School superintendent gives up $800k in pay

Discussion in 'Economics' started by bone, Aug 29, 2011.

  1. zdreg

    zdreg

     
    #21     Aug 30, 2011
  2. jsp326

    jsp326

    That sounds impressive, but what does that really mean? He could do an atrociously bad job and he'd still get his full retirement. In the worst case, they'd move him to some bogus bureacratic position until he was ready to retire. It's not like they're going to hold him to some high standard and fire him if his schools have poor performance metrics.
     
    #22     Aug 30, 2011
  3. sadly the flip side of democracy is that majority always wins.

    this administration does not put a premium on iq. in fact, it subtly punishes it

     
    #23     Aug 30, 2011
  4. There are quite a few professional athletes with long term contracts that should be doing the same thing. All it would take is one guy to say "You know what I signed this contract and they paid me $12million last year, but I did not live up to it..so I'm going to give back $10million".

    Of course, I'm sure the various player's unions would file a motion to declare such act a violation of the bargaining agreement.
     
    #24     Aug 30, 2011
  5. I know, I've been like a broken record talking about that for a few years now. Basically, the state is paying perhaps as many as 3 people for the very same job. The two guys who retired and the current employee.

    The bottomline is that the states have to move to the point where the retiree's retirement is his financial burden, not the taxpayers. The private sector has moved towards it for the past 25-30 years, there is zero rationale for the public sector to avoid it (aside from politicians who are basically making false promises that can never be realistically delivered).
     
    #25     Aug 30, 2011
  6. bone

    bone

    From the Weekly Standard, which is of course a right-wing rag but there are some hard, undeniable budget facts being reported by Wisconsin School Districts with Education Union Reforms being only one month old:

    •School districts that were able to institute Scott Walker’s & the GOP’s reforms to collective bargaining procedures have generally been able to balance their school budgets for the year without layoffs. In fact, at least one district that was on the verge of instituting layoffs will be able to avoid that.
    •School districts that were not able to institute those reforms – for whatever reasons – will not be avoiding layoffs.

    The Weekly Standard article linked to above lists Milwaukee (354 teachers fired) and Kenosha (212 teachers to be laid off). The first example is particularly noteworthy because: a), Milwaukee had had to fire an additional 482 teachers in 2010; and b), the Milwaukee school board estimates that it could rehire at least 200 of their teachers if the union simply agreed to instituting employee contributions to their own pensions (5.8%).

    From the Wisconsin Governor's Office

    Month One: Walker Budget Working

    Madison—One month after the 2011-13 state budget was signed into law, tangible results from the reforms put in place by Governor Walker and the Legislature are being realized. According to media reports, local units of government and school districts have already saved more than $220 million, with millions more in potential savings not yet reported.

    The state is also adding jobs. Between December 2007 and December 2010, Wisconsin lost over 153,600 private sector jobs. The state has netted over 39,000 new private sector jobs since the Governor called a special session to open Wisconsin for business. The state has seen 14,100 manufacturing jobs created since January. In June Wisconsin had a net job creation of 9,500 new jobs, including nearly 13,000 private sector jobs. Only four states created more private sector jobs than Wisconsin did in the last month.

    Below is a sampling of local units of governments being able to balance their budget and improve services due to the reforms contained in the 2011-13 state budget and the budget repair bill:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UfmhOFukBtUq64UyJ9bhnymuWg13PdXwMYHtBrI_2Ok/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1#
     
    #26     Aug 30, 2011
  7. jsp326

    jsp326

    That's possible, but there are a couple of key differences:

    1) Athletes aren't funded via taxes

    2) Athletes are notoriously bad at handling their finances. Many end up in poverty at the end of their lives. It would be different if they had a big, juicy pension coming after retiring like the superintendent has.

    Still, if athletes and/or celebrities (especially those of the Left persuasion) want to voluntarily give up their pay to charity or to pay off the national debt, that's fine with me. Buffet should've done this years ago.
     
    #27     Aug 30, 2011
  8. Exactly! Not only it provides jobs to incompetent irresponsible and even criminal teachers, not it gives more jobs to police unions.

    Now they even have cops in or near schools to write hefty tickets ($500/ticket isn't unusual in Texas, $240/ticket for being a little late to school in LA) to enhance revenue for the cities and police departments.

    After much community protest, LA stopped writing truancy tickets the first hour of school for students on their way to school.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...isbehavior/2011/08/04/gIQA5EG9UJ_story_2.html

    http://colorlines.com/archives/2011..._students_on_their_way_to_school_anymore.html

    Cops know that they can get the most number of truancy tickets napping kids near the school the first hour after school starts. These tickets are $240 each. Nice revenue enhancement for the LAPD.

    "It turned out that many students who got slammed with tickets weren’t exactly “truants,” many students were getting ticketed while they were on their way to school, and sometimes while they were just blocks away. The tickets ended up hitting the poorest students worst; community organizing groups found that many kids have to help drop off their younger siblings to school, or are dependent on Los Angeles’ shoddy public transit or their own two feet to get them to school, and often were juggling many other things in their lives besides just school."
     
    #28     Aug 30, 2011
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    #29     Aug 30, 2011
  10. jsp326

    jsp326

    Exactly. When trying to defend really bad state/Fed employees, people sometimes say "well, there are also bad employees and customer service in the private sector." The difference is that I won't be paying that rude McDonald's employee's salary the next 25 years nor his pension/benefits for life afterwards. The job security is almost bulletproof in many of those jobs (though perhaps less so in state/local government now with the budget problems).
     
    #30     Aug 30, 2011