$250,000 a year isn't rich!

[opebo]

...We want it all

What is this?  A scrap of bread and a roof over the head?  Seriously Torie, try to exercise better taste in future.

[opebo]

...We want it all

What is this?  A scrap of bread and a roof over the head?  Seriously Torie, try to exercise better taste in future.

Opebo, you are in charge of the "good/better taste" department. I gave that up when I started taking my testosterone shots. Surely you knew that. I may have to discount your IQ down from 131 closer to the number Gustaf gave you.

That's aptitude, not knowledge, Yummie.  I totally forgot about your testosteronious condition. 

But then again, in fairness, the thread is disgusting.   It is enough to make one reminisce fondly of Pol Pot, a man all too often poo-pooed.  (is poo poo as annoying as pubby and the y-word?  I'm just experimenting).

[opebo]

It would be nice if income taxes factored in cost of living.  The guy making 50k in Alabama paying the same rate as the guy in NYC is just not fair.

That is such an Atlas post that it makes me sick.

But it has helped you to get-to-know Americans better, no?

[opebo]

The reason they cannot read Torie, is because of the privilege of the rich.

[opebo]

The reason they cannot read Torie, is because of the privilege of the rich.

The rich have some plot to saddle the kids with union protected un-cannable incompetent teachers who got a C average in third rate former teaching colleges and worse?

Do you imagine that a) such supposedly poor teachers could make privileged children 'learn less', or b) that genius teachers could somehow wrest the children of the poor from their class-ignorance?

The fact is, Tory, that blaming the teacher for children being thus-and-so is like blaming the plumber for a case of diarrhee.

[opebo]

It's "Torie." You need to study up more opebo, a lot more, on the education industry. JMO.

Sorry, Torie, my apologies about the misspelling.  But about the 'education industry', your critiques are beside the point - poors will labour under disadvantage and rich shall enjoy privilege, in this as in all things.  The poor teachers have nothing to do with this.

[opebo]

...Yes, it would be nice if we could transform these lower class families or broken families, and make them whole with middle class values, but we have been trying for decades, and throwing trillions of dollars at it,

Actually no, we have not tried to change anything Torie.  If we had tried to change anything you would not have millions.  It is capitalism itself which consumes the human chattel, and any programs which were tried briefly in the 1960s were just window dressing.

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Oxymoron.

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Alright, soo pay these teachers $250,000/year.

[opebo]

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Well you actually got rather close to the truth on something here opebo. Well done!  

Most such fantasy-land plans which imagine a teacher can 'make a difference' expect the poor sod to spend his supposed 'three months off' studying for various 'advanced skills' and additional degrees in order to attain the trumped up 'master teacher' status.  I can tell you from experience - all these kind of performance-requirements do is force people to cease their actual work of teaching and prioritize nothing but meeting the requirements.  It ruins service.

The solution of course is socialism for society as a whole, and sinecures for teachers.

[opebo]

No, obebo, you just don't get it do you?  You hire teachers like Torie dumb dumb.  Geez!

Do I have to list for you why I would be a great teacher?

It is true I cannot imagine how you would be such, but if our criteria for procuring educators is this: like Torie, then I think we may as well give up the ghost now.  

[opebo]

I do agree with you though, Torie, that raising taxes on only millionaire's is not a sustainable fiscal strategy. What we really need to do is repeal the entirety of the Bush tax cuts, and return all the tax rates to what they were during the Clinton era. Also capital gains need to be taxed at the same rate as regular income.

Keep in mind that the Obama proposal raised taxes upon the parasitic class far too little - if rates were returned to the 70%+ range, with proper enforcement, revenues would be excellent.

[opebo]

You don't think I would be a good teacher?  I'm hurt! 

Actually I don't know you well enough to know, but I know you are rich, so I doubt you would put up with it.  It is terribly unpleasant.

[opebo]

Yes, I guess you don't. I don't operate that way by the way. But I digress.

What way?  You mean you don't react to unpleasantness?

[opebo]

Of course one way of making sure that there is absolutely no chance of the best possible teachers joining the profession is to denigrate the profession, its practices and institutions (such as they are). As has been done in many countries for the bulk of the past thirty years, often in the guise of... er... attempting to raise educational standards. Bit of a paradox there.

Precisely.  As I pointed out, in the past being a teacher was a sinecure.  Sans sinecure, the profession has little attraction.

[opebo]

$250k salary isn't rich. Just a highly paid worker.

That is a very reasonable structural definition that shows the observational astuteness of a Marxist.  Are you one, phk?

That said, there would be no harm in destroying this class of 'house n***o' along with massah.  Just pile them in the ditch, there's room.  Or, sorry, maybe we're just on this subject in reference to tax rates?

[opebo]

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I used to agree, Phk, and I have often expounded upon this very point, However, and it is a big however, it completely leaves aside the class-basis for membership in these higher echelons of 'paid employment'.  I still agree that the 250k doctor is a definite inferior to even a 100K man of rentier income, but as a function of class exploitation I think the doctor (and even more so the corporate executive or banker) is equally privileged, and equally an enemy of the common people.  I say this partly because his 'capital' does exist in the form of expensive education and class-signifiers, if not in rental properties or stocks, or bonds, and partly out of a  'you're with us or against us' mentality you can find in my post above.

Speaking of this sort of hoo-hah, today I had a nice dinner at a 'farang' restaurant in a nearby city, where my ears were assaulted by a table full of 'upper middle class' (in our native parlance) or 'middle class' (in the finer parlance of Al and his ilk) Americans.  Oh it was rough, let me tell you - the horrible little boasters were going on the entire time about their stocks, their investments, their technology, and their special knowledge about all of these things.  There were four of them, and one American woman who seemed (I thought I sensed this) to be slightly embarrassed by their puffery), and one foreigner of indeterminate extraction who seemed reserved. 

Every time I run into Americans in Isaan it is at this restaurant or another in this bigger city, and every time they make me want to jeer.  I swear I have had better conversations and or evesdropping with Mormon missionaries than these terrible self-obtuse climbers.[/tt]

[opebo]

^^^ opebo continues to be our greatest poster.

Thank you, Lief.  You are, as always, correct.

Might I suggest you quote the pleasing post to which you refer in some appropriate thread - I'm not sure if the Comedy Institute (née Goldmine) is appropriate, but somewhere - as I have little doubt the censors will soon remove it for the implication (piling the enemy in the ditch).

[opebo]

^^^ opebo continues to be our greatest poster.

he has great command of language, skilled in relaying a narrative, the ability to pierce through bullsh**t in many regards... much of this gets lost in translation to the crowds here, which are largely one-dimensional, and without novel perspective. 

he is, however, a disappointment.  not in the sense that is often used, that he never "made anything of himself", or etc.  but I do wish he had a passion.  on the scale of seeking comfort / seeking action he lies all the way toward comfort.  this is not a poor decision, but it means his value to others is limited and sporadic.  if he had a passion; say, something that he cared enough make himself central and then write a book about it, he'd approach immortality and greatness.  tilt him towards the risk-taking rather than risk-averse on that grand scale and he's Hunter S Thompson.

Wow, thank you Miami.  I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me.  And I believe it, too.