Is this why demcrats are against austerity in government?

[sylvester37]

January 2007 Manhattan Institute study (manhattan-institute.org):
-According to the BLS, the average public school teacher in the United States earned $34.06 per hour in 2005.
-Compared with public school teachers, editors and reporters earn 24% less; architects, 11% less; psychologists, 9% less; chemists, 5% less; mechanical engineers, 6% less; and economists, 1% less.
-Public school teachers are paid 61% more per hour than private school teachers, on average nationwide.

-8/13/10 USA Today: At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

-2/22/12 CNN, Buffalo, NY:
-The sweet deal that all the 3,400 teachers in Buffalo are eligible to get under one of their insurance plan options, they are billed nothing for any plastic surgery procedure, such as botox, liposuction, tummy tucks, and there is no deductible.
-Linda Tokarz teaches second grade and says she gets regular treatments. She says, "I think its great for us. I wouldn't want to see it taken away."
-While he does have plenty on non-teacher patients, Dr. Bhangoo does say three out of every 10 are Buffalo teachers and the school district's insurance covers every single penny. They will come in for hair removal on their face, liposuction, breast enhancement, and rhinoplasty.
-Last year, Buffalo's schools spent $5.9 million on plastic surgery which is also known as a cosmetic rider. And Buffalo teachers have had this rider for nearly four decades.

-6/11/12 Cato Institute (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/obama-vs-romney-on-public-school-jobs/) “Take a look at the data — as you can see from this graphic, public school enrollment has minimally increased over the last few decades, but teacher employment has exploded — the public school workforce has grown 11 times faster than student enrollment over the last 40 years.”
“Furthermore, on a per pupil basis, the inflation-adjusted average cost of a K-12 education has gone from about $55,000 to about $150,000.”

-6/14/12 townhall.com: Every pay period, the Philadelphia school district puts $155 per union member into a special fund that helps educators pay their personal legal bills, which includes everything from routine legal advice to estate planning.

[artzai]

You really are lazy. You copy and paste like mad, and most of the time it's nonsense.

[pete]

Austerity measures during a slow economic recovery could throw the country back into recession.

State and local governments have lost public sector jobs in the amount of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Those job losses have helped keep unemployment high and have adversely affected the economy by the loss of the money that could have been in circulation to help boost the economy.

We should be employing more teachers, more police officers, more firefighters, etc. Not only do they provide valuable services to the public but their employment in and of itself helps the economy and helps economic growth.

[fitche]

No, this is: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/grim-natural-experiments/#postComment

[avikar76]

Please divide that $34.06 by 30-35 kids and see if it equates to babysitting wages. And then there is the hour spent with 120 study hall students. And the babysitter doesn't need a college degree or recertification credits. Nor does the babysitter have to generate teaching materials, plan lessons, grade student work, or attend professional development seminars.

Before figuring out an hourly wage, too, please factor in the time to do all of those since that time is mostly outside the school day. For example, my last year of teaching, I had 140 students in classes and 135 in study hall every day. I generated worksheets, quizzes, tests, projects and activities such as research papers and essays, etc. for every week. I graded all of those Do you imagine that I did that in the one prep hour I got a day (unless I was asked to do something else by administration).

Then there was the summer school courses, on my own time and for which I paid.

Where did you get the figures for other professions? My child's psychologist charged $200/hour. Public employees, including teachers, generally have higher levels of education and more experience on average than private sector employees, so unless you compare those, comparisons are not valid.

Apparently Buffalo teachers have a number of options or so you say. I would assume each has different premiums. I would imagine the teachers pay the difference between a basic plan and a Cadillac plan.

$55,000 to $150,000? Is that in adjusted dollars? If not, I'd say public education is a bargain. The cost of living went up by a factor of 6.5+.

Since programs have been imposed on schools by law, including NCLB, districts have had to hire more staff.

In any case, in no district did teachers make the decisions. They would have negotiated, true, but that does not mean that they could write their own ticket. In every instance, school boards determined what they would or would not accept. I was a negotiator for four years, and in every contract, we knew what money was available. What was negotiated was what would go into salaries and what would go into benefits. Now teachers are expected to give up the benefits without recapturing the salary monies they gave up for them.

Before panning teaching, try it sometime.

[lathrop]

It is time to cut the pay of all federal employees by 10 percent. This will stay in effect until the federal deficit is gone.