The dark blue captain’s hat, with its golden oak-leaf clusters, sits atop a bookcase in Bryan Lawlor’s home, out of reach of the children. The uniform their father wears still displays the four stripes of a commercial airline captain, but the hat stays home. The rules forbid that extra display of authority, now that Mr. Lawlor has been downgraded to first officer.
He is now in the co-pilot’s seat in the 50-seat commuter jets he flies, not for any failure in skill. He wears his captain’s stripes, he explains, to make that point. But with air travel down, his employer cut costs by downgrading 130 captains, those with the lowest seniority, to first officers, automatically cutting the wage of each by roughly 50 percent — to $34,000 in Mr. Lawlor’s case.
The demotion, the loss of command, the cut in pay to less than his wife, Tracy, makes as a fourth-grade teacher, have diminished Mr. Lawlor, 34, in his own eyes. He still thinks he will return to being the family’s principal breadwinner, although as the months pass he worries more. “I don’t want to be a 50-year-old pilot earning $40,000 a year,” he said, adding that his wife does not want to be married to a pilot with so little earning power.
Why doesn’t everyone just quit doing what they do and go to work on Wall Street? You clearly don’t have to be competent or know anything, because these clowns trashed the economy and then ran around for months yelling hoocoodanode all while taking bailout money. Then, they turn around and take those taxpayer loans at low interest and the taxpayer guarantees, loan them back to the taxpayer at a higher interest rate, collect their vig, call it a profit, and then give themselves billions in bonuses because they are in the black again and happy days are here again. And half the public is so beaten down and broken they will look at all this and say “Hey, but isn’t it a good thing that Wall Street is profitable again?”
Why would anyone want to fly a plane for 34k a year when you can get rich being a thief, and one and a half of the two major political parties are going to have your back? Time to break out the foam fingers again, folks! USA! USA! USA!
You know what we really need? A capital gains tax cut. Hells yeah, baby!
Jamey
JC: Is “hoocoodanode” a category? If not, can you make it one?
Yeah, I want to fly across the Atlantic with a guy who earns less than the average Phila. bus driver at the yoke. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!
freelancer
I think you mean, “Damn, it feels good to be a bankster.”
It is fucking pathetic that pilots make less money than I do.
fliegr
I lost my airline pilot job a month after 9/11, haven’t been back, don’t miss it. My father did the job for 35 years, retired, then had his pension dumped on the government (and slashed over 75%) when his company declared bankruptcy. The lack of motivation and corporate infighting are enough to make any employee hate the industry, just what you want to hear about the person who’s shepherding your soft pink body through the atmosphere. About the only thing that’s keeping “airline pilot” a viable way to earn a living are the unions, and they’re a pretty shaky bulwark. At least the CEOs are making some bank, always nice to see our betters treated well.
PeakVT
What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!
Indeed.
Comrade Dread
Yeah. The longer this recession goes on and the more brazen shenanigans the banks and Wall St. pull, the more of a liberal I’m becoming.
90% f***ing tax rates on the rich are starting to sound really bloody good right now.
mgordon1
And more deregulation please.
Betsy
I was amazed when I first realized how little pilots earn. I think it still seems like a “glamorous” job to most people outside the industry, esp. kids. A friend of mine is a pilot, and it is not an easy life. He loves to fly, has always loved to fly, but the pay is shit.
Of course, this is also an argument for eliminating the pay disparities between male- and female- dominated professions, and also between men and women in those professions. I noticed that in the article, it’s taken for granted that an elementary school teacher should make such a low salary. I mean, it’s not like the job of teaching and caring for small children is important, right?
The Moar You Know
My father lost 90% of his pension, thanks to US Airways looting the fund and then declaring bankruptcy (the only reason he got 10% was that was the share that the Federal government, you and I, picked up), and a decade earlier in his career was forced to take a 40% pay cut with a corresponding increase in work hours. Our family had to live on savings for the first two years of his career, as pilots at the bottom of the seniority list make virtually no money at all.
BoB will no doubt be crushed to find out that all of these things also happened to Captain Sully.
The airline business is brutal, and the employees bear the brunt of it, in spite of having perhaps the most powerful union around.
My father does not encourage people to make it a career choice. Neither would I.
Xenos
The career misfortune is just that – while $34,000 is a huge letdown, and humiliating for a well educated professional who (presumably) did his job well, he at least has a job when many other pilots lost theirs and watched their pensions collapse, too.
But the wife who does not respect him as a result of this? That is a tragedy. Nice family values there…
The Grand Panjandrum
Relax Cole. Geithner’s got it all under control.
See! He’s got guys with all the appropriate experience guarding the Treasury. So quit you’re bitching … nothing could possibly go wrong now.
DougJ
I think you mean, “Damn, it feels good to be a bankster.”
Beat me to it.
The Moar You Know
@PeakVT: Two things strike me immediately about that article:
1. The Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 has some very unfortunate flight characteristics. While the pilots may have made some mistakes due to fatigue, the plane itself is not a favorite of quite a few pilots. My father refuses to fly in them.
2. From the article: “She said the company also allows them to remove themselves from flight duty if they are fatigued.” Total crock of shit. Do this, or call in sick, and you’re fired. End of story.
Zifnab
Remember when we all used to think teachers didn’t make enough? Crazy how those public sector jobs stop looking so bad once the private sector picks up the serrated strap-on.
The wife doesn’t want beans and Top Ramen for lunch. She doesn’t want to tell her kids she can’t put them through college. She doesn’t want to move out of her 3200 ft house and into a 1600 ft condo because they can’t pay the mortgage anymore.
That’s not family values, that’s standard of living. I made more than $34k straight out of college, and I’m sure as hell no airline pilot. Freak’n garbage collectors can make more than that. It’s offensive.
Shell
Yes, the Noon news was mostly all a-twitter about, ‘Will the Dow hit 10,000 today? Will it, will it?’ As if it’s some magic odometer that once it clicks past 10,000, *poof* the economy’s all righty again.
Joshua
It really is strange how quickly Sullenberger fell off the radar (err… no pun intended, of course) after he gave that testimony to Congress.
El Cid
John Cole: You are running the risk of being an unserious fringe ultraliberal, maybe even a leftist.
Please correct yourself or your invitations to corporate boards, foundations, sponsored think tank positions, columns in major publications, or guest spots on TV chat shows will dry up.
What?
freelancer
@DougJ:
It’s okay, y’all are posting more entries today than there are comments. What gives?
joeyess
I think this guy and the rest of the pilots should just go galt.
Col. Klink
A flat tax would come in handy too. I mean it is only fair!
Betsy
@Xenos:
Agreed. Yet another reason that the presumption of the male breadwinning role ought to be done away with. No good comes of it.
I also wondered if that was really his wife’s position, or if that was his interpretation/fear/expectation, based on his own expectations of himself. That’s something I’ve seen before – that a man feels like his earning power is such a reflection of his manhood that he can’t imagine that a woman wouldn’t see it the same way. So if she expresses a worry about money or the future, it’s interpreted in the most personal possible light.
I’m not saying that this IS what’s happening in this case; it’s just something I’ve seen before. Obviously not all (or even most) men feel that way. But I would be willing to bet that a significant number do. It’s what our culture tells them at every turn.
RedKitten
I’ve always found it rather disgusting that entertainers, athletes and CEOs make millions of dollars. And yet you have people like pilots and teachers who make peanuts. If they fuck up their jobs, a lot of lives can be very adversely affected, and yet they’re paid no more than an entry level sales executive.
Comrade Jake
Throw me in with the group of people who are shocked pilots make so little. Jesus. Where does all the plane ticket revenue go – to jet fuel?
EconWatcher
I don’t want to infer bad faith on the part of Obama, and I’m not ready to go there yet. But really, how is it possible that we don’t yet have a push for major reform of Wall Street? Politically, it’s the lowest hanging fruit imaginable. I get that he really wants to do health care, but would it be impossible to push both at the same time? How can he let the moment slip by as he has? It’s really baffling.
DBrown
Raygun and his pile of heaping friends (repug-a-thugs) got what they always wanted thanks to shrub & co. The American dream has become the more typical reality that most people in the world face. Thank god we still got religion.
RedKitten
@Betsy: I agree with you, Betsy. A lot of men seem to have a very hard time believing that they would still be valued as a man if their finances took a turn for the worse. There seems to be a lot of pressure (self-inflicted and societal) for a man to “provide for his family”.
I’m hoping that Mr. Lawlor’s wife will read that article and will react like I would, were it my husband, by responding with an exasperated (yet affectionate) “You adorable dumbass — don’t you know I’d want to be married to you no matter what you make?”
geg6
Holy crap. I had no idea that co-pilots made so little. Hell, that’s less than me. And I am a lowly public university financial aid administrator.
Although I do have to say that I am aware of how much people in the aviation industry have lost the last few years. Hell, USAirways was the biggest employer in my county just a few years ago (replacing the steel industry). And beginning commercial pilots make next to nothing and have for many years. I guess I thought that major airline commercial pilots still made good salaries and that first officers, etc. were just slightly below them. That’s what I get for assuming.
LittlePig
I’m with Xenos – if the wife really feels this way, I can’t see that losing her would be much of a loss.
That’s why you said “for better or worse”, dearie.
Johnny B
I often wonder how long it will be before significant numbers of educated Joes and Janes start doing a basic economic calculation. The calculation would involve figuring out whether you and your family would be better off economically (health care, housing, education, retirement) if you lived in another Western democracy, rather than in the Land of Legal Rape and Pillage that we have here. Even with 50% tax rates in Canada and Europe, I suspect the middle class in those countries get a far better deal than the horseshit that passes for “sound economics” in this country.
If the status quo continues, we will see the following yearly story from the American press discussing the emigration patterns of former Americans.
Joe Anchor Person: “Today, the Census Bureau announced that over one million American citizens emigrated to other countries in the last year alone. Surprisingly, most of these Americans are highly educated with advanced degrees. Let’s go to Jane Reporter in Washington, DC. Jane, what would possess so many educated, middle class Americans to leave the Land of the Free?”
Jane Reporter: “It’s a mystery to me. Even the three employees who work at the Census Bureau had no answer. What’s really strange is that the bulk of the countries that these emigres are moving to have massive tax rates to fund their socialist agenda.”
Anchor Person (smiling): “Well, I guess some people just don’t love freedom, Jane, do they?:
Jane Reporter (laughing): “I guess not, Joe.”
Just Some Fuckhead
Mr. Lawlor has some issues quite apart from career setbacks.
LittlePig
Why hell, Jake, that goes to upper management! All money in a corporation has to go to the head honchos – they make it all possible.
(snark OFF)
Part of it is the jet fuel cost, but I expect a lot of it is less business in bad times. Airlines need economy of scale to make a go of it.
aimai
Lets not jump all over the wife because of a paraphrase of something that her husband may have said to some crack reporting team that never makes an error of fact or interpretation. Its a well known fact that people who are used to defining themselves by how well they perform their masculine/feminine functions often assume that that’s their only value to their husband/wife too. Women who have mastectomies routinely worry that their husband’s will no longer love them after…men who used to be the principle breadwinner worry that their wives will no longer love them after. It says more about the sick/laid off person than it really does about the relationship or the spouse most of the time. Other times its a sad, but true, commentary on relationships that have atrophied over time.
aimai
freelancer
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yes, Methinks Mrs. Lawlor should have a go of it on just the teacher’s salary, alone.
Phoebe
What Xenos @9 and Betsy @20 said. I know about this pilot horror from the Michael Moore movie, which went way into it. But that last sentence smacked me in the head with a skillet.
Some group needs to form, something, I don’t know — “Women Who Aren’t Status-Seeking Vampires”? To tell guys to quit viewing their self worth in monetary terms. Being poor is certainly rough enough, but it’s worlds rougher if you hate yourself for it.
catclub
Pilots really love flying and even if not every aspect of the job is perfect,
they LOVE flying. The thing (i.e problem) is, they love it the way minor league baseball players love baseball – they would do it for free if they weren’t paid.
The result is a LOT of competition to be pilots.
Think of musicians – they really love doing it, but so do a gazillion other similarly talented people. A fraction get paying gigs. An even smaller fraction get good paying gigs.
The only difference in their disappointment is that pilots still expect flying to pay well. Musicians don’t.
Not as many people grow up desperately wanting to be a) a bus driver or
b) a teacher or c) an accountant.
Funny old world.
By the way, move to Canada and get a real professional job, like teaching children, and you can end up earning a good bit over $40k/yr.
Col. Klink
@ LittlePig & Xenos
The wife may be upset if her thinking runs that if her husband is going to be away from home 65% of the time, he should at least be making enough money to retire in 15 years and pay the mortgage off. It’s like the guy whose wife let’s him go to Iraq for two years on the assumption he’ll come back with enough cash to stay home for good. You can justify the immediate sacrifice for the potentiallong-term payoff, but if there is no long-term payoff then the gig pretty much sucks.
WyldPiratd
The dude should quit flying and start growing Mother Ganja.
He can easily double that income using under 100 sq ft of his hacienda.
kth
Actually RedKitten and Betsy are probably right: it’s most likely the pilot’s self-image that is making him jump to that conclusion. Even traditional Tammy Wynette types who marry manly-men pilots and such generally stand by their men when circumstances beyond their control affect their earning power. They may eventually divorce over the money issues, but that isn’t the same as the wife saying, “sorry, you are only half the man I married, good-bye”.
And I’m really not interested in the pilots’ self-esteem issues, except when they overlap with my personal safety (and that of millions of other air travelers). But at basically $20/hour to fly a passenger plane, that’s a lot of overlap.
Brick Oven Bill
Two relevant comments:
1. Oil shale moves from Balloon Juice to the UK Telegraph. What Ambrose-Evans does not yet understand is that the oil shale kerogen can generate aviation fuel as well as natural gas. The oil shale kerogen is virgin hydrocarbon and can generate any type of fuel. Our domestic deposits could power our airplanes and cars for four centuries at $20/bbl.
2. Chesley Sullenberger will be on Cavuto this afternoon to make an announcement. In a sane world, he will announce a Presidential run under either the Constitution Party or the Libertarian Party.
Chesley Sullenberger had checked out a book on professional ethics from the library that was destroyed in the water landing. He called up the library to let them know that he would not be able to return the ethics book. He likely offered to pay for it.
Chesley would not take crap from Goldman Sachs. He is an example of outstanding talent and outstanding virtue, Jefferson’s two determinants of the Natural Hierarchy of Man.
Thus Sullenberger should be our leader.
Frans
Read the whole article. The wife is not the problem. He is.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
If that’s the case then I would dump the wife and sex me up some stewardesses, amirite?
freelancer
@Brick Oven Bill:
That word, it does not mean what—
eh, fuck it, I’m talking to BOB.
Calouste
@Johnny B:
I wouldn’t say that the middle class in Europe is necessarily better of then in the US, but they are definitely safer. No risk of medical bankruptcy, putting kids through college is mostly financed by the government, short term unemployments benefits tend to be pretty good as is employment protection in general.
On the other hand, housing is small and expensive (1600 sq ft is considered a big house), most goods are more expensive and gas is $9-10/gallon.
Having said that, were I to lose the cushy job I have in the States at the moment, I would’t even look for a different one in the US and move back to Europe immediately.
celticdragon
@freelancer:
I cannot fucking believe I made more money fixing commercial aircraft then this guy who was flying them.
smh
different church-lady
Please, John, not everyone has the qualifications required to work on Wall Street — a complete and utter lack of compunction is a rare thing in a person.
asiangrrlMN
@Betsy: I agree with you, Betsy, and with RedKitten, too. Oh, aimai as well. My immediate reaction to the bit about his wife was, “No, she’s worried about how things are going to get paid.”
In addition, it’s the husband saying what he thinks his wife said to him. He ran it through his own filters and came up with an answer that resembled his own.
This is shitty for him and his family, though. Let’s all be gangster banksters now!
John S.
I’m not sure you’re capable of commenting on traits that neither you nor Glenn Beck posses.
celticdragon
@Xenos:
I gathered from the story that he was projecting there. She said nothing of the sort. He was understandably disappointed and ashamed (even though there was no reason to be…it happens when you have a major loss of prestige and income) and was putting words in her mouth that were not really there.
geg6
OT, but in the latest in GOP stupidity:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/13/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5381671.shtml
Immutable characteristics. Mr. Boehner, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
celticdragon
@aimai:
Exactly.
Brick Oven Bill
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself John S., it takes talent to recognize virtue.
So trust me on this one.
bago
If you doofs read the ENTIRE article, the wife actually *prefers* the new arrangement because the husband is home more, sees the kids, and is not gone for 4 days at a time. The guy is just projecting.
numbskull
This story reminds me of an interview I saw on TV whilst flipping through the channels. The show was about, of all things, running American Airlines. The shitstain of an executive being interviewed was gleefully and proudly gassing on about the time when he got a station manager in the islands to cut costs by making the warehouse watchman take a cut in pay, then made him half time, then replaced him with a guard dog, then put the dog at half time (I’m not making this up), then starved the dog so as to make an angry-sounding recording (again, not making this up), and then replaced the dog with the tape recorder.
I’m sure that not once did it occur to the asshole that a percent of a percent of his exec salary, way less than the dollar equivalent of the time spent on addressing the problem, would have saved even MORE money.
I’m not arguing to retain make-work positions. If the company didn’t need a night watchman, they didn’t need one. But how often do any of these Einsteins, particularly the Junior Aces that sit on Boards, ever figure out that what was done to the night watchman’s position could easily be done with most of top management AND NOBODY WOULD EVER KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.
…except when it came to balancing the books at the end of the year, at which point they’d find that they were in the uncharted territories known as PROFITABILITY.
jenniebee
@Zifnab:
Kids, if there are any kids out there, take my advice: when you’re investigating your career goals and checking out those great college prospectuses with their glossy photographs and the paragraphs on the back of each one explaining what each one was, take a minute out and think seriously about a plumbing apprenticeship instead. It’s good, honest work, it pays well, it’s darn near recession-proof, and by the time you’re forty, if you’re interested in being your own (and other people’s) boss, if you’ve got a scintilla of talent and sense it’s practically guaranteed that you can be.
Sure, you’ll need to buy hand-sanitizer in bulk, and a degree in the liberal arts has social cache and is still your ticket to a cubicle in the customer service department of your choice, but there will always be someone out there willing to empty his bank account into yours if you can stop his basement from flooding with raw sewage.
Calouste
@geg6:
If religion is an immutable characteristic according to Bonehead, why do those Jehova’s Witnessses and Mormons keep showing up at my door? Surely they would know about the futility of their effort? Oh, and maybe Bonehead should read that Bible he is going on about so much. I recommend he start with the story of Paul, formerly known as Saul.
Betsy
To support the point that I and others have been making, a direct quote from the article:
“Still, as her husband’s ordeal drags on, Mr. Lawlor in some ways has risen in his wife’s eyes. “I have more respect for him,” she said.”
Nowhere, but nowhere, did she say anything that would indicated that she “does not want to be married to a pilot with so little earning power.” She would like the pilot she IS married to to have more earning power (who wouldn’t?!), but that’s not the implication of his framing.
asiangrrlMN
@bago: Thank you for that. I shoulda read the actual article as well, but I did gather the hubby was projecting.
Frank Wilhoit
“…his wife does not want to be married to a pilot with so little earning power.”
Either he’s imagining that or else he’s not. He’s totally screwed either way.
This is the weakness of citing individual examples of social phenomena. We always feel the need to “put a face” on things. That doesn’t help, although seldom do we see such a crisp example.
celticdragon
@jenniebee:
Another suggestion is look at any medical technology or nursing program. The hours suck…but nobody has figured out a way to outsource the x-ray or imaging techs to IndiAs you said…recession proof.
Believe me, an awful lot of us in aviation were taking hard looks at medical field jobs even before 9/11
Betsy
I just hate how that quote, at the very beginning of the article, feeds into the “wives as gold-diggers” stereotype, while the actual quotes from her are buried at the back.
celticdragon
‘…to India. AS you said…”
Not my best typing.
gnomedad
@RedKitten:
For entertainers and athletes, it’s disgusting but predictable, since it’s all about fame and winner-take-all. Although if we admired talent and accomplishment rather than fame, maybe this would change. For CEOs, Wall Streeters, etc., it’s a different story. And gee, who’da thunk teachers would lack respect when book-learnin’ is a political liability?
kth
@bago: You’ve obviously mistaken this place for a site, like maybe Crooked Timber, where people RTFAs.
TenguPhule
Is it time to hang Wall Street yet?
RedKitten
@bago: Exactly. I can see her being worried about the bills and how they’re going to operate on a reduced budget, but that’s perfectly reasonable. But for him to translate that into her not wanting to be married to him? Silly man.
dadanarchist
Captain Lawlor makes an important point here: unions are important for material issues like wages, benefits, workplace safety and so on, but they can also provide another important, less tangible benefit: feelings of control and purpose.
Or in other words: solidarity.
KG
@Betsy: Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for teachers making good money. But, let’s also keep in mind that most of them work 8 months out of the year. They get summer vacation, they get two weeks at Christmas/New Years, and a week in the spring. Plus, all the holidays. So, some sense of proportion would make sense in that regard. I’ve a lot of friends that became teachers, they love their job, and particularly the fact that they get all that time off, but that’s one of the trade offs for not getting paid what people get paid when they work the whole year.
JGabriel
OT, but Josh Marshall brings the snark out. Annals of Failed Metaphors:
Can we change the Conservatives’ rally cry from “Wolverines!” to “Moooo…”
.
gnomedad
@JGabriel:
WIN.
Phoebe
For the record, I only read the excerpt, and immediately suspected he was projecting, because lots of men have a huge fear that if they lose their earning power they lose the love they’ve managed to get. Kinda like women fearing losing their looks. I wasn’t saying his wife really felt that way.
Elie
While I originally strongly supported the Obama team’s handling of the financial crisis on the basis that emergency measures had to be taken with the least disruption to the current, albeit corrupt system, I know this cannot stand as it is now. Something must be done to turn this thing around — the horrible corruption and distortion that is our financial backbone.
I would say that this issue, even more than healthcare, is the true monster in the cave for Obama – and US. To start to change this thing will take every tool, every resource at his and our command. I truly believe, for that reason, that it was/is essential for Obama to use the Congress and all its powers, and therefore he has to run these dogs to get them in shape ala the Health Care Reform effort.
I have no idea how this will ultimately turn out but this thing, this monster, lurks with all of its undiminished power and malevalence. This will be the work of his and our lifetimes. No less than that.
JGabriel
@Comrade Dread:
It’s one of those things that sounds outrageous at first, but makes more and more sense the more you think about it.
It would certainly (and did in the 50’s) get CEO’s and shareholders to spread the profits a little more broadly — in terms of hiring, salaries, safety, and R&D. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep that extra 10 mil for yourself when the gov’t is just gonna take 90% of it.
.
Joshua
Most people in their teens and 20’s grew up with their parents saying college was mandatory to a good life. And it was, back when they entered the workforce. Now, I say, if you don’t think you can cut it in a major like accounting, biology, math, physics, chemistry, engineering, etc., it’s probably not worth it.
And if you do insist on that sociology degree, at least fucking work to get a high GPA. Going to State to fuck and drink for 5.5 years might be (is) fun but it’s the ticket to a 30K salary nowadays.
Betsy
@KG:
Dude, where do your friends teach? The teachers I know are at work through late June, then start again in mid-August. No, the kids aren’t in school yet then, but the teachers are. I would say they work 10 months a year, not 8. But you still make a good point.
JGabriel
@gnomedad: I’M ON YR TRAKZ, BLOCKN’ YR ONRUSHIN’ TRAIN! MOOO!
.
Just Some Fuckhead
@jenniebee:
This.
Comrade Dread
Pretty close.
The more I watch the cable news shows and see the modern American aristocrats laughing it up, making bank, and hobnobbing at parties contrasted with the rising number of homeless people congregating near off ramps that I see daily, the more I feel like I’ve fallen into France c. late 18th century.
Betsy
@JGabriel:
Hilarious, but you missed what was arguably the best part of the quote:
toujoursdan
@ Johnny B:
Tax rates in Canada aren’t all that much higher than in the U.S. if you’re middle class. Federal taxes are just much more progressive than in the U.S.
You would pay less than Americans if you’re poor and more if you’re rich. It’s also weighed more toward consumption (GST) taxs than in the States.
But the main reason Canada is more solvent than the U.S. is that we don’t spent 50% of federal tax propping up the military-industrial complex. I keep waiting for the day to come when a significant number of Americans start asking whether they are getting value for their money in doing so. But so far the wingers have appealed to patriotism, biggest-cock thinking and suggesting that Europe and Canada somehow leach off of U.S. military might (against whom exactly?)
slippy
@Comrade Dread: 90% sounds eminently reasonable.
What most people don’t realize is that a true progressive tax is bracketed not by the total of how much you make, but by each amount. So for example, if you’re taxed at 10% for incomes under $30,000, 20% for $30-50,000, 30% for $50-100,000, and so on, this is what actually happens:
You make $100,000 yr.
Uncle Sam takes 10% of your first 30,000. $3,000.
He takes 20% off the next 20k. Another $4,000.
He takes 30% off your next 50k. $15,000. So instead of being taxed for $30,000 out of your $100,000, you only pay $22,000.
If the next tax bracket is 40%, and you make $200k, you pay $62k on your 200k, instead of paying $100k. And so on.
So for someone making 5 million dollars, if they’re being taxed at 90% above 4 million dollars, they’re still making a huge chunk of money out of their first 4 million.
I’m not going to feel sympathetic about that. They are still fucking rich. And don’t ever need to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
Comrade Dread
Assuming the cow survives that confrontation, he does realize that the majestic beast is then likely slaughtered, ground up, and served up in Big Mac form to hordes of demanding people, right?
different church-lady
@JGabriel:
Available!
http://www.checkdomain.com/cgi-bin/checkdomain.pl?domain=train-vs-cow.com
celticdragon
@Comrade Dread:
yep
different church-lady
@slippy: yes, exactly correct: the dirty little secret of the US tax code is that everybody pays the same rate for the same income. Bill Gates is taxed no more on his first 30k of income than I am.
different church-lady
@Comrade Dread: Kill your CNBC.
GReynoldsCT00
@Comrade Jake:
Executive bonuses too, my guess
Jason B at Work
@Zifnab: “1600 ft condo”
Man, I hate to be the poor kid on the forum because quite frankly it’s not the greatest honor, but I would literally kill someone to get 1600 sq ft, much less 3200.
slag
@Comrade Dread: Chew chew.
geg6
@KG:
I don’t know ANY teachers who loll about sipping margaritas by the pool during their “free” time during the summer. NONE. All the ones I know are coaching or working a second job to pay for the classroom materials (books, supplemental materials, videos/DVDs, lab equipment, etc.) that the district won’t/can’t provide and that their teacher’s salary can’t cover. In addition, with many districts going to year-round academic years, that summer “vacation” is a thing of the past in many places. This is just ignorant talk from someone that “knows” a few teachers and hasn’t ever really taken a good look at what they do, the hours they put in, the amount of required education, and the lack of respect they get which is amply illustrated by the idea that they don’t work hard.
What an assinine thing to say.
Martin
I know he’s fat and all, but Michael Moore relayed a related story over at GOS yesterday, different from what was in his movie.
Just in case anyone missed it.
KG
@Betsy: I was counting the three weeks of vacation as part of the time off (not to mention all the holidays too) as part of the time off. But yeah, I forgot a lot of teachers are in before/after the school year starts/ends. Still, I’d be willing to give up a decent chunk of salary to have 2-3 months off every year.
Death Panel Truck
I doubt she feels that way. But if she does, she needs to suck it up. Things are tough all over, and life ain’t a bit fair. And her hubby needs to man up, stop whining and be glad that for the moment, he still has a goddamned job.
catclub
Jason B.@86
Though as a matter of fact ( I’m being hopeful and generous here)
you have NOT killed someone for a 1600 sq ft. condo.
So, … not literally.
jenniebee
@Joshua:
That’s the way it was with my boomer parents – Dad went to college and then entered a public sector professional career (as did his father), his salary peaked at about $40K and he retired in ’98. His standard of living slid downward for about 3/4 of his working life. My dad’s sister got her PhD because she thought the way school worked was that of course you just kept going for more degrees as long as you got accepted somewhere. That was how you knew how smart you were and where you fit in. She went through hell finding a uni job, but eventually got tenure, topped out at around $60K and retired about the same time as Dad.
I’m the sector of my generation that is dwarfing my parents’ income because we know all the hawt IT technologies we’ve been hearing so much about lately. I dropped out of college to program computers. This career strategy works for those of us who learned “Hello World” on an Apple IIe, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a high school senior today.
Meanwhile, the guys who came in to redo my aunt’s kitchen last year all live in a nicer neighborhood than she does and none of them identify with Hey Julie. There’s a lot to be said for that.
KG
@geg6: fuck you, asshole. I never said they didn’t work hard.
As for teachers having to work a second job to pay for classroom materials, that is incredibly fucked up. No doubt about it. But that is a problem indicative of the entire system. As for the year round schooling, the area that I live in still has the traditional schedule, which is what I’m basing it off of.
But mainly: fuck you, asshole.
Martin
Easy. Here’s page after page of them, most for less than the price of a used Scion.
R. Porrofatto
For some big and not so big folks on Wall Street, $34k is a monthly expense account, and if you think I’m making this up, that’s only $400k per year for people who pay themselves tens of millions in annual bonuses.
My father did the job for 35 years, retired, then had his pension dumped on the government
Stolen is more like it. It’s no surprise that this never became a bigger story. Apocryphal welfare queens milking $200 checks are an abomination, but the systematic theft of pension funds to make a few people obscenely rich, and all at the expense of taxpayers and retirees, is just good business. Like so much of this shit, the only reason it isn’t a crime is because they made it legal.
wilfred
C’mon John. You were a big cheerleader for the No Bank Left Behind Act, weren’t you? The bankers were given a blank check and will be cashing it in until the sun burns out. Plus:
Fall outside? I guess in the END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT panic that surrounded the NBLBA no one could have foreseen space outside the rules.
Mutatis mutandis.
catclub
The pilots here have become the blonde girls in distress on CNN.
You are worried because … ‘it might have been me.’
Factory workers getting screwed, i’m outraged.
Teachers, even more so. Pilots, … reverting to the mean.
I think of pilots as much more like musicians, but without the realistic expectations. They REALLY love
to fly and want us to pay them extremely well to do so.
And screw the Air Force to make things better for the Army and Navy, too.
Martin
I told my son (11) to prepare two career paths – college and an apprenticeship laying tile, or some such – something that is more in demand in remodels than new construction (because new construction doesn’t pay for shit) and requires a high attention to detail, because he has that, and people will pay for that.
He’s smart enough to do engineering and likes it and will likely go that route, but I’d kill to earn what my tile guy made – and the job would be a shitload less stressful than what I do now.
aimai
CelticDragon @58
You have it exactly backwards. They are already outsourcing the reading of all medical technology to cheaper areas of this country and will to India and elsehwere very shortly. Your x rays and other lab reports are now routinely read by some doctor or rep somewhere else. The low level tech jobs will be dumbed down, like everything else, until you will walk thorugh a machine unaided and they can get rid of the lab tech him/herself. the machine will take the picture and it will be uploaded to India where a lab tech/fake doctor/real doctor will read it and send the diagnosis back. Any day now. The technology is pretty much there. The only jobs left with be phlebotomist. And laundress.
aimai
Martin
Fixt.
And we want to pay them well to do so. There simply is no equivalence to most other careers. No banker will ever kill me for earning too little.
It goes to show that the ‘culture of greed’ has completely obliterated the ‘culture of life’ in this country. Life is, economically speaking, worthless now.
geg6
@KG:
Go fuck yourself. You implied that teachers, who work incredibly hard under often the worst possible conditions (physical, mental, emotional, economic, and poltical), get all kinds of time off and it’s kinda just a job you take if you want lots of time off and don’t care about making a living wage, let alone one commensurate with the level of education.
Perhaps you’d like to reword these sections, then. Because it sounds suspiciously to me that you think teachers spend 4 months out of the year lolling around doing nothing and so deserve substandard pay for people with graduate and terminal degrees. I know of no one in those districts with a traditional academic calendar, who get more than a month or slightly more off from the district in the summer. I also know of no one who gets 2 weeks over the winter break. In addition, there is not a single teacher I know who gets a week off in the spring (a day or two, max). And they don’t get all the holidays. Only two districts here were out for Columbus Day out of 15. All but 4 will be in school for Veterans Day. No one gets MLK Day. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Comrade Dread
God damn it all.
Just Some Fuckhead
Is that where white Republicans beat health care reform into a bloody unrecognizable mess? Because I’m pretty sure that’s already happening in the Senate with Snowe and Collins.
aimai
Oh, and KG,
When someone politely points out that you have made a crashingly stupid comment about teacher work loads, salary, benefits, and rewards– one that has been disproved a gazillion times and is unsupported by anything other than an apparent child’s eye view of “your friends” and “their tradeoffs” and that you don’t grasp that teachers are, in fact, paid for *8 months work* and not paid a year’s salary with paid time off then the proper response is “I never thought of that…huh…” not “fuck off asshole.”
So, in keeping with the tenor of your posts:
fuck off asshole. On behalf of geg6.
aimai
Midnight Marauder
@JGabriel:
And just when you thought it could
n’tget better…GOP.com Changes The Game On ‘What Up?’
And the sad thing is, if anyone else had said that, it wouldn’t have been as crazy. Not so with Chairman Steele.
Change the game, indeed.
celticdragon
@aimai:
I thought I was pessimistic.
gnomedad
@JGabriel:
OK, OK, “WIN” with clusters! Jeez.
Actually, a worthwhile elaboration. Maybe we could form a “Cowcatcher Alliance”.
Hob
@KG: Telling people to fuck off is all very well, but to me it sure looked like you were saying teachers didn’t work as hard as other people per year, because they get all that “time off”. The experience of all the teachers I know is the same as what geg6 said– except that besides possibly moonlighting to pay for supplies, they’re often spending their “time off” getting things ready for the next class or processing heaps of crap from the last one. And I don’t know why you think “But that’s a problem indicative of the entire system” makes your argument any stronger, given that that’s the system teachers are actually working in.
I’m happy it’s working out well for your friends though.
catclub
celticdragon@106
Time to read “The Black Swan” on jobs that do and do not ‘scale’.
Prostitution and dental hygienist do not scale.
Being Michael Jackson does. Competition to be the next MJ is pretty fierce.
Laundress does scale to the extent that washing machines exist.
Apparently violinmaking does not – yet.
Lavocat
News like this makes me feel so wonderful! This is why I rarely fly. I’m also glad I don’t live in or near a big city.
Some day soon, I can see this disgruntled guy really losing it, once his wife moves on to greener pastures, with their kids in tow.
Suddenly, an American citizen, a pilot-cum-first officer, armed to the teeth, commandeering his own Boeing 747 into the White House or Congress or Wall Street doesn’t seem so far-fetched to me anymore. In fact, I’m actually surprised it hasn’t already happened.
You would think that the airline industry would want to go out of their way to make these people very, very happy. After all, when you get right down to it, they are flying missiles loaded with thousands of gallons of high-explosive jet fuel around the country.
Um, HELLO!
Hob
Oh well, geg6 & aimai beat me to it.
But then Lenny Bruce beat us all to it, anyway, in 1959:
I feel some guilt at the fact that my salary exceeds twentyfold schoolteachers’, in states like Oklahoma. They get $3200 a year, which is a disgrace, schoolteachers’ salaries. Education’s the answer to everything. World leadership hinges on education. Take Zsa Zsa Gabor who’ll get $50,000 a week in Las Vegas, and schoolteachers’ top salaries $6000 a year. This is really sick– that’s the kind of sick material that I wish Time would’ve written about.
I’m not that much of a moralist; if I were, I would be donating my salary to schoolteachers. I admit that. If a man came to me and said “We’re gonna levy a tax and we’re gonna raise schoolteachers’ salaries to $750 a week,” I would approve of it and pay the tax like that, ’cause I realize it’s an insurance factor. If schoolteachers get that kind of money, then the educational system will change immediately.
I’m a hustler– as long as they give, I’ll grab. But I know someday there’s gonna be a tribunal. We’ll all have to answer. I’m just waiting for the day. I’m saving some money to give back.
catclub
Martin@101
Of course, the pilot is tremendously motivated to not kill you because it
is likely to kill him first. All the more reason to pay him just enough to be hopeful.
Not so the banker. He can screw up your credit rating and not give a damn.
Remember why almost everyone on Red Dwarf was killed? Rimmer goofed
up in cleaning the chicken soup dispenser (IIRC).
How about your pharmacist? The guy reading your X-rays in India?
fliegr
Hey catclub, just as a thought exercise: in his 35 years of airline flying, my dad was personally responsible for orders of magnitude more lives than, say, a highly paid surgeon. During his career he was pretty well compensated for it, but these days why put up with the medical requirements, the constant training and check rides, the time away from home and mostly the complete lack of job security for what amounts to entry level pay in some fairly undemanding jobs?
As far as Canadian tax rates, I have a friend who owns a good chunk of Toronto, I don’t see him having to eat a lot of Top Ramen because they take a few extra percent off the top. Plural of anecdotes not being data and all that.
tamied
My young nephew, who is very talented, wants to work at becoming an actor/singer/dancer, but was worried that there’s no “security” in it. I told him to do what you love, there’s no security in any career any more.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Comrade Dread:
Perhaps Michael Steele is looking to score some free mail-order steaks from the Red State Strike Force.
mclaren
Just wait will they start outsourcing flying 757s to third world guys who control the plane by fly-by-wire for $2 an hour. And when the planes crash? Tough tit, that’s life, it’s capitalism.
John Cole’s job will soon get outsourced to some Chinese PhD who lectures in flawless english over the internet and gets paid $3 an hour.
Every white collar job is getting outsourced, or soon will be outsourced, to a smarter hungrier cleverer third world PhD with more experience and a lot more work ethic.
Welcome to the 21st century, baby. America will have nothing left but job openings for dog groomers, xerox clerks and hairdressers. All the technical jobs, all the jobs requiring knowledge or expertise or advanced degrees, forget about those, those are getting outsourced.
That airline pilot should be goddamn glad he still has a job. Next stop for him: working inside one of this little tiny booths with bulletproof glass in the front overseeing a 24-hour filling station for $7 an hour. If he’s lucky.
gnomedad
@tamied:
Have him check this out: Making a Living (in improv).
gnomedad
@celticdragon:
How’s this: the only people with jobs will be making cool stuff that the people without jobs will use to blow them up.
Don’t really believe this — yet.
Chuck Butcher
The next one of you who tells someone to get a construction job rather than an education is going to ripped by me – a construction contractor. A small percentage of construction work is union, the safest that way are plumbing and electrical. In those two the money isn’t that good unless you’re the owner and then you may well pay a higher percentage of your income in liability insurance than fucking doctors do. Workman comp rates in my line run $0.22 to $0.27 on the dollar wage,you like those numbers? I pay all SS/FICA on myself and 1/2 of employees. I have tens of thousands of dollars in tools and more in vehicles and those vehicles eat insurance dollars.
Do you stop to think about the working conditions? You like to crawl in sewage? You fond of attics at 150F full of insulation? You get paid to destroy your body and then there is that little issue of health ins.
Unless you live in a major metro area union construction means travel and probably living in and supporting essentially two households. You think somebody like a pilot is gone from home? You have no idea, I do. I practically lived on the road before I was married and the first three years of my marriage and I was too far away to come home on weekends, for months.
I’m not bitching, I love what I do but if you don’t you sure don’t want this as “just a job.” Fuck me running, parochialism sure leads to stupidity.
Somebody wishes they make what their tile setter makes? WTF? I set tile among other things as well as owning the business and I live in a 1600 sq ft house half of which I built and half of which is 1870s Victorian that I rebuilt because that’s what I could afford. I learned to set tile in the N SF Bay area and that wasn’t the key to any big house. I built a 2200 ft house for a plumbing contractor who is also a friend of mine and he wouldn’t make it if his wife didn’t work for the city.
As an owner I can tell you that you don’t see all the hours that go into your job. You like that free bid? It ain’t free, it costs me time, gas, and aggravation and you pay for yours as well as the ones I don’t get. I chase down the materials, I set up the job and tear it down, including time you never see.
catclub
fliegr@114:
“but these days why put up with the medical requirements, the constant training and check rides, the time away from home and mostly the complete lack of job security for what amounts to entry level pay in some fairly undemanding jobs?”
I think I did that thought experiment when I said pilots really LOVE to fly.
That is why.
Are you arguing that they don’t and I am mistaken?
Am I mistaken that there is LOTS of competition to be a pilot?
I grant that they can influence many lives, but so do tank truck drivers.
ruemara
@PeakVT:
my guildmate lost his entire family; wife, 2 lovely little kids, in that crash. his grief is still like a river he’s drowning in.
there are times I think the best the rest of the world can do is quarantine the US and hope the crass stupidity and peasant mentality dies out.
ruemara
@Jason B at Work:
You’re not the poor kid, I’m the poor kid.
I’d nearly kill to earn $34k. & have an employed mate. As a professional who turns 40 in 7 days, this is concerning me.
Elie
So many good comments…
Chuck – I feel your pain though I work in the high tech industry.
I am pretty well compensated but spend 24/7 in the stressful and overwhelming demands of customer service and account management. While I am relatively well compensated, I am definitely not in the category of the financial industry. I pay for this salary by short shrifting my day to day sanity and contact with my husband and real life.
I am a short timer just trying to hand on till retirement — though I worry whether I have planned well enough or have saved enough to truly retire versus just get another job of some sort. Both my husband and I have chronic illness needs that we cannot ignore and have to plan for.
I don’t know where we are heading in this country. We have lost our way. The horrible, mean spiritied, grudging discourse we have with each other just makes me so so sad anymore. Somehow we behave as though winning our arguments can only happen if we bloody and bludgeon our opposition into pulp. Somehow, that is supposed to make us feel better and bring us together as one country?
I like blogging and the internet. But I see everyday from our own blogs, how much we transmit the negative poison, inflate it and add to it. We are making ourselves and this country even sicker. I wish that I had an alternative to it. There is – stay away — but I find myself needing to keep up with what is happening — and I trust certain blogs such as this one, way more than anything on the MSM.
Interrobang
KG — You’re also forgetting that most teachers have to do continuing education every year, and that a lot of those “school holidays” are actually what they call “Professional Development Days,” which means that the teachers are at school, working, even if the kids are at home.
Also, speaking as someone who taught at the postsecondary level and who wound up getting paid something like $4.00/hr when you factor in what I was getting paid for versus what I wasn’t — prep time (unpaid), marking time (unpaid), keeping gradebooks (unpaid), answering student e-mails (unpaid), keeping office hours (unpaid), department meetings (unpaid), and the thousands of other administrivial details, do not ever tell me that teachers have a lot of time off. That job took up more of my time than my full-time office job does now, and it was only “part-time,” six lecture hours per week. And it had a lot fewer requirements than teaching elementary or high school does.
Even if you teach at a public elementary school, they don’t give you enough downtime during the day to do all that marking and gradebooking and stuff. (How long do you think it’d take you to mark a stack of assignments? Essays?) Most of the teachers I know (and there are three of them in my circle of friends and family) work until about midnight, five or six days per week, and take maybe two weeks off per year, between all the stuff I’ve mentioned.
Now, if you think working five twelve-hour days per week (day starts at 8AM, ends at midnight, less commuting time and eating), plus putting some time in on weekends, and getting two weeks off per year plus having to do continuing education every year and recert every couple of years is a good deal, you are more than welcome to volunteer. Because that’s actually what the reality is. Teachers don’t have a lot of time off.
BenA
@Chuck Butcher:
Your right… it’s hard work, but do you regret what you’re doing? Would you rather have ended up in a clerical job with a liberal arts degree? No one said it was easy… just that it might be a better career choice…
I’ve gotten the impression from a few people in my area that the construction industry as a whole has a bit of a problem in that there are a lot of older guys that may not be around much longer… especially in electrical and plumbing. Granted this is anecdotal and might just be where I live… If there really is a void, doesn’t seem like a bad place to head.
Most of the guys I’ve known who have gotten loaded from construction were generally dirty as hell and ended up with IRS issues up the wazoo… so I suspect you’re absolutely correct. The grass is absolutely greener on the other side.
So far all I’ve really gotten out of this thread is that people’s jobs all suck because they have to work hard and don’t get paid enough. Especially teachers… they close ranks pretty quick too. J/K ;-)
Notorious P.A.T.
The economy as a whole was a hell of a lot better when that was the case.
twiffer
@jenniebee: after 10 years in a cubicle, trust me, i’ve considered that route.
@KG: the crap teachers have to deal with, particularly from parents, would triple their salary (in an ideal world).
Mr Furious
@KG: Never said they didn’t work hard?
No, not in those words. But you pretty clearly said they earn less, because they work less.
You made a stupid-assed comment worthy of BoB, and when someone points that out, the better approach would be to concede the point or STFU.
Elie
BenA
I think that its more complex than just people work hard and dont get paid enough…
The way we work — the 24/7 nature of it, the time away from family and the long distances to work are different than in other countries. We like our standard of living — in big individual homes out in suburbs with no mass transit or public space — but the price we pay for that is exactly what we are experiencing in the diminishment of the quality of our life. Stainless steel kitchens are a poor tradeoff to walking to work or short commutes that allow time with the family over dinner. We are experiencing what that costs us in every way..
But it is not hopeless. We can live like that again, but it will take some doing and some pain in the process. We have to contract the highways and think about how to live closer to each other and bear it. Think about that as our discourse with each other becomes more and more rancorous.
Mr Furious
@Chuck Butcher:
Awesome comment, Chuck.
Libertini
@geg6:
KG went a little overboard with the F bomb, but I think you asked for it by calling his comment asinine and ignorant. S/he did slightly exaggerate the amount of time off teachers get, however, please consider:
On average, U.S. students go to school 6.5 hours a day, 180 days a year. Even if half of the remaining days are in-service days (which they are not – by our school calendars it is less than 25%) that is still 92.5 days off per year. Even if they spend every other summer taking continuing ed classes, they are still averaging nearly 50 days per year that they do not have to report for work.
I love you gal, but the original comment was neither ignorant nor asinine and your response was overly defensive. My sister in law is a very hard working teacher who spends a negligible amount on additional classroom supplies and enjoys approximately 90 days off per year. For the same salary at an office job which required a college degree, I got 3 weeks paid vacation (after 5 years) and 5 sick days.
Teachers are not paid as well as they should be, but neither is anyone else these days, and the time off IS a benefit of being a teacher, whether it is universally enjoyed by ALL teachers or not.
lou
My uncle was an airline pilot for Eastern way back in the heyday for airline pilots. But he lost all his pension, thanks to asshole Frank Evil Don’t Remember His Last Name, past CEO of Continental. He was the one who started that whole ball rolling in salary cuts for pilots and loss of benefits.
Remember how we were told that deregulation of the airline industry was going to make everything great? Now I go out of my way to not fly unless I must for work. Look at the sad story of those two pilots in the Buffalo crash. Both making squat and sleeping on couches, just as Lawson said he was doing. Or flying sick. Do we really want people not in peak condition in a cockpit? I don’t.
I have a relative who is an air traffic controller. There’s a job that now pays shite, thanks to St. Ronnie. Air traffic controllers’ starting pay now is less than it was in 1986. That’s not even adjusted for inflation. Literally paid less. Makes you confident in their prowess, doesn’t it?
BenA
@Elie:
I’m definitely with you. I was being a bit facetious. :)
I do think there’s more to it than the our plastic fantastic lifestyles too. I think our consumption is just tangental to the problem. I’m to tired and to depressed about a great many things to really get into it.
Hob
@Libertini: We could toss anecdotes back and forth all day, but it looks to me like you have *one* anecdote — your sister-in-law, who seems to have a very nice job — and the other commenters here have either worked as teachers or know some number of teachers N where N>1; and except for KG, they are all saying that KG’s description of the situation is way further off than just an “exaggeration”. Since the only other thing you have to go on is your back-of-the-envelope calculation of how you imagine the hours break down (including the interesting assumption that as long it’s not an official in-service day, it’s a day off), maybe you’d like to just say that your sister-in-law is lucky and leave it at that?
Elie
lou and others..
we end up running like hamsters on a fly wheel because we have not figured out how to dismantle the need to do that and to begin doing something else.
we are beginning to see more interest in those issues — not just salary, but HOW we live…Moving in that direction will free us from having to be in these inhuman situations.
but of course, there is a price. always is. we must be engaged and empowered and involved in citizen activism. That means more than just banging the keyboards here — but actually working on a local level everywhere to do the things to make our lives change.
easy? no. fast? no.
but it can be done and done by us.
Elie
Ben A
Man, don’t give in to it (the depression)
Keep moving.
I am struggling myself — just gotta keep moving.
Don
I didn’t see anyone else mention it, so I will. The wife may well have said to her husband that she didn’t want to be married to a pilot who made 34k a year, and it is an entirely reasonable statement when you read it as a whole statement.
The job of pilot has dangers and keeps you out of the house a lot, as well as having unique expenses. I would have no issue with telling my wife I wouldn’t want her to have her current job at 34k a year – it’s demanding, involves long hours and sometimes requires long stretches of from-home work. That’s not a statement about the 34k, it’s a statement about whether the job is worth the sacrifices.
geg6
@Libertini:
Well, I would bow to your vast experience and background in education, obviously.
I really have no idea what teachers do, when, and how often. None at all.
/sarcasm
Seanly
John, how on Earth were you ever a Republican? I’m just this side of being a soci-alist and I can’t picture where your beliefs differ from mine. You’ve even got my cynicism down pretty good.
btw, liberal and cynical is not the winning combination I thought it would be…
Chuck Butcher
@BenA:
As I noted, I love what I do and if you wouldn’t, it would be a very poor choice. Since my major was BSME w/minor in Computer Egr in the early 70s I say I made a poor economic choice, but a more satisfying personal one. But then I was a DFH then and probably still nearly qualify.
I won’t put down anybody’s career choices or jobs, I know what would have driven me insane which is being cooped up. I seem to be wired for 110V and operating on 220V, not good for office work.
I will pay for it with my body, though.
Sanka
Moral equivalency fail. What does this story have to do with Wall Street bankers? Nothing.
And maybe. JUST MAYBE, the answer to your question is, he doesn’t WANT a job on Wall Street—-which is actually quite obvious from reading the piece itself.
Amazing how personal ambition is such a novel concept.
But hey, WALL STREET BANKERS!
Chuck Butcher
The economic model the right forgot when they started slashing the upper tax rates was that the tax was intended as a disincentive for behavior. A 90% rate on something over say $5M makes it pointless to grab for it, at 35% it is quite reasonable to grab for it. That disincentivized money goes somewhere else, like maybe lower down the scale. It wasn’t so much about running Uncle Fed off the backs of the rich, which works well enough at 40%.
Jimmy Higgins
I commented on this situation a year and a half ago:
freelancer
@Seanly:
yes, but for the most part, it’s at least an empirical view of the Universe.
Chuck Butcher
@Seanly:
I don’t know if Cole has eversaid what made him a Republican, my guess is “inherited” Reagan R without any real analysis of Reagan.
By all evidence Cole is a critical thinker who engages in analytical behavior. His arc since abandoning the bankruptcy of BushCo is pretty consistent with that type of character, once jolted out of unexamined assumptions things start falling apart. At the beginning of this arc John was not anywhere near my leftism, he’s sure getting a lot closer by now – and it is a consistent narrative. I respect that.
John can feel free to call me an idiot for this.
celticdragon
@Chuck Butcher:
Good point.
gypsy howell
Oh I know I’m way downthread here but here’s our family’s little story about the career path for pilots:
When my son was a senior in HS, he had been taking flying lessons and decided he wanted to be a pilot. We visited lots of schools including Embry Riddle in FL. I was appalled when they told him that he could expect to be earning just above minimum wage as a entry level commercial pilot on a small commuter route, IF he found work right away. He could make more at McDonalds. And he could expect this low wage high stress position for years before he could make it into the “big leagues.” Yes, these are the people flying you around at 36,000 feet in a small tin can.
Thank god he had a late change of heart and ended up going to art school instead. He actually has a pretty great job right now, right out of school.
I’m soooooo glad he changed his mind.
Nicole
@jenniebee: Props for the Fountains of Wayne reference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtKhFaW2Z1E
Mr Furious
@Jimmy Higgins:
This.
Mr Furious
@Libertini: Obviously your sister-in-law is the every-teacher…
Not even close. I have two sisters who are elementary school teachers, and have taught in three completely different parts of the country—San Diego, Dallas and Connecticut—and your story doesn’t sound like theirs at all.
Especially the “negligible amount on supplies” part.
Mr Furious
As for the “math” in your comment, the average workaday stiff gets 120 days off a year with weekends and two weeks vacation…
That teaching gig still looking like a cakewalk?
And do you really think they only work the hours students are sitting in class each day? You’re ridiculous.
Anne Laurie
A quote for both Jenniebee and Chuck Butcher:
“A society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and rewards mediocrity in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbers nor good philosphers. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
binzinerator
@Chuck Butcher:
Great comment. I have a couple of degrees, and I love building things, so at one point in my life I considered making a living doing some kind of a construction job. I worked a couple of years for a home remodeler, doing everything from framing to cabinetry to tile work to plumbing to painting to installing insulation.
It’s hard work, it can be very fulfilling if you like making things, but it’s hell on the body, hot as hell in the summer, freeze yer ass in the winter, and I barely made a living doing it. I was young and had no health insurance. I was living life carelessly indeed.
In construction nothing much happens at a convenient chest height. You’re either on your knees or on a ladder. Basements and attics are common areas were you will spend a big chunk of your working life too, especially if you do remodels. Would-be plumbers: Lots o’ pipes down in the basement. Framers and roofers get the great outdoors but not plumbers.
The work place for such a career field has certain risks.
I gave up thinking this was something I could do with my life when a friend of mine who was a carpenter and was in his 50’s fell through a temporary stairs on a job site while carrying a heavy load of stuff. When he fell though he lost both his kneecaps. What does a guy do a dozen years from retirement, who knows nothing but carpentry and now has massive surgery on his knees? I didn’t want to be that guy.
That, and realizing I could scratch my itch to build stuff by doing other things for better money and working conditions, changed my mind.
If any of you are considering a construction job, you might ask any middle-aged carpenters or plumbers how their backs and knees are doing. Ask them how their lungs are. Construction dust, sawdust, and breathing PVC solvent fumes can cause asthma, more likely if you discover you have a sensitivity to that kind of shit — or develop one. Likelihood increases with exposure, alas.
It ain’t all big bucks and no worries.
gnomedad
@Anne Laurie:
Excellent! Looked up source: John W. Gardner
kay
I’m starting to think Wall Street has no connection to Main Street.
Chuck Butcher
BushCo used construction to prop up the economy, this is total horse shit. I’ve been in the industry long enough to tell you that ordinarily if the economy sneezes construction catches pneumonia and dies, it is also the last to revive. Wall Street used that construction prop to play ridiculous games. Connected to Main St, only when there are losses to hand around.
Leelee for Obama
@Chuck Butcher: Chuck, you have made the situation crystal clear. In the years since I didn’t vote for Reagan either time, I have said over and over to anyone who would listen that what they want is a serf class, and they have just about achieved it. In what world is it morally right to pay a pilot with so many souls on his hands less than you pay some smart-ass Wall Street wheeler-dealer in a week? Nurses, teachers, some doctors (probably most doctors), day care providers, nursing home workers make a pittance for the very necessary work they do, and pay taxes the while, and these banksters do their BS magic and make millions, get bonuses even when they screw the pooch, and get bailed out when their fuck-ups threaten the very foundations of a nation. And shelter their lucre any which way they can. Bastards!
I’m sick to my stomach. Edith Piaf was right, Drag the aristocrats to the lampposts.
Tax rates at 90% on the hyper-rich might just save us. I in favor, who do I tell?.
Leelee for Obama
Leelee for Obama:
@
I am pathetic, aren’t I? Good thing I confessed to typese dyslexia earlier!
ksmiami
As I said before, we as Americans have to accept less individual wealth (fewer billionaires) in order to have a wealthier, better educated, more stable and healthier population. If these righttards have a problem, they can just pack off and go GALT in Somalia.
Hiram Taine
@binzinerator:
One point that you and Chuck B missed is that the construction trades are just fucking *awash* with undocumented immigrants, more so in some parts of the country than others but it’s a problem most places. Even electrician and plumber jobs are being taken by undocs now..
The undocs have driven down what were already low wages and made what was already a tough business far tougher.
Not that I have anything against the undocs themselves, they are desperate and doing what they have to do to stay alive, the Amcit assholes that hire them are entirely another story though, them I despise.
Leelee for Obama
Couldn’t have said it better. Jail, fines, stocks , pillories, any one of these or all according to the amount of profit and degree of exploitation. The workers are victims, just like the Americans screwed out of a good job.
Leelee for Obama
@Anne Laurie: Anne-years ago there was a comedy show on HBO I think-Not Necessarily the News. The lead guy did a skit about moving into his new house on a week-end.The stove didn’t work, so he called an electrician, who wanted 200 bucks to hook it up-guy says he’ll wait till Monday for that, for 80 bucks. Then, he uses the bathroom-back up from toilet into tub-the bad kind. Calls a plumber, it’s 300 bucks and a month guarantee. Guy tells him come on over. His reasoning is-10 bucks a day, to guarantee no sh– in the tub is a bargain! I always though that was a great tribute to plumbers and common sense.
Comrade Dread
Yeah. I’m probably not as liberal as you are, but I agree that cynicism is definitely not that much fun.
I was much happier before I knew exactly how badly everyone was screwing the country over and how likely it is that they will continue to screw the country over until the Revolution or until everything goes to hell and we’re all paying a trillion dollars to buy some Wonder bread.
jenniebee
@Chuck Butcher:
Noted, but I think we have a case of the grass is always greener. I’ve got layers of bureaucratese surrounding me in every which way, a 60-80 hr workweek, disappearing benefits (although they did buy us each a bottle of purell this month, which I guess makes up for discontinuing the matching 401K contributions. Or it would if the bottle was the size of, say, Kansas), carpal tunnel, and my health has gone downhill ever since I contracted this serious and chronic case of cubicle butt. And I’m one of the lucky ones, I’m not carrying a crippling debt.
Chuck Butcher
@Hiram Taine:
I just left that alone, they’re as much victims as the legal workers whose wages are tanked. You have no idea of the level of fury I have for the lying cheating scumbag mother*******s who hire illegally. I’m in direct competition with them and that hits my end as well as my guys’. I started out humping lumber to pay for my version of a BSME degree and worked up from that lowly position so I do understand some things. Everyone who has ever worked for me has known how important their well-being is to me and that the could count on me. It’s always been a rare part of any day that I wasn’t wearing bags and sawdust.
The day I finally walked away from further college I knew it would be tougher.
@jenniebee:
Ooh I’ve got all of that, and not benefit one to disappear. Maybe you don’t know how many agencies, and etc have their fingers in my eye. My wife is uninsurable and I’m a horrid risk – see power saws, ladders, etc, etc…. and as for WC, I’d pay somewhere between 22 – 27% of income so I have none on me – as an officer I’m not required to.
(go ahead and ask me where I’m at on health reform)
Ajay
I work on wall street and have been for 5 years. I think demonizing all of wall street is really not kosher. The point you are making applies to a select group of people and not really every one. In fact, a good majority is not part of this. Only the special ones see the carrot. I am on the technology side so its a different perspective than the “Bankers”.
For full disclosure, I was against the Tarp and other tax payer money thrown at them simply because it teaches the crooks nothing other than to do it again as there are no consequences. And yes, my job would have been on the line. But surprisingly, only very few (if at all) had this line of thinking. In fact, it was a war like atmosphere when senate started discussing tax on bonus etc.
srv
I have a relative who is an airline pilot, and it is a miserable life. Save for him, I have little compassion for the soshulist unionized pilots. Went to a party with about two dozen active, furloughed or retired this year, and I was definitely surrounded by the Glenn Beck fanbase.
They may be able to fly airplanes, but they really have to be amongst the stupidest f***s on the planet. Darwin could do a chapter on them.
Elie
“As I said before, we as Americans have to accept less individual wealth (fewer billionaires) in order to have a wealthier, better educated, more stable and healthier population. If these righttards have a problem, they can just pack off and go GALT in Somalia.”
This
Desert Rat
Why doesn’t everyone just
quit doing what they do and go to work onmarch en masse and burn Wall Street?Fixed this for you.
Chuck Butcher
@Desert Rat:
you mean other than it would be like trying to exterminate cockroaches by stomping on them?
Desert Rat
@Chuck Butcher:
Bad analogy. WASPs neither scurry as fast, or reproduce at nearly the rate of roaches. Though the resemblance is uncanny.
Libertini
@geg6:
No need for the sarcasm tag. Even without a teaching degree, I caught it right away.
I wasn’t implying that I had more experience, nor that I knew more than you by any means, just giving ONE example of an exception. It was NOT asinine to note that teachers get more time off than other professions. What they do with that time and what they do with their income is an individual decision. With over 6.2 million teachers, I’d think it would be impossible for anyone to speak for all of them.
My math works fine too. From the DISD school calendar 2009-2010
Working days: New teachers 197
Working days: Returning teachers 189
Average working days for an “average” “corporate” employee with 2 weeks vacation, 5 sick days, and 10 holidays – 231
I also don’t believe I was the only corporate peon working more than 40 hours per week, often on weekends or holidays, and spending personal money on items for business use.
Teaching, IMO, probably ranks highest among the undercompensated professions. The time off argument does nothing to diminish that, but IS a valid point.
Libertini
@Mr Furious: See this. @Libertini:
geg6
@Libertini:
You keep arguing the point that teachers get “time off” as if it is vacation time and they are compensated for it. THEY ARE NOT. Here in PA, teachers get paid for 180 days/academic year. That is the number of days that students are in school. All other time spent on the job or off is uncompensated, unless it is something provided for in the contract, such as a second job with the district (i.e.: coaching, etc.) for which the compensation is different (and almost always lower) than teaching compensation. They spread the 180 days of pay over 12 months, but I’ve been involved in school board/union contract negotiations. I know exactly how many days/hours teachers work and how many of those they get compensated for. I don’t know a single teacher who is actually compensated for any time off other than the usual 2 personal days and 10 sick days that most contracts provide.
People who complain about this stuff really don’t know anything about how teachers are compensated or how many hours/days/weeks of work time they put in. Simply adding up days on the school calendar won’t tell you half the tale. I don’t expect you to know this stuff or understand it, but I also would expect you to not keep digging when told you’re digging in the wrong spot.
Libertini
@geg6:
I’m not going to argue semantics, nor am I complaining, nor will I dig any further. They get paid the same amount for supposedly 180 days a year that I got paid for supposedly 231, and I can assure you I spent as many uncompensated hours on the job as most teachers. That doesn’t make their job any less demanding, less valuable or more fairly compensated. I wouldn’t take the job for 10 times the pay.
I maintain my original argument, which is only that the original comment was neither asinine nor ignorant.