Credit: Ismael F. Armendariz Jr.
It was the strike heard ‘round the country.
West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, four-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.
If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country will henceforth be groomed for a third-world life.
Gordon Lafer, Associate Professor at the […]
Public schools have been used to create drones for a long time.
I have followed Lynn Paramour for at least 5 years and have never found fault in her economic analysis. Her views are more conservative than mine which probably makes me a stronger critic of her work.
An observation…Systems always produce the result they are designed to create. The system itself is the producer and can be defined by it’s outputs. While we might want to search for a cabal that runs the world the truth is more subtle, the system is much more complex which means that change itself occurs by simply manipulating most any of the system determinants. Some determinants have stronger impact than others.
For instance, the globalization treaties starting with GATT and most critically Clinton’s NAFTA served the wealthy well. The defacto corporate coup that bought off both political parties and allowed unfettered globalization had to result in an equalizing of wage and capital rates across the globe. That this would be disasterous for workers was given as workers at the inception had been disenfranchised so that the treaties were a decision of the wealthy. The USA has not hit that world poverty level yet and will continue to decline to world levels so long as the people of the nation sell their political power to the ruling elite.