Its the Teachers, stupid........

You miss the bigger picture. There is a finite amount of money. The more Paul Allen has (currently enough to easily support 10,000 or so families for their entire lives) the less other Americans have.

As for "job creation", that's another myth perpetuated by the uber-wealthy and politicos to get their way and bend the rules in their favor. Usually to the detriment of the average citizen (waiving development fees to a builder, waiving environmental safeguards to a manufacturer, waiving building height/parking limitations to a commercial plant) and usually increasing your future taxes.

Jobs are not created by employers. Jobs are created by consumers.

Without demand, there is no reason to supply. Without a need, there is no reason for service.

 

I agree, and I know 2 girls teaching there. Bottom line, people getting paid with our tax dollars should be held accountable for their performance, just like those working for private companies. If you're a janitor, and your job is to wash floors, and you only wash half the floors well and the other half like shit, you're gonna get fired. If you're a cashier, and your cash drawer only has half the money its supposed to in it, then you're going to get fired. That's why unions suck, they started off as a useful thing, to protect good employees, but now it's just an excuse for people to do the bare minimum in order to keep their job.

 

Maybe I confused you by using the term money, when more accurately I meant wealth.

Obviously, more money can be printed but that would only devalue the base unit and the total wealth would stay the same.

As for the meaning of finite in my post, c. Possible to reach or exceed by counting. Used of a number.

All told, anyone looking for all of the U.S. dollars in the world in July 2009 could expect to find around $8.3 trillion in existence.

Imagine the unparalleled arrogance required for someone like Paul Allen to hoard over 1,oooth of his country's total wealth while tens of millions of his countrymen suffer, ail and die for lack of simple basic needs like food, shelter and medical attention.

39,000,000 people living below the poverty level so PA can live the life of Satan.

 

If they had to fire all the teachers for incompetence then the problem is obviously not the teachers, it's higher up the ladder.

Somebody hired those teachers and presumably gave them guidance and direction. That's your weak link.

 

Something to note here is not that all students have to meet one single predetermined achievement level for a teacher to be considered successful. They just have to be better than they were last year. Isn't annual progress the whole point of teaching and why school takes 12 years instead of two or three?

And whoever blamed the unions has it right. There are studies out there (I'll try to find them at some point) that show that younger teachers make more learning happen than their older, tenured counterparts. That's not to say that there aren't terrific tenured teachers out there, but if you know you can't be fired unless you hit someone pretty much, why improve?

Lastly, the pay for teachers is flat out shit for the amount of work they're doing. Sure they're getting summers off, but they're also working 11 hour days for most of the academic year when you add planning, grading, and meetings to the class day. And most of the good ones are also the ones who are volunteering with the clubs and orgs offered by schools and are doing even more.

 

I disagree that they ate underpaid. I know about a dozen teachers and they aren't working twelve hours a day. Everything is pre structured now, they don't have to plan much. After all the vacation time is factored in they are only working half the year. I think they are paid well considering that.

 

Unless you refer to wealth as an idea (he has a wealth of friends...) and not a reality, you're wrong. All actual wealth must be based on something tangible. Tangibles do not increase, although they can be transformed from other tangibles.

Discovering something that is already in existence in a fixed amount does not change the fact that there is only a certain amount of it. If there's a $100 bill under my bed and I found it, the amount of money has not changed, just my knowledge of it's presence. Natural resources like gold and oil exist in finite amounts, though much of it may be hidden from view. Finding it only increases your possession of it, not it's total amount. Furthermore, resources like trees, oil, diamonds, food...can be produced only at the expense of other resources. More diamonds = less coal. More food and lumber = less minerals. More oil = less dinosaurs. You can't produce something out of nothing, it has to be produced from something else.

This is why real estate will always be the best long-term investment one can make (unless and until the world population stops increasing). A finite amount of it exists, and the people dividing it up are increasing at a phenomenal rate. There is about 5 acres of livable land available for each person on the Earth today. There will be less available per person each day the population increases. Scarcity increases demand and demand increases value. And while this fact would seem to "create" wealth simply by holding onto land, monetary systems are nothing more than (highly flawed) concepts of wealth measurement and in the end if you have 5 acres and every resource on it all your life it's actual worth in reality never changes. It is what it is.

from wiki: The world's current (overall as well as natural) growth rate is about 1.14%, representing a doubling time of 61 years. We can expect the world's population of 6.5 billion to become 13 billion by 2067 if current growth continues. The world's growth rate peaked in the 1960s at 2% and a doubling time of 35 years.

 

I love it when you strut your ignorance proudly, for all to see.

The rest of your post is invalid. Do you really think Earth is an isolated system?

 

Neither you nor maxiep seems up to the debate, throwing childish insults but offering nothing of any substance in rebuttal of the facts I have posted.

Try eating fish. They say it's food for the brain.

 

Please explain to me how Earth is an isolated system. If you want to make the claim that the sum of "tangibles" is fixed, you have to show how Earth is an isolated system.

 

My mom is a retired teacher and it was amazing how often (99.9% or more of the time) the absolute worst teachers were the union big wigs. The best teachers were focused on teaching students. You could always rely on the fact that crappiest were going to be all about the union.

Forcing schools to retain teachers based on tenure is just one of the bad things that comes of it. Really, who cares about keeping the best teachers -- we're all much better off having someone who's been behind the desk longer. yeesh.

 

I need clarification. Isolated from what? Are you suggesting we have economic trade with other civilizations on other planets?

 

You're the one claiming everything "tangible" on earth is fixed in quantity. I'm saying that is a false assumption, which makes the rest of your argument invalid. Energy is a "tangible". That is not a fixed quantity on Earth.

 

Do you care to show me where I involved myself with your idiocy in this thread? Get over me; I'm not into you.

 

My apologies, I meant to say Denny Crane.

 

Yes, energy is fixed, in the sense that to produce it resources must be consumed. Man has yet to figure out how to make something from nothing, but let me know if you do.

Your making an unsupportable and fictional statement in no way affects the validity of my fact-supported position.

I say position" rather than "argument" since it has yet to be challenged by facts.

 

Look out your window. See that burning, bright ball of light? That's called the sun. Feel how it heats things up? That is called energy. Still think that the amount of energy on Earth is fixed, and we have an isolated system?

LOL at your "fact-supported position".