I guess I came across as too harsh. My thoughts are that if there is truly a budget shortfall the Gov. must do what is necessary to keep the state afloat. It just seems that, from what I saw on the news, many people take up the attitude that because it's not them they dont care. Effectively taking their 911 services for granted. I think Walker played to this and attempted to demonize these people as greedy while on average higher salaries are available in the private sector for those with analogous skills.
To remedy the situation I guess you would need to cut services or figure out a way to pay for them. I think this argument is consistent with health care services paid for by the state. The populous solution is to just pay doctors less while maintaining the same services. I think that's wrong. It's akin to a private firm saying to another "hey were low on funds give us that contract for X-Y instead of X". There is some room for negotiation but rarely is the farm given away.
Walker's toolishness aside, let's not pretend that these government workers chose the lower .gov paycheck out of patriotic altruism and an overdeveloped sense of civic duty. They're accepting a sub-market wage today in return for the longer term benefit of a .gov pension. At some point they thought the sub-market .gov wage was a better deal than their other options.
It's not once you adjust for education: directly compare analogous professions. However, I agree if you throw in all the private sector HS drop outs working in the fast food industry etc. the public sector accountants, architects, physicians, firefighters, police, crime lab, gov officials most likely earn a little bit more.
The only reason he didn't go after fire/police is because conservative media had not adequately demonized them yet - public teacher bashing has been 20 years in the making. Once the attention is turned to police and fire it will be politically viable.
Sounds like you're doing the right thing by seeking out other educational alternatives. I'm sure your kids will be educationally stronger for it as private schools have less riff raff and a higher teacher to student ratio.
I feel like the biggest problem today in education is with the parents rather than the teachers. The teachers can only teach as fast as students can learn. I think the rate limiting part of that process is parental involvement. ie. sitting the kids down and making sure they can do their HW and understand it. I dont have kids but I've thought about idea of putting my future kids in an after school academy. 8-2 school then 2:30-5:30 academy. That's the way they do it in the east and they're kicking our butts.
Agree. The biggest problem is that as a society we do not cherish education the way that we used to.
But teachers unions are part of the problem. They are a net negative to everyone but teachers.
