Wow. Ol Neil got himself a pretty sweet deal! The rest are way over the top but the deal Neil got is armed robbery! I see we have a couple posters here who are finding themselves in a nearly impossible predicament. <img src=http://www.wayodd.com/noindex2/funny-pictures-head-up-your-ass-Afq.jpg>
Hmm...taxpayers are paying Wall Street con men? We may have ourselves a good old fashioned non sequitur here.
China is not paying their teachers obscene benefits, nor are they allowing them to have tenure, and they are probably making less then 10 cents on the dollar, and I can guarantee they are firing their teachers after they are caught on record assaulting students for no reason. They also seem to be overtaking us in terms of science, perhaps we should follow their model. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=217977
What the flying f*ck does military spending have to do with state budgets? Are you implying that teacher and administrator salaries are coming out of the "federal" budget? Of course not, that would make you a certified left wing f*ck nut moron that does not know the difference between state and federal budgets.
Society Einstein, society. I didn't mention taxpayers, that's your non sequitur. It has to do with what a society values most. Doesn't matter really if it is public or private sector, we are one society. Who gets paid represents what society places a high value on. Alex Rodriguez making 25 million a year, and teachers making 50K...who is actually more valuable to society? A baseball player or a teacher?
You picked one of the highest paid baseball players. The average baseball player is making 15k a year selling used cars...if he's lucky. You know as well as I do that sports are a fat tail profession where 99% make nothing and 1% date Madonna and drive a Bentley. Teachers however, almost all of them will retire millionaires. There is no comparison. And worst of all, it's not even merit based. A teacher that rapes a 12 year old student and does a lousy job teaching will make the same as the best teachers. The same cannot be said of sports stars. Show me how much money a .150 hitter in baseball makes on average over his career.
Why a capitalist begrudges teachers is demonstrative of the putrid value system of the capitalist... http://www.infoplease.com/finance/commentary/feature/feature_100499.html
What part of "the state of IL is broke" do you not understand. If this state had a surplus, we could argue over the merits of how much money to allocate to pensions. But when the state is broke and it has to go to the taxpayer (who btw are also broke) and take more of their money so these administrators and teachers can retire millionaires while they will retire with little to nothing, then we have a problem. BTW, I don't have a problem with someone investing in Berkshire. They could have lost all their money. They took a risk, the taxpayer didn't.