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Taking the chain e-mail into the classroom!
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Apr 26, 2012 23:44
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quote:Darcy, who films his encounters with teachers and fellow students, doesn’t have much luck selling this theory.
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Apr 26, 2012 23:54
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Dameius posted:Taking the chain e-mail into the classroom! This is a dumb O'Keefe-style stunt that has a whole lot wrong with it, none of which matters because the point is to get the dumb message (WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION!!!1) out instead of being honest. e: What I mean is that if you took income inequality ratios and stuck it up against a GPA I'd imagine you'd need to only "redistribute" like 0.02 grade points to bring someone from a 0.0 to a passing grade. SixPabst fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Apr 27, 2012 |
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Apr 27, 2012 00:02
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It's almost like it doesn't work at all because there's a hard upper cap on the grades you can earn.
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Apr 27, 2012 00:39
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"He said many students on college campuses support high taxes on the rich, but when put into relative terms, cringed at the thought of spreading around their academic wealth." Do grade points pay for classroom security, or infrastructure that makes obtaining good grades even possible? Is there a percentage of people with high grades who were simply born with them and don't even have to show up for class and contribute to the group discussions? Is there a certain percentage of students that have to work and study harder than the high GPA guys and gals but are capped at a D average because of systemic socioeconomic issues? Do those with the highest GPA get to lobby the professor for special perks or to keep the low GPA group from becoming high GPA? BECAUSE JUST ASKING HOW RELATIVE WE MEAN HERE.
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Apr 27, 2012 01:33
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prom candy posted:It's almost like it doesn't work at all because there's a hard upper cap on the grades you can earn. If 1 person is the class had a GPA of 4.0 and 99 people had a GPA of .01 the results of the redistribution question would probably be a bit different.
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Apr 27, 2012 01:48
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I'd really like to make a well written 'sequel' to the classroom story, I know it won't change any minds but I think it'd be cathartic. I'm going to work on improving the relationship between the GPAs and family net worth but it should be pretty close for now.quote:...
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Apr 27, 2012 02:30
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prom candy posted:It's almost like it doesn't work at all because there's a hard upper cap on the grades you can earn. Also, there's no such thing as the velocity of grades. These simplified comparisons are what sells supply side economics to the majority public.
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Apr 27, 2012 02:32
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more like "spurious comparisons."
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Apr 27, 2012 03:21
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Speaking of spurious comparisons, I get tired of seeing the debt/households number conservatives like to throw around. Debt is not negative money. A lot of Americans own those T-bonds.
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Apr 27, 2012 04:52
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NatasDog posted:The documentary Wal Mart Movie is pretty chock full of useful info as well. I just went to a talk given by Winona Laduke and one of the points she brought up in her speech was discussing the WalMart effect on her reservation community. They did a study to determine where all of the money spent on food for the community went. 85% left the reservation, mostly to WalMart. The remainder spent in the community was almost entirely junk food bought at gas stations and convenience stores. She made sure to point out that this was typical for most rural communities. It isn't just that WalMart and other giant box stores kill mom and pop shops, they parasitically suck the life out of the community as a whole by draining what little money is brought in by the people there right back out again.
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Apr 27, 2012 06:42
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Dameius posted:Taking the chain e-mail into the classroom! 'It'll be interesting to see what these students think in a few years once they're out in the real world'
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Apr 27, 2012 09:26
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Guilty posted:'It'll be interesting to see what these students think in a few years once they're out in the real world' Since they assume they will be the ones distributed FROM rather than TO, they'll have the same position.
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Apr 27, 2012 09:40
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Dameius posted:Taking the chain e-mail into the classroom! Why is it that college conservatives and libertarians (same thing?) think stupid poo poo like this or "Affirmative Action Bakesales" are clever, intelligent, and insightful? It's like they see other people doing creative things as protests and activism, like the stage performances of the Prop. 8 trial transcripts, but they don't really get how this stuff works, kind of like the "conservative comedy" oxymoron.
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Apr 27, 2012 11:21
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After seeing all these dumb and spurious images comparing household finances to national budgets I started wonder if you could make one that scales the US down to a town of 1,000 or maybe 10,000 people and how evocative that would be. It's clear that these people find the household budget argument compelling, so maybe scaling things to a small town will be too? I'm probably relying too much on my faith in them giving equal weight to the same type of arguments and not what the conclusion to those arguments is.
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Apr 27, 2012 16:22
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I'd really like to make a well written 'sequel' to the classroom story, I know it won't change any minds but I think it'd be cathartic. I'm going to work on improving the relationship between the GPAs and family net worth but it should be pretty close for now.
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Apr 27, 2012 16:28
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DarkHorse posted:After seeing all these dumb and spurious images comparing household finances to national budgets I started wonder if you could make one that scales the US down to a town of 1,000 or maybe 10,000 people and how evocative that would be. You really can't do it that way either. I know towns issue municipal bonds, but they almost never run constant deficits. But they also can't set interest rate and don't have their own currency. A lot of this stuff only really happens on a national scale. You can't even make exact comparisons with Eurozone countries because of the Euro being a multi-nation currency.
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Apr 27, 2012 16:40
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Whoops, I left out a sentence, I meant using it to represent the distribution of wealth and income in the country. I don't doubt it would still be wrong for the same reasons their images are wrong, but I kept coming back to the image of a town of 1,000 where fifty guys literally owned half of the buildings and 3/4 of the money and spent their time hanging out in each others' mansions planning how to get more money, and 800 were barely scraping by... some of whom are saying the fifty need more money.
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Apr 27, 2012 17:16
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A former highschool friend who still lives in Wisconsin posted an article called "Lies my union told me: dismantling WEAC talking points", and prefaced it with a fairly inane comment:Facebook friend posted:I feel like I've said most of this stuff myself already. But at least if this list is coming from a teacher, it should lend some more credibility to it than me saying it. Lies my union told me posted:Thank you for the overwhelming response to last week’s newsletter. I feel like it’s time to address some of the repeated comments I hear when talking with people about the teachers’ unions. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are many who agree with my opinions; however, I find that those who disagree with me give me the same five talking-points, over and over. Those tiresome talking-points (and my response to them) will be the focus of this week’s newsletter.
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Apr 27, 2012 17:23
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Bruce Leroy posted:Why is it that college conservatives and libertarians (same thing?) think stupid poo poo like this or "Affirmative Action Bakesales" are clever, intelligent, and insightful? Conservative comedy isn't an oxymoron in itself, it's just that comedy by definition has to involve "punching upwards". Someone joking about someone in a position of power over them is a fine tradition. Someone joking about someone over whom they have a position of power is just cruel and hacky. That's why most attempts at overtly conservative humour (as opposed to people who happen to be conservative and funny) fail, because they have to take such convoluted routes to convince themselves and their audience that it's the white middle-class male that's the oppressed party - hence Affirmative Action Bakesales...
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Apr 27, 2012 17:31
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As a teacher in a right to work state where we have gotten pay cuts 5 years in a row despite being in the top 50-100 high schools in the loving nation every year I would really like to say 
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Apr 27, 2012 17:33
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DarkHorse posted:Whoops, I left out a sentence, I meant using it to represent the distribution of wealth and income in the country. I don't doubt it would still be wrong for the same reasons their images are wrong, but I kept coming back to the image of a town of 1,000 where fifty guys literally owned half of the buildings and 3/4 of the money and spent their time hanging out in each others' mansions planning how to get more money, and 800 were barely scraping by... some of whom are saying the fifty need more money. Oh if you mean demonstrating income distributions then that would be a good example considering stuff like that actually exists and has been a pretty common trope in fiction. You could pretty much copy and paste Mr. Potter from Its a Wonderful Life and it would be pretty accurate.
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Apr 27, 2012 17:58
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That loving article posted:Without unions, teachers would be paid $10 an hour. Surely people can just move whenever they like with and are not burdened by things like "friendships" and "cost of moving". Also, business always cares about the schools in the area and have not constantly come out in favor of cutting schools, especially when the economy does well. Surely when schools turn bad people will band together and raise tax...er, some kind of money somehow to improve the schools and not just turn away or let the negative feedback loop happen. Let's never try to actively improve things. Or you could look at the last several years of evidence and consider that, just maybe teachers have been chronically underpaid for years. quote:Without unions, teachers would have poor working conditions. For a teacher, she certainly doesn't understand the opposite of that statement. The statement is saying that working conditions would suffer without unions, not that all working conditions are peachy-keen with unions. Besides, a teacher's working conditions are a child's learning conditions, and class size is a huge factor in working condition. They advocate for better facilities, but it's a secondary thing since their concern is teaching. Also, teachers' unions have done things like enforce certification standards and devise curriculum standards, so you can be. Teachers' union benefit public education which benefits the public, so they should pay for something that benefits them. quote:Charter schools/choice schools take money away from public education. Teachers' unions aren't in opposition to taxpayers, BECAUSE THEY ARE loving TAXPAYERS! If they are in opposition to anyone, it's school administration, who aren't elected. Also, once teachers are payed, IT'S THEIR loving MONEY! They are selling their labor to you, you get a benefit so you pay them in accordance with their value, and the money becomes theirs to pay for union dues or whatever else they want. It's no longer taxpayer money at that point. quote:Scott Walker never said that he would “strip collective bargaining rights.” They meant before the election, dishonest hack. quote:Teachers who do not like the unions should stop reaping the benefits from collective bargaining and go work for a private school. Surely private school teachers get no benefit out of having a union even if they're not part of it, except for putting pressure on private schools to provide competitive compensation, increasing options and mobility. quote:There you have it. I tried to be as short and sweet as possible to keep your reading time down to a minimum. Hopefully, I have shared some counter talking-points that we can use to help keep the focus of education where it belongs: On the kids! Not short, not sweet. How can she care about kids when you can't give teachers time, resources, benefits, and incentives to not be stressed about money and their future? You know, so teachers can actually focus on teaching and give kids attention. Why do people assume they get no benefit out of maintenance payments like union dues? It'd be if I told my condo association to lower their fees and then be surprised when the water pipes burst. I just needed to vent. 
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Apr 27, 2012 18:01
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So they didn't abolish collective bargaining in Wisconsin? I haven't heard anything on it in a while. Or did they just at the same time make WI a right-to-work state or something? I'm confused by the line about "giving people A CHOICE" in joining the union.
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Apr 27, 2012 18:14
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JohnClark posted:Why do people think that they're shackled by their unions, and that they would truly be liberated if allowed to operate under the thumb of their employers with absolutely no means of fighting back? ThePeteEffect posted:Why do people assume they get no benefit out of maintenance payments like union dues? I had a long series of discussions with an anti-union buddy of mine last summer and I can probably shed some light onto the mentality. The basis of it is the just world theory, and if the world is inherently just then unions are just getting in the way of that natural justice. This guy was convinced that what unions actually did was fund the Democratic Party, line the pockets of the "union bosses" and protect lazy people from getting fired. He absolutely refused to entertain the notion that any of these things might not be the case or that unions had any other real purpose. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the mind-numbingly stupid opinions about politics stem from the just world theory.
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Apr 27, 2012 18:24
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myron cope posted:So they didn't abolish collective bargaining in Wisconsin? I haven't heard anything on it in a while. Or did they just at the same time make WI a right-to-work state or something? I'm confused by the line about "giving people A CHOICE" in joining the union. Some people lost collective bargaining rights, such as: - Home health care workers paid by Medicaid - Family child care workers - University of Wisconsin Hospitals & Clinics employees - University of Wisconsin faculty & academic staff Other people just got collectively hosed: - Collective bargaining is limited to negotiating wages. Wage increases are limited to a cap based on inflation unless a referendum is held and the voters approve a larger contract. - State employee contracts are now limited to one year in duration. - The state employers are now prohibited from collecting union dues from worker paychecks and remitting the same to the unions. - Unions can no longer require members to pay dues for membership. - Unions are required to hold a vote of its members every year to maintain its status as a collective bargaining unit. So basically they lost any ability to raise funds and they are required to vote to continue existing every year, and if they lose the vote even once, no unions forever. Good Citizen fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Apr 27, 2012 |
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Apr 27, 2012 18:25
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Good Citizen posted:- Collective bargaining is limited to negotiating wages. Wage increases are limited to a cap based on inflation unless a referendum is held and the voters approve a larger contract. I love this because it shows that Conservatives don't really believe that wages should reflect accomplishment or hard work, and that 'fair' means what voters think, not actual market-place negotiations.
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Apr 27, 2012 18:27
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Good Citizen posted:- Unions can no longer require members to pay dues for membership. Oddly enough when parts of the law were struck down by federal court, this part was(along with automatic collection from checks) and Citizen's United was cited for it ruling that collecting dues in that fashion was by far the most efficient way for a union to engage in speech, and their rights to free speech would be hindered in an unfair fashion otherwise. The yearly re certification was also struck down I believe.
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Apr 27, 2012 18:55
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I love, too, how they objected to applying the same rules to the Chamber of Commerce, specifically that people could join and gain its benefits without paying dues, and suddenly that was unconscionable and unfair because people would be getting things for free!  Re: teachers getting paid more than $10/hr - Oh great, I'm glad a bunch of Master's degree earners are making a little more than minimum wage!
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Apr 27, 2012 19:26
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DarkHorse posted:Re: teachers getting paid more than $10/hr - Oh great, I'm glad a bunch of Master's degree earners are making a little more than minimum wage! I always respond to that argument with a variation of "If your tax dollars are used to pay the salaries of the teachers who teach your children, do you not expect a good return on your investment (i.e. well-qualified, happy teachers)?"
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Apr 27, 2012 19:29
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Dameius posted:Taking the chain e-mail into the classroom! I go to the same university that he did- he's graduated now, and the College Republicans haven't done a single thing since then. It was all him being an attention whore. I don't think the idea was even his, it's been a fixture of chain e-mails since before that.
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Apr 27, 2012 19:32
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The fact that the Republican machine got people mad at the bailout, but then okay with the people receiving it spending it on themselves, is pretty impressive.
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Apr 27, 2012 19:34
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quote:Without unions, teachers would be paid $10 an hour. In SC a teacher starting out with a MASTER'S degree earns $36,762; after 20 years of experience, they graduate all the way to a massive $55,572. This is an annual increase of 1.3%, which isn't even enough to beat 20 years of inflation.
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Apr 27, 2012 20:12
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Sarion posted:In SC a teacher starting out with a MASTER'S degree earns $36,762; after 20 years of experience, they graduate all the way to a massive $55,572. This is an annual increase of 1.3%, which isn't even enough to beat 20 years of inflation. In VA a teacher with an MA in their subject area starts at no more than $41k, even in areas like NorVA, Virginia Beach, and Richmond, where costs of living are remarkably high. It's lower in rural areas. The best part? The payscales have been frozen for five years. You cannot move up to the next experience bracket, and the pay for each bracket is not being adjusted for inflation, increased healthcare premiums, or increased retirement contributions -- as a result, teacher's real take home pay is decreasing with remarkable speed here. Kids are our future!
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Apr 27, 2012 20:16
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BrotherAdso posted:In VA a teacher with an MA in their subject area starts at no more than $41k, even in areas like NorVA, Virginia Beach, and Richmond, where costs of living are remarkably high. It's lower in rural areas. Then why don't you just move to a state that pays better? 
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Apr 27, 2012 20:18
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Sarion posted:Then why don't you just move to a state that pays better? Because everyone in Massachusetts is an rear end in a top hat and I don't want to fall into the sea with the Californians when the big one hits, obviously.
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Apr 27, 2012 20:20
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I would say that WI is creating a massive free rider problem but that's probably their idea in the first place. But it's good to hear that parts were struck down. Is there a better place to read about it than Wikipedia?
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Apr 27, 2012 21:32
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Posted by a facebook friend: "It is interesting how if you look closely the people in sororities and fraternities are throwing up the same demonic hand symbols that the celebrities use in their videos and on stage. Take a closer look at this. I've noticed this and this is no coincidence. C'mon y'all....we cannot serve 2 masters." "The 666 sign and the sign of baphomet are common examples." 
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Apr 28, 2012 10:41
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Tarezax posted:Posted by a facebook friend: Quick, tell them that the 666 number is a mistranslation and it's actually 616 from early old Testament translations. http://www.rense.com/general64/616.htm (The original UK article is in its archives) http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=33;t=000999;p=0 Discussion on it.
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Apr 28, 2012 10:48
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| # ? May 25, 2024 19:09 |
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Earlier this week, I told my small-l-libertarian dad about some of the common conservative chain emails, e.g. "Welcome to the Republican Party," and some of the common rebuttals to them, e.g. "The little girl could arrange for the hobo to do her extra chores, charge $50, pay the hobo $10, and pocket the difference." "That sounds like Obama-style crony capitalism," he observed. "That sounds like capitalism, period," I shot back. Then we were interrupted; I don't yet know how he would have responded. But still, his comment was just another entry in a long list of crazy crap he's said. It's like he and I live in parallel, yet overlapping dimensions. All the same political and business figures exist in both dimensions, and all of the same events occur, and he and I can interact with each other across whatever unobservable barrier separates our respective worlds. In my dimension, corporations are sucking the life out of the American people, progressives are struggling valiantly to check corporate influence, and Obama is a well-meaning yet rather ineffectual president, but in Dad's dimension, the government is the parasite, the corporations and lobbyists are the country's would-be saviors, and Obama is freedom and democracy's most dedicated foe outside of the terrorists. Dad claims that I will come to see as he does one day, but I just can't see myself crossing into his dimension any more than I can see him crossing into mine.
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Apr 28, 2012 12:12
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