Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Actually, he said teachers were millionaires in another post

I'm pretty sure I said something like this: your average teacher is a millionaire at retirement to the extent that it would take over $1 million at retirement to provide their pension for life and retiree health care benefits. I then quantified those numbers in a later post.

Funny how expansive you are with language when you post and how nit-picky you become with technical details when others post. I should expect no less I suppose.

Shall we now argue about what "is" is??

 

[huskyfan]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

I knew ministers were exempt from SS taxes. never knew teachers were.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Actually, he said teachers were millionaires in another post. In this post he never said anything about having a net worth greater than a million dollars. He said you could get a pension that would net you $457/month for $100,000. That's assuming you have the $100K set aside to buy one.

Or assuming that you understand the definition of "net present value."

Since I'm a millionaire now, I should be able to find that between the cushions on my sofa.

Which you obviously don't.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

I knew ministers were exempt from SS taxes. never knew teachers were.

Congress is, too. Then again, find something that creates both a tax and "benefit" Congress has laid upon us from which they haven't exempted themselves.

 

[Rover]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Oh, really?? Here is what SSA.GOV has to say:

Your actual Social Security earnings are the basis from which your Social Security payments are derived.

Your actual Social Security earnings are the basis from which your Social Security taxes are paid.

You are trying to wriggle out on a technicality? "no fishy [insert nasal whine], it's not based on what you paid in, it's based on your earnings."

Sorry, I thought you understood the transitive property since you were educated by such wonderful teachers' union members.

Nice try, but you're about to become a fried fish when you answer this simple question: Is it your belief that people only get to take out of Social Security what they contributed during their lifetimes. This is a yes or no question, so maybe even you can get it right!

Husky, that's what I'm here for, to educate you and your ilk. Why Fishy's idea is starting to smell like a dead fish is because he was under the mistaken assumption that people can only get a set amount out of SoS, while teachers get unlimited pension benefits. In fact teachers are on the same footing as SoS beneficiaries in this regard - the both can end up taking large sums of money out of the pot "millions" according to one poster, so I ask again why they're being singled out (with only Lynah bothering to offer up a response).

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Is it your belief that people only get to take out of Social Security what they contributed during their lifetimes.

No. People don't take anything out of Social Security. They are paid Social Security benefits based on their lifetime Social Security earnings. It operates like a giant group annuity contract; no individual person has any money set aside in a segregated separate account, it is all pooled together into a collective fund.

People paid into Social Security Trust Fund through paycheck withholding during their working lifetimes.


Meanwhile, teachers' pensions also operate like a giant group annuity contract; their benefits are typically set by formula based on years of service times final average salary. However, teachers typically either pay a much smaller fraction of their earnings to receive much larger pension benefits; or they don't pay anything in at all.


Due to political pressure and lack of standards and oversights, neither Social Security nor the typical teachers' pension fund have adequate resources to meet promised benefits.



You are mis-stating what I said earlier to prove how clever you are?

<strike>how pathetic that you have to turn here to show off, you sad little twit.</strike>


Addendum: well done, you goaded me into taking a two-minute minor for hitting after the whistle. I'm off to the penalty box, enjoy your power play.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

This has been a fascinating and informative discussion, even though I'll leave the SS minutia to FFish and others. Taking a step back, I'll rely on that union buster FDR, who thought public employees should not be permitted to unionize because they would wind up negotiating with themselves through spineless officials, whom they helped to elect, who are more than willing to kick the fiscal can down the road. It's comforting not to have to worry about profitability, or market changes or quality of product or innovation or competition. Just raise the taxes. There's plenty of money.

And in the case of unionized teachers, educating our kids is more important than what the surly b*tches at the DMV do. it is an inter-generational multi-trillion dollar effort. And by any measure available, we are spending more and getting less. Unionized teachers aren't the only problem here, but they are manifestly part of the problem. Frankly, if teachers want to behave like and adopt the tactics of teamsters and pipefitters and longshoremen, they shouldn't be surprised if we think them like teamsters and pipefitters and longshoremen.

This business of posing as the wonderful teachers you remember as a kid but behaving like any other bareknuckle special interest when it comes to elections or referenda is getting old. The biggest teachers union calls itself "The National Education Association." That could be the name of an ad hoc group of well meaning citizens working to improve the system. It's not. The NEA is a big, powerful, rich special interest whose concerns about improving education for our kids are way down the list of their priorities. Unions (especially public sector unions) exist to improve the pay, benefits and working conditions of their members, to increase the number of members, to increase the money available to win concessions from weak kneed politicians, whom they helped to elect. While it's their right to do these things, I find it amazing the number of posters who just can't accept what is obvious.

Governor Walker implemented some minor changes in pensions and medical coverage in Wisconsin. And unionized teachers acted like spoiled brats and union goons. Generally indistinguishable from their thug brothers in SEIU and other pubic sector unions. Even so, some of us act like we've taken Holy Orders of loyalty to teachers unions. Unwillingness to recognize or even consider problems is not a prescription for solving them, IMO. Unless they're saying there are no problems or that what problems there are can't ever be laid at the feet of teachers.

Of all the broke dick arguments advanced here over the last couple of days the "you must hate teachers and don't care about education because of it," argument is the prize winner. Some of the finest people I've ever known were teachers (something we all share) and I'm sure the vast majority of teachers now are dedicated to the proposition of educating our kids in an increasingly complicated world. And in many cases, I'm also sure individual teachers disagree with what the union(s) are doing in their name. 'Course there's not too much they can do about it, since membership and dues paying are generally mandatory. The thing that chapped the unions the most in Wisconsin was ending the practice of docking teachers' checks for dues. Don't want those teachers to be able to withhold dues do we? And having to collect our own dues would cost us money! So please, stop that nonsense that criticizing the CTA (for example) for dumping about a quarter of a billion dollars into California politics in recent years means I'm critcizing Ms. Grundy. That's just silly.

 

[Priceless]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

I'm pretty sure I said something like this: your average teacher is a millionaire at retirement to the extent that it would take over $1 million at retirement to provide their pension for life and retiree health care benefits. I then quantified those numbers in a later post.

So you essentially changed the definition of millionaire. Oh, OK then, that makes perfect sense. How exactly is it that you don't consider everyone a millionaire then? Because of my disability, I'm set to collect $750K over the course of the next few decades between my private insurance and Social Security. When you add in the cost of my health care, that will exceed the million dollar threshold. Somehow I get the feeling that if I went to the bank and tried to get a loan, they wouldn't accept that I'm a millionaire. Once again, I say I don't know many teachers that have retired as millionaires.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

So you essentially changed the definition of millionaire. Oh, OK then, that makes perfect sense. How exactly is it that you don't consider everyone a millionaire then? Because of my disability, I'm set to collect $750K over the course of the next few decades between my private insurance and Social Security. When you add in the cost of my health care, that will exceed the million dollar threshold. Somehow I get the feeling that if I went to the bank and tried to get a loan, they wouldn't accept that I'm a millionaire. Once again, I say I don't know many teachers that have retired as millionaires.

So since you can't spend it on wine, women and song or use it as collateral for a loan, the money you'll receive doesn't count?

 

[duper]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

I understand being concerned about quality of education, and feeling that teachers are overpaid for the quality of the work that they do. My question is, does it seem like the solution is to pay them less? I don't know what it costs to get a Master's degree these days, but I imagine that it generally runs well into six figures (including the bachelors). In some places, a Master's is mandatory for teachers. In almost all places, it is hard to get a job without one now. So I ask, what is the incentive to spend all that time and money to become qualified for a job that is extremely difficult, extremely stressful, and frankly extremely unappreciated in our society? Does lowering the compensation package seem like a good way to attract good, motivated, bright people to the profession?

That said, there are a LOT of misconceptions about what wonderful jobs teachers have.
It is very difficult to fire a teacher. That is true. Here's a question, though. If the starting goalie on your NHL team has a crappy year, and his contract is up, is the team likely to resign him? No. Does that mean he got cut? No. He wasn't resigned. It's hard to fire a teacher, but if a tenured teacher has performed poorly on their performance review, it's not hard for the board to table their contract, and just not offer a new one. If I am a bad teacher, and the board doesn't offer me a contract for next year, I am no longer a teacher there, even though I wasn't fired. So as I mentioned earlier, firing statistics for teachers can be really misleading, because usually they don't bother firing teachers, they just don't give them a new contract.

It is my understanding that mandatory union membership is NOT the norm for teachers in the U.S. I could be wrong, but if I am, I'd like to see some sort of evidence. My personal evidence doesn't count since I have only worked in two states, in two districts, but I was not a union member in my district in northern Arizona (Chinle Unified) and I was a union member by choice in my district in Alaska (Lower Yukon).


I won't claim that the education system is perfect. Frankly, it's really ****ed up. But as I see it, the BIGGEST problem is that smart, motivated, type A people are NOT attracted to the profession because, Fresh Fish's semantic argument aside, teaching is not a high paying profession. The perks that do exist, like the fact that it is one of the relatively few professions where one can still expect a pension (although those pensions are getting scaled back) the fact that you get a significant amount of time off every year, these things attract some people. But right now, precious few people become teachers for any reason other than feeling called to it. And I don't think that's enough.

So, I don't think that privatizing education is the answer, because the country would, within probably 2 generations tops, be back to the days when only the wealthy could get an education. I don't think vouchers are a good option, because I think a good public education system benefits EVERY PERSON in the country, even those who don't take advantage of it.

And OP, I went overboard last night. Even though you obviously already know that, saying it seems like the right thing to do.

 

[mookie1995]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

No. People don't take anything out of Social Security. They are paid Social Security benefits based on their lifetime Social Security earnings. It operates like a giant ponzi scheme.

you could have stopped here.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

you could have stopped here.

Today it operates as a giant Ponzi scheme. It was not always that way.

Also, the quaint notion of "privatizing" Social Security as in "give everyone a segregated personal account" is not at all feasible. Group annuity plans rely on actuarial balancing, commuted benefits from early deaths offset extended benefits from exceptional longevity and it all evens out. You need a life expectancy table, a reliable discount rate, and a spreadsheet (or database) and it's not that complex to figure out from there, merely tedious.

What would be a sophisticated and elegant business solution, that I would propose were I Candidate Romney, would be to segregate the assets that support the actuarially-balanced stream of future payouts. Today, the "ponzi scheme" element is not the nature of Social Security per se, at all! It is merely what the Social Security trust fund is invested in. It is totally illegal and criminal for a private-sector company to invest its retirement plan assets in its own stock (or bonds); however the US governmetn has "invested" the Social Security trust fund 100% in US government bonds. Not only is this illegal for self-dealing, it also violates the Trustees' fiduciary duty under the "prudent investor" statutes to concentrate all of the trust fund assets in only one asset.

Now, the Federal government has plenty of income-producing assets. Let's transfer formal legal title for some of those assets to the Social Security trust fund in exchange for government bonds as they mature. The trust fund could own a diversified portfolio of oil leases, timber royalties, grazing rights fees, and the like, and be self-sustaining over time with an inflation hedge built in.

That would be a brilliant political stroke!!

Both the boomers and older would be reassured that Social Security could continue to fund benefits, and also young workers also would be reassured that their taxes wouldn't build any future equity for themselves. It would defuse a huge source of pending social tension between the generations too, and be a real boon to future economic growth in this country.

That's the kind of bold, constructive thinking that someone with Romney's background and experience should be bringing to bear on our country's problems. Be a private equity investor in the jewels and gems of the US government. It's not all bad, it's not all gloom and doom, there are a lot of resources and talent and energy available, it just needs to be unlocked. Opportunity, true opportunity, for all, would be so appealing.

I am gagging on disputes over "fairness." Ych. Let's all build something together and have fun doing it.

 

[leswp1]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Riding on the train yesterday, I notice that some of those "shovel-ready" projects from 2009 are finally underway....from my observational experience, most of the "stimulus" money in our area went to highway contractors and concrete suppliers. in our town we spent $4 million on a parking lot, or $18,500 per space...for 10 jobs. we also are spending $70 million to widen a railroad bridge....for about 40 jobs. i notice another multi-million highway project going on along the route as well.

Went to PTO the other night. Scary info. Our town is close to last in the state for budget/student despite the plan to increase the budget by 200K this coming yr. The stimulus money will be running out. That was to the tune of 2M. We will now be way short of cash in an already very tight fisted town that is underbudgeted (balance the bugdet, don't increase taxes- this is a beautiful audiovisual aide for how badly that strategy fails) for everything to the point that we are in trouble with the courts about the town hall, the schools etc. We are probably losing 75 teachers, the foreign languages are most likely going to be stopped in the Jr High meaning they will be unable to offer honors in HS as no one will be able to get that far before graduating. Accreditation is at risk. Sports fees are going up to more than double what they are now. THere is going to be a 200$ parking fee for the HS. Bus fee will be doubled to about 200. Little town but the stimulus $ paid for way more than a few jobs. It paid for teachers, programs as well as numerous road projects. We saw a ton of activity from that cash.

My mother was classified a teacher for one job and paid into a Maine retirement fund which is separate from Social Security. As such, those wages are not counted towards her Social Security amount and are not calculated into her retirement.

Mr les can't draw on SS as he has been a state employee and when he was not one he didn't make enough money to count.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

I understand being concerned about quality of education, and feeling that teachers are overpaid for the quality of the work that they do. My question is, does it seem like the solution is to pay them less? I don't know what it costs to get a Master's degree these days, but I imagine that it generally runs well into six figures (including the bachelors). In some places, a Master's is mandatory for teachers. In almost all places, it is hard to get a job without one now. So I ask, what is the incentive to spend all that time and money to become qualified for a job that is extremely difficult, extremely stressful, and frankly extremely unappreciated in our society? Does lowering the compensation package seem like a good way to attract good, motivated, bright people to the profession?

That said, there are a LOT of misconceptions about what wonderful jobs teachers have.
It is very difficult to fire a teacher. That is true. Here's a question, though. If the starting goalie on your NHL team has a crappy year, and his contract is up, is the team likely to resign him? No. Does that mean he got cut? No. He wasn't resigned. It's hard to fire a teacher, but if a tenured teacher has performed poorly on their performance review, it's not hard for the board to table their contract, and just not offer a new one. If I am a bad teacher, and the board doesn't offer me a contract for next year, I am no longer a teacher there, even though I wasn't fired. So as I mentioned earlier, firing statistics for teachers can be really misleading, because usually they don't bother firing teachers, they just don't give them a new contract.

It is my understanding that mandatory union membership is NOT the norm for teachers in the U.S. I could be wrong, but if I am, I'd like to see some sort of evidence. My personal evidence doesn't count since I have only worked in two states, in two districts, but I was not a union member in my district in northern Arizona (Chinle Unified) and I was a union member by choice in my district in Alaska (Lower Yukon).


I won't claim that the education system is perfect. Frankly, it's really ****ed up. But as I see it, the BIGGEST problem is that smart, motivated, type A people are NOT attracted to the profession because, Fresh Fish's semantic argument aside, teaching is not a high paying profession. The perks that do exist, like the fact that it is one of the relatively few professions where one can still expect a pension (although those pensions are getting scaled back) the fact that you get a significant amount of time off every year, these things attract some people. But right now, precious few people become teachers for any reason other than feeling called to it. And I don't think that's enough.

So, I don't think that privatizing education is the answer, because the country would, within probably 2 generations tops, be back to the days when only the wealthy could get an education. I don't think vouchers are a good option, because I think a good public education system benefits EVERY PERSON in the country, even those who don't take advantage of it.

And OP, I went overboard last night. Even though you obviously already know that, saying it seems like the right thing to do.

In considering whether teacher compensation is "too low," it's useful to remind ourselves we're talking about a 9 month job, with a long (formerly known as Christmas) break in December and about a week long spring break, too. During the summer teachers can augment their salaries in a variety of ways, or indulge the muse and write or whatever they choose. The point is, they get three months off. Most of the rest of us are lucky to get three days off. While no one is advocating lowering teacher pay perhaps, we could do a better job of identifying the teachers who are actually doing a great job and rewarding them. To the extent they've embraced this concept, unions have done so very reluctantly. Master Teachers. Tenure. All good ideas, for the right people.

The universe of people who consider teaching (primary and secondary) these days is different from the old days. For one thing, those very smart ladies whose options consisted primarily of nursing or teaching are getting MBA's and going to work for big companies or starting their own businesses. In other words, a lot of the cream is no longer available.

Let me give you an example that has nothing to do with unions. When I was working in Seattle, they had a program of successful businessmen working with kids in "inner city" schools. The fellow in question was a big wheel at Microsoft. And on one occasion, a kid in his class dismissed something another had said or done by saying: "That's so gay." The guy asked the kid how he would like it if he called the boy an n-word. This is a very tough word to use in any context these days, but he was trying to make a point that had some value. IMO he could have made the point without using the word, but his motivation was good. Anyway, the kid's parents and the local useless pastor head of the even more useless chapter of the NAACP. whipped up such a holy war that the guy finally just quit. So here's a guy making maybe half a million a year, who is hugely successful, trying to give these poor kids some insights as to what it takes to succeed and he's outta there because of one relatively minor slip. A terrific human resource driven away by reflexive racial politics. Not the kind of thing to encourage other successful people to help out, either.

You went to a west suburban high school, as did I. And the idea of the football coach becoming the principal or superintedent is as foreign as escargot. Yet that's the way things are done in lots of places, especially in the south and west. In my high school the football coach would NEVER become the superintendant. Athletic Director, Director of Boys' PE or Director of Driver Ed would be the administrative jobs available to him. The guy who was superintendent when I was there went on to become Executive Vice President of Forseman, the big textbook publisher.

Unionization per se is not the problem. Unionization in the public second has inherant problems, as I've mentioned, that cannot be eliminated. Public sector unions wind up negotiating with people they've spent millions to put into office. How is that calculated to treat tax money as a scarce resource? If teachers' unions would stop giving lip service to "improving" the education our kids get, and stop fighting tooth and nail to keep incompetent teachers on the payroll, then I would be less adamant. We have many problems in this country. Problems which contribute to our failing public education system (which isn't equally failing in all locations). Part of that problem, it seems to me, is incompetent teachers, like that b*tch in the news this week who bullied a student who had the temerity to disagree with her Obama campaign advertisement, and informed the kid he could be arrested if he insulted the president. Her partisanship is not the problem, IMO, it's her grasp of the First Amendment and other details which expose her as a total incompetent. If she wants to take a stand, that's fine by me, but don't bully your students who disagree. That just makes her a partisan hack. How did she get a job teaching? And why hasn't she been fired? We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on education and based on the various indices, it doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth. We must do better. It ain't going to be easy. And teachers unions must do their part. Business as usual just won't cut it any more.

Overboard, schmoverboard. Don't sweat the small stuff.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

http://www.theatlantic.com/national...gnoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

Maybe we're going about it wrong?

There's really no question that, at least at the primary and secondary levels, we're getting our collective arse kicked by a country the size of Wisconsin.

Some of it is culture, and won't necessarily translate to the states. But maybe some things would travel. More local responsibility, much higher employment standards (Master's degree being a minimum qualification) with correspondingly higher pay, and more equitable funding (geographically)?

Might be worth a shot. The only thing we're worse at than primary and secondary education is reforming primary and secondary education. Put the American exceptionalism book on the shelf for a moment and look at places that actually don't fail at it.

Tenure for poor teachers is a legitimate concern, but the usual political response (contempt for teachers) falls squarely into the "not part of the solution, so part of the problem" category.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

http://www.theatlantic.com/national...gnoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

Maybe we're going about it wrong?

There's really no question that, at least at the primary and secondary levels, we're getting our collective arse kicked by a country the size of Wisconsin.

Some of it is culture, and won't necessarily translate to the states. But maybe some things would travel. More local responsibility, much higher employment standards (Master's degree being a minimum qualification) with correspondingly higher pay, and more equitable funding (geographically)?

Might be worth a shot. The only thing we're worse at than primary and secondary education is reforming primary and secondary education. Put the American exceptionalism book on the shelf for a moment and look at places that actually don't fail at it.

Tenure for poor teachers is a legitimate concern, but the usual political response (contempt for teachers) falls squarely into the "not part of the solution, so part of the problem" category.

Maybe there are some lessons to be learned. But direct comparisons between a tiny country, where all the kids share the same ethnicity and history, is of limited utility here. And that nonsense about no private education. We should pass laws restricting the opportunities for people who have succeeded in the forlorn hope that will help improve the opportunities for those who haven't? That dog won't hunt. And what in the world does "the American Exceptionalism book" have to do with this? Other than giving you a chance to take a gratuitous shot.

The contempt is not for "teachers", it is for incompetent teachers who, for instance, tell a high school kid he could be arrested for disagreeing with her. Yeah, I've got contempt for that worthless b*tch. Put her to work in the cafeteria. "Teachers" like her should never be hired and should be fired immediately.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Some of it is culture, and won't necessarily translate to the states. But maybe some things would travel. More local responsibility, much higher employment standards (Master's degree being a minimum qualification) with correspondingly higher pay, and more equitable funding (geographically)?

So long as it is a *useful* master's degree. I had a family friend growing up who had an MBA, had taken time off from her career to raise her kids, and was considering teaching high school economics as a 2nd career. Turns out that she couldn't be hired as an economics teacher - she needed to have a master's degree specifically in economics or in education. I would much prefer someone with an MBA (and actual business experience) teach my kids economics than someone with a master's in education. Or for that matter a master's in math, physics, or even engineering - basically any technical field instead of education.

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

So long as it is a *useful* master's degree. I had a family friend growing up who had an MBA, had taken time off from her career to raise her kids, and was considering teaching high school economics as a 2nd career. Turns out that she couldn't be hired as an economics teacher - she needed to have a master's degree specifically in economics or in education. I would much prefer someone with an MBA (and actual business experience) teach my kids economics than someone with a master's in education. Or for that matter a master's in math, physics, or even engineering - basically any technical field instead of education.

Totally agree. Under the standards that apply these days, Bruce Catton couldn't teach American history because he ain't got no ejucation courses. I took a night business law course at IIT, and the instructor was a lawyer, just back from Miami, with a very deep tan, solid gold cuff links and a saville row suit. Seemed like he met all the requirements.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

So long as it is a *useful* master's degree.

Well, sure. But there's not going to be a single standard. An MBA won't prepare you to teach a 3rd-grader a foreign language.

It boils down to more resources, more responsibility.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

We should pass laws restricting the opportunities for people who have succeeded in the forlorn hope that will help improve the opportunities for those who haven't? That dog won't hunt. And what in the world does "the American Exceptionalism book" have to do with this? Other than giving you a chance to take a gratuitous shot.

That dog will hunt all day - on am radio stations.

If you have small classes and dedicated professionals, students can still get individual attention. Not sure where you're getting limited opportunities.

The exceptionalism thing was absolutely a dig. Cut me some slack. We're 12 months into the presidential election now, and the derp . . . it burns . . .