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Beginning of the End for Public Unions?

Last two years beginning of a downward slide for Public Sector Unions?

  • Yes, their power has waxed and now it shall wane.

    Votes: 40 62.5%

  • Unions will respond and their power will grow.

    Votes: 14 21.9%

  • It depends on November.

    Votes: 10 15.6%
  • Total voters
    64
Henrin said:
What? He is the owner of the goods that created the produce and all the produce is owned by him as it was produced with his property.
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You're just stating the current rule- the profits go to the owner rather than the workers. That doesn't advance your position.

Henrin said:
Lol, follow along the talking point that liberals point out about taxes. It should be obvious since you are a liberal. When liberals bring up the fair tax what do they say is the problem?
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Again, I have no idea what conspiracy theory you're cooking up. If you have one, lay it out. I'm not going to sit here and try to guess what you've cooked up.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Yet another brilliant debate strategy. First you assert that public teacher salaries are low, for the "same" education level, then assert that they are the correct "standard", but that private schools are somehow "sweat shops" and pay "slave wages" compared to public schools. Now we must examine WHY any teacher would work for a private school for those "substandard" wages, even stranger, why anyone would pay to put their precious childern in them. You just keep going in circles.

If a private school can get a qualified teacher for $11K/year less than a public school can, then which institution is OVERPAYING the teachers? Well gosh, it must be those stupid taxpayers AGAIN, forking out $1K/month more for their public school teachers than the private competition is paying. Maybe that is why vouchers are so feared by the teacher's union, they would be out of work, or forced to work for the lower private wages, like most taxpayers are. Those rich people are so dumb too, PAYING to send their kids to private schools, with those lousy underpaid teachers, not getting that better quality FREE public education that uses the "best and brightest", and higher paid, public school teachers. Hmm...
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That is not what I said. When you decide to discuss what I actually said, please let me know.
 
teamosil said:
You're just stating the current rule- the profits go to the owner rather than the workers. That doesn't advance your position.
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The workers have no claims to the property. The claims would have to be created out of thin air and bypass the property rights of the owner for your solution. I can't actually believe you think these two things are comparable.

Again, I have no idea what conspiracy theory you're cooking up. If you have one, lay it out. I'm not going to sit here and try to guess what you've cooked up.
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Really, no idea what I'm talking about? I can't believe that. You know perfectly fine that if people that are right below him get taxed along with him it will hurt them more than it hurts him and thus it works to his advantage. Maybe if you thought about the argument put out by liberals on the flat tax it would of been obvious?
 
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Henrin said:
The workers have no claims to the property. The claims would have to be created out of thin air for your solution. I can't actually believe you think these two things are comparable.



Really, no idea what I'm talking about? I can't believe that. You know perfectly fine that if people that are right below him get taxed along with him it will hurt them more than it hurts him and thus it works to his advantage. Maybe if you thought about the argument put out by liberals on the fair tax it would of been obvious?
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More is relative. If both are int he higher income brackets, it's doubtful they will even notice it in any realistic way. It would likely have no effect on buying, or hurt their budgets in any tangable way.


However, more basic, no business is better than that businesses workers. That is true whether the service is public or private. It is poor business and poor policy to attack workers too much.
 
Catawba said:
No, that is a bizzaro world interpretation of what I said. What I actually said was, "All you have proven is that non-unionized private school teachers make substandard pay and benefits, far below the average private sector job with comparable education requirements."
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If that was the case, then why would people become private sector teachers? Only terrible students would become private sector teachers, and with terrible teachers no one would ever think about paying for private school. In fact teachers in private schools are better despite the lower pay.

Why do people accept a 45K wage as a private sector teacher? Because the perks, vacations, benefits is still very good. Public teachers earn much more, and I am asking you. How does it benefit the poor to increase the wage of teachers with compensation from 120K to 150K. They will just experience higher taxes, higher costs, and worse public services.

There is no evidence of that whatsoever.
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Really, you don't think strong teacher unions will demand 4-6% wage increases each year, pluss extra perks? Like they always have. If they had all the power, I wouldn't be suprised that many teachers would earn 150K compensation in 5 years. How much do you think the poor will earn in 5 years?
 
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Catawba said:
That is not what I said. When you decide to discuss what I actually said, please let me know.
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Oh. come on. You first told that private teachers earn just as much. When I proven you wrong, you didn't apologise. You instead said that the lower wage of private sector show that we need teacher unions.
 
Boo Radley said:
More is relative. If both are int he higher income brackets, it's doubtful they will even notice it in any realistic way. It would likely have no effect on buying, or hurt their budgets in any tangable way.
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True, but any advantage is worth while to go after. ;)

However, more basic, no business is better than that businesses workers. That is true whether the service is public or private. It is poor business and poor policy to attack workers too much.
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I'm not attacking them. All I'm doing is putting things in the proper order.
 
Henrin said:
I'm interested to know why you think education level = a certain acceptable wage and when it doesn't there is some reason to be outraged.

Any answers?
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There aren't any, that is the fatal flaw in that nonsense "comparable" argument. That is the classic argument used to "justify" public teachers getting "super pay", they require SO much education, far beyond what a private school does. Does it REALLY make sense to require a masters degree to teach 3rd to 6th graders math, science, history or english? Of course not, just as it does not take a mechanical engineer to fix a flat tire, replace a fan belt or change the oil in a car. It is pure puffery, used to justify the unjustifyable.
 
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Camlon said:
Oh. come on. You first told that private teachers earn just as much. When I proven you wrong, you didn't apologise. You instead said that the lower wage of private sector show that we need teacher unions.
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You again misrepresent what I said. And you have disproved nothing. If you would like to post an actual quote of mine and address what it actually said, we can continue that way. If not, I am not interested in further discussion with you.
 
Henrin said:
True, but any advantage is worth while to go after. ;)



I'm not attacking them. All I'm doing is putting things in the proper order.
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The second statement was to the thread, to be fair. ;)
 
Henrin said:
The workers have no claims to the property. The claims would have to be created out of thin air and bypass the property rights of the owner for your solution. I can't actually believe you think these two things are comparable.
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The claim that the person who puts in money has more of a claim to the profits generate by a business than the people who put in labor is just arbitrary. You're just assuming that because that's how the US is currently set up in general. Most companies in the US do it that way. Many companies choose to share profits more evenly. For example, Starbucks has a profit sharing program. SAIC is employee owned where every employee acquires shares of the company based on the amount of time they work and seniority level. The US gives total control of the board to the investors by law, but many countries split control between investors and employees. For example, in Germany companies have a board that is elected by the investors and a roughly equally powerful committee called the worker's council that is elected by the employees. How that balance is set is arbitrary. You seem to think that setting it to favor the owner in every scenario is "right" because that's what you're used to, not for any immutable reason.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that the employees should get all the profits or something. Just that there are a million dials that we as a society set either to favor the owners or the employees. In the US we're way out on the pro-owner extreme end of the spectrum. IMO we should reel it in a bit. Assuming you're an employee, I am arguing that you should have a bit more say in your company's decisions. Heck, you probably have better ideas about what the company you work for should be doing than some retiree in Florida who owns a mutual fund and doesn't even know it has shares in your company does, right? Not more than the owner, but a voice on the board to represent your point of view. Companies should aim to attract better employees by offering them a bigger slice of the pie and employees should be more insistent about demanding it and changing companies if they don't get it. Etc. The median productivity of an American worker is an outstanding $97k/year and rising, but the median compensation is a paltry $44k/year and falling. We need to be rethinking the settings on some of the dials we've cranked all the way to "owner". The guy making $18k/year should be making $28k/year and the guy making $180k/year should be making $280k/year. Ultimately our investments would yield more return as well because consumer spending would be boosted up and right now at least, that is what our economy is hurting most for.

Anyways, the point is that the assumption that however it happens to be at the moment is how it is somehow "supposed" to be is just a simplistic assumption. You shouldn't just take everything for granted like that. You should aim to think about what is the best way to set these rules that we play by.

Henrin said:
if people that are right below him get taxed along with him it will hurt them more than it hurts him and thus it works to his advantage.
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See, I knew you had a conspiracy theory worked out. Next time just state your position and quit playing coy.

Your theory doesn't make sense. Buffett is an investor. He owns shares in the same companies the folks right below him do.
 
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Camlon said:
If that was the case, then why would people become private sector teachers?
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Because they are not willing to achieve the education standards required in public schools in most cases.
 
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Catawba said:
You again misrepresent what I said. And you have disproved nothing. If you would like to post an actual quote of mine and address what it actually said, we can continue that way. If not, I am not interested in further discussion with you.
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You want quotes, here you go.

Catawba said:
You have not made that case. On the other hand, I have referenced a large body of evidence above in post $697 that shows "that public school teachers and other government workers have total compensation that is lower—or at least no higher—than that of comparable private-sector workers."
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Then I prove you wrong, and you said

Catawba said:
All you have proven is that non-unionized private school teachers make substandard pay and benefits, far below the average private sector job with comparable education requirements. So you have demonstrated only why we need public unions. Is that the point you were going for?
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Catawba said:
Because they are not willing to achieve the education standards required in public schools in most cases.
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:lamo

The education standards in American public schools are horrible. Private schools tend to be much better, because parents pay for their children education, and will pull their kids out if the school is substandard,
 
Camlon said:
:lamo

The education standards in American public schools are horrible. Private schools tend to be much better, because parents pay for their children education, and will pull their kids out if the school is substandard,
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Once again you are wrong.

"While public schools have certain minimum requirements for teachers including certification and specific degrees, private schools have much greater leeway. Therefore, teachers in private schools may not be required to have certifications or specific degrees to teach in their subject areas."

Teaching at Private Versus Public Schools - Public School Compared to Private School Teaching
 
teamosil said:
The claim that the person who puts in money has more of a claim to the profits generate by a business than the people who put in labor is just arbitrary.
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Its not arbitrary. If I'm using my property to create a product and pay the workers that work for me the profits of such an venture go to me as I'm putting in all the capital. The workers are putting in labor to the equation and putting zero personal capital up for risk. They have no claims to capital that comes out.

And who the hell said the owner is not putting in any labor? Is that really what you believe?

You still haven't shown me how in your solution you aren't creating a claim to property out of no where. Your solution basically is party A using his property to create a product and takes all the capital risk and party B that helped(which is already paid for) gets the returns or least some of it. It makes no rational sense.


Your theory doesn't make sense. Buffett is an investor. He owns shares in the same companies the folks right below him do.
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You don't get to the top by allowing everyone to go with you.
 
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Catawba said:
Once again you are wrong.

"While public schools have certain minimum requirements for teachers including certification and specific degrees, private schools have much greater leeway. Therefore, teachers in private schools may not be required to have certifications or specific degrees to teach in their subject areas."

Teaching at Private Versus Public Schools - Public School Compared to Private School Teaching
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Degrees, or certificates do not make you a good teacher. A high school graduate can be a much better teacher than a person with a doctorate in teaching. Teaching is not a skill you can learn well by using textbooks.

However, private school teachers have an incentive public school teachers don't have. They can get fired for doing a bad job. A bad public teacher can just keep their job, and there is no way you can fire him. For instance do you think active pedophiles will be good teachers. Still, many active pedophiles are still teaching because it is impossible to fire anyone. Sometimes they are so bad, they pay them to do nothing.

I have seen enough bad teachers in public high schools. And private teachers are significantly better than public teachers, but are paid less. Why don't they get a public teaching job, because public teaching jobs at non-terrible schools, are hard to get.
 
Catawba said:
That is not what I said. When you decide to discuss what I actually said, please let me know.
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It is not possible since you keep changing the "rules". You AGREE that public teachers make more than private teachers, then assert that is not a FAIR public/private comparsion because private teachers are underpaid. It is not possible, in your mind, that private teachers are correctly paid but that public teachers are overpaid (but ONLY because YOU say so).

So you want to compare public teachers pay to other (as yet unnamed) private "comparable" positions based on the number of years of education (but not in the same fields of study) that have entirely different work schedules. Then you say that is not fair either because the "comparable" public teacher education is somehow "continuing education" making public teachers no longer comparable to whatever you were comparing them to (again, as yet unnamed). Please start with SPECIFICALLY what a public teacher's pay is comparable to in the private world, then MAYBE I can see what you are talking about.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
It is not possible since you keep changing the "rules". You AGREE that public teachers make more than private teachers, then assert that is not a FAIR public/private comparsion because private teachers are underpaid. It is not possible, in your mind, that private teachers are correctly paid but that public teachers are overpaid (but ONLY because YOU say so).

So you want to compare public teachers pay to other (as yet unnamed) private "comparable" positions based on the number of years of education (but not in the same fields of study) that have entirely different work schedules. Then you say that is not fair either because the "comparable" public teacher education is somehow "continuing education" making public teachers no longer comparable to whatever you were comparing them to (again, as yet unnamed). Please start with SPECIFICALLY what a public teacher's pay is comparable to in the private world, then MAYBE I can see what you are talking about.
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Depends on the private schools and the teacher, but if they do, would that mean public schools pay too much or private schools too little?
 
Henrin said:
Its not arbitrary. If I'm using my property to create a product and pay the workers that work for me the profits of such an venture go to me as I'm putting in all the capital. The workers are putting in labor to the equation and putting zero personal capital up for risk. They have no claims to capital that comes out.
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You're still just stating what the current rule, or at least what the right would ideally like the current rule to be, is. You aren't considering whether that is the optimal rule. Risk isn't the only thing that warrants a return. Work is as well. When you give workers more of a stake, they work harder. How many people are willing to put in an 80 hour week for a chance at a $1,000 a year raise at the end of the year? Now, how many are willing to if they get a percentage of the profits?

Let me give you a personal example. I used to work in software. The company was paid on a fixed fee per-project basis. I generated something around $1 million a year in profits for the company working about 50 hours. Now, I could have worked 80 hours a week and generated $1.6 million a year. But what's in it for me? At most, I would have increased my raise by maybe $5k/year. Now, say that I got just 10% of the profits I generated. That would have been an increase in my compensation of $160k/year. Would I have worked 80 hours for that? Hell yes. And it would have increased the owner's profits by $440k/year had they set it up that way. Win-win.

Henrin said:
And who the hell said the owner is not putting in any labor? Is that really what you believe?
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No. Owners often play dual roles as owners and workers, and they are at least usually compensated accordingly. But, you should distinguish the roles. In a massive corporation they are usually pretty much separated, and in a small company they overlap a lot, but you should still consider how much of their income is coming from working vs. from owning.
 
Catawba said:
You left out where you proved me wrong.
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Ok, you do realize it is not very difficult for me to include my own quote. You were wrong, and you chose to change explanation. So here is it with my quote.

Catawba said:
You again misrepresent what I said. And you have disproved nothing. If you would like to post an actual quote of mine and address what it actually said, we can continue that way. If not, I am not interested in further discussion with you.
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You want quotes, here you go.

Catawba said:
You have not made that case. On the other hand, I have referenced a large body of evidence above in post $697 that shows "that public school teachers and other government workers have total compensation that is lower—or at least no higher—than that of comparable private-sector workers."
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Then I said ro prove you wrong.

Camlon said:
I looked at the research, and it does not say that. It says the benefits covered by private workers is the same as public workers. There is some discussion on how much return you get from their pensions. I would like to see some numbers in that research. How did they calculate the compensation, and then we can evaluate if it is valid.

That still doesn't change the fact that Using 2007-2008 data, the average "total school-year and summer earned income" for public school teachers was $53,230 . The equivalent for private-school teachers was $39,690. (These are the numbers without compensation, and includes part time) Median US wage is 26K. Still, liberals have no problems with teachers having excellent job security, long vacations and earning 120K with compensation, and still demanding higher salaries.

Are Public School Teachers Overpaid or Are Private School Teachers Underpaid? - Hit & Run : Reason.com
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and then you responded

Catawba said:
All you have proven is that non-unionized private school teachers make substandard pay and benefits, far below the average private sector job with comparable education requirements. So you have demonstrated only why we need public unions. Is that the point you were going for?
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Catawba said:
Once again you are wrong.

"While public schools have certain minimum requirements for teachers including certification and specific degrees, private schools have much greater leeway. Therefore, teachers in private schools may not be required to have certifications or specific degrees to teach in their subject areas."

Teaching at Private Versus Public Schools - Public School Compared to Private School Teaching
Click to expand...

That is the classic argument used to "justify" public teachers getting "super pay", they require SO much more education, far beyond what a private school does. Does it REALLY make sense to require a masters degree to teach 3rd to 6th graders math, science, history or english? Of course not, just as it does not take a mechanical engineer to fix a flat tire, replace a fan belt or change the oil in a car. It is pure puffery, used to justify the unjustifyable.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
That is the classic argument used to "justify" public teachers getting "super pay", they require SO much more education, far beyond what a private school does. Does it REALLY make sense to require a masters degree to teach 3rd to 6th graders math, science, history or english? Of course not, just as it does not take a mechanical engineer to fix a flat tire, replace a fan belt or change the oil in a car. It is pure puffery, used to justify the unjustifyable.
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So, a qualified credentialed teacher is not worth more than an unqualifednon-credential teacher?

Also, there's another question up above.
 
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