California is the only state to hide its spending – nearly $300B a year
forbes.com
forbes.com
One article in their website suggests tying education spending to performance, and that teachers in Baltimore are overpaid [1]. Another says that a $100,000 salary is "too high" for Texas public workers [2]. I think my favorite would be this one [3], where they assert that a $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive.
These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.
[1] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-baltimore-city-public-sc...
[2] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-texas-is-in-trouble-...
[3] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...
Why? It is perfectly fair for a taxpayer to question public spending, including for salaries. It is when we stop questioning, or start making statements that we should not question something, that we end up with a situation that spending go out of whack since there is no oversight. BTW, that is exactly what happens in the case of CEO compensations also.
Secondly, regarding $150K+ salaries for teachers, how do these salaries compare to the salaries of fresh Asst. and Associate Profs at Universities. Many of them are paid lower I believe, for example Assistant Prof. at UC Berkeley seems to make about $100K [0]. So, there needs to be some oversight around teacher salaries also to make sure that the salaries are actually going to well educated competent teachers and not the ones with some random degree from the University of Phoenix or similar. Education and experience in teachers should be rewarded and the salaries should not be flattened.
EDIT: To add, there are student evaluations for Profs at all Universities. Where are the student/parent evaluations of public school teachers? How are they graded? How are they promoted? Assessment results? If so that is not the correct method, since IMHO it depends more on the parents than it does on teachers. I'll hypothesize, put a bad teacher from a crappy school district in a currently great school district and I guarantee the scores will not change much, if at all.
[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-pro...
Per that logic FAANGs should be paying the least to their software engineers, since prestige..
Sorry, but while I’ll agree there may be something to it when comparing one university to another, it doesn’t add up when comparing a K-12 school teacher to a PhD faculty.
Moreover that was just an example, other universities’ salaries are similar..
FAANG high salaries are due to the low supply of engineers skilled enough. Otherwise, FAANG would not compete on pay. As high as FAANG pays, supply is still not high enough to lower pay significantly.
OP is arguing that teachers should not be compared to professors because supply may still not be high relative to demand. Additionally, the job is still essential enough to keep demand high despite lack of prestige.
In a university setting a problematic and disruptive student just gets kicked out. Nowhere near as much drama.
If you’re comparing entry level professorship at UC Berkeley, then the highest paid position for a first-year teacher with the maximum number of extended education credits (since I assume you need a higher degree for professorship) is 69k.
[0] https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/...
It's also a good way for a country to fall behind.
I’m merely objecting to the fact that the salaries can’t be questioned by tax payers, and am questioning what is the metrics used in their promotion, since I’ve never seen any input ever being solicited from students/parents unlike in universities. I want the same standards employed.
Ideally I want the salaries to be high enough to attract highly qualified people who are subject matter experts and not random barebones online degree holders.
In addition, I’m saying that the university faculty salaries are low. So in fact I’m advocating for those to be higher.
When it's almost 19,000 public employee's being paid over $150,000 in SF, that kind of does sound excessive especially in the context of a budget deficit.
> These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.
It-least in [3] they never use the word Teacher. They do claim the average Firefighter Comp is 191,000 in SF. Maybe it's not 191K but isn't there some number where people in charge essential duties can be "overpaid" ?
I don't know about you, but I'd have to compare it to cost of living references and public employee's per capita to begin to have an understanding. Even if I had that, there are many other factors I'd want to explore: what's the impact of CoL and commuting? What's the impact of employees not living in the jurisdictional area? What are the structural systems which function to determine salaries, both as an interaction with labor markets and those that have been institutionalized? If I was hired as a consultant to make judgements on SF public spending, in short, I'd do my due diligence.
This is not to say that firefighters are not essential workers, of course they are. We can make an argument that every firefighter should be paid 500k or 1 million. Heck, they save lives, so why not 10 million?
Ultimately, the vast majority of people not in public sector work doesn't get to make these kinds of arguments, and are simply forced to take market rates.
If it’s the latter then that’s an argument that compensation is too high if anything. It should be rebalanced such that some of it is used for training.
If the former then that’s just alien to me. Here in Australia firefighting is a prestigious job with a lot of competition. People volunteer to do it for free or do it part time while working another primary job, for years, in the hopes of being able to become a full time firey.
For any employer, private or public, slashing salaries and benefits is a great way to start trending towards 100% turnover, which is a pretty negative outcome if you want to maintain any semblance of operation.
Don't equate that with arguing for Austerity.
https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-... [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia [2]
Are teachers overpaid, or are people in SF underpaid relative to the value of a house?
Afford to live in the community is significantly more important but In general I think it is better if they can do both. However home's are assets & assets can have bubbles. I don't think the public should necessarily be paying wages such that someone can buy a home at any cost.
I can't afford to purchase these radically inflated assets myself... but if you want to call me scrooge because I don't think owning a multi-million dollar house is a fundamental human right, go ahead.
But I can still simultaneously believe teachers are underpaid and at the same think they aren't entitled to multi-million dollar homes.
[1] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...
[2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-scho...
If the argument is that teacher salaries should be a linear function of average home values and that a $1M/yr salary doesn't make sense and a $3.8k/yr salary doesn't either, I'm not sure where you want to go from there.
1. https://www.credible.com/blog/data-insights/county-in-every-...
It’s not necessarily normal to live in a house. It certainly shouldn’t be normal in cities.
If public housing is more attractive than private then property price problem solves itself.
What you can know is that in expensive areas, they will need to pay a premium, but does the premium need to be as high to allow teachers to buy houses there instead of commuting in? And if you did pay them that much, many would prefer to keep the money and commute a bit longer because they may not value housing as much as the people living in the community. So people have different values and we should let them make their own trade offs. If a community can't hire enough teachers because cost of living is high, then they will need to raise wages. Once they can hire enough, then let people chose for themselves where they want to work and live.
I am changing. I might be voting for Republican (local) representatives for the very first time if they're not too crazy and have rational mediated approach, or centrist Democrats for that matter. Most Republicans I've talked to including my college friends reject Trumpism, but also reject toxic Berkeley's wokeness. So, I am in the same boat it feels despite of different labels. It was actually eye-opening talking to some old friends with whom I used to disagree in college, but now we're more mature and in our late 30's - and far more rational about things.
Looking at how things are today, I know I made the right decision.
Saying that one should never consider a firefighter or teacher overpayed sets a dangerous precedent. Sure most of them are not, maybe even all of them, but if a situation is found where some _are_ overpayed, then it should not be bad to discuss it.
Also, I don't see why it's unfair to call a teacher or firefighter overpaid. If you work for a private business, nobody else knows or cares about your salary. But when you work for government, every taxpayer has a right to complain. Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position.
Education should be extremely well compensated. There's a host of reasons why it's a good idea to pay teachers the way doctors, lawyers and engineers are paid; but it all comes down to wanting the best and brightest working in education, because kids getting a shitty education decreases the country's ability to produce bright people, whereas kids getting a good education increases the country's overall intelligence.
Instead, those people work on ads. Idiocracy thought it'd be the cosmetics industry. Turns out…
We can have a discussion about increasing the minimum training for teachers to be additional years + a PhD. I'm sure this would naturally increase the quality of teaching and also increase the market rate for teachers since there are less people who are qualified.
We can also discuss raising salaries if the school simply cannot find enough teachers.
It doesn't make as much sense to say we should simply increase the pay of teachers if there is a huge backlog of qualified applicants.
I believe SF is having a teacher shortage, so for that reason, it makes sense to increase teacher pay. But I think too often people make moralistic arguments for government pay but free market arguments for everyone else.
Or, someone might reasonably think that teachers play only one part in educational outcomes, and that investing more in teaching quality isn't an efficient use of resources.
Or maybe both those people are wrong. But it's hardly dangerous to entertain the complaints of the people paying the bills.
They simply want the high salaries with no responsibly to produce results.
Why?
paying less taxes doesn't imply that the gov't ceases to exist. The gov't has no competition, so every entity within the gov't has every incentive to increase their own revenue by maximally expending tax dollars.
It is up to the people paying taxes to reduce it, as a counter-balancing force, and hold the spending efficiency to a good standard.
It’s a revenue stream for governments, sure, but how much revenue a government needs is determined by what policies a government has in place, their obligations to pay employees and officers, and what additional services the government offers. The politics is all around that stuff, but a tax is still a taking of the money that someone else earned to pay for all that, including to pay public employees.
That’s also irrelevant because that doesn’t address what a tax is, or how it ended up in a government’s treasury, or why it is there in the first place.
These people are underpaid. We have every right to expect the best in these positions, why are we not paying for it?
> Suggesting [x], is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.
The root parent shared a values-based opinion with no objective support.
Your parent asked for an explanation of the circular conclusion.
Since that isn't accurate (lobbying can be dangerous) there wasn't anything substantial to respond to.
- Lobbying can be dangerous
Those two things are orthogonal. Lobbying is not "an opinion". Lobbying is an attempt to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials. An opinion is just what someone thinks about someone. It is possible to lobby your government official to get them to support your position, but that doesn't make them the same thing.
At face value, it really sounds like you're accusing people of thought-crimes for having an opinion (e.g. firefighters are overpaid/underpaid/fairly-paid).
> (lobbying can be dangerous)
And if you think that firefighters are underpaid, then couldn't lobbying (i.e. firefighter unions) possibly produce "good" outcomes? Can someone call that outcome dangerous? This really boils down to you making a value judgment AGAINST lowering firefighter pay. That's what the grandparent comment said and other commenters asked for the reasoning.
Now, for a person to have an opinion is fine. But this is a partisan organization, devoted to pushing an agenda and spread it to the public opinion. If they were to succeed, teachers would see their salaries effectively cut.
Why would someone with a math background take $40k to teach a bunch of kids math when they can learn a bit of python and make $140k doing data science? Some do, but outside of rare exceptions, you aren't going to get the best talent.
You also end up with teachers who can't be bothered to learn how the subject is used in the real world. I barely put effort into learning matrices or complex numbers in high school.
"You just have to learn it, There aren't any practical uses for it" said my highschool algebra teacher told me when I asked what these are used for.
Do they actually have different qualifications? Each of them has to be trained for a teaching job and, er, remember most of their school program?
In the same vein instructor at the bootcamp is someone who's good at motivational shouting and in all likelihood isn't missing opportunities to serve as a commando.
The fact that all teachers are trained the same is a big problem. Personally I am fan of not having "trained teachers" for anything beyond grade school
After that we should be using subject matter experts
No we should be using teachers, people trained to effectively communicate and teach concepts of a subject.
A subject matter expert can be an expert in a subject but terrible at communicating and teaching that concept. Knowing that concept is not equivalent to effective communication. This is analogous to Great Software engineers becoming mangers with no managing talent whatsoever.
I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore.
But it is possible for firefighters or teachers or anyone to be overpaid. I have even seen it where the firefighters union (and police unions) have captured local government, and captured DB pensions worth millions of dollars where they walk away at age 45 with a $100k+ per year annuity for the rest of their life.
When I read a comment like this, I'm reminded of how much of a bubble HN is. $40k a year is higher than the median personal income of the US, which is higher than the median personal income of Baltimore.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/2404000?utm_medium=explo...
Also, a better comparison would be to median income of people of working age working in roles with the work and responsibilities of teachers, or the type of work that our ideal teachers are doing instead of teaching, because the pay is so meager.
Rent, auto insurance, food, mobile, retirement savings, clothing, healthcare, taxes, emergency savings. There is no way to fit that all in $40k.
Which I assume must be evident to anyone that has had to pay bills.
Anecdotally, it is eminently possible to live a modest life on $40k. I know several people that do, and would have no trouble doing so myself if I needed to based on my actual expenses. The idea that Americans can't live on $40k is out of touch with reality; in many parts of the US that is considered a pretty good wage.
You'll live in a small house or suitable apartment, you'll cook at home almost all the time using inexpensive ingredients, and you'll take inexpensive vacations. You won't have any fancy stuff, aside from one or two special "nice" things, and the stuff you do have you'll use for as long as it is feasible to do so. The most challenging expense will be transportation, because you'll rely on your car and cars are prone to significant random and variable expenses.
Savings won't be enough to cover retirement but you will have a modest amount, you'll mostly be relying on Social Security. Even poor people often have a very modest amount of savings. I know a single mother who amassed $20k savings on a $30k income just by saving for many years.
The ugly part, and one of the main reasons I would not recommend raising a family this way even though I know how, is the social consequences because it comes with a lot of class signals. People in this class are often treated quite shabbily by people that live in the expensive coastal cities, which will impact your kids.
>insufficient pay for a full time career, much less one that requires working far more than 40 hours per week, and take on huge liability working with kids which likely do not have supportive home lives.
There are plenty of other $40k jobs that let you be a desk jockey and browse HN while you work 4 hours per day.
I flirted with a transparency org. Washington Citizens for Open Government.
The libertarian minded (Discovery Institute, Toby Nixon, Paul Guppy, so many others) used these nonpartisan good govt orgs to advocate their religion. It was maddening.
For instance, simultaneously advocating transparency AND privatization, without irony. Corporations are not subject to public records requests. Many an agency outsourced work to keep the activities away from public scrutiny. Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization.
By all means, advocate for better stuff. Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith. The paradox of tolerance, on endless repeat.
I have no ideas how to avoid that trap. A large part of my burn out as an activist.
"Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith."
The only bad faith displayed here is yours.
Aside. I think public services, which are not subject to market forces, should be required to be easily auditable. The tradeoff you make for being a government monopoly is that any citizen should have the right to inspect it.
The motive behind information should be irrelevant in terms of its veracity but your implied premise here is interesting: advocating to reduce public spending is wrong. Obviously no government can support indefinitely high public spending, so at some point there needs to be a reduction of public spending in the public’s favor lest the government institution go bankrupt. In that case advocating for reduced public spending would obviously be right, not wrong, at least by your apparent moral standards.
At what point would you consider it right to reduce public spending? Or rather, what factors would you consider when making a determination as to whether public spending is too high?
When public spending inevitably degenerates into nepotism and corruption, that is just cutting the problem at its root. What alternative do you propose?
"CALIFORNIA SPENT $20 MILLION ON PAPERCLIPS LAST YEAR, THAT IS TOO MUCH" > No we did not. "SHOWS US THE BOOKS. HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS DID YOU BUY AND FROM WHOM" > No that is secret. "IT CANT BE YOU ARE REQUIRED TO SHOW US HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS" > Well we can, but it is too much work, so no.
Governments should strive for transparency and be able to admit errors if any are made.
They might spin their findings into something you dislike, but consider that other journalists and researchers could have access to these records to bring other useful insights to the public. Isn't this the whole point of maintaining a healthy democracy (i.e. the fourth estate)?
Edit: Also the Teacher Retirement System is basically a massive investment firm. The more money it makes for the teacher pension, the less the public has to kick in to make up for any pension shortfalls. You would presumably want to hire the best of the best. Now if that actually happens is debatable, but you absolutely would not want to cut those salaries to the bone.
And who among us are performing non-essential duties? What does "essential duties" even mean? Should all so called essential duties be publicly funded? If so, by who? by the remaining of us who are providing non-essential duties?
Holy shit. IF its anything like when i lived there 5 years ago, thats JUST enough to not be on the poverty line if you're supporting a family
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia
Honestly this comes off pretty elitist. "Well, George, if you're not earning 400K then you're dreadfully poor!"
For example, a fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco area is considered to be $3,121 (£2,340) per month - nearly twice the 2008 figure of $1,592 (£1,190). In Cincinnati, Ohio, the figure is $845 (£632). This difference (270%) is much larger than the difference in median family incomes (50%).
The income thresholds for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development[1] (HUD) seem to be the best location-adjusted standards for poverty (the federal poverty thresholds[2] are the same for all mainland states). HUD's 2021 numbers for households of 3-5 people in San Francisco:
| | 3 PERSON | 4 PERSON | 5 PERSON |
|-----------------+----------+----------+----------|
| EXTR LOW INCOME | 49,350 | 54,800 | 59,200 |
| VERY LOW INCOME | 82,250 | 91,350 | 98,700 |
| LOW-INCOME | 131,750 | 146,350 | 158,100 |
[1]: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il/il21/Section8-Inc...
[2]: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...
-- lukeshu (some guy who has never even been to California)
The people I worked with lived in fairly small apartments, shared with up to eight co-tenets. It was all they could reasonably afford, and they were well payed tech employees.
I bought a new house in the Central Valley for the same pay.
But even in SF, 112K is sufficient for 50% of households, and the median household does not live in a small apartment with eight cotenants. That's also absurd.
What's wrong with that? That's how markets work, and they work well.
Most of the classes at Caltech were just that - blackboard and chalk. Often there wasn't even a textbook.
They're never expected to worry about year-end donation drive to manage the school band's budget, finding out who vandalized all the bathrooms, or how to talk to Sally's parents after she missed school for three days. And they get to teach some of the best, brightest, most motivated students America produces.
Yeah, all they needed was a blackboard and chalk. Who needs more resources?
Heck, hands-down the best calculus lesson I ever had was a one-on-one with a prof and a blackboard.
I suppose it's like running. No technology can make you a better runner than a good coach and a desire to run.
P.S. note that colleges compete on "resources" all the time. But that simply isn't what matters. It's the prof, the blackboard, and the student. Facilities don't matter. Sports programs don't matter. Landscaping doesn't matter. Luxury dorms don't matter.
If you can’t see or understand the incredible amount of _hidden_ infrastructure in place at a place at Caltech so that you could sit down and think about nothing but Calculus with a world class professor then you are extremely privileged.
Secondly, there is a federal school lunch program for all the students that need it. This program is not underfunded, and is not what I am talking about when discussing educational "resources".
> Buy their own chalk.
Oh please.
> incredible amount of _hidden_ infrastructure in place at a place at Caltech
There were many opportunities to join research activities. This was not necessary for the education, though. I didn't partake of that, as research did not interest me.
> so that you could sit down and think about nothing but Calculus
Sorry, but that does not require incredible infrastructure. It just doesn't.
> world class professor
Being a researcher is not the same thing as being an effective teacher, not at all. They weren't hired for their teaching ability. I doubt any had any training whatsoever as teachers.
I'm amazed at the notion that teaching with a blackboard and chalk requires incredible infrastructure.
Freshman physics was taught by Prof Goodstein, who is a world class physicist. I had no personal interaction with him at all. The homework was graded and administered and coached by grad students (in "recitation" sessions). A couple years after I graduated, his lectures were recorded and made available as "The Mechanical Universe" series of videos. Lots of fancy animations and stuff were added, but in my not-so-humble opinion added entertainment but little value.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_xPU5epJddRABXqJ5h5...
In the worst case, teachers at inner city schools who have the hardest jobs get paid the least since their students do the worst.
It will be a system that has to work across the board everywhere and easy to administer. So no looking intelligently at the individual cases, instead there will be some numeric targets - and as usual the "searching under the lantern" a.k.a. streetlight effect appears, meaning the system will measure what can be measured instead of what would be needed (which likely cannot even be measured).
Next, a lot of intelligent and at the beginning motivated people will be measured by an unfeeling bureaucracy against insane targets. The system will also fail to do what it is supposed to do and remove the "bad" teachers. Case in point: Measuring all kinds of "performance" has already been happening in education for a long time. What did it achieve apart from increasing frustration? Are teachers in the US doing "free form", whatever they like, right now? They already follow strict protocol.
The link is kind of random, soooo many articles have been written about this in a lot of countries all facing similar issues, so I don't really think I can find some "definitive" source to link to.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/to-fix-...
.
> That's how markets work, and they work well.
Uh... I don't really want to go there right now.
Not if the parents decide how well they're doing. After all, if the parents buy the kid guitar lessons, and the kid fails to learn, are they going to continue paying that teacher? Nope.
Markets fail when they are government by bureaucratic rules instead of free choice.
But it would be inexpensive to try a simple experiment. Pick a school, any school. Offer teachers a fat bonus for every student they bring up to grade-level reading.
I bet a miracle will be observed.
You haven't been paying much attention to markets lately, then.
Also, there are things that shouldn't be treated as a market. Education is one of them, unless the goal is to exacerbate inequality.
The first I can obviously see why they wouldn't that information public, but I'm not sure why the second group would care.
Just pay your taxes and make public how that money is spent, no matter what the individual, country or community. Is it really so hard?
For whatever historic reasons our street is not maintained by the city, nor by the county (we are in Marin County). Obviously not by the State of California. Every 10 years neighbors get together and we hire a contractor to patch the holes in the street and coat with tar. We have no public lights, each house installs a light in front on the entrance.
Our public high school is severely underfunded. There is side system funded by parents/PTA to maintain projetcs, art classes, etc.: https://www.tamvalleypta.com/
Kiddo (https://kiddo.org/) raise $3M every year to fund just about everything:
What Kiddo! Funds
At every elementary school, Kiddo! funding pays for many people and programs.
Kiddo! provides funding for the salaries for all Art teachers, Music teachers, Chorus teachers, Orchestra and Band teachers, and P.E. teachers; plus salaries for almost every Classroom aide, and every Library aide in our District.
Kiddo! also funds Dance programs in every grade, Poetry and/or Drama instruction in every grade, and multiple Innovative Teacher Grants.
Kiddo! funds 100% of the salaries for all Art teachers, Instrumental Music teachers, and Vocal Music teachers, plus Music Technology, and our MVMS Library Aide
Kiddo! funds 100% of the Specialist Contracts to teach Dance in all grades, and Poetry in 6th grade.
Kiddo! funds the Greek Mythology workshops for all of 6th grade, Shakespeare program and performances for all 7th grade classrooms, Word for Word literary drama program for all 8th grade classes, a Yoga unit for all grades during P.E., an all-school Robotics Club, and several innovative teacher grants.
Kiddo! also provides funding for the all-school Spring Cabaret for all grades.
Kiddo! also provides funding for technology, including computers and software for classrooms, plus the salaries of our district-wide Instructional Tech Coach and some of the tech support staff. Read more about the District Tech Plan here.
Because of Kiddo!, the Mill Valley School District is able to provide our students with an unparalleled, top-notch education that values the arts as much as any other content area. This is integral to our Strategic Plan, and it is a point of pride for our District that students in all six of our schools participate in a diverse array of enriching experiences that deepen and expand their learning every year, from transitional Kindergarten through 8th grade.
How Kiddo! Helps Elementary and Middle School Teachers
Support for Core Curriculum. The arts and P.E. are not "extras." They are part of the core curriculum in California. Kiddo! funds pay for the art, music and elementary P.E. teachers, and provide dance, drama and poetry specialists.
Specialized Instruction. In districts that can't afford dedicated staff for art or P.E., classroom teachers often teach these subjects, squeezing them in when they can. Mill Valley students receive regularly scheduled art, music, drama, dance, poetry and P.E. from professionals trained in these subjects.
Support for Differentiated Learning. Because Kiddo! funds classroom aides, teachers have more prep time and more time to dedicate to students. They can provide more attention to students who need it and more challenges for students who are excelling.
Teaching Grants. Kiddo! also funds grants so classroom teachers can try new and innovative programs. This year Kiddo! has funded over $50,000 in teaching grants across the District.
Teaching Teachers. – Kiddo! provides the funding for our district-wide Instructional Technology Coach whose primary focus is to assist classroom teachers to successfully integrate instructional strategies using multiple technologies.
Funding for Other Needs. Kiddo! fills holes in other critical areas such as supporting professional development and funding most of our tech support team.
Learn more about volunteering, events, and other ways to get involved at http://kiddo.org/
Wait property tax is a percentage of assessed value - not a fixed amount. Property tax revenue has increased pretty reliably since 1978.
https://dailybruin.com/2017/01/11/ucsa-campaign-aims-to-refo...
This is, at best, a misleading statement: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur... shows that California is 10th by tax burden, not 1st. It's not even first by income tax burden.
70,000 - 8800 (married filing jointly) - 2000 (two dependents) = $59200 taxable income, $2960 tax bill. An effective rate of 4.22%
To reach the site's stated 3.29%, this family would need to make around 32k a year.
Fwiw, it appears the average household income in Massachusetts is about 80k.
Of course, that’s just advertising law (what you can legally claim about your product), this is an online forum based on higher standards.
Words matters. Their context matters.
As for personal income, you declare it every year on your tax form.
Why do so many people not understand how graduated income taxes work? And why wouldn’t you average the tax burden across the entire California population when calculating its “tax rate”, unless you are claiming the highest tax rate in California someone could actually pay rather than the rates paid on average?
But I guess these are the same people that don’t understand how America dealt with a 90% income tax rate in the 1950s. Or a 77% tax rate until 1981!
To be fair, when people criticize the tax rate, be it state or federal, it is usually implied they are referencing the highest tax rate. Apples to apples, it’s a rough but fairly accurate proxy for relative so called “tax burden.” One would expect states with roughly equivalent highest tax rates to scale their tax rates about the same as income goes down.
That is incredibly stupid. Someone (single) in Alabama making $40k/year is paying 4.07% effective state income tax rate, in California they are just paying 2.37%. States with lower top tax rates are usually more regressive than states with higher top tax rates, red southern states being the main example of states with regressive taxation.
This actually validates my point. 40K in Alabama goes a lot farther than 40K in California, based on differences in average cost of living. Just look at relative gas prices. Why are you so hostile? You shouldn’t bully fellow commenters on HN.
Alabama is nearly last in everything for a good reason. That Californians have a much longer life expectancy (with correspondingly lower obesity rates and fewer health problems) shows that there is more to measuring COL than just what people can buy.
I only pointed out that the assumption that higher top tax rates meant higher bottom tax rates as well is incredibly stupid, if anything, the converse is true (higher top tax rates usually mean lower bottom tax rates, not higher).
That actually wasn’t the argument being made. Which I think is why you keep validating my point. You can reread what I wrote to verify.
https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2020/2020-California-Tax-Rate-S...
It is very efficient. All volunteers. 100% of your money is put to good use.
Funding legislation is a whole different Hydra and the best way to go nowhere while you have kids in school. Focus on the short term and support classes and teachers right now.
In Canada we have had constant reductions in the quality of education for at least the last 40 years, without any corresponding reduction in taxes.
While I'm in favour of public education in principle, we cannot trust the gov to not raid this and the health care coffers so that they can spend on what will get them re-elected.
People can but will they? From what I've seen, no they won't. This is how you get an aged / aging population that has not saved enough, but often cannot work (e.g., because of health reasons). Then you have a sizeable demographic that's stuck eating proverbial cat food.
Further, even when people do save, they put money into absolute non-sense things either because they think they can beat the market (spoiler: 99.99% of us can't [1]) or because they don't know what to invest in and may not have the time to learn.
Forced savings [1] is a good thing for the general population.
Of course you are different, and don't suffer from cognitive/behaviour biases, so you'll do better than average and beat the market.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
The situation has changed with the advent of near zero cost index funds and target date retirement funds.
There is no reason for pension fund managers to exist when they have been automated.
Again, this assumes that people will actually invest. Which plenty of people do not do. For a large portion of they never bother setting anything up.
As someone who participates in /r/PersonalFinanceCanada a lot, the number of posts that say something like "my parents are 60 and have nothing saved" is quite tragic. There are books written on folks who have only started late in the game:
* https://www.moneysense.ca/save/retirement/procrastinating-on...
The problem is not technical in nature on the products one should buy, but behaviour on actually buying anything (even if it's a shitty mutual fund with a MER of 2%). Getting people saving something, anything is the problem.
Forced savings are a good thing for a very, very large portion of the population.
California does have a "strongly encouraged" saving program that is mandatory for all employers with five or more employees to offer[0]. It is similar to the MyRA program that Obama implemented but was left to fade away for partisan reasons.
It takes an illness and a lifetime of making less than the average wage, to condemn a person to poverty after retirement.
Pensions are essential all around the developed world. They are not "stupid", they are one of the pillars of elderly protection.
Otherwise, as evidenced by basically every data point, politicians will promise the DB pensions, then not fund them, then lay the costs on future generations.
Or you look at demographics ahead of time and have the political will to switch away from a pay-as-you-go system. Like Canada did with its CPP in the 1990s:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#1996_refor...
Every three years the CPP is independently audited to make sure it is solvent 75 years out given certain assumptions:
* https://www.cppinvestments.com/the-fund/our-performance/actu...
And that includes audits from foreign auditors/actuaries that don't have a dog in the fight:
* https://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/oca-bac/ipr-rip/Pages/gad30....
> no city, county, or state should be in the business of promising things that far into the future.
Health care workers in the province of Ontario would disagree:
But at the end of the day, what are they doing different that a target date fund from Vanguard/Schwab/Fidelity is not? Except the latter avoids agency risk and is super cheap.
There's no guarantee that pensions will perform well of course (see Alberta). But as someone who spends a decent amount of time in /r/PersonalFinanceCanada, the random person on the street probably does worse.
> But at the end of the day, what are they doing different that a target date fund from Vanguard/Schwab/Fidelity is not?
1. Forced savings taken off their pay cheques no matter what, which solves a huge behaviour issue.
2. Run by folks who are better audited than individuals are personally, so results are readily available, and can be easily criticized for non-performance.
2. It is already very easy to write software that compares performance to an index.
Regardless, if the purpose of a DB pension fund is to protect people from their own proclivities, then a federal pay as you go system works better (cheaper, less agency risk). If the purpose is to supplement the amounts from the federal system, then a personal account at a brokerage invested in a low cost index works better.
I am not even sure why Canada invests its pension funds in the private markets. Canada can always issue new Canadian dollars anytime it needs to pay the benefits it has promised if tax receipts are insufficient. If anything, this leads to another perverse incentive of Canada’s government wanting to bail out businesses it has invested in.
Surely just because you don’t work for Ontario doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed a pension. Same in, same out should be the principle.
2. The listed pension funds are not for working specifically for the government, but are for more publicly focused aspects (health care, education). But there are other options, like folks who work in (e.g.) the food industry (supermarkets):
* http://ccwipp.ca/index.php/en/
Construction:
And even general solutions:
That said, the public sector pension (OPTrust) set up a system where Ontario charities / non-profits can join their general pool not too long ago:
* https://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2018/09/ontarios-new-non-p...
* https://www.optrust.com/AboutOPTrust/News/Nonprofits-Enroll-...
* https://theonn.ca/our-work/our-people/decent-work/pension/
BC is looking at pensions for gig workers:
* https://www.benefitscanada.com/benefits/health-benefits/b-c-...
Otherwise seems rather sensible.
Scale helps a lot because you tend to get closer to average returns and closer to the statistical distribution of payout timelines.
CPP was never meant to be a 100% program.
It would be "stupid" to not pay pensions, unless you don't see the risks in leaving a whole generation in their elderly years with no income whatsoever. Most evident of all, it would be a deadly blow agains the economy itself, especially in developed countries with aging populations.
It is inevitable that the longer people live during their non working years and the more top heavy the population pyramid becomes, that there will be less for future generations’ during their younger years.
At least in the US, there seems to be more than enough money to keep several branches going. The military just got $20 billion extra this year. Foreign aid is around $45 billion a year.
It's not that there isn't enough tax money.
At a national level that is probably okay, at a municipal level it means that people that leave a city get services that they don't pay for, and future residents pay for services they didn't benefit from. It's a terrible alignment.
Would creating a national pension system work better?
Note the "paid for" in "paid for in the future".
California is 2nd to Hawaii in home prices and more importantly, payment to income ratio
https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-house-price...
California has the 2nd lowest percentage of home ownership, and is among the highest decline in home ownership over the past 15 years.
https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/homeownership-rate-...
It’s pretty common to hear about police officers and firefighters supposedly working >80 hr/week for extended periods. I’m not saying it’s impossible for that to happen naturally, but I think it is greatly incentivized by pension calculations. The OT pay itself being time fraud isn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but the fact the taxpayer has to pay it over and over again over potentially decades really makes it consequential and something we need to disincentivize (note I’m NOT suggesting we even get rid of OT. Just remove it from pension calculations).
Another controversial statement: a lot of public jobs in CA pay a lot of money. I don’t think they necessarily need to have their pay cut but you could probably reduce the pension to like 40-50% of max income. Someone making $120k/yr has plenty of money to make other retirement contributions and still live well off an extra $50k+/yr. Healthy pensions are good to avoid destitution but $100k/yr pernsion is a lot of money…
Otherwise it’s great as long as stocks always go up.
Not weighting your investments towards bonds as you get closer to retirement is solely on the individual.
> These investors are told to never sell even in a crash
Realizing losses on money you don't need for 20 years is an incredible stupid thing to do. The instruction here is almost always correct.
The school district has to pay now rather than pay later (not only the employer contribution, but salary is generally higher to make up for the lack of a juicy pension). The 401K is also persistent (you don't need to work X amount of years at the school district for it to stick), and if you die early, your heirs inherit it rather than it just going poof. It isn't an obvious win for the school district...and it does keep them more honest in that they can't pretend their investment returns will be higher than they actually are.
A bit more than 5%, but exactly (about $30k/year to fully fund a 401k from employee and employer side, sans whatever the employee contribution was before).
Basically, a pension is an understanding that you accept lower pay during your career in exchange for a guaranteed annuity in retirement, but the workers have by and large completely broken their side of the tacit agreement.
Why would anyone trust a good politician to nominate a good pension fund board member to hire good investment firms to make good investments when you can cut all that agency risk out and just stick your money in VOO and VCSH or a target date retirement fund at Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab?
A pension fund of one or two is very risky and so you need to take a lower withdrawal rate, especially if you find yourself starting your withdrawal in times of very high valuations.
In this scheme, earlier generations of California teachers will make out great. Latter generations of California teachers will suffer. The typical result of DB pension schemes.
Then the state is stuck picking up the bill for homelessness and healthcare and crime.
Looking at the exploding sovereign debt around the world, this seems to be true on the governmental level as well. At least if we speak about "own" money instead of "owed" money.
The EU has basically given up on Maastricht stability criteria for the euro by now. "No more than 60 per cent of GDP in debt" is about as reachable as the Moon for most members.
I'm perfectly happy to be outraged about some of this. Why does the top earning deputy sheriff earn three times in overtime his regular salary, for instance? I have a hard time believing he seriously put in 160 hours a week of work that deserves compensation. But there is no need to lie about it. They have no obligation to show you the literal checkbooks of each official with the power to withdraw from a public fund without charging for it, but that isn't the same thing as "hiding spending." You can view the most recently published comprehensive annual financial report here: https://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-ARD/CAFR/cafr19web.pdf. You can search the record of disbursements from public contracts here: https://suppliers.fiscal.ca.gov/psc/psfpd1/SUPPLIER/ERP/c/ZZ....
I'd like to know why this writer feels this isn't good enough.
For example, I clicked on: https://suppliers.fiscal.ca.gov/psc/psfpd1/SUPPLIER/ERP/c/ZZ... (your last link) and got this:
You must have cookies enabled in order to sign in to your PeopleSoft application.
Return to Sign In with cookies enabled.If your attempt fails, please contact your System Administrator.
And your "comprehensive annual fiscal report" that you're touting is for... the year ended in June 2019 (2.5 years ago). How is that useful?
I see this entire comment didn't go over well. People love to shit on governments. I used to be a budget officer in the US Army, in charge of the 1st Cav's efforst to digitize all records at the time the DoD was attempting to produce the first GAAP-compliant auditable financial statements ever in its history. We were digging out paper receipts from filing cabinets in rooms people had forgotten existed to upload into the SAP ERP, an extremely time-intensive and error-prone process, at the same time the sequester was going on and all the civilian staff had been furloughed, and half the headquarters was deployed to Afghanistan in the middle of this.
This is actually hard. Governments are held to much higher transparency and accountability standards than private companies, all while constantly having their own budgets cut and staff reduced, with no investment in automation or interoperability between disparate information systems and sources of truth.
People just expect this to be magic and free for some reason.
All of the states that you list receive among the lower amounts of federal aide AFAICT:
* https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...
* https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...
* https://voxeu.org/article/which-50-states-practise-personal-...
It's the more-blue states that you seem to be criticizing that keep the rest of the more-red states afloat. Perhaps the more-red states should follow the policies of the more-blue states so they're in a 'more terrible' place and be less dependent of federal spending.
> It's the more-blue states that you seem to be criticizing that keep the rest of the more-red states afloat
This is not true. Almost all spending is deficit, the government is not taxes in, taxes out. In fact, the surplus generated by every net-positive state is consumed many times over by a single state: Virginia [0]. Last I checked Virginia leans blue, but again, it is utterly irrelevant.
[0]: https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-...
[1]: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/502321-no-blue-states-do...
> These are the exact same states with the lowest and highest balance of payment ratios, respectively. It is hypocritical to decry the tax code for taxing high-income states more than low income states while intentionally designing tax policies with that effect.
The above is an example of a tax code that is progressive. Plenty of red-leaning folks, including Rand Paul or KY, want a flat tax. The very progressiveness that helps their states is what they attack:
> As a lower-income state, Kentucky receives the full benefit of federal programs like Medicare, but pays relatively little in income or payroll taxes, so it gets much more than it pays in. And that is actually how the social safety net is supposed to work. We want individuals who for whatever reason are hurting financially to receive support from the more fortunate, which necessarily implies large transfers from rich states like New Jersey to lower-income states like Kentucky.
> What’s not OK is when states that are huge net beneficiaries of progressive taxation and the social safety net preen and posture about self-reliance and the evils of big government. It’s even worse when they assert some kind of moral superiority over the metropolitan areas that pay their bills.
* https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/opinion/kentucky-tornado-...
The The Hill article linked to also references ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which also is pushing for a non-progressive flat tax:
* https://www.alec.org/model-policy/flat-tax-option-act/
ALEC, while labeled as "non-partisan", certainly has clear leaning (as it's original under §History illustrate):
> ALEC has produced model bills on a broad range of issues, such as reducing regulation and individual and corporate taxation, combating illegal immigration, loosening environmental regulations, tightening voter identification rules, weakening labor unions, and opposing gun control.[8][9][10][11]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
> at this point my only question is whether these places go broke in my lifetime or not
I think that would be hard to do when running a $30+ billion budget surplus.
There are however unfunded pension liabilities. If that goes broke, we can hope that government workers finally get moved over to a 401(k) type system (I write this as an ex-government worker.)