Investments in Squalor [UPDATED]

21Feb/110

Investments in Squalor [UPDATED]

You may recall that Michelle Obama's $300k job at the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics largely consisted in finding ways to redirect patients to local clinics, because it wasn't possible to get reasonable compensation out of Medicaid. In other words, it was less about cost savings than it was about cost shifting, away from the institution that paid her and her husband.

I mention this because I have some sympathy for the teachers in the Milwaukee Public School system, who are now being confronted with the evidence that black 4th graders fare worse in reading under their tutelage than they do anywhere else in the country, including Washington, DC. They deserve a share of the blame, but certainly not all of it.

Earlier in the week, some were reporting that the average teacher compensation package in Wisconsin, including benefits, graded out at over $100k. That was actually the average pay package of teachers in city schools, the majority working in the Milwaukee Public Schools system, by far the largest in the state. Milwaukee's not like New York or Chicago in the sense that it costs a lot more to live there than it does in any of the smaller towns elsewhere in the state. It's marginally more expensive. Granted, teachers in Milwaukee's public schools probably deserve hazard pay, given what they have to put up with.

In some of the photos of pro-union picketers in Madison, I saw signs saying, "If you can read this sign, thank a teacher." Indeed, I've been thankful towards my own teachers all my life, and I've enjoyed my stints of teaching, as well. I can say, though, that I and virtually all of my friends learned to read at home before we ever went to kindergarten. Put in place as many Head Start programs as you like, nothing can replace the tutelage of a parent, because nobody's as deeply invested as a parent.

For many years, Chicago sloughed off the burden of its dependent citizens on Wisconsin at large, and Milwaukee in particular. It was a common practice among social workers to urge people to move to there in order to collect the superior social benefits that generous Wisconsinites offered for the needy. If Illinois gets irritated by the idea of Wisconsin or any of its neighboring states trying to poach away businesses now that they've boosted their state income tax so high, they ought to keep that in mind.

The squalor of dependency sought is worse than the squalor of dependency suffered, so it's not surprising that Wisconsin's black students do poorly, no matter how much their teachers are paid.

The variety of benefits paid out by ever-proliferating social programs is now such that it's possible for economists to argue, convincingly, that families on social benefits have more discretionary income than working families making $60k/year. That sends kind of the wrong message, don't you think? In effect, it subsidizes stupidity and incapacity.

The collective bargaining "rights" that unionized public employees have that you don't.

Meanwhile, the CBO estimates that ObamaCare is liable to cost 800,000 jobs. The unions who pushed for ObamaCare seem to think that's just fine, as long as they are exempted from having to comply with its provisions. And Obama wants to take away conscience exemptions regarding abortion for some health care workers.

If you don't like any of that, the answer is more education for you, even if it's performed by government-sponsored propaganda bots on social media sites paid for with your tax dollars, and brainbirthed by Cass Sunstein. Because it's not ethical to disagree.

UPDATE:

State education officials have ordered the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools to immediately implement a plan that balances the district's books by closing half its schools.

The Detroit News says the financial restructuring plan will increase high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidate operations.