From Stark
While the power struggle with public employee unions in many states may fire up the Republican Party’s base, it may not be a big winner with the public as a whole.
Here’s another poll reported in the New York Times that indicates strong levels of support for public employees and their rights to unionize for collective bargaining.
It may be too early to gauge the political impact of this power struggle in Wisconsin and other states, as well as the impact of the power struggle over the federal budget and the possibility of a government shutdown.
The impact won’t be clear until everything shakes out. By the fall of 2012, the outcome of all this fiscal and political brinksmanship will be clear. Will slashed state and federal budgets trigger renewed recession, as some claim? Will political hardball with unions lead to public sector chaos and reduced quantity and quality of government services? It’s too soon to answer those questions, but the answers will determine whether Democrats or Republicans can reap political windfalls.
We can also hope that there are leaders in both parties thinking about what’s best for us, as well as for them.
Here’s a comment about Social Security and Medicare that you might find to be interesting:
http://market-ticker.org/post=181492
Excerpt: “You set up a business. I’m a “trustworthy guy.” You have employee who you wish to provide a pension.
So every week when you pay them, you take out $100 from their paycheck. You have 10 employees (including yourself) and you come to me with your $1,000 every week and give it to me. I take it.
But instead of sticking it in an account somewhere with your name on it (as a trustee would) I instead give you a piece of paper. It says I owe you $1,000. But it’s not a debt security. You cannot negotiate it like a check, nor can you sell it to anyone else – it’s only valid if you bring it back to me. It says so right on the face. I promise that if you bring it back I’ll give you the $1,000.
Here’s the problem – as soon as you leave I call up my 10 stripper friends and the local liquor store and throw a party. Guess what I use for the money? Your $1,000….”
Later in the post,
“The money is gone. The so-called “IOUs” are not negotiable debt instruments. They have no formal, legal standing as debt. Further, they cannot be exchanged for actual cash unless the Treasury is able to issue actual debt into the market, because Treasury has no cash either; it is spending $1.7 trillion more than it takes in every year. If that ability to issue ceases, the $4.6 trillion will not be paid. Period.
Neither Social Security or Medicare can pay what has been promised. Social Security is cash-flow negative now (as of last year) and will be permanently on a forward basis. Within 20 years there will be one retiree for every two persons working. But the amount of tax received from those workers will only cover somewhat less than half of the money that has been promised to be paid out. In other words once the IOUs are depleted the promised funds will not be paid. Period.”
Since when did anyone have to have a point to post a comment?
I have no idea who this Iowahawk character is, but I figured he was trouble as soon as I noticed he began his post by calling Paul Krugman a “blowhard” and ended it by asking why Wisconsin teachers hate black students.
Iowahawk quotes one of Krugman’s recent New York Times columns correctly,
All of which is true. However, Iowahawk completely ignored the main thrust of Krugman’s piece, which was that, despite being one of the most conservative states in the US, Texas is in very, very deep fiscal trouble — pending budget cuts in Texas will disproportionately affect children (and poor children, at that).
However, instead of discussing spending cuts or budgetary matters, Iowahawk uses the above quote as a straw man to suggest that Krugman is merely another “member of the chattering class [who has issued] a nugget of stupidity so egregious that no amount of mockery will suffice.” [Incidentally, anytime you read disparaging rhetoric like this, it should raise red flags that the author is probably full of B.S.]
Iowahawk uses national test scores to argue that the [largely non-unionized] educational system in Texas is actually doing better than the [unionized] public schools in Wisconsin (which, again, was NOT Krugman’s point). This strategy gives Iowahawk the seemingly irresistible opportunity to bash both Paul Krugman and teachers’ unions, two of conservatives’ favorite whipping boys.
The only problem with Iowahawk’s analysis is that it is all wrong.
He begins with ACT/SAT scores, which are standardized test scores frequently used in college and university admissions. Iowahawk writes,
This entire argument is spurious, and I know, because I have used state-by-state comparisons of SAT scores in my courses as an excellent example of the misuses of statistics. It turns out that states like Iowa and Wisconsin report above average ACT/SAT scores, because relatively few of their high school graduates actually complete the tests, whereas other states either encourage or require all of their students to complete the tests.
And, which high school graduates in Iowa or Wisconsin are more likely to take such college entrance exams? It turns out that a relatively small proportion of Iowa graduates take the SAT, and those students tend to be the “cream of the crop” who intend to go to college. In fact, in 2009, only 1,105 Iowa high school students completed the SAT, whereas in Texas, 141,733 students took the SAT. Thus, the College Board specifically mentions self-selection bias and cautions against making state-by-state comparisons for this and other reasons:
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/cb-seniors-2009
Unfortunately, Iowahawk doesn’t consider any of this, but he does go on to ask:
Iowahawk then lists a bunch of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) purporting to show that
Once again, Iowahawk’s analysis is deeply flawed. First of all, if you actually go to the NAEP web site and pull up scores comparing Texas and Wisconsin, you’ll soon find many instances in which Wisconsin reported higher numbers than Texas. However, it also turns out that many of the differences reported by Iowahawk are not statistically significantly different, meaning that the differences in scores are likely due to chance factors. Third, just like the rest of the nation, the scores from Wisconsin and Texas are really nothing to brag about. Both states have plenty of room for improvement.
Finally, if Texas reports higher scores than Wisconsin for African American kids, what does that mean exactly? And, what other factors, besides state of residence or amount of public school unionization, might be affecting test scores? (Here’s one clue: poverty is strongly negatively related to scholastic achievement.)
The Texas population is about 11.5% Black or African American, whereas only about 5.9% of Wisconsin’s population is Black or African American. Moreover, it turns out that about three-quarters of Wisconsin’s Black population lives in Milwaukee. So, as far as African American test scores are concerned, Iowahawk might have done just as well to compare test scores from the entire state of Texas with those from the Milwaukee School District, which by many measures is definitely struggling.
The ethnic disparities between Texas and Wisconsin are even more glaring.
I could go on citing problems with Iowahawk’s analysis, but I won’t bother to belabor the point. Suffice it to say that his analysis is woefully inadequate. It’s also misleading, because even if Wisconsin schools did produce superior test scores, it would not necessarily make a “strong case that maybe Texas schools ought to become a union shop,” as Iowahawk claims. To make such a case, one would have to adequately consider many, many other factors.
Lastly, Krugman did not say anything about test scores; he mentioned graduation rates.
Stillwell (2010) examined state graduation rates for the National Center for Education Statistics, specifically the averaged freshman graduation rate (AFGR), which is an estimate of “on-time” graduation rates based on the percentage of an entering freshman class that graduates in 4 years.
Stillwell reports that the averaged freshman graduation rates of public high school students in Texas is 73.1 percent, whereas in Wisconsin, it is 89.6 percent. Graduation rates are worse in the Deep South and highest throughout the Upper Plains and Northern Mountain States. Incidentally, Washington State is only estimated to graduate a relatively lackluster 71.9% of our freshman students on-time.
Of course, this isn’t a fair comparison either, because Texas is about 36% Hispanic or Latino (of any race), and we know that ethnicity is predictably related to other factors that affect graduation rates, such as educational background, parental education, household income, and so forth. Moreover, the graduation rates in predominantly African-American, inner-city Milwaukee are far worse than the state averages would suggest.
Iowahawk’s conclusion that “students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools – especially minority students” is not justified by his weak analysis. Despite Iowahawk’s efforts, the claims in Krugman’s column hold up and remain unscathed.
And, as anyone who has heard him speak will undoubtedly attest, Paul Krugman is NOT a “blowhard.”
SOURCE: Stillwell, R. (2010). Public School Graduates and Dropouts From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2007–08 (NCES 2010-341), table 5.
“One reason liberals get so excited about the protests and teacher strikes in Wisconsin is that they see this as a battle to preserve the power of the working man — a noble cause and one many liberals take very seriously.
If you squint just right, you can see it their way:…
In his column today (02/21/11), Krugman describes the unions as a “counterweight to the political power of big money.”
But the unions are big money. Five of the top ten contributors to congressional and presidential campaigns since 1989 are labor unions according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the last election, 10 of the top 20 PACs were union PACs.
More importantly, it’s not as if Big Labor is balancing out the rest of “big money.” Does Krugman know that all of the top ten industries contributing to the 2010 elections gave more money to Democrats than to Republicans? That’s right: Lawyers, Health Professionals, Securities & Investment, Real Estate, Insurance, Lobbyists, Pharma, Government Unions, Entertainment, and Electric Utilities all favored Democrats in 2010.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/paul-krugman-epitomizes-current-liberal-divorce-reality#ixzz1FeBClU4T
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!!
The effort to demonize unions from their positions of political donation
is a bit like concentrating on the exhaust your car leaves behind and forgetting about the miles it moves you to your destination.
Also, those numbers AFY copied and pasted are wrong
as corporate PACs and contributions to the campaign season do not need to reveal themselves as long as they merely fund advertisements against a candidate.
The total true spending by unions is also lumped into every professional and trade organization that sees fit to endorse a candidate.
Ciz, if you think they be wrong, why not post for us all the numbers you think be right, otherwise there is plenty of smoke but the fire seems to be out!
Your opinion does not prove a source wrong, methinks!
But you do have a right to that opinion.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
All Contributions 2010
Grand Total Democrats Republicans Dem % Repub %
Business $1,317,974,729 $637,107,580 $612,940,796 48% 47%
Labor $92,355,686 $63,563,023 $4,319,172 69% 5%
Ideological $147,031,956 $77,919,743 $51,101,767 53% 35%
Other $210,734,003 $103,715,547 $98,735,937 49% 47%
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/blio.php
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Krugman’s columns have been receiving so many long, critical comments from economists and financial professionals that he recently shortened the length of comment allowed.
You may not think that Krugman is a blowhard, but many do.
For another view of Krugman, one of my favorite blogs: Are the Republicans Killing the Recovery, or is Krugman Killing Economic Logic?”
“Once upon a time, economists were taught logic, as they had to use it in presenting their material. Over time, the study of logic — and the attendant fallacies that good students learn in order to recognize good arguments over fallacious ones — was replaced by multi-variable calculus and statistics.
…
Why the long introduction? I do it because Krugman once again abandons economics for circular logic in his latest column. We get such gems as:
“So we’ve gone through years of high unemployment and inadequate growth. Despite the pain, however, American families have gradually improved their financial position. And in the past few months there have been signs of an emerging virtuous circle. As families have repaired their finances, they have increased their spending; as consumer demand has started to revive, businesses have become more willing to invest; and all this has led to an expanding economy, which further improves families’ financial situation.”
Before the Doctrines of Samuelson had taken hold, such a statement immediately would have been recognized as an example of circular logic, or, more specifically, the informal logical fallacy of “begging the question.” Today, unfortunately, this is what passes for economic wisdom.
However, we are supposed to ignore this and accept Krugman’s politically-convenient “bad weather and everyone else is getting richer” explanation. That is not economics, nor is it even mediocre economic logic. No, it is the application of pure, political partisanship in an attempt to circumvent sound economic thinking. Yep, that’s Paul Krugman.”
http://krugman-in-wonderland.blogspot.com/
I told you why the numbers are misleading and incomplete.
I also told you why it’s foolish to concentrate on published numbers at all.
Like all statistical measurements,
they will tell you nothing.
It’s your philosophy that both requires documentation and eschews it at the same time
and so makes a selective display out of inappropriate opinions and fabricated facts from others.
I’s got it, facts mean little but opinion means all!
It kinda like a religion, all it’s takes is faith!
I’s do have faith me friend!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
It’s important for all of us to realize we live in a media saturated environment absolutely rife with misinformation and disinformation that is intentionally crafted to manipulate our beliefs and our views of the world. Indeed, in addition to making us status-conscious consumers, billions have been spent to divide the nation into opposing political factions and to keep us at one another’s throats (so to speak).
We have to learn to be very sophisticated, savvy, and skeptical media consumers, so we can cut through all the spin, distortions, half-truths, and outright falsehoods masquerading as truth or reality.
Just this week, I heard a left-wing radio host refer to Peter G. Peterson as some sort of evil conservative who wants to destroy Social Security, but I am familiar with Peterson’s policy prescriptions, and there is no truth whatsoever to the claim. In fact, that claim is no truer than those planted in the popular imagination by Glenn Beck’s recent smear job on George Soros.
Every time I read comments to stories about George Soros now, I frequently see repeated the lie that he is some sort of evil fascist, or socialist, or communist who wants to destroy our democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth, but millions believe it, because Glenn Beck told them so.
The propaganda is pervasive. It’s on the left, the right, and in the center. Most of us have become so used to it, that we don’t even know it’s there, which of course, merely increases its power over us. Propaganda exists in nearly every room of our homes. It comes to us over our radios as we drive to work. It’s nearly inescapable.
Call it what you like; it’s known by many names: public relations, punditry, marketing, public diplomacy, advocacy journalism, psychological warfare, political commentary, perception management, crisis communications, advertising, whatever. It’s all propaganda that is carefully designed to change public opinion, mold our thoughts, and influence our behavior.
The media messages we receive are exhaustively researched, focus-grouped, and pretested by a multi-billion dollar industry hell-bent on selling us the next fad, staying ahead of the curve, and creating our culture. And, as any anthropology student can tell you, culture has the power to determine perceived reality.
Don’t buy into the BS. Media pundits are almost always wrong. Sound-bites are almost always false. There are always more than two sides to every story. Things are far more complex than you are led to believe. Always question the authority of the speaker and the veracity of the message. And, we should always be ready to question the truth value of our own beliefs, for we all hold beliefs that are simply untrue or not well supported by the available evidence.
And, whenever possible, use Shermer’s “Baloney Detection Kit” — ten questions we should ask when encountering a claim:
1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10.Are personal beliefs driving the claim?
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2009/06/baloney-detection-kit/
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html
Dave quotes from “Are the Republicans Killing the Recovery, or is Krugman Killing Economic Logic?” which is actually just another smear job.
Here’s an excercise for you: Go through and fact check all of the claims in the following paragraph using reputable sources and then explain how it is NOT a good example of tautological reasoning:
This just out, yesterday on Public employee’s, from definitely a right wing newspaper for sure!
“IF, AS SEEMS likely, New York City must lay off thousands of teachers because of budget problems, Mayor Michael Bloomberg would like a say in who goes and who stays. Topping his list of those who should lose their jobs are 2,671 teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory over the past five years, 882 teachers who lack a teaching license, 291 whom an arbitrator found to be incompetent or guilty of malfeasance and 183 with records of excessive lateness or absenteeism. But state law enshrining the policy of “last in, first out” doesn’t allow performance to be a factor and that means good teachers – possibly even great teachers – are likely to be forced out of the classroom.
It’s an indefensible policy, and it is not unique to New York. In most school systems, seniority trumps other considerations in determining whether a teacher stays or goes. As the New Teacher Project found in a searing new report, it’s actually illegal in 14 states to consider any factor other than a teacher’s length of service when making layoff decisions. Only the District and three states – Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma – require schools to consider job performance in making teacher layoff decisions…..
…Not only students but teachers, too, are hurt when they are treated, in the parlance of the New Teacher Project, like widgets or interchangeable parts. Why should the many fine men and women – who daily do heroic work often under difficult circumstances – be lumped indiscriminately with teachers who have given up on their students or who, as examples from New York City’s case files show, forged doctor’s excuses to explain excessive absences, committed corporal punishment against students or engaged in other misconduct? The time for timidity in changing this irrational process is long past.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030305414.html
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
How much did corporations contribute to campaigns?
There’s no way to tell since much of what they do isn’t disclosed.
How much did unions contribute to campaigns?
That too is unanswered since the method used to tally numbers isn’t disclosed.
So you find an opinion,
represented as statistics you like and that’s your argument.
The FEC knows:
http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapApp.do
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
The FEC is a long-running joke of ineptitude.
http://fixthefec.org/
…when people argue over data and hard facts, and not over ideological loyalties and impulses, progress is more possible. Peggy Noonan
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
According to this way of arguing, there will be no true principles in the world; for there are none but what may be wrested and perverted to serve bad purposes, either through the weakness or wickedness of men.
Jonathan Mayhew
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Well, I just came across an AP article here on the Herald’s site, and it looks like some of Krugman’s claims have been mostly substantiated by Jeannine Aversa, the Associated Press economics writer:
NOTE: The virtuous cycle does NOT amount to circular logic.
Now, to substantiate the remainder of Krugman’s claims, we’d better check the savings rate and the consumer spending figures for the past few quarters. We could also find out if consumers have been paying down debt or not. If you do, I think you’ll find that Krugman was correct.
NOTE: when you find an unreliable source that’s feeding you BS and blowing smoke up your behind, STOP paying attention to it! And, please, STOP spreading such crap around. We’re already knee-deep in bull pucky as it is.
Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/03/04/1898064/unemployment-dips-to-89-pct-192k.html#ixzz1FfsnQtxI
TED Talks: Bill Gates on How State Budgets Are Breaking US Schools
Gates says we need to preserve funding for education while reforming state budget and accounting practices.
You can watch it here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ted-talks-bill-gates-state-budgets-breaking-us/story?id=13038278
Todd,
In Mark Perry’s blog, Carpe Diem, today: “Fundamental Shift: Transparent Hospital Pricing
“From today’s Detroit Free Press, “Shopping Comes to Health Care: More Hospitals Post Prices, Negotiate Costs”:…
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/03/fundamental-shift-transparent-hospital.html
Incidentally, we’ll see what happens to the “virtuous circle” going forward.
You wrote, “Now, to substantiate the remainder of Krugman’s claims, we’d better check the savings rate…
Where I come from, that is deleveraging, not increased spending, except as caused by the (invisible) inflation.
I disagree with Gates, who attended Lakeside and Harvard, about this, but his argument has merit. However, Gates’ speech was about state budgets, and not about education as a central focus. I didn’t hear him say that we need to preserve state funding for education as much as that we need new approaches.
Those new approaches, I think, should include vouchers and charter schools.
That said, I’ve already linked to two articles that linked to that speech, and I called out the links. You present it as something you just discovered.
You’re not going to be surprised that I think that the government school monopoly, exacerbated by the pernicious influence of the teacher’s union, is more responsible for our educational problems than are declining state budgets.
I think that if you watch Gates’ speech again, you’ll see that it is about State budget gimmicks more than it is about education.
Gates definitely said we need to maintain funding for eduction.
And, he said absolutely nothing about abolishing state funding for health-care programs or pensions or health-care coverage for public employees, as you suggested.
Instead, Gates argued against all the gimmicks and tricks that have been used to obfuscate and disguise state spending and liabilities. Conversely, he supports more honest accounting principles and transparency in state budgets, receipts, spending, and liabilities.
What’s there to disagree with?
Just how misinformed are we?
Here’s the view from Canada on the “Obama birth conspiracy”:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=1829653144
Welcome to the perpetual silly season, folks!
Todd,
You’re going to love this, from Iowahawk:
Badgering the Witless
“…I was amused by a couple of emails asking for my credentials, and/or pointing out Paul Krugman’s sinecure at Princeton – as if this had any bearing on the validity of either of our conclusions. I may be a random internet drunk, but I am occasional cogent enough to recognize the ol’ appeal-to-authority gambit. Unlike Mr. Krugman I am happy to cite/link to my source data, both in the previous post and in this one. It’s a courtesy I learned at my beloved alma mater, Ottumwa Body & Fender (Southeast Iowa’s finest dent repair institution). But hey, if credentials and oak-framed vellum degrees are your bag, let me share this email with you:
Dear Mr. Burger:
I edit educationnext.org. I have a blog on the site. I would like to do a blog that will depends heavily on your material,quoting you at length, as I also think Krugman is a nobel prize winning fraud and because your data are intrinsically interesting… I will link the piece to your site, obviously.”
Paul E. Peterson
Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government
Director, Program on Education Policy and Governance
Harvard University
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Degrees-y enough for you? Despite getting my name wrong, I accepted Prof. Peterson’s request and encouraged him to go at my results hammer-and-tongs. His comments are here.
As for Mr. Krugman, I’ll only note the remarks of his former ombudsman at the New York Times, Daniel Okrent:
“Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.”
No shit, Sherlock. Now to the numerical issues brought up by readers. …”
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/badgering-the-witless.html
Dave,
I read his post, and I didn’t love anything about it.
It’s obvious that Iowahawk doesn’t know what he is talking about, and he certainly isn’t qualified to crunch education-related data, let alone refute Krugman’s work.