American liberalism: reality and ideology
David Henderson has some fun the other day with a New York Times article on Anthony Weiner:
Neither Ms. Abedin [Anthony Weiner’s wife] nor Mr. Weiner earn lucrative salaries, and Ms. Abedin is worried about her husband, who has been in politics much of his adult life, finding work. Mr. Weiner would still be eligible to collect his pension after his resignation.
David commented:
But that’s obviously not what Raymond Hernandez meant. He meant that the annual salary of $174,000 that Weiner made until recently is not lucrative. Nor, in Hernandez’s opinion, is Huma Abedin’s salary lucrative. But he doesn’t tell us what her salary is. Does he know? He’s a reporter for the New York Timesand so you would expect him to check. Did he? I’m guessing her salary is well in excess of $100,000. To me, that’s lucrative. Notice also that if I’m right, the couple’s salaries together totaled over $250K. Isn’t that supposed to be the magic number in this country that makes you rich? It was when Abedin’s big boss, Barack Obama, ran for president in 2008.
Let’s consider the average well educated affluent East Coast liberal who reads the NYT. Does any one think that they would ever utter the following statement at a cocktail party:
George, I heard the Sanderson’s have become quite wealthy, they are each earning about $150,000/year!
No, to them a family income of $300,000 is certainly not wealthy. On the other hand their official ideology insists it is, and they have no trouble mocking a University of Chicago professor who insists that a $300,000 family income is not wealthy. There are two realms in which they talk, real life and ideology. In their ideology they would claim some students do poorly because of underfunded schools. Granted, their own kids don’t go to underfunded schools, but even if they did I doubt they’d accept that as an excuse for a D plus GPA from their teenage son. They’d tell him to study harder. (Just to anticipate commenter complaints, I am not arguing conservatives don’t do the same–they want a muscular foreign policy, but want their sons to go to law school, not the military.)
The question of whether a family making $300,000 is rich or not is not very interesting. They are very rich compared to most people alive today, and indeed compared to most people who have ever lived. But the same is true of an American family making $60,000. Instead, I find these sorts of inconsistencies more interesting when they expose some of the internal contradictions of liberalism.
Here’s Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
Teachers “shouldn’t have to take a vow of poverty,” Duncan said. “Great teachers should have the chance to make “” pick a number “” $130,000, $140,000, $150,000.”
Often when I read liberal pundits I get the feeling they see America as being split up between the poor and the rich, with no middle class. This despite the fact that 90% of Americans consider themselves middle class, and despite the fact that the vast majority of American families earn middle class incomes. Obviously Arne Duncan thinks in terms of the two Americas, you are either rich, a couple making $130,000 each, or you have taken a “vow of poverty.” There is no in between.
But here’s the problem. If you think the rich need to pay a lot more taxes, then won’t that couple each making $130,000 be knocked down into the sub-rich category. And of course that means they’d be poor, as recall that there is no middle class.
I also recall that liberals find it extremely distasteful when conservatives bash wealthy government workers. It’s almost like talking about welfare queens driving Cadillacs. OK, but which is it? Would a married couple of two teachers each making $130,000 be rich, or not?
I don’t much care about exactly how much teachers make. But I find logical inconsistencies to be very annoying. I want the Obama administration to clearly make one of the two following statements:
A. We think some public school teachers should be wealthy.
B. We don’t think a couple making $130,000 each is rich.
Disclaimer, my wife and I are both in the low 6 figures. Call me rich or not–I don’t care. Just make up your mind and stop demagoguing the issue.
Tags: liberalism, Progressivism
10. September 2011 at 12:42
I don’t see the issue here. You have a salary which puts you in the top one or two percent of income and statements demanding that teachers make that much money. This doesn’t seem any more demagogic than the “bake sales for bombers” bumper sticker. Secondly, that people who are rich don’t “feel” rich isn’t an interesting phenomenon since there is lots of motivated thinking involved because “the middle class” is an important concept in America’s post-war mythology. Even when it’s absent, I suspect most genuinely wealthy people can come up with a woe-is-me story built using a lack of perspective; I’ve heard more than a few.
The bifurcation of income in many people’s minds is an interesting phenomenon, but I think it has more to do with peer group. Once you make or travel in circles which make high salaries, particularly those which concentrate heavily on status goods, class quickly separates: there are those who can afford the minimum status goods to make you acceptable to “elite society” and those who cannot.
10. September 2011 at 12:42
It seems to me the way the term is used that middle class means middle of my socio-economic class rather than middle class according to the distribution of income.
In other words when you know people poorer than you and richer than you, then you’re “middle class”.
10. September 2011 at 12:50
What I want is for Nick Rowe to admit I don’t confuse cause and effect.
The number of macro-ecnomists who don’t admit that Monetary Policy isn’t done for everyone (it is done for the people who own shit) makes it very hard to take their thinking seriously.
I feel like kid at Christmas sifting through a pile of manure just sure that there has to be a pony. Eventually, you folks will get it. I know it!
I think it is because macro guys wants to feel like technocrats, not servants.
10. September 2011 at 13:45
Hyena, You said:
“I don’t see the issue here.”
Then read the post again.
I don’t want liberals saying Weiner and his wife don’t make lucrative incomes, then mock a UC professor for saying he’s not rich. Is that too much to ask?
I want Obama to admit he thinks public school teachers should be wealthy. Is that too much to ask?
Martin, That’s right.
Morgan–wrong post.
10. September 2011 at 14:13
I don’t want to be this cynical, but more and more I come to believe the theory that basis of modern liberalism is essentially just a vast effort by intellectuals to justify their envy of capitalists.
10. September 2011 at 14:18
I never understand what you’re talking about when you reference “liberals” like this. I’m an East Cost liberal (I prefer ‘center left’ – but whatever – lots of people think I come across as liberal) and $300,000 sounds very rich to me – as it did when the Todd Henderson thing broke out.
I’m never quite sure who you have in mind when you talk about liberals. When you did your marshmallow post it surprised me that you said liberals were “one-marshmallow” people too. When I first saw that youtube video well before you did your post I said almost exactly the opposite: “this is what’s wrong with conservatives – they’re not two marshmallow people – their discount rates are too damn high”
I’m not sure where I’m going with this comment… but that was kinda my reaction to the original post too.
I think you’re taking things that you don’t like in some people and that no one likes in people and projecting it on to a group you don’t want to associate with. Because I guarantee you – almost every liberal I know thinks $300,000 is well off (I suppose whether they’re wealthy depends on how wise they are with that money – but they’re clearly not someone that should be worrying).
10. September 2011 at 14:21
Is “the average well educated affluent East Coast liberal who reads the NYT” supposed to be equivalent to “the average reader of the NYT”? What do you think the average household income of an NYT reader is?
I think what David Henderson noticed is a problem of the worldview of NYT journalists, not readers. If the typical reader thought that a couple with two $150,000 salaries wasn’t rich, they wouldn’t need to print so many copies (or get so many pageviews). Personally I get annoyed if I read about the money worries of families with six-figure incomes in the NYT or elsewhere.
10. September 2011 at 14:28
Not one of your better posts.
I’m not going to dissect it.
I’ll just say that it’s not a sign of hypocrisy to have a position that $250,000 is a nice living, it’s not rich, it’s nothing to complain about and that as part of getting our fiscal house in order the tax rate on it should be 4 percentage points higher than it is now.
10. September 2011 at 14:47
Just because some reporter wrote it in the NY Times doesn’t mean that most liberals agree. I’d bet those liberals who mocked the UC prof would agree that any congressman who complains publicly about his salary is an idiot, liberal or otherwise.
10. September 2011 at 15:14
I think you’re misinterpreting the statements, namely taking some to actually be about compensation when they are actually statements about social status and priority.
10. September 2011 at 16:15
You seem to be getting too hung up on the word “wealthy.” Families making more than $250,000/year should (and could) pay more taxes. Why torture words so that you can conclude that families making less than $250,000/year are poor.
To most people, as you say, families making more than $250,000/year are wealthy. But that’s a political statement. The real issue is what should tax rates be.
10. September 2011 at 16:35
I agree with bill above: This is not one of your better “critique of the left” posts. Just because you think taxes should increase on incomes above X doesn’t mean you think X income makes someone wealthy/rich.
10. September 2011 at 17:00
even better, stop telling me what “the rich” or the “middle class” want or need. whatever. new rule: everyone vote for their own self interest and not what they think or hope the other guys self interest is. new rule: all pundits are allowed to tell me whats best for them, not some (likely fictious) other guy. I’ll admit it, I make more that 95% of americans. I know lots of people in a similar brackets. yet when both liberal and conservative pundits caricature our situation, or what we are interested in, its never even 50% correct.
10. September 2011 at 17:02
I am another liberal who thinks of a 300k joint income as affluent and who rolls my eyes at the idea that congressmen are laboring away with meek incomes.
Please don’t take four different claims from four different liberals (obama saying he would only tax the “wealthiest” americans, obama’s education secertary saying some teachers should make as much as 130,000k, people sniggering at a member of a well-off couple claiming he is middle class, and a journalist claiming a well off couple don’t have lucrative salaries)and pretend like they were all made by one homogeneous mass of liberals. That’s sloppy and divisive thinking.
10. September 2011 at 17:08
blah.
The real issue is, raising taxes on the “rich” can’t pay for th promises made by Obama and company.
He is a liar.
The right doesn’t lie, they make it clear they are all Dem voters getting less.
EITHER WAY: Dem voters are going to get less.
Say it with me…
EITHER WAY: Dem voters are going to get less.
——
The point is SINCE Dem voters are going to get less, shouldn’t he left be the ones figuring out who is going to get screwed?
That’s why you know they don’t care about the unfortunate.
—–
Think about it like Sofie’s Choice, except it isn’t a Nazi saying “choose” it is economic fact.
Dems face a choice, some of their voters are going to get less.
THEIR STRATEGY is to make the GOP choose, instead of manning up and choosing themselves.
It is sad.
They are more concerned with blaming
10. September 2011 at 17:24
Professor Sumner —
The New York Times aims for a national (or global) audience that doesn’t view Mr. Weiner or Ms. Abdein’s earnings as particularly “lucrative”; and its writing undoubtedly shares their frame of reference. But many of them are pretty conservative on matters of economics and foreign policy (less so on teaching evolution theory or on helping a teen-aged daughters get a safe abortion).
Frankly, I’m baffled how you made the mental leap from the Times’ marketing strategy to what “liberals” or “the Obama administration” think.
10. September 2011 at 17:58
A couple of people have touched on why this…umm..perhaps isn’t best criticism of Democratic tax policy. I’d like to throw in another point.
This post seems to imply the rich are liberal (the “average well educated affluent East Coast liberal” at the cocktail party). But it isn’t so simple. Richer people tend to be more Republican.
http://andrewgelman.com/2010/08/are_all_rich_pe/
I don’t think using the voice of a stupid New York Times reporter and imaginary cocktail partygoers leads to good policy conclusions.
10. September 2011 at 18:25
For the record – our household combined income makes us “wealthy”. I think we are wealthy compared to most of the world, and I don’t particularly think we deserve that wealth. I don’t particularly think I contribute much worthwhile to the world in my current job, I just happen to be quite good at it. I would be very happy paying higher taxes if I thought it would fix this country’s problems. However, I don’t think that (alone) it will. I, too, get tired of listening to northeastern liberals who see-no-evil-speak-no-evil about Team Obama, and get visibly angry and frustrated when I criticize his policies. Much like southern conservatives, many NE liberals are so certain of their views they don’t even bother to think critically, yet they pride themselves on being smarter/more educated/more virtuous than conservatives. Yes, it’s hypocrisy.
Having said all of that, I know a _lot_ of NE “liberals” who are smart, thoughtful, and highly critical of the current administration. Like me, they would probably be republican if the republicans were not being run by wingnuts. They are willing to take a personal hit to income if it would really fix the country’s problems, but they aren’t willing to take that hit just to subsidize a broken system. MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, they care about their children’s future. Remember, NEW YORK was only a few decades ago the bastion of conservatism.
There is a reason that “Independent” is the biggest political affiliation.
But as much hypocrisy as you observe on the left, it’s quite balanced by the hypocrisy on the right – and more so. One of my wife’s childhood friends is a diehard republican tea partier. She’s also spent 3 years on disability and unemployment benefits, receives food assistance (stamps), received state-covered medical care for an illness that cost over $200,000, state sponsored care for a child with mild disability, is divorced after having a child out of wedlock, etc. Hates free trade, but loved Reagan. Hates the deficit, wants more military spending, etc.
We are a seriously messed up country, and I think there is something I deeply don’t understand about the underlying motivations of the financial leadership of this country. I’m struggling very hard to understand what’s going on in greece right now.
10. September 2011 at 18:33
Comments like this:
“This post seems to imply the rich are liberal”
are just bizarre.
All I can say is that I find it amusing that the Obama administration thinks public school teachers should be wealthy. If others don’t find that amusing, so be it.
10. September 2011 at 18:46
Let’s imagine that the world is as you say, and liberals are all rich, well educated people. How in the world do the democrats win any elections then? The US is not swimming in families making $300K. You might as well build a party around peg-legged homosexuals.
It seems like a pretty fantastic world. Do they also commute in rhinoceros? Do they decorate their walls with mosaics made with M&Ms?
When you want to come back to the real world, where the median household income is about 40K, let us know.
10. September 2011 at 19:12
All this is just one more example of preference falsification (Timur Kuran’s “Private truths, public lies”). I don’t think it’s deliberate hypocrisy though, it’s an actual blindness of most people to see on “their” (concrete) side what they point out as a fault on the “other” (abstract) side. Happens all the time with immigration stances, racism, wealth, morality, what have you. I believe now it has to do with too much abstraction when thinking about the world.
10. September 2011 at 19:48
$300k income makes you rich, according to this Elite, East Coast-residing classical liberal.
10. September 2011 at 20:32
Scott,
Amusing because the Obama administration frequently positions itself as attacking the wealthy? I suppose so, yes…although one could easily contend that left liberals would rather encourage more teachers and civil servants to be wealthy, while discouraging hedge fund managers and investment bankers from the pursuit and maintenance of wealth. (i.e. they are not attacking the idea of being wealthy, but rather specific classes of people whom they view as unworthy of being wealthy.)
That still doesn’t speak very well to all the rhetoric about inequality, though. Given an imperfect world, some degree of inequality is necessary to incentivise certain behaviours, such as entering the teaching profession.
11. September 2011 at 00:05
I have the feeling you people are missing Scott’s point.
Look at the following phrases where he talks about ‘liberals’:
1. “Let’s consider the average well educated affluent East Coast liberal”
2. “Often when I read liberal pundits”
3. “and they have no trouble mocking a University of Chicago professor who insists that a $300,000 family income is not wealthy.”
#3 refers to an episode where liberal pundits such as Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman criticized said Professor. Now in all fairness, those two are consistent, it’s about part of their audience. Scott assumes that even their ‘rich’ audience agrees, but privately does not consider that wealthy when it comes to themselves.
Point is Scott is not talking about blue-collar workers who can be called liberal and vote Democrat. Scott is talking about the people that claim to represent these groups, their ‘thought-leaders’/’opinion-leaders’.
The teacher example he gives is where their private opinions have spilled over into their public policy recommendations.
‘Teachers are good, I consider myself to be good, I earn at least amount x, therefore teachers should earn at least amount x’.
The trouble is that people – that is the ‘opinion-leaders’ – talking about income distribution and rich vs poor, are inconsistent in their private and public life and sometimes something spills over, because social justice is often more about showing that you care than actually caring, and the result is that you get wacky policy.
11. September 2011 at 00:20
Tis true, if teachers earned $150K a year, none of the current teachers would be allowed to teach.
They’d be pushed out by competent people.
We ought to hire baby-sitters, and give everybody a computer and an allowance based on how many Khan Academy questions they answer each week.
11. September 2011 at 01:40
@Morgan, I wouldn’t be surprised if that actually would improve test-scores for the money thrown at it.
If you look at the amount of money in education and test-scores of US-students, then the US is getting a really bad deal. If you correct for the poverty-rate though the US scores are substantially higher and the conclusion you’re then led to is that difference in income-equality is the driver of the international difference in test scores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#United_States
Diminish poverty and you diminish the difference. You can’t be a superpower in today’s world if your kids don’t have the skills to add substantial value to a global supply chain.
11. September 2011 at 03:30
incidentally, I know some public school “teachers” who make well into the six figures (in administrative functions, like principals).
11. September 2011 at 03:48
sorry- forgot link to teachers salaries in maryland.
superintendent: 200k+ in every county
director: 140k +
instructional coordinator in howard county (page 6) – 144k
with a doctorate, someone can make 100k+ in montgomery county. (the maximum applies to those with many years of experience).
A two-earner teacher couple with masters degrees in howard or montgomery county makes 80-100k the first year.
Now, don’t misunderstand me: i live here. i pay high taxes. i send my kids to public school. all on a volunteer basis cause i like it here and my kids get a good education. I *want* those salaries high so that we attract the best of the best to teach my kids.
but… they aint poor by any definition!
http://www.msde.maryland.gov/NR/rdonlyres/CAFE5C56-843C-4D45-8DDB-D7D26146E60F/25636/salsch12.pdf
11. September 2011 at 04:58
Martin,
+1
The ONLY way we’re going to have teachers make $150K is when they can teach a class with 100+ students, and deliver the goods.
The productivity gains coming in education are gong to leave 50% of teachers without a job.
11. September 2011 at 05:58
Morgan,
assuming there’s still classic classroom teaching, teachers’ salaries, and wages for other non tradeable services (health…) go up because of Baumol’s cost disease. Completely independently from any quality considerations that may or may not arise.
Teaching classes of 100+ … Hm. You don’t teach, do you. You may say, Khan Academy or other online delivery, but so far I see little real progress made, much of that because people don’t just go to college, and people don’t send their kids to school, just to learn facts. School and college are social institutions. Much of school and college consists in socialization (for better or worse, like it or not). Not just in learning the syllabus material.
11. September 2011 at 06:06
Morgan,
Don’t hold your breath. I made several teaching colleagues mad by moving to online exams and requiring electronic submission of written work for plagiarism, despite the fact it opened up several hours a semester for more in-depth learning and lots of hours of less grunt-work for me (it also made grading more rigorous and easy to verify).
The net result is that I quit and am now starting a private sector job making double the money and the courses I would have been teaching this fall are being taught by people who don’t know how to post a syllabus online or even respond to emails.
11. September 2011 at 07:16
David, liberalism is not an ideology, it is a sociology. As such it is no surprise that the adherents are inconsistent, contradictory and even illogical. but the same may be said of conservatism.
11. September 2011 at 07:17
MikeDC and Morgan , again,
FWIW I use online exams a lot now and at my institution we post everything online on a learning management system too. It saves me time and is a good source of reference for students. Still: while our max class size is 45 I’d say the best interactive quality would be achieved at around 12 or so, needless to say, that class size seldom happens. But at 100 per class, yes, the in-classroom experience would be so poor that that kind of thing might as well be done online then.
11. September 2011 at 08:30
Scott,
Of course some liberals let ideology get in the way at times and there are certainly liberals who lack some critical thinking skills, but at least anecdotally we are more open to persuasion given some evidence and/or a good argument.
Yes, there are close-minded socialist/communist types, but they seem very rare in the US and the Democratic party certainly doesn’t strike me as anything like the kind of cult organization the Republicans have become.
The Democratic party is clearly corrupt and frankly a basket case, but they are still clearly the lesser of evils. I think Obama deserves a lot of the blame for the present state of the party, given that he’s the captain of the ship, and when he hasn’t been below decks, he’s been steering us not only in the wrong direction, but not even on a consistent one. It’s as if Democrats don’t understand that giving the poor and the middle class the wealthy’s money doesn’t buy votes.
I don’t care about the semantics of wealth, but I take your point. The president and other Democratic leaders don’t have a coherent message or agenda.
11. September 2011 at 08:31
Scott,
Of course some liberals let ideology get in the way at times and there are certainly liberals who lack some critical thinking skills, but at least anecdotally we are more open to persuasion given some evidence and/or a good argument.
Yes, there are close-minded socialist/communist types, but they seem very rare in the US and the Democratic party certainly doesn’t strike me as anything like the kind of cult organization the Republicans have become.
The Democratic party is clearly corrupt and frankly a basket case, but they are still clearly the lesser of evils. I think Obama deserves a lot of the blame for the present state of the party, given that he’s the captain of the ship, and when he hasn’t been below decks, he’s been steering us not only in the wrong direction, but not even on a consistent one. It’s as if Democrats don’t understand that giving the poor and the middle class the wealthy’s money buys votes.
I don’t care about the semantics of wealth, but I take your point. The president and other Democratic leaders don’t have a coherent message or agenda.
11. September 2011 at 08:32
Please scratch the first post. I didn’t think it posted before the edit, given my browser froze.
11. September 2011 at 08:32
That is, Democrats seem to fail to understand that the poor and middle class will probably like some free money from the rich.
11. September 2011 at 09:02
Sandifer… thus proves I’m right. Any retard can make the buy poor votes connection.
That is WHY you can all be so sure Reagan and bush spent all the money on purpose.
Our gambit is UNBEATABLE. It took a while to get the cojones up to execute but now that we have you the liberals have to go a completely different way.
I’m not kidding the left needs to support a balanced budget amendment – and force a true guns or butter decision making.
You won’t listen… you will need to see atleast one more dem president get handed a maxed credit card before you realize Uncle Morgan loves al the arguing children equally.
11. September 2011 at 09:26
@mkb,
“Still: while our max class size is 45 I’d say the best interactive quality would be achieved at around 12 or so, needless to say, that class size seldom happens. But at 100 per class, yes, the in-classroom experience would be so poor that that kind of thing might as well be done online then.”
What does ‘interactive’ add to the output and why does it only count as interaction when it is ‘student-teacher’ and not ‘progressed student-less progressed student’? Students need feedback to learn, but feedback can also come form tests and their fellow students.
The bonus is that everyone can progress at his or her own level rather than that a teacher limits the level to the lowest common denominator. That is what happens when the only feedback is student-teacher.
An additional bonus is that this elevates the status of the more progressed students as other students need their help. Just see it as a market, when humans have to rely on one another this creates a cooperative structure. A teacher-centered approach is no different than a central plan. The role of a teacher should be that of an arbiter explaining the rules of the game and then let the players play.
11. September 2011 at 09:29
@Morgan
“The productivity gains coming in education are gong to leave 50% of teachers without a job.”
Or the productivity gains will lead to a more diverse curriculum within each subject and in the number of subjects.
11. September 2011 at 09:46
There’s a much better example of the title of this post here:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/09/a-platonic-dialogue-on-the-ontological-status-of-social-security.html
Where our old friend J. Bradford says of Social Security’s shortfall, ‘A trillion here, a trillion there…we’re not talking real money.’ (If I were an economist at a prestigious university and had a comments section as ignorant as his, I’d become a beachcomber)
Also, (Romney adviser!) Mankiw’s source is our own Jim Glass.
11. September 2011 at 10:30
Congressmen and government employees aside, the concept of tax incidence makes the whole thing somewhat of a fallacious argument. Just because a larger tax bill is levied on one group of people does not mean those are the people who actually pay it or bear the consequences. That, to me, is the problem with the class warfare approach to politics and taxation. There is an opportunity cost to nearly everything, and liberals can’t seem to figure that out.
11. September 2011 at 10:42
I am often annoyed when Congressman say they are making a sacrifice–to work for $174k plus heavy benefits. Hoo-haw. Median family income in the USA is about $50k. We heard some sniveling from Supreme Chief Justice John Roberts that he was suffering on $250k (and he also has working wife).
As to Scott Sumner–yes, you are rich. You live better than 99 percent of humanity though history, with superb nutrition, health care, literature, entertainment, ability to travel globally etc.
My best year ever I netted maybe $100k and thought it was Fat City.
I feel lucky if not rich (on much less than $100k most years), and if we entered a bona-fide necessary war, for example, I would have no qualms about lowering my living standards by 10 percent to fund the war effort.
I would say people who make more than $200k (barring unusual circumstances) should certainly feel wealthy and lucky. Crickey-Almighty, has no one ever cracked open a history book?
If you do not feel lucky at more than $200k, you are clueless to how 85 percent of Americans live.
11. September 2011 at 11:04
Scott,
Every time I think about you running around without a cell phone I get mad.
Yes yes, you don’t have to have cancer to understand it.
But, anyone who doesn’t push the envelope on personal productivity gains, has to have their opinion on printing money taken with a grain of salt.
So even if you don’t end up changing your mind, you ought to at least personally curious enough to take the time to walk in the shoes of, if not the bleeding edge, at least those who can see the bleeding edge from where they are standing.
11. September 2011 at 12:53
I would like to see some evidence of the proposition that Obama “attacks the wealthy” in his rhetoric or his actions. It seems to me that he has conspicuously avoided doing that. Recall when his administration quietly overturned the limitations on (nationalized) AIG’s employee bonuses.
To generate any tension between the statement that teachers should make $150K and “anti-wealth” rhetoric, it is necessary to spirit in the latter.
11. September 2011 at 14:52
While not really the point of this post, I’ve always wondered if there are situations that the free market would pay teachers to the point that they are wealthy (By way of yearly salary). That’s excluding the idea of the internet allowing a teacher to teach 1000’s at a time. Special Education teachers? Really advanced childhood education?
11. September 2011 at 17:44
Median individual income in the USA: 27,200
Median family income: 44,389
So called “Middle Class”: 22,500 to 82,000
At 250k, you’re in the top 1%. With that kind of money, you can whine all you want, but you are most definitely filthy stinking rich.
11. September 2011 at 17:45
libfree,
I ADVOCATE a system where a small group of teachers make Rock Star / Pro Athlete Money.
I want them to teach via recorded video course work, accredited course work, to 100K+ or 1M students a year.
Video lectures recorded live 10 years ago and with a real time feedback loop of user experience, and incstructors and their staff, spend all of their time increasing the knowledge transfer of the video series.
Imagine Econ 101 like a multi-camera view DVD, where every stream is another way of describing the same idea. and streams are matched to students in real time.
A “tax wedge” is described for student #100075243 using stream 1, but quickly cycles to stream 7, and if he isn’t getting it, kicks him to stream 12, and then stream 21.
Stream 21 might just be clips of movie scenes that illustrate examples of a tax wedge, or a series of rote memory devices, or read chatted up by a celebrity, a football hero, a guy leaning against a building smoking a cigarette early Dennis Leary style.
The idea being that the encyclopedic work of a subject is in fact limited, types of humans / learning styles, are in fact limited, and thus nothing should ever be repeated LIVE twice.
Eventually dumber and dumber people can understand what a tax wedge is in the same amount of time and the average person used too.
The course is becoming perfect.
11. September 2011 at 17:51
Will,
The evidence is this:
We want Obama to STFU and announce that he will personally execute any govt bureaucrat who argues with any small business man about anything for the next 12 months.
He will open a #800 hotline where if ANYONE complains about he assistant deputy superintendent of Kalamazoo – Obama will publicly flog the bastard.
When a farmer stands up and says, “yo dude, we don’t know what the deal is going to be with X regulation”
Obama whips out a pen, and drafts an executive order throwing out all regulations on the subject in the past 5 years – on the spot.
—-
And if he doesn’t do it – he is anti-wealth.
This is not a private public partnership.
We want public SERVANTS nothing less.
11. September 2011 at 19:12
libfree, you might be interested in:
Andrew Coulson, Market Education: The Unknown History (New Brunswick: N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999).
12. September 2011 at 04:15
Martin, and Morgan,
from pedagogic research, students learn better if they participate, when they do group work, when they have to frequently recall material (testing), when the material has practical aspects ideally in their own lives (case studies), and the like. Of course all these forms of interactivity have components between teacher and students as well as between students themselves.
And this is why I do (and have to, by policy), encourage and grade class participation, have students do group projects with in class presentations, when possible, use cases or publications for in class discussions, etc. All of these require a lot more thought and work and student monitoring for the teacher, and therefore smaller class sizes, than routine stand-up material delivery of the material.
Standard delivery (reading down material in class) is the easiest way of teaching and also pretty much the only component of these that can be done readily in youtube video fashion. It is surely the cheapest. It is also the worst.
Then there’s the social component. Food for thought: when we interviewed students for acceptance at our institution, we had them discuss a paper that lauded the possibilities of online teaching, video teaching etc. They universally hated the idea. Basically students don’t just want to study for the purpose of learning academic material. They want to meet, talk, date, have student life, experience independence from parents in a half-free setting. They want to learn to become adult members of society. Video courses completely miss this – the main point of a university.
12. September 2011 at 04:50
I’d say the value in econ of “interactive” time is that teachers can usually apply and teach the core concepts in addressing questions or specific problems that students have. You generally get a lot more engagement that way, and you get to tackle more depth to problems responding on-line, in writing can sometimes be more effective for solving problems, but it generally leaves out a lot of depth.
mbk,
You’ve just presented a great argument as to why the modern university is a terrible idea. It’s not about what it’s supposed to be about, but instead it’s largely about catering to the social whims of non-adults. That seems to be college at its worst.
12. September 2011 at 05:37
Statsguy, I agree.
Bob, You said;
“Let’s imagine that the world is as you say, and liberals are all rich, well educated people.”
Let’s imagine you were able to find a quotation where I said, or even implied, something so silly.
mbk, Good point.
Turkey, As I clearly said, I’m fine with that.
Johnleemk, The question is; “Do we need to make teachers wealthy in order to get good teachers?
Martin, You said;
“I have the feeling you people are missing Scott’s point.”
The understatement of the century.
Morgan, Yeah, and it would be a monumental waste of money, because K-12 EDUCATION SIMPLY ISN’T THAT IMPORTANT.
dwb, I have slightly less problem with that.
Mike, You said;
“Of course some liberals let ideology get in the way at times and there are certainly liberals who lack some critical thinking skills, but at least anecdotally we are more open to persuasion given some evidence and/or a good argument.”
I’ve done posts calling conservatism dumb, but that means liberals need to try harder to live up to their reputation. Liberals are good on evolution and global warming, but bad on the income tax and innate differences between men and women. They ignore the science when they don’t like it. Check out the comment section on my Buffett post–one liberal after another saying the science doesn’t matter, only Buffett’s folksy wisdom matters.
Patrick, Thanks for the link.
Bonnie, Good point.
Benjamin, I agree. BTW, as far as I’m concerned, Obama says $125,000 is the cutoff for rich. I don’t make anywhere near $200,000, but he thinks I’m rich. He’s the one who says individual household incomes should be aggregated with married, but not when living in sin. That’s his explicit policy.
Will, As I said, I’m a happy man if Obama just says “I think public school teachers should be wealthy.” Attacks on the wealthy are a side issue. Just say it–and see how the American public reacts.
libfree, The free market would and should pay a few teachers that much–but public K-12 should not. (Obviously public universities do.)
data; You said;
“At 250k, you’re in the top 1%. With that kind of money, you can whine all you want, but you are most definitely filthy stinking rich.”
Exactly my point, so let’s have Obama say he wants public school teachers to be filthy stinking rich. I want to hear it said out loud. No more of this “avoid a vow of poverty” stuff–say “rich.”
12. September 2011 at 07:14
MikeDC,
“You’ve just presented a great argument as to why the modern university is a terrible idea. It’s not about what it’s supposed to be about, but instead it’s largely about catering to the social whims of non-adults. That seems to be college at its worst.”
Not at all. Firstly, the students are adults at that point. Secondly, they objectively need to build their position in society. That’s going to happen socially, not scholarly, and it’s not a whim, it’s the true goal of why most people study in the first place. So why wouldn’t a University be the perfect place to learn that too, where they meet their social peers / wannabe peers? How else is any kind of social learning going to take place? From videos?
The people that end up deciding in society are not the best engineers. They are the best people people. They understand, organize, and manage other people and other people’s labour.
Finally, the idea that everything has one and one purpose only is a common but very simplistic view of society and nature. It’s painfully obvious that food uptake is usually coupled to a social function, that sex very seldom leads to reproduction, that clothes are much more about making the right impression than about protecting from the elements, the list goes on and on. Almost everything is socially multifunction and the social function is usually the primary one. Disclaimer, when I was a student I also saw the university as just a place to learn and get a degree. It certainly also is, at face value. But I now know that I misunderstood a lot of points along the way.
12. September 2011 at 08:12
I completely agree that most everything is multipurpose (and should be) and that social learning and dynamics are important.
Put differently, I agree that universities produce three basic things for their customers: 1. A Consumptive knowledge good, 2. human capital in the traditional sense of boosting employment skills, and 3. social capital in the sense you’re describing. And perhaps 4, in that they create a signal regarding the customer’s existing stock of human capital.
However, I think you’re completely wrong to think universities are somehow unique in their ability to create that social capital. They’re not. You get all the same sort of things in work environments, sports and hobby clubs, religion, you name it. You can get much of the same by working with other students even in non-traditional classes.
Granted, it’s a different way of thinking, but that’s exactly the point. All of those social interactions can provide equivalent or better opportunities for social capital development (I’d argue for better, because they generally are truly collaborative, voluntary interactions, often across large peer and non peer groups).
And best of all, they’re largely efficient, market-based interactions rather than an ungodly expensive university experience that saddles the kid with a lifetime of debt and a bunch of nonsensical ivory tower hokum.
Point blank, I certainly made great friends in college and grad school, and learned how to interact with them. However, I think I would have made great friends and learned how to interact with them in a world where most people don’t go to college but, say, do extended apprenticeships or go to work in a factory. I also made great friends and developed relationships being a young, 20-something professional working with lots of other young, 20-something professionals and lots of older, more experienced folks too.
One final note. This is especially true with non-peer groups and diversity. University experiences with this seem uniformly bad (in my observations as a teacher and a student there). I learned a lot more about class, race and gender/sexuality relations (at least in the positive sense of developing relationships and working with folks of other races and backgrounds) by working, following my interests, volunteering than through anything I did at school.
12. September 2011 at 08:39
Scott, huh?
Morgan, Yeah, and it would be a monumental waste of money, because K-12 EDUCATION SIMPLY ISN’T THAT IMPORTANT.
This is a large assertion. I think we agree but for th ewrong reasons.
But nothing I said costs a lot of money. It is private sector profit driven. So it can’t be a huge waste of money.
12. September 2011 at 17:24
Morgan, I should have clarified “at the margin.” Boosting teacher pay from $75,000 to $150,000 will give you a better teacher, but what’s holding back Johnny isn’t the quality of $75,000 teachers, it’s that he plays computer games rather than reading books and doing homework. More money won’t change that.
12. September 2011 at 19:04
Oh you were responding to the earliest post… nm.
13. September 2011 at 11:30
Sorry Scott, but I think you’re being ridiculous here.
I’ve not seen any official statement that a couple with family income of 260k is “rich”. They are certain well enough off to be able to handle a few extra dollars in income taxes (IOW, what the 2009 Obama plan would have had them paying if that was their *taxable* income.
The reason that UofC prof got nailed is because he was trying to cry poor over the potential extra tax bill when he and his wife made something like 450k/year. And when you examine their expenses as he laid them out, it’s obvious that their *taxable* income would not be that much over 250k (they had huge mortgage deductions, and huge tax-deferred retirement contributions. Since that plan would have raised the marginal rate *only* on taxable income over 250k, they might have had to pay an extra couple thousand dollars in taxes.
That would almost certainly have been less than my taxes went up in 2003 (total family income of 110k) when they changed around the marriage brackets, so that I started paying 25% at 50k instead of at 100kish (total family income of 110k). Funny — I don’t recall anybody raising a massive stink about how *that* tax change would make us all poor, but I’m betting a *lot* more families were affected by it than would have effected by Obama’s plan to go back to 90s tax rates for those whose taxable income was >250k/year.
When liberals talk about the shrinking middle class (I didn’t know anybody suggested it was gone already), we are talking about how difficult it is to afford certain crucial signals of middle class status on a median income (home ownership in a good school district, send your kids to college, decent health care).
You can do that on 200k certainly, and you can probably even do that on 100k — but 100k family income puts you at the 80th percentile.
Try doing it on 60k — close to the median. Not so easy. Now rmember that in the last 30 years, there has been essentially zero real wage growth for the median household, while housing education and healthcare have grown faster than inflation.
Ergo, it’s much harder to afford these crucial markers of middle class status than it used to be for those of moderate means. Hence: *shrinking* middle class.
13. September 2011 at 17:55
Michael, You said;
“I’ve not seen any official statement that a couple with family income of 260k is “rich”.”
Then you need to pay more attention to American politics.
You said;
“The reason that UofC prof got nailed is because he was trying to cry poor over the potential extra tax bill when he and his wife made something like 450k/year. And when you examine their expenses as he laid them out, it’s obvious that their *taxable* income would not be that much over 250k (they had huge mortgage deductions, and huge tax-deferred retirement contributions.”
I’m not defending the guy, but those numbers don’t add up. No one can put more than 22k into a 401k.
You said;
“When liberals talk about the shrinking middle class (I didn’t know anybody suggested it was gone already), we are talking about how difficult it is to afford certain crucial signals of middle class status on a median income (home ownership in a good school district, send your kids to college, decent health care).”
I don’t think it’s ever been possible to live in a good school district on a median income. In America median incomes have always been way below average, as they include lots of people who are young and old. Even I had a poverty level income for 8 years 918 to 26)–that gets included into “median,” making the number pretty meaningless. Much more meaningful is median income of families headed by someone 40 to 60 years old.
We are spending way more on education in real terms than in the good old days of the 1960s. If median schools are worse it due to worse students, not a lack of spending. And no about of income redistribution can address that issue in the slightest.
13. September 2011 at 17:56
I would add that the median family has access to far better health care than in the good old days.
16. September 2011 at 07:48
If anyone is wondering, the median household income headed by someone aged 45-54 is $62,485 in 2010. Age 55 to 64 is $56,575. (Census Data)
If you want to do a time series (as I think this will be good data for some input on Tyler’s broader great stagnation argument) you can find an easier to work with file here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/229092/H10AR_2010.xls
17. September 2011 at 09:51
Thanks K.R. That’s quite a difference from the median individual income, which is about $27,000.
An individual making $62,000 is quite well off. A family headed by someone 50 years old making $62,000 is just doing average. People mix up the data all the time, and get gibberish.