I’m not against unions per se, particularly for positions which are not as lavishly compensated as a typical white collar FAANG employee. I’m merely pointing out that you need to pick better examples. Otherwise you just undermine your own argument.
The funny thing is that public employment (in the US) is where unions have the least impact on firing difficulty, because employees have a property interest in their employment which means government — even as their employer — cannot deprive them of it without due process under the 5th (for the federal) or 14th (for states and subdivisions) amendments even if they are not unionized.
Also, the line you push about teachers is pushed by privatizers (and sometimes administrators as an excuse for their own failures), often supported by one or two anecdotes, so often as to have become an article of faith ib sone circles, but there is no systematic evidence for it.
In Switzerland, all the large unions (railroad workers, public service workers, ect.) have so much money and so much access to cheap credit, they can (and frequently did in the past) start housing co-ops for their members.
This results in large developments in the middle of the most expensive cities, where only union members have a chance to rent. And even those have year-long waiting list on every new development.
Since the housing co-op is non-profit and pays rock bottom interest rates on its loans, rent is frequently around half the fair market rate.
That war chest, in combination with it being unthinkable that a big union goes bankrupt, and the fact that they are building real estate, pretty much means they can borrow more money dirt cheap.
Otherwise, those apartments are completely normal and indistinguishable from any other development in a central urban neighbourhood.
And yes, union jobs pay decent salary in Europe. Probably one of the easiest/safest ways to a middle class life, especially without going to college.
You have that completely backward. Virtually all bad teachers start out hopeful and excited to teach kids, that's why they become teachers in the first place. They are then worn and beaten down by bad schools. Bad schools are mostly caused by bad students, who are disrespectful, disruptive, get into fights, etc. Bad students are mostly caused by bad parenting. If they aren't raised to respect adults, education, authority and their peers, then there is little that teachers can do about it. The reason "bad schools" have trouble keeping enough teachers despite high levels of state and federal funding is because the students burn through the teachers quickly. The teachers who hang on for a long time at those schools are often ones that develop coping strategies like not giving a shit, finding pleasure in yelling at kids, etc.
Employees have more money thanks to unions -> those deriving income from capital have less money -> narrower distribution of wealth -> goods (including housing) which both classes pursue are more affordable to the working class. QED.
Now, save recently, the cost to rent money for real estate was in steady decline. That means even a constant income could afford to rent an increasing amount of money. As a result, the price of housing was able to rise disproportionally to income, but proportionally to rent.
They are quite common in the UK.
Only if allowed to do so - but yes, landlord are leeches who do nothing and in return soak up every penny of income they can from their tenants.
However, isn't the typical market-capitalist argument to this, "if they could be making more money now, they would?" Don't "markets" set the price of real estate?
Markets don't, but it's really funny to me when people argue against good things, such as increasing minimum wage, with absurdities, like somehow a minimum wage increase is simply a subsidy for landlords.
I never experienced anything like the about “rubber rooms” in NYC (they may exist in NYC, IDK - but the suggestion that they are “business as usual” in school districts across the country is a fantastical lie). If admin wanted a teacher gone, they simply put them on the education version of a PIP, collected evidence of poor performance, and let that person go at a non-disruptive time.
I was in a union, Teamsters in fact. It protected crappy workers, prevented any change to work processes that might save time and put a low ceiling on high performing workers.
Not all unions are like that, but they certainly aren’t panaceas to all workers ills (in fact, sometimes they are the cause of new ones).
It's impossible to fire bad teachers (it really isn't, btw, at least not in Texas) because there are no teachers because teachers wages are pathologically low because every education department in the country is underfunded.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
Everyone else brings down the average, and it has nothing to do with teachers or how good they are.
Teachers in my county are assigned to schools randomly, and yet some schools score 9/10 and others score literally 1/10 and 2/10 on great schools for academic performance. Funding between schools is the same. Teachers assigned are from the same pool.
It’s not the money. It’s not the teachers.
Anyone who talks about “education in the USA” without addressing the giant disparity in academic performance that begins in kindergarten for black and Hispanic students is ignoring the single largest factor on student outcomes.
It would be nice if socioeconomic factors were the whole answer here. But that does not appear to be the case. Even Hispanic and Black students adopted by White families do not score much higher than peers of their ethnic group. This is a dark rabbit hole that you may not want to go down.
*Legal immigrants are self selected for higher ability.
Are you referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption... ? Are there other studies I'm not aware of? Because that study doesn't really conclusively demonstrate the point we're discussing in this thread re: race correlating with intelligence because of genetic factors of a race itself. In fact many interpretations of the study point to socio-economic factors as the root cause of different test results (e.g. it's hard being a different race than your parents, or suddenly finding yourself growing up in wildly different socioeconomic conditions than the ones you were born and raised into ). Also worth pointing out that black children adopted into white families had higher test scores than the mean for white children nationwide.
Yes there are other studies. Critically analyzed they all point in the same direction, including this one.
In Sweden it's around 41550 SEK per month, which implies 498 000 SEK per year, which including the tax would be 647 400 SEK per year, i.e. 59 000 USD.
But Sweden has a per capita GDP of 56000 USD whereas the per capita GDP of New York State is 104343. It's not going to be incredibly competitive.
So tax is in. I need to compare the same kinds of things. The American numbers are also pre-tax.
Here in Sweden though, the fully pre-tax numbers are rarely reported. Rather, what is reported is the wage minus a 1-1/1.3 tax, so I have to reverse that tax by multiplying by 1.3.
1. Above average talent in any subject field do not join the talent pool for teachers in the USA. Industry pays better and has better working conditions (both real and perceived). This is going to be a major cultural hurdle but the USA needs to break away from the idea that teaching is lesser work. This will create more political will to boost teacher funding.
2. Free Market Economics. You heard me. Teachers in the USA have the unique "opportunity" of having to find and interview for positions. Two problems: First, you end up with talent pooling unevenly. Next, you have teachers stagnating at one school for decades. Solution: central deployment. Teachers are hired by districts, and then the district rotates teachers through all schools in the district over the course of their career. Seniority grants some preference ranking, and longer rotation periods.
This also counters a third problem: Teachers finding themselves out of a job, or facing job prospects so dire that they just leave the field altogether. There is a level of security, and those who wish to proceed to administration are given opportunities towards the ends of their careers.
3. Administration as a separate career track. Administrative bloat is becoming a real problem, and both the higher pay associated + the opportunity to laterally move into the track via "further education" is a root cause. This makes them a separate class with competing interests, and incentives will only lead to more bloat as well as siphon away talented teachers who get burned out by teaching (mostly due to the abysmal pay). My time in Japan gave me perspective on a perhaps better way:
a) School based administration (principals and vice principals) is a role only obtainable at the end of your career, on a fixed timeline. If you decided to put yourself on that track, you will most likely be in the last 6 years of your career, and your last 3 years as principal will end in retirement. This both prevents admin bloat and class distinction, while allowing skilled, senior teachers to provide guidance and pass along wisdom.\
b) School District administration -- that is all the bureaucratic management of schools -- is a completely separate career track of professional, general bureaucrats who are assigned to school administration as part of a career rotation inside their career at government.
And thus begins a virtuous, positive feedback loop of good teachers rotating around a school district reinforcing good teaching, and then ultimately being rewarded by becoming the ultimate teacher. At the same time, administrative entrenchment is avoided because administration is an assigned, rotating task.