per student, but the amount for public education is about that. The money problem is that most of that money never makes it to the school bulding, much less the classroom. I won't get into the rest of the legions of problems public schools can face ... that's for books.

One lump in the one room schoolhouse gravy: they kept order in mixed age classrooms by beating the living shit out of the children. There are reasons beyond convenience why we built our current school system.

Good points, Mapgirl. The task the union appears to do best is keep itself in power.

And it is DC that is sending its recent leadership to prison for gross misuse of teachers union dues on fur coats, vacations and the like.

GP, beatings: that's not a bug, that's a feature. Still, discipline can be maintained without beatings so long as the parent doesn't sue the school when their precious little darling is punished.

I used to give admissions tours and take care of latch key kids at my nice posh private school and these days parents, both conservative and liberal don't really seem to think that their kids can do anything wrong. Their children are perfect creatures descended from the gods and akin to the holy messiah himself. These ppl are deluded. If I had a videotape of their children's beastly behavior, I doubt the parents would still have been convinced.

Oh yeah, don't forget that some of the more 'aware' parents were overmedicating their kids because of mythical ADD. Try getting your kids some glasses first. They're acting out because they can't see the blackboard! No, your kids are running around because that's what kids do. It's called playing.

/me smacks forehead. It doesn't matter how much money or education you have, you can still be a shitty parent who ignores their kids. It's not a class issue.