Are you sick of highly paid teachers?
Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.
That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET'S SEE....
That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).
What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.
Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! There sure is!
The average teacher's salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!
Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.
I found the above floating around Facebook today and it seems simple enough and straightforward enough to accept. But there is a huge glaring hole that this piece completely ignores: benefits! It is obvious that this was written in response to the recent activities in Wisconsin and now is being shared throughout social media in a way to emotionally sway the political argument in a particular direction. But I feel incredibly manipulated when the whole thing is completely misleading. In fact, the issue in Wisconsin has nothing to do about the wages of teachers or even if the state continues to give the privilege of collectively bargaining for their salaries. The issue is over the people working actually putting their own money toward their own benefit and pension plans. The author of this little piece above seems to purposefully leave out the fact that the $50,000 dollars does not include the thousands of dollars that teachers get in benefits.
What I am NOT saying is that teachers do not deserve these benefits or that teachers do NOT deserve more money. Teachers perform and incredible service to our society. My brother is in school right now to become a teacher and I applaud him and anyone else in or planning on going into the profession for their work and service.
But another problem that this little piece seems to neglect is Collective Bargaining. As I mentioned Gov. Walker is NOT planning on ending collective bargaining for salaries, merely for benefits. And future wage increases would be subject to a voter referendum. What is wrong with this? How dare the public have a voice in how their tax dollars are spent?
Here's some perspective that this piece above does not give. One of the most liberal Presidents of the 20th century, FDR, said that public unions collectively bargaining is not and should not be part of true democratic government. As he puts it, in the public arena "the employer is the whole people."
To engage in true collective bargaining for public workers is called voting. You vote in a representative that is sympathetic to your political and personal views and ideas. You engage your representative in townhall meetings, send them letters and emails, and call them. Also, in a private collective bargaining situation the two sides have different agendas that they must work to reconcile. In the public sector the very people that are voted to represent are then the negotiators. These elected negotiators are going to give their constituents what they want in return for campaign contributions and votes. Just think about the power of the public union when a huge voting block can be used against a representative to get the desired change. That representative would rather maintain those votes and give in, it is in his best interests. This is completely different in the private sector.
But this also gets into the problem of the unions. The unions have the ability to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars from their member dues and use those to lobby elected officials to pass particular legislation that they want. So the public union can circumvent the democratic process by lobbying officials and twisting arms via threats or promises for campaign contributions and votes to get their desires met even if the public majority of the public does not want it.
Finally, this comes down to the idea that the public unions have the "right" to collectively bargain. We throw this word around these days as if everything we WANT is a "right." Collective bargaining for public officials was given to them by Wisconsin in 1959. This is not a right. The government does not dictate to us what is a right. Those are inalienable and God-given. Government protects the rights of ALL people. This includes the rest of the public that pays for these public workers. When people are losing their jobs and their incomes are being reduced and their lives are being changed by the economy the public unions do not have the right to collectively bargain to maintain or increase the burden upon the public to continue to finance programs that the people benefiting from them are not even paying out of pocket for themselves.
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