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> It hasn't solved Chicago Public Schools' problems. sure but it probably has solved many financial problems for Chicago teachers, which is a good enough reaso

> It hasn't solved Chicago Public Schools' problems. sure but it probably has solved many financial problems for Chicago teachers, which is a good enough reason to implement a tool like this.

HEmanZ 4y ago
At the cost of more financial problems for taxpayers? How do you balance those two?
- blamazon 4y ago
  Those teachers aren't burning the money. It goes back to the community around them as they spend it, generally.
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    We gave out a bunch of free money during the pandemic. What was the result of that?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - roughly 4y ago
      We didn’t have a fucking depression. Also, there was some inflation.
      - chitowneats 4y ago
        Well, aren't you lucky that the rising cost of basic and essential goods isn't a strain on your personal finances.
        roughly 4y ago
        It can be possible that two things are true at the same time: the current situation is bad, and the alternative was worse.
        chitowneats 4y ago
        The actual correct alternative would have been to not freak out about COVID. I can understand the first 3-6 months of restrictions. The rest was a total own-goal. A politicized circus. At least we didn't own ourselves for almost 3 years like China.
    - blamazon 4y ago
      One small part of the complicated answer to that question - a huge portion of that free money went to businesses in the form of PPP loans in a top-down kind of approach, which resulted in a dramatically high amount of fraud and misdirected public funds that will take tens of years to unravel. To ask another question: (presuming our hands were to be tied to give out that free money) Had we instead given that money directly to teachers and other low income individuals, essentially doubling or tripling the proportion we actually gave them, would we have seen the same level of fraud or waste? I can't imagine so. Would the economy have been better off? I feel like probably, but I'm no economist. It's a supply side argument and I have a hard time believing those based on the results of 'corporate socialism' experiments.
      - chitowneats 4y ago
        "Had we instead given that money directly to teachers" You mean the people who went to great lengths to be considered non-essential, so they could work remotely? We know the result of that was historic learning loss for American children. They don't deserve another dime.
        blamazon 4y ago
        I sense a polarity in our opinions regarding responses to the pandemic that indicates we're unlikely to come to an agreement on much with regard to adjacent topics, which is okay with me. Trying to put myself in your shoes, my heart breaks for the things you probably saw and experiences you probably had during the pandemic that I presume contributed to this harsh perspective on the public education system in Chicago. The next generations are so important and I think we agree we should strive to serve them as best we can. Wishing the best for you and yours.
        chitowneats 4y ago
        Thank you for your comment. It's not often someone tries to empathize with someone on the opposite side of an argument. Especially on the internet. Indeed, I saw things I hope to never see again.
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    And taxpayers usually burn money?
    - blamazon 4y ago
      Generally tax structures should be set up to tax the most wealthy entities first, and the poorest last, by my understanding. The wealthiest entities are going to be corporations and their leaders and they don't live where the teachers do. So, from the perspective of businesses and individuals that live where the teachers do, yes, the largest taxpayers do usually burn money. (Quite literally, in the form of things like very expensive-to-operate private planes, such as to attend the recent 'super bowl')
mwint 4y ago
Companies (and governments) never raise wages to solve problems for employees. They raise wages to solve problems for themselves. Maybe that’s the stated reason, and maybe it’s used to drum up political support, but it’s never the real reason.
- blamazon 4y ago
  It can be both. Everyone prospers when incentives are aligned on both sides of being and using labor.
  - ahepp 4y ago
    I absolutely agree in principle, but unless pay is in some way linked to performance I really don’t see how. The existing seniority based pay system completely decouples money as an incentive, doesn’t it?
    - blamazon 4y ago
      It's a tough nut to crack, I do agree. On one end of the scale you have labor incentive systems that are overly associated to (perceived) performance, which can produce much misery, inequity, and arguably reduced productivity - toxic stack ranking, the 2014 amazon NYT article, 996 Taylorism, etc. On the other hand you have systems that you describe that are not at all calibrated to performance, and only care about seat time. Such as, toxic school systems or government agencies. But, somewhere in between, there is a tremendous amount of happiness, equity and productivity. Such as, the customer service representatives that have worked for Amazon in Germany in the same roles since 1998. Or, airline pilots who, setting aside the various labor and equity troubles for a second, get great performance results from a seat-time oriented approach. Or someone that happily worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Rome for 20 years. In USA there's also a good deal of civil servants that have faithfully served our local societies for decades with a high quality of labor and life. The USPS mail person that delivers to my parents' house has been running that route for like 2 or 3 decades, he's still great at it and spends as much time playing with my parents' dogs as he wants. I don't know what the perfect formula is, but I do think it involves outpacing inflation for compensation increases regardless of performance, and some amount of performance evaluation too. But maybe not too much of either. Just my two cents, not an economist, etc.
_hdki 4y ago
At the expense of the school system itself, and students therefore. Illinois has to diminish services and sell the school system’s assets in order to fund the underfunded pensions, which cannot be diminished, as per the Illinois constitution.
friend_and_foe 4y ago
No it's not. A teacher is supposed to teach. We want to pay them more because they keep saying that if we do they'll teach better. We don't owe them money simply because they exist.
- yakireev 4y ago
  > We want to pay them more because they keep saying that if we do they'll teach better. Given a choice, would you prefer the teacher of your kid paid 30k or 60k? I'd prefer the second option even if it would be the same person teaching, because do you really want your kids to be raised by people in dire financial situation? A prospect of smarter folks becoming teachers (or staying in the field if they're there already) is a nice bonus.
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    I'm perfectly happy with a teacher making 60k provided that they're teaching my kid well. I'm not happy with giving them a raise if they're not, and "their lives could be easier so we should do it anyway" is not a compelling argument. In the rest of the professional world we have to earn our salaries.
    - beej71 4y ago
      What if underperforming teachers were fired and replaced with high-performing teachers? This is really what needs to happen, but... It's way harder to find high-performing teachers when you lowball salaries. It's actually way harder to find _any_ teachers when you do that. So if you're not willing to raise pay, you'll take what you get and you'll like it. > In the rest of the professional world we have to earn our salaries. As someone who worked decades in the professional world before giving up a huge chunk of salary to pursue my passion for teaching, this is not entirely true. There are tons of slacker leeches in the professional world. I've seen it worse than in teaching.
      - friend_and_foe 4y ago

> It hasn't solved Chicago Public Schools' problems. sure but it probably has solved many financial problems for Chicago teachers, which is a good enough reason to implement a tool like this.

HEmanZ 4y ago

At the cost of more financial problems for taxpayers? How do you balance those two?

blamazon 4y ago
Those teachers aren't burning the money. It goes back to the community around them as they spend it, generally.
- chitowneats 4y ago
  We gave out a bunch of free money during the pandemic. What was the result of that?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - roughly 4y ago
    We didn’t have a fucking depression. Also, there was some inflation.
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      Well, aren't you lucky that the rising cost of basic and essential goods isn't a strain on your personal finances.
      - roughly 4y ago
        It can be possible that two things are true at the same time: the current situation is bad, and the alternative was worse.
        chitowneats 4y ago
        The actual correct alternative would have been to not freak out about COVID. I can understand the first 3-6 months of restrictions. The rest was a total own-goal. A politicized circus. At least we didn't own ourselves for almost 3 years like China.
  - blamazon 4y ago
    One small part of the complicated answer to that question - a huge portion of that free money went to businesses in the form of PPP loans in a top-down kind of approach, which resulted in a dramatically high amount of fraud and misdirected public funds that will take tens of years to unravel. To ask another question: (presuming our hands were to be tied to give out that free money) Had we instead given that money directly to teachers and other low income individuals, essentially doubling or tripling the proportion we actually gave them, would we have seen the same level of fraud or waste? I can't imagine so. Would the economy have been better off? I feel like probably, but I'm no economist. It's a supply side argument and I have a hard time believing those based on the results of 'corporate socialism' experiments.
    - chitowneats 4y ago
      "Had we instead given that money directly to teachers" You mean the people who went to great lengths to be considered non-essential, so they could work remotely? We know the result of that was historic learning loss for American children. They don't deserve another dime.
      - blamazon 4y ago
        I sense a polarity in our opinions regarding responses to the pandemic that indicates we're unlikely to come to an agreement on much with regard to adjacent topics, which is okay with me. Trying to put myself in your shoes, my heart breaks for the things you probably saw and experiences you probably had during the pandemic that I presume contributed to this harsh perspective on the public education system in Chicago. The next generations are so important and I think we agree we should strive to serve them as best we can. Wishing the best for you and yours.
        chitowneats 4y ago
        Thank you for your comment. It's not often someone tries to empathize with someone on the opposite side of an argument. Especially on the internet. Indeed, I saw things I hope to never see again.
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  And taxpayers usually burn money?
  - blamazon 4y ago
    Generally tax structures should be set up to tax the most wealthy entities first, and the poorest last, by my understanding. The wealthiest entities are going to be corporations and their leaders and they don't live where the teachers do. So, from the perspective of businesses and individuals that live where the teachers do, yes, the largest taxpayers do usually burn money. (Quite literally, in the form of things like very expensive-to-operate private planes, such as to attend the recent 'super bowl')

mwint 4y ago

Companies (and governments) never raise wages to solve problems for employees. They raise wages to solve problems for themselves. Maybe that’s the stated reason, and maybe it’s used to drum up political support, but it’s never the real reason.

blamazon 4y ago
It can be both. Everyone prospers when incentives are aligned on both sides of being and using labor.
- ahepp 4y ago
  I absolutely agree in principle, but unless pay is in some way linked to performance I really don’t see how. The existing seniority based pay system completely decouples money as an incentive, doesn’t it?
  - blamazon 4y ago
    It's a tough nut to crack, I do agree. On one end of the scale you have labor incentive systems that are overly associated to (perceived) performance, which can produce much misery, inequity, and arguably reduced productivity - toxic stack ranking, the 2014 amazon NYT article, 996 Taylorism, etc. On the other hand you have systems that you describe that are not at all calibrated to performance, and only care about seat time. Such as, toxic school systems or government agencies. But, somewhere in between, there is a tremendous amount of happiness, equity and productivity. Such as, the customer service representatives that have worked for Amazon in Germany in the same roles since 1998. Or, airline pilots who, setting aside the various labor and equity troubles for a second, get great performance results from a seat-time oriented approach. Or someone that happily worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Rome for 20 years. In USA there's also a good deal of civil servants that have faithfully served our local societies for decades with a high quality of labor and life. The USPS mail person that delivers to my parents' house has been running that route for like 2 or 3 decades, he's still great at it and spends as much time playing with my parents' dogs as he wants. I don't know what the perfect formula is, but I do think it involves outpacing inflation for compensation increases regardless of performance, and some amount of performance evaluation too. But maybe not too much of either. Just my two cents, not an economist, etc.

_hdki 4y ago

At the expense of the school system itself, and students therefore. Illinois has to diminish services and sell the school system’s assets in order to fund the underfunded pensions, which cannot be diminished, as per the Illinois constitution.

friend_and_foe 4y ago

No it's not. A teacher is supposed to teach. We want to pay them more because they keep saying that if we do they'll teach better. We don't owe them money simply because they exist.

yakireev 4y ago
> We want to pay them more because they keep saying that if we do they'll teach better. Given a choice, would you prefer the teacher of your kid paid 30k or 60k? I'd prefer the second option even if it would be the same person teaching, because do you really want your kids to be raised by people in dire financial situation? A prospect of smarter folks becoming teachers (or staying in the field if they're there already) is a nice bonus.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  I'm perfectly happy with a teacher making 60k provided that they're teaching my kid well. I'm not happy with giving them a raise if they're not, and "their lives could be easier so we should do it anyway" is not a compelling argument. In the rest of the professional world we have to earn our salaries.
  - beej71 4y ago
    What if underperforming teachers were fired and replaced with high-performing teachers? This is really what needs to happen, but... It's way harder to find high-performing teachers when you lowball salaries. It's actually way harder to find _any_ teachers when you do that. So if you're not willing to raise pay, you'll take what you get and you'll like it. > In the rest of the professional world we have to earn our salaries. As someone who worked decades in the professional world before giving up a huge chunk of salary to pursue my passion for teaching, this is not entirely true. There are tons of slacker leeches in the professional world. I've seen it worse than in teaching.
    - friend_and_foe 4y ago