What's Wrong With Schools?

It's not, as some insist, bad teachers or an insufficient number of standardized test, nope. Much like our colleges and universities, the  problem with schools is administrative overreach and over pay. To wit, the Long Island administrator of 10 schools and 6.6k students gets around 405k per annum and no backises.  

Crooks

Remember the SEC/Citigroup case a judge threw out because, on the whole, he found it too lenient and wanted an admission of guilt? Instead of going to trial and convicting, the SEC is appealing the ruling. Why? Because:

The S.E.C. has long contended that it must settle most cases rather than take them to trial because its limited resources cannot afford much litigation. In addition, the commission says it frequently achieves in its settlements much the same result that it could hope to obtain in court, without enduring the expense of a trial.

It's the first half of the equation, not enough money to pursue crooks, rather than the I don't think we could have got more money half, that explains why prosecution for financial fraud is at a 20 year low.

This situation is, if you are wondering, by design.

Conservative Fear Mongering Explained

You know how Rick Perry argued, in bad faith one hopes, that scientists harp on global warming to keep the money flowing in? Well, according to this synopsis of a much longer report, Neoconservative and Conservative Islamophobes and fear mongers received over 45 million dollars to, you now, be professional Islamaphobes and fear mongers. Let's hope Rick Perry denounces these mercenaries and their paymasters.

Bah

Adjunctivitis in spades. Posting will be light

Economics Still Not a Science Yet Again

Over to the NRO there is a report of a dust up betwixt the Donald and the Club for Growth. The CFG, which -- I am pretty sure -- didn't sell the Donald his weave, insists that

“One thing that all economists can agree on, regardless of their political leanings left or right, from Paul Krugman and Robert Reich on the left and Art Laffer on the right, is that free trade is beneficial, creates jobs, creates economic value and economic growth and increases the standard of living,” Chocola said.

But where are the jobs? According to ThinkProgress elsewhere where workers' lives are cheap and the living is uneasy:

It might be true that the freer the market the more jobs can be moved from high wage to low wage areas, it really doesn't seem to do much in the lifting all boats category of human improvement. Clearly this particular market has failed and must be regulated as it's invisible hand failed to synchronize the concupiscence and crapulance of the capitalists with the material needs of the workers. (See also)

Best Students?

I really enjoyed Stiglitz's Freefall and found it very persuasive about the causes and cures of the current economic mess and its associated political skulduggery. I do, however, want to take major issue with one minor aspect of his argument.  On page 276 (paperback) he writes that he "saw too many of our best students going into finance" and laments that [w]hen [he] was an undergraduate the best students went into science, teaching, the humanities, or medicine." Given that the majority of his text is an indictment of these "best students" ability to act in their own best interests, to say nothing of the common good, and his dissection of the greed, stupidity, cupidity, lack of foresight, insight, or any sight that led to the crises, it's difficult to figure out what he means by "best students."   The self denominated Fabulous Faz isn't really what I would call, for all of his Stanford education, an example of the best America's higher education has to offer.

This characterization of the crooks and liars who created the mess that is now being exploited by dolts like Walker to further ruin everyone else's life, actually makes fixing things harder as it tends to ratify the dangerous notion that Lloyd Blankfein's nonsense about doing God's work or the inflated sense of self worth of nearly everyone involved in causing the catastrophe. As this manifesto makes clear, after having failed miserably the miserable failures still think that are John Galt.

It is also the case that lots of people went into the non-financial sector and did really important work and none of them, so far as I know, undertook to destroy the international economy in the bizarre belief that society exists to improve their personal bottom line.  Sure some of the so-called quants may well have been able to do something else but they lacked one personal quality that, for me -- in any event, attaches necessarily to the modifier "best": an interest in creating a better society.

My claim would be that the best students continued to go into the traditional fields in the rather sane hope that they would leave the world better than they found it while earning enough to come home to a the refreshing beverage of their choice and significant other.

Coincidental, I am Sure

No doubt the thingy in the Wisconsin budget that allows the state to sell its power plants to whomever for whatever isn't a potential gift to someone or another. But still

Energy client is looking for experienced Plant Managers for multiple power plants located in Wisconsin. You need 15+ years of operations & maintenance experience in a power plant environment. You should have at least 5 years of experience managing operations & maintenance teams in an operational power plant. The ideal candidate has experience in a coal fired power plant. Salary is commensurate with experience.

via the comments to this post.

Financial Crises Explained

A couple of days ago I suggested the Matthew Yglesias' praise for a book that explained the current economic crises as the result of "overconfidence" was misplaced. Today I read a review of several books that make the case of understanding the crises is slightly different terms. Of the books under review, I can only comment on Stiglitz's, which I found to be very persuasive.

Productive Workers versus Robots

Recently the Koch Brothers, who aid and abet Scott Walker, laid off 158 employees at one of their paper mills here in Wisconsin.  The lay offs result from the introduction of automated machines which made the workers redundant. The factory was already profitable and there is no sign of a decline in demand for its various paper products. 158 employees represent about 25% of the total work force. Assuming the theory that more productive workers gain income because of their increased productivity, which is a fact of the matter according to the Baumol Effect, we would expect the remaining workers to share in the income of the formerly employed workers, who now have the chance to retrain for some other job that doesn't exist or won't exist in the near future.

For the sake of argument lets say that the 158 workers salaries excluding benefits was 30k. 158 * 30000 = 4,740,000.  If I have this right, the total work force would have been 632; 632-158=474; 4,740,000 / 474=10,000 means an increase of 10,000 per remaining worker with all the other labor costs passing back to the company. Otherwise everybody involved, the City of Green Bay, the business, banks, and etc previously patronized by the now unemployed workers, except two of the richest men in the world loses out.

What do you bet the odds are that the remaining workers paychecks went up? I agree: zero. After all the Koch Brothers are currently working to destroy public unions, and they own power plants, no?,  -- although I am sure that's all just a coincidence, I'm sure they see their various industrial endeavors as primarily as a means of fulfilling a socially useful function and not at all are they interested in profit maximization.  Nope. Beside which private vice = public virtue, all the classical economists say so.

Here In Wisconsin

It's not just about teachers and unions. From Walker's budget proposal, via here and here:

16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

Why it's almost like destroying the unions isn't enough for Walker and the Koch Brothers, they'll need to sell off state property for a dollar as well. 

Neoliberalism Hates People

Word on the street is that 

its looking as if Tuesday’s budget speech will announce the de facto privatization UW Madison, so that’ll be fun too.

This is just an insanely bad idea.  It ranks up there with the insanely bad ideas that take up the rest of the bill that any decent centrist, like Obama, who of necessity ought condemn the blatant assault on unions, even as you promote unnecessary austerity measures. Unless, of coures, you're Matthew Ygelsias and have no idea what's going on in Wisconsin. Concluding his post about the events here, he writes that

[w]hen conservatopia arrives and kids all go to for-profit schools where they’re taught by non-unionized teachers, the school operators’ trade association will have all the same sometimes problematic incentives that the National Education Association has today. Heck, it’ll probably even be called the National Education Association. But instead of being a “union” that promotes high levels of education spending in sometimes inefficient ways plus egalitarian social policies, it’ll be a “business association” that promotes high levels of education spending in sometimes inefficient ways plus regressive social policies.

I realized that as a long-time foe of teachers' unions, it's tough for Yglesias to see the series of insanely bad ideas pouring out of the Koch foundation's Scott Walker, but it's all workers, from the janitorial staff to the mail room to the doctors and nurses prison guards bus drivers and so forth. Relatedly, unions aren't responsible for inefficient spending; they don't adopt books and new technologies or fall for the expensive scams of vouchers and charter schools.  The inefficient spending is the work of hacks who think they can end a "crisis" in education by importing the Olive Garden model, firing a lot of teachers, or some other load of bullocks.

In the same post, he "argues" that

[b]ut the political system has a strong tendency toward equilibrium. Democrats will keep getting enough money to stay in business and will keep winning approximately half the elections. It’s just that in post-union America, rich businessmen will be the only viable sources of political funding. So to an even greater extent than is the case today, politics will take the form of “culture war” battles or “sector versus sector” fights (pharmaceutical companies’ support for the Affordable Care Act is probably the shape of things to come) over rents in which the fundamental interests of rich businessmen qua rich businessmen are off the table.

He doesn't read anyone to his left so he is probably unaware that this version of political life, in which the state becomes the business manager of the property holder - as some classical economist once put it, is precisely the criticism leveled by everyone to his left. Having worked so hard to undermine teachers' unions and unions more generally, Ygleasias can take a victory lap and this latest victory over people.

Unions Yes:

Scott Walker is Worse Than I Thought

It seems that Democratic senators have fled to stop or at least delay Walker's union busting. It also appears that Walker's pro-business anti-human policies created the fiscal crisis that necessitates his destruction of the unions. For a summary of this argument see here and here with the full report here (pdf).

UPDATE:
It seems that state workers in Wisconsin aren't over paid relative to privately employed workers, except for those with little or no education.

China, Investing, and Anthony Trollope

Your assignment is to go read Trollope's The Way We Live Now, here in kindle for 89 pennies, then go read Surowieki on the coming China bubble and practice saying no one could of known.