I challenge the Republican establishment to explain themselves.
This is not an attempt to attack conservative base values, it is instead a direct attack on the Republican political party and its priorities. It is my contention that neither conservatives nor libertarians are being served by that group in its current form.
Today's topic: Education
The Money Tree
Every time the state runs into financial trouble under Republican watch, education seems to be one of the first things on the chopping block. Corporations, meanwhile, are one of the last to see an increase in taxation to make up the shortfall. This defies basic structural logic if public education has value, which I think every US citizen would agree it does.
To understand the logical failing, we have to understand what we mean by value. Having an education gives a student the tools necessary to be able to realize their individual initiative and perform the jobs asked for them in the private sector. So in effect education is the root and trunk of the free market money tree. Education reaches roots into America's raw potential in the form of its children and shapes the capability of the upcoming worker whether they're future labor, management, or executive.
On the other side, corporations are the leaves and flowers of that tree: They are the final product that generates energy for rest of the plant. But for some reason Republicans seem to balk at that 'for the rest of the plant' part. They get caught up on the idea that because the leaves are the ones making the energy, that the roots are leeching that energy from the plant because they directly produce no energy by themselves. Never mind that the leaves could not do what they do without the nutrients of the roots or the support to of the trunk, the important part is that the leaves, corporations, are the sources of energy, revenue, and therefore should be allowed to keep it for themselves.
But even so - even if we don't tackle the question of a value chain where every dollar made in the canopy owes a portion of its value to the education system buried in the ground below - there is a simple structural failure in the idea of cutting the roots of the tree to trim back the plant. At the end of the day, if the leaves are thick and abundant and the plant is too heavy, trimming those leaves carefully is the way to make a garden grow. Carefully cut back the leaves, and a plant thrives, usually stronger than before. Cut its roots and it dies. So in times of immense corporate profit, huge CEO salary increases, and massive pools of liquid capital, why do we cut at the root of the plant instead of trimming the leaves?
Incentive
The average CEO in corporate America saw a 27% increase in salary last year, with major global corporations paying their CEO's figures approaching hundreds of millions in total compensation. The Republican justification for this kind of compensation is that it creates incentive and a loyalty to the corporation they pilot.
So to be clear, the idea is that compensation and investment forms the core of what keeps people in positions of value. I would be stunned if you didn't see where I was going with this. Once again we have this strange double standard from Republicans. As we've discussed, everyone agrees education has substantial value. So much so that we legislate it endlessly and require teachers to be licensed and get phenomenal levels of training and education to even apply for a job; a level of stringency only professionally matched by doctors and lawyers.
But we don't pay teachers like doctors and lawyers. In fact across the nation, Republicans bend over backwards and squint really hard to try to find ways how teachers are overpaid. They'll cite the nine month work year, which might be convincing if you don't know a teacher and don't realize that between inservice, curriculum development, after school programs, and a host of other obligations, they actually don't work less in total hours than someone employed 'year round'.
Likewise, they'll point out the short contract day in many districts. However not only is almost never the definition of a teacher's work day, but 'working the contract' – which is to say working the exact hours on the paper – is considered a way for the union to strike without impacting the yearly educational schedule. The expectation on teachers – both by the public, the district and by the teachers themselves, is that they will work significantly more than the contract demands. This is so engrained in the assumption of what the job entails, that board members get angry when teachers protest by just working the hours they agreed to. Think about that for a moment. Crazy, huh?
Finally Republicans love to stuff teacher's bras. Let me explain. They love to pull the retail value of the teacher's benefits and tack it onto their compensation dollar value, then quote it to the press as if it is their salary. This is just an exploitation of our assumption of what 'salary' means. When I ask you how much you make, you say $55,000, I understand that to be your gross pay. I do not ask you about the value of your other benefits other than to ask if you have them and are they 'good'. The social measuring stick does not include benefits – they are seen as perks and not part of the comparative value between people's jobs besides as a justification for taking a lower salary, and even then it's kept abstract, like so: “I took a lower salary because the benefits are great.” You wouldn't hear that person say: “I took a higher paying job, but most of the pay is in benefits.”
That's not how we talk.
Should we? That's a subject of another conversation. But we don't. So to DO that – to pad the numbers of a teacher's salary with the retail value of their benefits – is to stuff the bra with a sock and call it a real breast. It's inauthentic and looks and feels fake under close scrutiny.
So what we really have is a strangely treated group of highly trained professionals that are routinely paid very poorly for their level of education, tenure, and most importantly for the value we place on what they do. But despite stringent requirements, heavy regulation, and constantly growing expectations of what educators are to convey to children as they prepare for their adult lives, Republicans continuously move to cut spending on schools and most recently directly attack teacher contracts, benefits, and salaries.
How does a Republican reconcile this with the loudly stated belief that salary is incentive for value? If a middle manager had a masters degree and had been with the company for 10 years and had done exemplary work, would you attempt to keep that loyalty and performance by cutting their pay by 8% and unilaterally renegotiating their health care and pension so they have to pay more of it? How can Republicans wring their hands hard over education standards as they did under Bush and then participate in the largest cuts to education funding in our state's history? If compensation incentive works for business to the point where salaries have to grow by hundreds of percentage points to keep top professionals engaged, don't those rules apply to educators in some fashion?
Taxation
Considering the above, the bottom line for the Republican party doesn't seem to be logic, consistency, or even a coherent critique of education. It seems to reside in the fact that taxation is used to pay for public education. It's no longer even really about how much taxes are allocated, it's about the very fact that public education feeds on taxes at all. Republicans have lost perspective on taxation and the role of government, and have flown so far afield in protest to taxes that they don't recognize when taxation is being used properly.
Generally speaking, K-12 education is not profitable. Most private schools do not make money and charge heavy tuition to help cover the immense costs of overseeing not only a living environment and supervision for children, but the aggressive standards required by government. Attempts to privatize education into profitable business have met with poor results at best, disaster at worst. The fact is that education front loads the costs of preparing children for participation in the private sector, and there is little to no money to be made in doing so. This is fundamentally why public education is so important.
So the core issue is that there is no meaningful revenue stream created by education, but every revenue stream ultimately depends on education. Whether it's the assumption of basic math and the ability to read at Wal Mart for checkout clerks or the careful selection between MBA's from top universities, the people that then participate in gathering dollars from consumers gain many of their fundamental skills from their K-12 public education.
This is the best use of tax dollars you can come up with. You have a benefit being produced on which every single corporation depends. That benefit is used to garner every dollar of profit in whole or in part by every US company. Therefore every single corporation or individual owes a certain financial debt to the schools that keep our population educated and capable of participating in that market.
So we fund this system by taxing the population, and it's at that point that Republicans lose their minds. Paying for education up-front in the form of tuition they can get their heads around - It's a purchase. But paying for something already acquired in an indirect fashion through taxation offends them because there is no direct, limited obligation. It is a shared expense that continues as a price for participating in the national free market economy, and that idea feels far too socialist. So socialist, that Republicans seem willing to irrationally oppose it even if it forces them to hold double standards, ignore proven facts, and toss simple structural logic out the window.
Bottom Line
I used to work in telecommunications as a support manager. I saw the same thing there that I see in the Republican party today. Support was instrumental in our client retention, and therefore one of the pillars of the company's revenue. Everyone knew this, from executive management to sales. But despite the facts, we were constantly seen as a burden on sales because we didn't actually produce new money. We made sure the money acquired was not lost, but that was difficult to measure and hard to see. But it was objectively and absolutely true, but it irked those at the top that keeping their clients happy had a price tag.
Education is the support of everything our economy does. This year, Republican governors across the country are slashing education budgets in the name of fiscal responsibility. But fiscal responsibility is the intelligent administration of financial efficiency, not the blind reduction of spending at the cost of long term financial strength. Corporations know this. When I managed operations and costs looked high, I sent in people to audit and trim and streamline, but these Republicans are simply cutting off the funding. The result is a short sighted direct attack on the roots of the tree with the lushest and thickest weight at the top cheering the whole time. As the effect of hundreds of layoffs and early retirements of teachers attempting to lock in their pre-cut pensions, and slashed programs hits, every one of those fat leaves will start suffer as their roots thin and some die. Instead of trimming the bush and creating the promise of growth, they hack at the roots and watch the whole money tree start to weaken.
Republicans need to fall out of love with their hatred of taxation when it comes to paying for things that make their 'self determination' even possible. They need to remember that 'small government' and 'private enterprise' are not inconsistent with intelligent taxation and governmental strength in areas where the free market is most reliant. Education is a ridiculous and counter-intuitive target for Republican small government initiatives. It, like national defense, should be funded with the same zeal as the military, as what is accomplished in education becomes the basis of what will be tomorrow's profits. If Republicans were consistent in their application of their OWN values to education, none of these radical cut back and voucher programs would be even on the table, much less being signed into law.
Yet here we are. Once again Republicans are treating public education as if it is day care run amok, and a dangerous drag on the economic growth of the nation. They seek to grind down its costs to a minimum costing jobs and programs while demanding more and more from teachers. All the while massive profits of corporations and wall street reap the rewards of that education every single day.
Go ahead, Republicans. Explain yourselves.
This is not an attempt to attack conservative base values, it is instead a direct attack on the Republican political party and its priorities. It is my contention that neither conservatives nor libertarians are being served by that group in its current form.
Today's topic: Education
The Money Tree
Every time the state runs into financial trouble under Republican watch, education seems to be one of the first things on the chopping block. Corporations, meanwhile, are one of the last to see an increase in taxation to make up the shortfall. This defies basic structural logic if public education has value, which I think every US citizen would agree it does.
To understand the logical failing, we have to understand what we mean by value. Having an education gives a student the tools necessary to be able to realize their individual initiative and perform the jobs asked for them in the private sector. So in effect education is the root and trunk of the free market money tree. Education reaches roots into America's raw potential in the form of its children and shapes the capability of the upcoming worker whether they're future labor, management, or executive.
On the other side, corporations are the leaves and flowers of that tree: They are the final product that generates energy for rest of the plant. But for some reason Republicans seem to balk at that 'for the rest of the plant' part. They get caught up on the idea that because the leaves are the ones making the energy, that the roots are leeching that energy from the plant because they directly produce no energy by themselves. Never mind that the leaves could not do what they do without the nutrients of the roots or the support to of the trunk, the important part is that the leaves, corporations, are the sources of energy, revenue, and therefore should be allowed to keep it for themselves.
But even so - even if we don't tackle the question of a value chain where every dollar made in the canopy owes a portion of its value to the education system buried in the ground below - there is a simple structural failure in the idea of cutting the roots of the tree to trim back the plant. At the end of the day, if the leaves are thick and abundant and the plant is too heavy, trimming those leaves carefully is the way to make a garden grow. Carefully cut back the leaves, and a plant thrives, usually stronger than before. Cut its roots and it dies. So in times of immense corporate profit, huge CEO salary increases, and massive pools of liquid capital, why do we cut at the root of the plant instead of trimming the leaves?
Incentive
The average CEO in corporate America saw a 27% increase in salary last year, with major global corporations paying their CEO's figures approaching hundreds of millions in total compensation. The Republican justification for this kind of compensation is that it creates incentive and a loyalty to the corporation they pilot.
So to be clear, the idea is that compensation and investment forms the core of what keeps people in positions of value. I would be stunned if you didn't see where I was going with this. Once again we have this strange double standard from Republicans. As we've discussed, everyone agrees education has substantial value. So much so that we legislate it endlessly and require teachers to be licensed and get phenomenal levels of training and education to even apply for a job; a level of stringency only professionally matched by doctors and lawyers.
But we don't pay teachers like doctors and lawyers. In fact across the nation, Republicans bend over backwards and squint really hard to try to find ways how teachers are overpaid. They'll cite the nine month work year, which might be convincing if you don't know a teacher and don't realize that between inservice, curriculum development, after school programs, and a host of other obligations, they actually don't work less in total hours than someone employed 'year round'.
Likewise, they'll point out the short contract day in many districts. However not only is almost never the definition of a teacher's work day, but 'working the contract' – which is to say working the exact hours on the paper – is considered a way for the union to strike without impacting the yearly educational schedule. The expectation on teachers – both by the public, the district and by the teachers themselves, is that they will work significantly more than the contract demands. This is so engrained in the assumption of what the job entails, that board members get angry when teachers protest by just working the hours they agreed to. Think about that for a moment. Crazy, huh?
Finally Republicans love to stuff teacher's bras. Let me explain. They love to pull the retail value of the teacher's benefits and tack it onto their compensation dollar value, then quote it to the press as if it is their salary. This is just an exploitation of our assumption of what 'salary' means. When I ask you how much you make, you say $55,000, I understand that to be your gross pay. I do not ask you about the value of your other benefits other than to ask if you have them and are they 'good'. The social measuring stick does not include benefits – they are seen as perks and not part of the comparative value between people's jobs besides as a justification for taking a lower salary, and even then it's kept abstract, like so: “I took a lower salary because the benefits are great.” You wouldn't hear that person say: “I took a higher paying job, but most of the pay is in benefits.”
That's not how we talk.
Should we? That's a subject of another conversation. But we don't. So to DO that – to pad the numbers of a teacher's salary with the retail value of their benefits – is to stuff the bra with a sock and call it a real breast. It's inauthentic and looks and feels fake under close scrutiny.
So what we really have is a strangely treated group of highly trained professionals that are routinely paid very poorly for their level of education, tenure, and most importantly for the value we place on what they do. But despite stringent requirements, heavy regulation, and constantly growing expectations of what educators are to convey to children as they prepare for their adult lives, Republicans continuously move to cut spending on schools and most recently directly attack teacher contracts, benefits, and salaries.
How does a Republican reconcile this with the loudly stated belief that salary is incentive for value? If a middle manager had a masters degree and had been with the company for 10 years and had done exemplary work, would you attempt to keep that loyalty and performance by cutting their pay by 8% and unilaterally renegotiating their health care and pension so they have to pay more of it? How can Republicans wring their hands hard over education standards as they did under Bush and then participate in the largest cuts to education funding in our state's history? If compensation incentive works for business to the point where salaries have to grow by hundreds of percentage points to keep top professionals engaged, don't those rules apply to educators in some fashion?
Taxation
Considering the above, the bottom line for the Republican party doesn't seem to be logic, consistency, or even a coherent critique of education. It seems to reside in the fact that taxation is used to pay for public education. It's no longer even really about how much taxes are allocated, it's about the very fact that public education feeds on taxes at all. Republicans have lost perspective on taxation and the role of government, and have flown so far afield in protest to taxes that they don't recognize when taxation is being used properly.
Generally speaking, K-12 education is not profitable. Most private schools do not make money and charge heavy tuition to help cover the immense costs of overseeing not only a living environment and supervision for children, but the aggressive standards required by government. Attempts to privatize education into profitable business have met with poor results at best, disaster at worst. The fact is that education front loads the costs of preparing children for participation in the private sector, and there is little to no money to be made in doing so. This is fundamentally why public education is so important.
So the core issue is that there is no meaningful revenue stream created by education, but every revenue stream ultimately depends on education. Whether it's the assumption of basic math and the ability to read at Wal Mart for checkout clerks or the careful selection between MBA's from top universities, the people that then participate in gathering dollars from consumers gain many of their fundamental skills from their K-12 public education.
This is the best use of tax dollars you can come up with. You have a benefit being produced on which every single corporation depends. That benefit is used to garner every dollar of profit in whole or in part by every US company. Therefore every single corporation or individual owes a certain financial debt to the schools that keep our population educated and capable of participating in that market.
So we fund this system by taxing the population, and it's at that point that Republicans lose their minds. Paying for education up-front in the form of tuition they can get their heads around - It's a purchase. But paying for something already acquired in an indirect fashion through taxation offends them because there is no direct, limited obligation. It is a shared expense that continues as a price for participating in the national free market economy, and that idea feels far too socialist. So socialist, that Republicans seem willing to irrationally oppose it even if it forces them to hold double standards, ignore proven facts, and toss simple structural logic out the window.
Bottom Line
I used to work in telecommunications as a support manager. I saw the same thing there that I see in the Republican party today. Support was instrumental in our client retention, and therefore one of the pillars of the company's revenue. Everyone knew this, from executive management to sales. But despite the facts, we were constantly seen as a burden on sales because we didn't actually produce new money. We made sure the money acquired was not lost, but that was difficult to measure and hard to see. But it was objectively and absolutely true, but it irked those at the top that keeping their clients happy had a price tag.
Education is the support of everything our economy does. This year, Republican governors across the country are slashing education budgets in the name of fiscal responsibility. But fiscal responsibility is the intelligent administration of financial efficiency, not the blind reduction of spending at the cost of long term financial strength. Corporations know this. When I managed operations and costs looked high, I sent in people to audit and trim and streamline, but these Republicans are simply cutting off the funding. The result is a short sighted direct attack on the roots of the tree with the lushest and thickest weight at the top cheering the whole time. As the effect of hundreds of layoffs and early retirements of teachers attempting to lock in their pre-cut pensions, and slashed programs hits, every one of those fat leaves will start suffer as their roots thin and some die. Instead of trimming the bush and creating the promise of growth, they hack at the roots and watch the whole money tree start to weaken.
Republicans need to fall out of love with their hatred of taxation when it comes to paying for things that make their 'self determination' even possible. They need to remember that 'small government' and 'private enterprise' are not inconsistent with intelligent taxation and governmental strength in areas where the free market is most reliant. Education is a ridiculous and counter-intuitive target for Republican small government initiatives. It, like national defense, should be funded with the same zeal as the military, as what is accomplished in education becomes the basis of what will be tomorrow's profits. If Republicans were consistent in their application of their OWN values to education, none of these radical cut back and voucher programs would be even on the table, much less being signed into law.
Yet here we are. Once again Republicans are treating public education as if it is day care run amok, and a dangerous drag on the economic growth of the nation. They seek to grind down its costs to a minimum costing jobs and programs while demanding more and more from teachers. All the while massive profits of corporations and wall street reap the rewards of that education every single day.
Go ahead, Republicans. Explain yourselves.
Andre, Once again, you hit the nail on the head! Why aren't you running things? Or, at the very least, formulating policy?
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