"he value of a college degree is the selectivity of the degree-granting institution. Community college, Sacramento, Cal State Chico. All completely non-selective schools. There was never any reason to believe that degrees from these institutions had any value at all. And they don't. Of course they became public school teachers."
"he value of a college degree is the selectivity of the degree-granting institution. Community college, Sacramento, Cal State Chico. All completely non-selective schools. There was never any reason to believe that degrees from these institutions had any value at all. And they don't. Of course they became public school teachers."
i.e, you think that the occupation of public school teacher is worthless, because the pay is So Median Income. In your Brave New World, it must be one of those Gamma jobs. Unlike, say, the Empyrean Skill of commodities trading.
In my lifetime, I've witnessed the Inferior Surplus People designation be expanded from Welfare Cheats, to Welfare Bums, to Burger-Flippers and Janitors, and now to Public School Teachers.
It's rather ironic that at the outset of the financialization of the economy in the early 1980s, trading firms were hiring people with BAs in liberal arts subjects from non-elite schools. It was understood that the skill set had little to do with a vast amount of erudition or superior intelligence.
You created the designation, you can expand it whenever you want. The average commodities trader earns 35% more than the average teacher, with a FAR less generous benefits package and no summers off. Seems fair enough to me.
Most people tend to take jobs that maximize their earnings potential, which is based on the value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others. So yes, technically those below the median are more likely to be inferior, in aggregate offering. This isn't Lake Wobegon, we can't all be above average.
Reducing the value of a person's contribution to their society and the planet to their personal net monetary worth is about as dehumanizing a value system as it gets. It's non-thinking bot reaction. Actually thinking about that vast set of circumstances requires examining the implications that are so easily disguised by the numbers on a spreadsheet.
We have entire occupational classes that pay well above "the median income" that fulfill societal functions that fall somewhere between superfluous, ephemeral, parasitic, and criminal. I'm not opposed to people making money off of the first two categories, but I'm not deluded with notions about the "superiority" of the "value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others", compared to, say, a competent and compassionate home health caregiver, or the maintenance staff in my apartment building. Or a public school teacher.
I just read The Bling Ring, by Nancy Jo Sales. I'm in no mood to hear that nonsense.
(The Bling Ring is a very good work of investigative journalism. I'd like to have Matt Taibbi review it. In fact, maybe it ought to be assigned reading in high schools.)
Not "their" society, just society. There are 7 billion people, I will never meet the overwhelming majority of them, they will never meet me. To me, they're all just cogs in the machine, as I am to them. On average, those who are contributing more to the standard of living that both of us enjoy are paid more than those who don't. Yes, there are always exceptions. I'm sure your maintenance man is a lovely person, but a particle physicist could do everything that he does. The reverse is probably not true. Only one can substitute for the other, those with more substitutions available *generally* choose to maximize earnings, which involves taking a position where they provide benefit to more people.
Those commodity traders you seem to scoff at are the only reason your venerated public teachers can collect the pensions they do, as in many, if not all, states the unions negotiated based on potential market returns (and rely on taxpayers to pick up the difference if projections aren't met).
"In my lifetime, I've witnessed the Inferior Surplus People designation be expanded from Welfare Cheats, to Welfare Bums, to Burger-Flippers and Janitors, and now to Public School Teachers."
Heh, don't forget "paper pushers", which Hilary used to spit out referring to people who work in Insurance, with as much venom as if she were saying "profit". (this occasion, back in the 90s, was when I noticed the widespread failure of analytical ability, with people agreeing sagely that such workers were an unnecessary overhead imposed on health care...as if A) SOMEBODY was going to have to process claims and payments and B) it was going to be the GOVERNMENT so any pretense that there was a saving to be found was insane or stupid or both.
Anyway Hilary proposed to turn those "paper pushers" into doctors, nurses and other worthwhile people. This made me wonder if she might actually BE a witch, though I've never had her in the proximity of a proper Dunking Chair.
"i.e, you think that the occupation of public school teacher is worthless, because the pay is So Median Income."
That is absolutely not what I am saying. What I am saying is that potential employers don't value their degrees. Teacher pay varies significantly from district to district. Teachers with better qualifications work in better districts. A high school science teacher with a medium amount of seniority in my school district makes over $115,000/year.
I will add that people should seriously consider how much personal financial sense there is in incurring $100,000 of debt and foregoing 4 years of earnings to make less than what a typical skilled tradesperson makes; and in plenty of cases to make less than what a top tier waiter makes.
"It's rather ironic that at the outset of the financialization of the economy in the early 1980s, trading firms were hiring people with BAs in liberal arts subjects from non-elite schools."
I don't think that has changed. There are plenty of Fordham history majors on trading floors. It's just that there are fewer human traders on those floors.
"Teacher pay varies significantly from district to district. Teachers with better qualifications work in better districts."
i.e., in districts where the homes are worth more, and the property taxes (that typically do so much to fund schools) are higher. The explicit linkage of high quality public education to affluence. Public education is ostensibly about remediating that disparity, not contributing to it.
On the wider question of student loans for teachers, we're presently in a situation where someone who enters military service gets a substantial educational benefits package in return for four years of government service because it involves carrying a deadly weapon and incurs the possibility of overseas deployment in a war zone, even if the person was simply doing the logistical support jobs performed by the majority of armed service personnel that never involved any personal risk; but someone with a sincere interest in a lifelong career in teaching schoolchildren is expected to rely on loans that typically run to the tens of thousands of dollars. And there's nothing like forgiveness, even if they've paid off double the principal.
As a streamlined proposition, that's what's known as Military Socialism. I say that as someone raised in that system. My father made that observation to me explicitly on more than one occasion, although he never got too far into examining the implications. But at least he admitted it. I've always found it hugely ironic that so many in the occupational cohort reaping those benefits identify themselves so proudly as conservative champions of the capitalist private enterprise system. My late father was a Republican, but he wasn't a wingnut. He knew better than to bluster hypocritically about right-wing nonsense.
If you're stating the Army is full of shitbags too, true enough. The theft problem in deployments is real, just as an example.
If you're trying to equate military benefits with this sorry couple, most military types would respond that they _earned_ their benefits, same as SS recipients would say. When you sign up, you have no idea what might happen to you. You could end up in a cozy garrison location. Or, you could end up at a nuke plant somewhere in Iraq getting rocketed and shelled constantly. You never know. Anyway, I have a hard time equating moving to Maui to military service.
It can be pretty close. I have a friend who served in the small US military station in the British Virgin Islands. To make his war stories more horrifying, he got put on "flag duty". Which involved running the flag up in the morning, bringing it down in the evening. And surfing and dope smoking. I think there was some folding and unfolding involved too. And he sometimes had to go out and monitor sonar stations, but that was very intermittent. He used to say "War is...well sometimes, not even 'heck'."
Interestingly, he never used his education benefit. Go figger. Sometimes life is not fair, and other times it's VERY not fair.
" My late father was a Republican" fwiw, he voted for Democrats in the JFK and LBJ eras. Politics is rarely as simply as implied by a party label. Especially politics American style.
"Teacher pay varies significantly from district to district. Teachers with better qualifications work in better districts."
I don't think any discussion of gentrification can avoid the desire of young parents not affluent enough to pay for private school for "better schools." Huge driver of suburbanization in the '50s-'70s.
Agreed. And I'm not sure it's a "problem" that needs to be solved. It's tempting to try to shift school funding from localities to states to ensure a more even distribution of resources, but you have to take a step back and ask just what it is you are upset about - parents with the financial means spending money to improve their children's futures? The result of equalizing spending won't be to dramatically increase spending in the average district, it will be to dramatically reduce spending in the wealthiest, which is how government efforts to engineer equality always work out. It will just accelerate the professional class' departure from public schools entirely.
They can "depart" from the public school system if they please, but they still pay into it via property taxes like everyone else including childfree people. So it still would equalize the public school system to move funds from rich districts to poor.
> California's entire tax system is bizarre and dysfunctional, and needs to be reformed.
I totally agree with that. But reform is needed on both sides of the ledger.
You want to raise taxes? Fine, but you won't persuade me unless you also have a plan to fix the systemic governance failures that sent 31 BILLION dollars in CA EDD COVID relief to criminal scammers last year.
"he value of a college degree is the selectivity of the degree-granting institution. Community college, Sacramento, Cal State Chico. All completely non-selective schools. There was never any reason to believe that degrees from these institutions had any value at all. And they don't. Of course they became public school teachers."
i.e, you think that the occupation of public school teacher is worthless, because the pay is So Median Income. In your Brave New World, it must be one of those Gamma jobs. Unlike, say, the Empyrean Skill of commodities trading.
In my lifetime, I've witnessed the Inferior Surplus People designation be expanded from Welfare Cheats, to Welfare Bums, to Burger-Flippers and Janitors, and now to Public School Teachers.
It's rather ironic that at the outset of the financialization of the economy in the early 1980s, trading firms were hiring people with BAs in liberal arts subjects from non-elite schools. It was understood that the skill set had little to do with a vast amount of erudition or superior intelligence.
You created the designation, you can expand it whenever you want. The average commodities trader earns 35% more than the average teacher, with a FAR less generous benefits package and no summers off. Seems fair enough to me.
Most people tend to take jobs that maximize their earnings potential, which is based on the value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others. So yes, technically those below the median are more likely to be inferior, in aggregate offering. This isn't Lake Wobegon, we can't all be above average.
Reducing the value of a person's contribution to their society and the planet to their personal net monetary worth is about as dehumanizing a value system as it gets. It's non-thinking bot reaction. Actually thinking about that vast set of circumstances requires examining the implications that are so easily disguised by the numbers on a spreadsheet.
We have entire occupational classes that pay well above "the median income" that fulfill societal functions that fall somewhere between superfluous, ephemeral, parasitic, and criminal. I'm not opposed to people making money off of the first two categories, but I'm not deluded with notions about the "superiority" of the "value/potential for profit their skills and knowledge offer to others", compared to, say, a competent and compassionate home health caregiver, or the maintenance staff in my apartment building. Or a public school teacher.
I just read The Bling Ring, by Nancy Jo Sales. I'm in no mood to hear that nonsense.
(The Bling Ring is a very good work of investigative journalism. I'd like to have Matt Taibbi review it. In fact, maybe it ought to be assigned reading in high schools.)
Not "their" society, just society. There are 7 billion people, I will never meet the overwhelming majority of them, they will never meet me. To me, they're all just cogs in the machine, as I am to them. On average, those who are contributing more to the standard of living that both of us enjoy are paid more than those who don't. Yes, there are always exceptions. I'm sure your maintenance man is a lovely person, but a particle physicist could do everything that he does. The reverse is probably not true. Only one can substitute for the other, those with more substitutions available *generally* choose to maximize earnings, which involves taking a position where they provide benefit to more people.
Those commodity traders you seem to scoff at are the only reason your venerated public teachers can collect the pensions they do, as in many, if not all, states the unions negotiated based on potential market returns (and rely on taxpayers to pick up the difference if projections aren't met).
"In my lifetime, I've witnessed the Inferior Surplus People designation be expanded from Welfare Cheats, to Welfare Bums, to Burger-Flippers and Janitors, and now to Public School Teachers."
Heh, don't forget "paper pushers", which Hilary used to spit out referring to people who work in Insurance, with as much venom as if she were saying "profit". (this occasion, back in the 90s, was when I noticed the widespread failure of analytical ability, with people agreeing sagely that such workers were an unnecessary overhead imposed on health care...as if A) SOMEBODY was going to have to process claims and payments and B) it was going to be the GOVERNMENT so any pretense that there was a saving to be found was insane or stupid or both.
Anyway Hilary proposed to turn those "paper pushers" into doctors, nurses and other worthwhile people. This made me wonder if she might actually BE a witch, though I've never had her in the proximity of a proper Dunking Chair.
Sadly.
Ugh. Could use an 'edit' button.
"i.e, you think that the occupation of public school teacher is worthless, because the pay is So Median Income."
That is absolutely not what I am saying. What I am saying is that potential employers don't value their degrees. Teacher pay varies significantly from district to district. Teachers with better qualifications work in better districts. A high school science teacher with a medium amount of seniority in my school district makes over $115,000/year.
I will add that people should seriously consider how much personal financial sense there is in incurring $100,000 of debt and foregoing 4 years of earnings to make less than what a typical skilled tradesperson makes; and in plenty of cases to make less than what a top tier waiter makes.
"It's rather ironic that at the outset of the financialization of the economy in the early 1980s, trading firms were hiring people with BAs in liberal arts subjects from non-elite schools."
I don't think that has changed. There are plenty of Fordham history majors on trading floors. It's just that there are fewer human traders on those floors.
"Teacher pay varies significantly from district to district. Teachers with better qualifications work in better districts."
i.e., in districts where the homes are worth more, and the property taxes (that typically do so much to fund schools) are higher. The explicit linkage of high quality public education to affluence. Public education is ostensibly about remediating that disparity, not contributing to it.
On the wider question of student loans for teachers, we're presently in a situation where someone who enters military service gets a substantial educational benefits package in return for four years of government service because it involves carrying a deadly weapon and incurs the possibility of overseas deployment in a war zone, even if the person was simply doing the logistical support jobs performed by the majority of armed service personnel that never involved any personal risk; but someone with a sincere interest in a lifelong career in teaching schoolchildren is expected to rely on loans that typically run to the tens of thousands of dollars. And there's nothing like forgiveness, even if they've paid off double the principal.
As a streamlined proposition, that's what's known as Military Socialism. I say that as someone raised in that system. My father made that observation to me explicitly on more than one occasion, although he never got too far into examining the implications. But at least he admitted it. I've always found it hugely ironic that so many in the occupational cohort reaping those benefits identify themselves so proudly as conservative champions of the capitalist private enterprise system. My late father was a Republican, but he wasn't a wingnut. He knew better than to bluster hypocritically about right-wing nonsense.
If you're stating the Army is full of shitbags too, true enough. The theft problem in deployments is real, just as an example.
If you're trying to equate military benefits with this sorry couple, most military types would respond that they _earned_ their benefits, same as SS recipients would say. When you sign up, you have no idea what might happen to you. You could end up in a cozy garrison location. Or, you could end up at a nuke plant somewhere in Iraq getting rocketed and shelled constantly. You never know. Anyway, I have a hard time equating moving to Maui to military service.
It can be pretty close. I have a friend who served in the small US military station in the British Virgin Islands. To make his war stories more horrifying, he got put on "flag duty". Which involved running the flag up in the morning, bringing it down in the evening. And surfing and dope smoking. I think there was some folding and unfolding involved too. And he sometimes had to go out and monitor sonar stations, but that was very intermittent. He used to say "War is...well sometimes, not even 'heck'."
Interestingly, he never used his education benefit. Go figger. Sometimes life is not fair, and other times it's VERY not fair.
" My late father was a Republican" fwiw, he voted for Democrats in the JFK and LBJ eras. Politics is rarely as simply as implied by a party label. Especially politics American style.
"Teacher pay varies significantly from district to district. Teachers with better qualifications work in better districts."
I don't think any discussion of gentrification can avoid the desire of young parents not affluent enough to pay for private school for "better schools." Huge driver of suburbanization in the '50s-'70s.
Agreed. And I'm not sure it's a "problem" that needs to be solved. It's tempting to try to shift school funding from localities to states to ensure a more even distribution of resources, but you have to take a step back and ask just what it is you are upset about - parents with the financial means spending money to improve their children's futures? The result of equalizing spending won't be to dramatically increase spending in the average district, it will be to dramatically reduce spending in the wealthiest, which is how government efforts to engineer equality always work out. It will just accelerate the professional class' departure from public schools entirely.
They can "depart" from the public school system if they please, but they still pay into it via property taxes like everyone else including childfree people. So it still would equalize the public school system to move funds from rich districts to poor.
> California's public schools were destroyed by anti-tax Prop 13
No, they weren't. CA's spends 2-3x per-pupil today than it did in 1970. Lack of funding is not the problem.
And since I know you'll ask for data, here you go:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.70.asp?current=yes
1970: $867 per student
2017: $13,287 per student
...you can adjust for inflation however you like. But no reasonable method is going to tell you that $867 in 1970 is more than $5 or 6k in 2017.
Well, I don't think the numbers support that narrative. There was no 'dip' in funding in 1978 to be "restored."
And I'll just note that this "anti-tax right wing bs" somehow remains overwhelming popular in the bluest of blue states.
also, on this:
> California's tax system is largely dependent on property taxes
I assume you mean income taxes.
> California's entire tax system is bizarre and dysfunctional, and needs to be reformed.
I totally agree with that. But reform is needed on both sides of the ledger.
You want to raise taxes? Fine, but you won't persuade me unless you also have a plan to fix the systemic governance failures that sent 31 BILLION dollars in CA EDD COVID relief to criminal scammers last year.
I'm not aware of any significant changes to Prop 13 in the past 40 years that actually passed. What are you referring to specifically?
Prop 15 last year came closest, but even with the unique circumstances of the pandemic it still lost by almost 4 points.