Larry,

It  had  better  NOT!  Whether  it’s  Wall  Street   or  the  Public  sector.  The  contraction  of  the  labor  force  HAS  TO  STOP!  The  economy  is  in  a “death  spiral.”  I  believe  the  Federal  Reserve  sees  this,  hence  the  0%  interest rates  and  massive  expansion  of  the  money  supply  in  recent  years.  Political,  and  business  leaders  have  to  find  ways  to  grow  the  economy  quickly.

Larry,

You  were  doing  so  well.  But  you  had  to  throw  “pension  underfunding”  in  there.

“….The fiscal crisis is due to debts, pensions, and Wall Street not
plundering as much as it did a few years ago and paying city and state
taxes.  Private employment is at a record, The fiscal crisis is due to debts, pensions, and Wall Street not
plundering as much as it did a few years ago and paying city and state
taxes.  Private employment is at a record, but pay at the top is down.
 And it doesn’t keep going down, in the end we won’t have a financial
sector, because people won’t agree to be ripped off as
customers/investors forever. 
And it doesn’t keep going down, in the end we won’t have a financial
sector.

So  maybe  rather  than  attack  the  wages,  and  benefits  of  public  sector    workers,  which  will  only  exacerbate  the  economic  decline;  it  would  be  better  to  try  and  lift  up  workers in   the  private  sector?

“…..but pay at the top is down.
 And it doesn’t keep going down, ”

Over  the  past  30  years,  pay  at  the  top  in  the  private  sector  has  NOT  been  going  down.

This covered a host of sins, including falling real compensation for most U.S. workers.  Some people did very well out of this, and some people did not.  And now, the U.S. standard of living is going down.  Those with power may exempt themselves from it, making it worse for others.

The fiscal crisis is due to debts, pensions, and Wall Street not plundering as much as it did a few years ago and paying city and state taxes.  Private employment is at a record, but pay at the top is down.  And it doesn’t keep going down, in the end we won’t have a financial sector, because people won’t agree to be ripped off as customers/investors forever.

Pensions  aren’t  the  problem  for  the  fiscal  crisis.  It’s  the  economy.  If  the  economy  starts  growing  at  a  reasonable  rate,  tax  revenues  will  increase,  and  states  and  localities   will  be  in  better  financial  condition.  The  city  spends  8.5 billion dollars  on  pensions  out  of  a  budget  of  about  66  billion  dollars.  That  is less  than  13%  of  the  entire  budget.  A  lot  of  that  money  is  then  put  back  into  the  economy  by  the  consumption  of  pensioners.  So  the  effective  rate  is  somewhat  less  than  13%.

 The  only  purpose  of  education  reform,  and  the  attack  on  public  sector  workers  is  to  rid  the  oligarchs  of  an  alternative  employer  to  compete  for  workers.  The  public  sector  forces  them  to  raise  wages,  and  benefits  in  the  private  sector.  It’s  more  important  for  them  to  destroy  the  middle  class  in  this  country,  than  have  any  threat  to  their  wealth  and  power.

Here is my view.  They were worse.  They got better.  And now they are starting to get worse again, and this will go on for a long time.

All this stuff, big school, small school, this curriculum, that curriculum, in the end doesn’t matter as much as how qualified and motivated the teacher is, and the resources they have.  And some of that comes down to money.  

The administration may think this complicated formula will lead to better and more motivated teachers, may like bonuses and things like it, but I think it comes down to students per class and cash pay, particularly starting pay.  At this point, I don’t know what the UFT wants to say. They now have more money. They say the schools are bad.  The oppose changes and do not propose changes.  So?

And students per class and cash pay comes down to the total amount of money available, how much goes to teachers, and how much goes to teachers in exchange for work in exchange for not working.  And as for money to those who are not working, how does this compare with what other people get.

My view is that the schools were bad due to less total money, aside from special deal schools, despite a very high total tax burden in New York (you might have heard we have a local income tax, but retired public employees are exempt from it), because the money went elsewhere.  

The schools improved when total school resources were increased, in part through even higher taxes, as class sizes fell in lower grades and cash pay increased, relative to other trades.  And they are now getting worse, despite higher spending, because of all the retroactive pension deals, the cost of which multiplies by each other, is draining money away from those working.  Those pensions were better than most people get to begin with. They should have been fully funded and otherwise left alone.

Even now, the Administration proposes not to pay all the pension costs needed to get the pension funds out of the hole, and draining away the money set aside for teacher retirement. That is stretching out the pain but extending it.  And now we see a proposal for new employees to receive a less generous pension than existing employees were promised to begin with.  Again.  That really ticks me off.  An entirely predictable cycle that has been repeated again and again.

I don’t know what OCD means, but yeah, I’m ticked off. Take a look in a library at the city’s Annual Report of Social Indicators from the early 1990s, look at the economic section, and see the charts of NYC spending by category compared with the national average, showing education spending (excluding pensions) to be low.  I produced them.  At the time, those who didn’t like what the data said responded “their problem is not money.”

We’d better hope they were right.

You write: “All the ‘data’ in the world will never help one iota to improve schools or student performence [sic].”

All the money in the world would, though.

We’ve been talking about money, not “data.”  Money matters.  Teachers matter, too, but until teachers teach for free, money matters more.  You recognized the principle yesterday and called it “pay up or shut up.”  So don’t dismiss arguments about money just because you not able to read a financial statement or you’re not familiar with concepts like deferred compensation, or net present value, or inflation.  If you’re not capable of understanding the discussion, don’t say anything at all.  If you are capable of understanding it, then demonstrate it.  

I don’t lecture you about how to manage a classroom or plan a lesson.  And if I do, that’s when you should point out that we’re not classroom teachers and don’t have any idea what we’re talking about.  But don’t tell me that I have to “pay up or shut up” and then later tell me that discussing school financing is irrelevant because it involves “numbers.”  That I even have to say this to a teacher is incredible.  

How long would we last without “teachers”?  Not long.  How long would we last without *you*?  I think we’d get by.  

Retire asap, please.

Teachers are the formers of this world.