BUT IT'S FOR THE CHILDREN, EH. BC TEACHERS AND NHL PLAYERS.

So News1130 of Vancouver, British Columbia, reports that members of the BC Teachers Federation are facing a 5% cut in wages if teachers fail to agree to a new deal. Should teachers sign the deal, each one shall get a CAD$1,200 signing bonus. The sum of those bonuses would cost the BC provincial government more that CAD$40 million.

The average wage of a player in the NHL is $2.4 million. NHL players belong to a union, the NHLPA. 

But are NHL hockey players overpaid? It is unlikely that a pro hockey player in the NHL could play in the NBA, whose players earn US$5.15 million on average, nor in the MLB, whose players earn US$3.2 million on average. 

Perhaps a few NHL players could play in the NFL, whose players earn US$1.9 million a season, on average. Yet, most couldn't.

So, the true wage of a NHL player absent his union would be the highest wage he could earn doing something else. The true average wage then for all NHL players would be the average of the highest wage all players could earn doing various work.

If BC teachers weren't teaching, then what kind of work could they do? Let's suppose that BCTF teachers could qualify to do government work. Statistics Canada reports there were 3,631,837 public sector workers earning wages and salaries in 2011.

Statistics Canada also reports that public sector workers were paid CAD$194.19 billion wages and salaries. Dividing total wages paid by total public sector workers gets $53,469.73. On a 40-hour work week and at 52 weeks of work, the average hourly wage for a Canadian government worker across all provinces is CAD$25.71 an hour.

There isn't any federal minimum wage in Canada. Instead Canadians of their respective provinces establish minimum wages through their respective provincial legislatures. 

At $25.71 an hour, that is a whopping 2.5 times the minimum wage of $10.25 an hour for residents of BC.

In spite of what anyone might believe, teachers rarely improve their skills after their first year teaching. So, a teacher working 20 years who claims to have 20 years experience truly only has one year experience repeated 20 times. 

Even if a teacher improves her skills during the first two or three years work, any improvement thereafter likely is insignificant. 

Of course, what holds back teachers from improving their skills is their Luddite fight against any capital, which would improve their productivity.

BC teachers get paid in steps by categories. To create a representative table of salaries for BC teachers, I have averaged the pay tables for Metro Vancouver, since the lion's share of school-aged population lives there and thus likely the lion's share of teachers in BC.

So, BC teachers need to justify why a teacher at step 10 in category 6+ should get paid $39.33 an hour or 1.3 times that of the average government worker and nearly four times (3.84) the minimum wage worker.

In the meantime, unionized BC teachers shall tell the same big lie that all unionized teachers tell.

Read more ...

"FREE COLLEGE FOR EVERYONE!" SAYS BILLHASLAM

• 
  
• −

Bill Haslam, governor of Tennessee and brother of the owner of the Cleveland Browns, has proposed that Tennessee taxpayers ought to pick up the tab for any graduating high school senior to attend a two-year community college or a college of applied technology free of tuition and fees.

Few reformers ever touch on reality. Reality starts with knowing one's purpose. What ought to be the purpose of education for strangers living in a society of property, where property always means the right of ownership and never the things owned? 

Education should support progress. One word sums up all of progress — autonomy. Autonomy is self-government of anyone in society of property.

Haslam touches on what needs to happen — real reform. Yet, his approach would fail to do the job if implemented.

Here is what real reform that leads to successes would look like:

Elementary schooling should emphasize expression — learning musical instrumentation, learning 2-d and 3-d perspective drawing, learning all kinds of athletics. Of course, reading proficiency and arithmetic proficiency ought to be concurrent with the foregoing.

All indoctrination of young minds in elementary education should stop forthwith. There is no need to pollute minds with phony versions of history nor is there good cause to subject young minds to support contemporary political factions seeking extra privileges.

High school needs to end at 16. Middle school and high school ought to be combined. The end point of high school should be an understanding of jurisprudence and civics so that young adults can become engaged citizens.

During these years, students ought to learn an authentic history of what it means to be American. Thus, such a history should begin in-depth around the English Civil War and culminate around the eve of World War 1. Next students should learn about the control for power of America through the various wars and schemes and why the USA as ended up where it is today.

Along the way, students should gain proficiency in algebra, odds-making, risk-assessment, rhetoric, persuasion and bookkeeping.

What is now the first two years of an undergrad education or the full two years of community college ought to become two tracks — (1) three years of foundation preparation with the curricula the same everywhere — calculus, statistics, finance, business law, physics, chemistry — which gets completed by 19; and (2) production trades for mechanics, technicians completed by 18. Either way, both would lead to skilled Americans for actual work.

The bachelor's degree ought to be done away. Instead, universities ought to begin with conferring master's degrees built from the foundation preparation above. So by the time an American is 21, she or he is a master in a field such as business or engineering or law. The JD ought to be eliminated.

The advantage to the foregoing is that when occupational demands change, anyone needs but a quick two years to change his or her master vocation.

With an additional year, for those seeking to become medical doctors and dentists, instead of the two years master's degree, such persons should gain a medical degree readying them to gain licenses straight away.

However, too many vested interests have want to keep schooling extended for years upon years. There are too many academicians with bogus Ph.Ds pursuing personal hobbies as research, which ought to be privately funded as charity. Whole fields need to be eliminated such as sociology, Chicano studies, Afro-American studies, women's studies, and all other such political fields of pseudo-science.

Read more ...

SAME AS IT EVER WAS IN THE LAND OF GLUTTONY AND SLOTH

These clips come from a small work published in 1910, titled Individual Responsibility written by Frank Wallace Patch.

As you can see from the clips, little has changed for Americans for more than 100 years. That change has not come reveals an indictment against all the means of mediation between individuals of America — all of our government and its institutions.

You can read the full work after the clips.

Read more ...

HIV IS STILL MOSTLY A HOMOSEXUAL DISEASE

Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) are approximately 2% of the United States population, yet men who have sex with men are the most severely affected by HIV. In 2010, young MSM (aged 13-24 years) accounted for 72% of new HIV infections among all persons aged 13 to 24, and 30% of new infections among all MSM. At the end of 2010, an estimated 489,121 (56%) persons living with an HIV diagnosis in the United States were MSM or MSM-IDU.



For years, workers at the CDC have published the HIV Surveillance Report, which dispels the myths about HIV conjured by those working for mainstream media who push agendas. 

The annual HIV Surveillance Report provides an overview on the current epidemiology of HIV disease in the United States and dependent areas. CDC funds state and territorial health departments to collect surveillance data on persons diagnosed with HIV infection; all personal identifiers are removed from these data before being transmitted to CDC via a secure data network. Data are analyzed by CDC and then displayed by age, race, sex, transmission category, and jurisdiction (where appropriate). Prior to the 2008 reporting year, the report was referred to as the HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report. The report is published annually in late summer or early fall.

Read more ...

KELLY PHILLIPS ERB AND HER SILLY BELIEFS ABOUT PUBLIC EDUCATION

The foregoing comes from Kelly Phillips Erb, over at Forbes.

There is no such thing as “society.” Saying so is a cheap rhetorical ploy. There are only individuals. If society exists, it consists of all the individuals as there are only individuals. Society doesn’t exist apart from the individuals who comprise it. So Ms. Erb must show that each adult individual in America enjoys a rise in purchasing power above the sum of money taken through force from each to fund public education. If Ms. Erb can not do so, her boastful claim that a benefit exists to each adult individual (aka “society”) at once becomes false. After all, Ms. Erb made the boastful claim a benefit exists, which must be a benefit to each individual. If some individuals benefit while others do not, then no one can claim “society benefits.” Regardless of her wishful thinking, Ms. Erb can not escape the choke-hold grasp of logic. Specifically with respect to Mr. Fernandes, unless his income goes up each year by something greater than $7,143.54, to cover his compliance expense as well as to yield a return, Fernandes loses. Likely, that is the case of for all adult Americans who get forced to pay to the public school district mafias. Public education benefits unionized government workers engaging in make-work as all government work is little more than overpaid welfare make-work. Also note, that public educators who pay taxes to fund public education, in effect, do not pay any taxes as they pay themselves. Thus, public educators are receiving an extra benefit that none else are. The indoctrinated and the shills parrot the same lines — "School tax is cheap insurance. Without public education, there shall be many on food stamps and other welfare who have a dozen kids each. If children become well educated they are less likely to rob me or cause my neighborhood to deteriorate. Without a public education system, a country will experience a lack of prosperity." Never do these indoctrinated ones and these shills cite peer-reviewed studies that shows by statistical significance the lack of education is causal for crime rather than coincident or causal for why all becoming a food stamp recipients or other welfare. Never do these jokers show that public education is causal for prosperity. If the lack of education were causal for crime, then why not mandate everyone earn PhD.s? Why not require persons pay taxes for everyone to attend universities through PhD.s, gratis? Educating everyone to the max would eradicate crime according to your beliefs. Right now, 1 in 6 Americans receive SNAP (food stamps). Some of them have PhD.s. How is it that some having earned PhD.s need food stamps, the same as those who might be high school drop outs? The current owner of Dole, David H. Murdock, dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. He is the 190th-richest person on earth according to Forbes with a net worth of US$2.4 billion. Why hasn’t Mr. Murdock led a life of crime? If it were so that public education were causal in prosperity, then public education must also be causal in time of pauperism and economic depression. Likely, in the history of the USA, there has never been a time with more Americans having been educated through public education and to the degree of that public education. Yet, Americans have experienced more than five years of bleak employed precisely because of the lack of prosperity. These indoctrinated and shill jokers are cowards who are are quite comfortable to have agents of the political establishment use force against some so that their preferences get provided by others, preferences which support their crazed false beliefs about Utopia.  

Read more ...