Why Wisconsin?
Commenters have been asking me for my views on Wisconsin, but I’ve been holding back because instant reactions to emotional issues are usually wide of the mark. (Remember the Gifford shooting reactions?) Now Will Wilkinson has taken an appropriately above the fray look at the situation. You’d be better off reading his excellent short post and skipping my meandering long one, but if you insist:
I actually grew up in Madison, so I suppose I should know something about the situation. But I’ve lived in Boston for most of my life. Nevertheless, I’ll try to describe why Wisconsin ended up in this predicament.
When I was young, Wisconsin was a strongly Democratic state. In 1988 the Democratic candidate (Dukakis) lost California and won Wisconsin. That’ll never happen again as long as I live. But why not?
In the past few decades politics have shifted in several ways. Well-paid professionals have drifted toward the Dems, and people who make things have drifted toward the GOP. Well-paid professionals have also grown in number, and have flocked to big cities on the coast, and also a few interior places like Chicago and Minneapolis. The state of Wisconsin doesn’t have one of those sophisticated big cities (although my hometown arguably punches above its weight.)
A few years ago I read that Wisconsin was number two in percentage of jobs in manufacturing (Indiana was one.) That surprises people, who picture lots of dairy farmers. Manufacturing has mostly left America’s big cities and gone to small cities, of which Wisconsin has plenty. Wisconsin is a pretty boring state in a statistical sense, fairly average in total population, urbanization, income, you name it. Why hasn’t it suffered as much as the manufacturing belt from Detroit to Buffalo? I don’t know.
There is a strong Northern European social democratic vibe in Wisconsin history–it led the US in adopting all sorts of progressive legislation. I believe they outlawed the death penalty about 100 years before the barbaric French got around to it.
At the risk of sounding racist, it may be that Wisconsin has done better that the eastern rust belt because the German and Nordic immigrants brought in a tradition of relatively good governance, and skill at making the sorts of sophisticated capital goods that rich countries can still export. But I don’t want to oversell this success. They aren’t doing well, they are merely avoiding doing badly like Detroit/Northern Ohio/Erie/Buffalo, etc.
As highly educated young people leave Wisconsin for cities like Boston, you are left with lots of people who make physical things–farmers and manufacturing workers. And of course all the ordinary service jobs that support them. The Democrats actually aren’t doing badly in Wisconsin, it still leans slightly Democrat. But they aren’t doing as well as they should be doing, because white voters in small and mid-size towns don’t perceive the modern Democratic party as offering much to them. That’s why states like West Virginia have trended Republican, as big wealthy urban areas trend Democrat.
The really interesting message from Wisconsin is that Governor Walker is able to mount this challenge to unions, not whether he “wins” or loses (which I see as an issue of minor importance.) This battle is a symbol that the old Democratic Party that I knew when I was younger is very much weakened. The party of people like Hubert Humphrey, for you older readers. It’s not gone, but it is more and more confined to public sector workers, who work with their minds. My dad liked Humphrey a lot. He was a Dem because when he was young the GOP was the party of deflation and prohibition. And he like to drink and have fun, and as a realtor he liked seeing house prices going up. He didn’t much care for public sector workers.
In smaller cities in Wisconsin you don’t have lots of rich people like here in Boston. So the Dems in Wisconsin can’t easily say “look at those rich fat cats, we need to take their money and redistribute it to the rest of us.” Factory managers and factory workers mix socially at cookouts before Packer games. In many cases the struggling factory and service sector workers find that the public employees that they know are in much better shape–decent salaries, safe jobs with no layoffs, great pensions, etc. Liberals write books like “What’s wrong with Kansas,” implying that lower income voters in middle America don’t know that their economic interests lie in voting Democratic. But it’s not obvious why that is the case. Extremely few Wisconsinites are on welfare, so that’s not a big factor. The Dems obviously aren’t going to do anything about imports that steal factory jobs. I suppose the health care bill could be a plus, but many working class people don’t want to be forced to buy health insurance, even with subsidies. And although Wisconsin voters are more socially liberal than Southern voters, those aren’t big issues for struggling working class people.
In the last election the GOP made huge gains in the area between the two coasts that is not part of a big sophisticated city like Chicago, or a big African-American city like Detroit. Because Wisconsin has only a modest number of highly paid professionals, and also a modest number of minority voters, it was exactly the sort of place the GOP made large gains.
Keep in mind that almost all generalizations about Wisconsin are slightly inaccurate, as it’s hard to make generalizations about highly average places. For instance Wisconsin does have some professional jobs in insurance, biotech, etc. But Wisconsin is un-average enough in one dimension to make at least a few generalizations possible. And that dimension isn’t dairy farming, it’s lots of cities with 50,000 people that make things. It’s easy to convince foolish rich people in West LA to waste $300,000,000 on boondoggle high schools, they even think teachers are poorly paid. But in a community of 50,000 people, most folks pretty much know what’s going on, and they accurately perceive that the public employees are currently doing better than they are. In the end the GOP may over-reach, as Wisconsin still has that strong Northern European social democratic tradition. It’s still a Democratic state. But the fact that the battle in Wisconsin is even this close should be a wake-up call that there are some internal contradictions in modern liberalism that are a long way from being resolved.
How do I feel about public sector unions? Let me put it this way, I oppose public sector jobs. If I had my way there’d be nothing to unionize except police, judges, soldiers, EPA and IRS workers. Having said that, I have nothing against teachers unions, as long as the teachers don’t work for the public sector.
Universal education care! Single-payer! Bring Swedish-style socialized education to the Badger state!
Confession: I was once a public sector teacher in Wisconsin (albeit for only one semester.)
Madison fun facts: America’s two greatest artists lived there. One for just a year, the other grew up there. (Our greatest film director was born in Kenosha.) It’s on an isthmus (a word I still can’t pronounce.) The UW was the most fun university in America when I was young–15 year olds could drink in bars with no IDs. I suppose that’s changed. But I think Wisconsin still leads America in alcohol consumption. Believe me, growing up in Madison in the 1960s and early 1970s makes ever other place and era in America seem like a bunch of insufferable Puritans. There are towns around me (near Boston) that ban alcohol! Professors can’t drink wine at Bentley faculty parties!
In 1948 Madison was the cover story of Life magazine–the best place to live in America. Used to be the second most educated city above 150,000, but recently has slipped a bit. Has the best state capital building. Has a brand new suburb where the architecture is non-ugly. Wisconsin has a far more egalitarian culture than Massachusetts.
When I was young I couldn’t get out of Wisconsin fast enough. Now as I think back to my youth it seems like a kind of paradise.
Tags: US politics, Wisconsin
24. February 2011 at 08:24
Excellent post Scott. Very illuminating.
24. February 2011 at 09:17
Wayne: “So, do you come to Milwaukee often?”
Alice Cooper: “Well, I’m a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers began visiting here in the late 16th century.”
Pete: “Hey, isn’t “Milwaukee” an Indian name?”
Alice Cooper: “Yes, Pete, it is. In fact, it was originally an Algonquin term meaning “the good land.””
Wayne: “I was not aware of that.”
Alice Cooper: “I think one of the most interesting things about Milwaukee is that it’s the only American city to elect three Socialist mayors.”
Wayne to the camera: “Does this guy know how to party or what?”
I agree! Wisconsin is absolutely wonderful. If anyone is coming through the Midwest this summer, I recommend to all a stop at Summerfest. Makes the Taste of Chicago look like a waste of time.
As far as liberalism goes, I agree it will still trend blue. The upper-midwest will has the Wellstone-Feingold-Franken tradition to it. And UW-Madison and Marquette still do a nice one-two punch of representing Wisconsin among total number of Peace Corps volunteers (FYI – the Peace Corps turns 50 on Tuesday!). http://multimedia.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/stats/schools2011.pdf
24. February 2011 at 09:21
Other fun facts about Wisconsin:
1) There are seven towns in Wisconsin named “Union” (where, as Scott notes, factory managers and factory workers probably mix socially at cookouts before Packer games).
2) Wisconsin enacted the nation’s first unemployment compensation law in 1932.
3) Wisconsin enacted the first state law for worker’s compensation in 1911.
4) In 1886 seven workers were shot to death by the Wisconsin State Militia while protesting for the 8 hour day and the 40 hour workweek. That particular cause was lost but it did eventually give birth to what most of us these days call “the weekend”.
5) AFSCME was founded in 1932 as the Wisconsin State Administrative, Clerical, Fiscal and Technical Employees Association.
6) The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned franchise in American professional sports major leagues.
So it’s somewhat ironic that we’re seeing this showdown in Wisconsin.
P.S. From a “realpolitic” perspective this must matter otherwise there wouldn’t be so much emotion involved. I think it’s important to keep in mind that the three groups that contributed the most to the Democratic campaign in the last election were the SEIU, AFSCME and the NEA.
P.P.S. Here’s a public service message from AFSCME, “the union that works for you” (warning, not for sensitive ears):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3mw49mk_x0&feature=player_embedded
P.P.P.S. When I was a student at Chicago in the 1980s I used to spend a lot of my free time recreating in Wisconsin. For example, my first Grateful Dead concert was at Alpine Valley. I camped at the Richard Bong Recreation Area. I used to go swimming in Lake Geneva. I wore out the first engine of my 1964 VW microbus treking Southern Wisconsin in the extreme Midwestern summer heat. Now that I think about it, Scott’s right. With the benefit of hindsight, Wisconsin does seem like paradise.
24. February 2011 at 09:39
Hmmmm… Single payer education … that’s an interesting and provocative way of putting it. So are you one of those libertarians like Matt Welch (http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/07/why-prefer-french-health-care) who (not so) secretly prefers the efficiency brought by other types of single payer systems as well?
24. February 2011 at 09:39
“And that dimension isn’t dairy farming, it’s lots of cities with 50,000 people that make things. It’s easy to convince foolish rich people in West LA to waste $300,000,000 on boondoggle high schools, they even think teachers are poorly paid. But in a community of 50,000 people, most folks pretty much know what’s going on, and they accurately perceive that the public employees are currently doing better than they are. ”
I have a feeling that that explains another one of Scott’s points as well. I’ve no proof, just a feeling.
Sweden, and even more Denmark (places which Scott keeps pointing out are, despite high tax levels, actually pretty well run and arguably more classically liberal than than the US) seem to recreate in their taxation and public goods and services sectors this “small town” feel. Taxes for health care for example are raised in the counties and spent in the counties (sure, there’s a national system on top for rarer specialties).
Denmark’s national income tax rate is 3.76%: the top national income tax rate is 15%. You get to hte fierce total income tax rates of 50-60% etc, by adding the local income tax to it. And that’s collected at the level of the commune, which can be a unit as small as 10,000 people. Collected and spent at the level of the commune.
I would argue (indeed I do argue) that people would be much more likely to be happy with such high tax rates if they knew where the guy who both collects and spends the money has a beer on a friday night.
Especially if the taxes are exceptionally high and he likes more than just the one beer: makes remonstrating with him as he leaves so much easier.
24. February 2011 at 09:53
ChacoKevy, is that from that vampire movie with Malcolm McDowell, “Bite” or “Suck” or whatever? It was playing at Reading Festival. If I’d known Alex Lifeson had a cameo, I would have stayed to watch.
24. February 2011 at 09:57
@Richard Allan
“Wayne’s World”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105793/
Party on!
24. February 2011 at 10:13
“Wisconsin has a far more egalitarian culture than Massachusetts.”
THAT is true. Even within city – though I don’t think Boston has the equivalent of Metcalfe Park since it demolished the Combat Zone. But if you compare Beacon Hill to Jamaica Plain, I think the gap is greater.
“Used to be the second most educated city above 150,000, but recently has slipped a bit. Has the best state capital building. Has a brand new suburb where the architecture is non-ugly.”
When you talk about why it’s so highly ranked, you mention a lot of things that rely on public goods.
Re: Public Salaries. I’m sympathetic to cutting public sector salaries (or more accurately, pensions), as you know, but it’s important to also point out that the gap between public sector vs. private sector is substantially lower if you limit it to private sector jobs that cannot be outsourced and require a college degree. It’s also smaller if you compare to the 30 year change in mean wage (instead of median wage). But you are right in points of comparison. New Yorkers don’t look at public school teachers and feel jealous, but I doubt most Wisconsinites could even comprehend spending 8 million dollars for a 3,000 sq foot apartment in a building that was constructed in 1930.
24. February 2011 at 10:17
Last time I looked Sweden was using a voucher system nationwide for their schools. They also have about a half dozen alternatives for national pension system, somewhat like that in Chile, and private companies run the buses in Stockholm. Which, if true, is interesting since the nation is portrayed as cradle to grave socialism.
24. February 2011 at 10:23
Man, your filter just killed my comment even though it had only one link:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_utl.htm
24. February 2011 at 10:24
When I had coin to buy some rental units, I chose Wisconsin over California because I agreed with your good governance impression. Wisconsin’s business climate is the Cayman Islands compared to California, and I could provide endless comparisons.
You’re mostly right about West LA, too, except for one enclave considered the “most Midwestern” city (pop 60,000) around. “Midwestern” is embraced by residents to whom it means a genial, egalitarian community ethos (and income distribution), local politicians eat at local eateries and attend local events where they can be engaged, the Chamber of Commerce has a valid voice, and good governance somehow survives within a larger Los Angeles environment of simony, nepotism and patronage. “Midwestern” denigrated means rascist cops, sinister business and development sympathies, vaguely stupid & blockheaded residents, pale cultural conformity (coerced by some shadowy method), and a city council too timid to enact grand resolutions on the national social issues, cutting edge environmental laws, and massive tax increases to fund every whackadoos good idea.
24. February 2011 at 10:36
‘…local politicians eat at local eateries and attend local events where they can be engaged….’
Exactly, and it applies to public employees as well. If the DOT employees aren’t fixing the city’s potholes they’ll hear about it when they stand in line in the grocery store or at their kids’ Little League game.
We might call it the Sarah Palin Effect.
But, let’s not forget one of Wisconsin’s greatest accomplishments; twice electing Joseph McCarthy to the U.S. Senate.
24. February 2011 at 10:37
statsguy,
You wrote:
“I’m sympathetic to cutting public sector salaries (or more accurately, pensions), as you know, but it’s important to also point out that the gap between public sector vs. private sector is substantially lower if you limit it to private sector jobs that cannot be outsourced and require a college degree.”
There’s an interesting EPI paper that’s circulating the progressive blogosphere that looks at Wisconsin public sector compensation. It controls for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability, and finds that both state and local public employees earn lower wages and receive less in compensation (including all benefits) than comparable private sector employees (about 5% less).
http://epi.3cdn.net/9e237c56096a8e4904_rkm6b9hn1.pdf
Also, Menzie Chinn turned Table 2 (compensation by education level unadjusted for other variables) into a nice graphic in a post at Econbrowser called “Analogy Watch: “Cairo has come to Wisconsin”?” on February the 17th.
However, I believe such comparisons are extremely difficult, and probably very much besides the point of what is happening in Wisconsin.
24. February 2011 at 10:56
The EPI paper is bunk. The link below explains the failings on Pension and Health Insurance.
My issue is more generic: Teachers are bumped up for having a Masters Degree. After a # of years, If they don’t get one, they don’t make more.
In the private sector you have Docs, MBAs, and JDs – but by and large – much of the talent, even those with just HS degrees – private sector workers approach “making more money” as having nothing to do with getting more education.
So, listening to teachers say they have more education IS NOT indicative of market value.
What they could do is show me private sector companies clamoring to hire 45 year old 4th grade teachers with a MFA and pay them more then they earn now.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657704576149941061124736.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion
24. February 2011 at 11:25
“It’s easy to convince foolish rich people in West LA to waste $300,000,000 on boondoggle high schools, they even think teachers are poorly paid.”-Sumner.
Ouch. Not that I live in West LA or that I am rich (except by global standards).
Call me weak, I still cherish the idea of a public neighborhood school, a pillar of the community. I suppose those days are over.
I notice it is students who make a school. In other words, public school teachers in L.A. are lousy, unless they have Asian students, who tend to excel. No one is allowed to say this out loud.
Actually, my concept of local government is that all units of government conform to “precinct”–so that your police, city councilman (alderman), school are aligned with a precinct or aldermanic district of no more than 40,000. In this way, a large city could become humanized and manageable, and negotiable by average citizens. If you have a problem, you call your alderman’s office, and they know how to handle it. I wonder if the Chicago alderman system is like this. Your alderman (woman) would know how to negotiate government for you, and would be approachable and knowledgeable about her/his smaller district. The alderman would know the precinct captain, the local public schools, the roads, fire department, etc.
I can assure all Sumner readers that Los Angeles is a great place to live, but we have a confusing welter of city, county, and state governments and districts that would require a team of experts several weeks to explain. The local newspaper complains that county government is “opaque.” Oh, if that is what the newspaper says, what does the citizen say?
In no place in the world do city projects unfold more slowly than in the City of Los Angeles, although NYC with its World Trade Center site may be emerging as a rival.
Well, those are my pipe dreams for the day.
24. February 2011 at 11:50
@Benjamin
The aldermanic council here does work as you imagine it, but not in ALL services. My alderman is responsible for things such as overseeing the work done to our sewer lines, as well as permitting for parking on city streets.
Also, the smoking ban in bars/restaurants in the city came out of the aldermanic council, not the mayor’s office.
However, the story goes that an alderman has to tread lightly on issues with the city at-large, lest they suffer the wrath of the mayor. For instance, the city has X number of garbage trucks and snow plows, so an alderman, allegedly, puts his ward at risk for deprivation of services should they not be in line with the mayor.
Piss off Daley? Good luck getting that pothole fixed.
…We have Rahm though now, so that looks like it will be changing … /snark
24. February 2011 at 12:18
Morgan,
The WSJ article by Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine raises questions concerning the EPI study by criticizing….a Berkeley study on public sector compensation in California. Talk about bait and switch.
However, I did find another article by Biggs over at AEI where he describes the results from estimating a fixed effects model on Wisconsin public sector compensation. In other words he followed the same people over time, specifically as private sector workers found new jobs which could be in the public or private sector, and then estimated the difference in compensation between sectors. He states that what he found confirmed Keefe’s EPI study (oops). But he does promise to address the matter again in the future (presumably when he can find some way of analyzing it that supports his preestablished opinion):
http://blog.american.com/?p=27543
In any case I reiterate that such comparisons are difficult and ultimately probably irrelevant.
However, primary school teacher salaries (not total compensation) of those with 15 years experience as a ratio to GDP per capita in Sweden (where they have a voucher system) are a few percent lower than in the US according to an old post on Economix called “Teacher Pay Around the World” (and is less than in most of the EU).
24. February 2011 at 13:06
Keep in mind the changes in partisan voting trends in WI have been very modest, here’s a paritsan voting graph on all states since 1948. It actually shows remarkably little trend change in the industrial Midwest over fifty years, and a slight trend away from the Republicans if you squint at it.
http://www.themonkeycage.org/2011/01/trends_in_partisanship_by_stat.html
Wisconsin is also much older than it was in 1988, if you look at exit polls I think you’ll find the primary trend in 2010 was the move right of the Medicare eligible 60+ crowd.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/07/weekinreview/07marsh.html
The West LA comment seems odd for someone from Newton to make!
24. February 2011 at 13:27
Mark, I’m sorry to me the key point was job security = 15%. I’m a big believer the market based way to solve for what to pay public employees is to keep lower their pay until the quit rates are the same for public service.
“However, primary school teacher salaries (not total compensation)” then we won’t pay attention to this. I’m fine with salaries, if we:
1. end the pensions
2. cut the benefits
3. make it easier to fire bad teachers
That’s not a hard list to compromise on.
Mark, I love my daughters very much, and I want them to have good teachers – but in all truth, I’m far more concerned about the shady politics, world views of their potential teachers and about the quality of the other students in the class.
Every single small government parent I know talks about having to deprogram their kids based on what bullshit ideas they bring home.
I will never send my kids of private school, but if you staffed a school with “pretty good” teachers who were all WILDLY IMPRESSED with entrepreneurs / businessmen, and focused kids routinely, out of their own beliefs bleeding through on the virtues of commerce – I’d pay for that.
24. February 2011 at 13:45
‘…presumably when he can find some way of analyzing it that supports his preestablished opinion….’
Not that that would ever be the case for an EPI economist doing a ‘comparable worth’ study.
But, do you think there was a lot of movement from the low paid public sector to the more highly remunerated private sector in Wisconsin? That’s what we’d expect to find wouldn’t we if the EPI paper is true?
Also, if the public sector unions do such a lousy job for their members, why all the hysteria over retaining collective bargaining rights?
24. February 2011 at 14:01
Scott, nice post. Sums up Wisconsin quite well.
Over the next few weeks we’ll see if any of the State Senate Republicans wish to negotiate to move on, breaking ranks with Gov. Walker. Or whether the Dems will finally cave from public sentiment and/or the Senate passing more and more bills in their absence – voter ID being one of them.
It will also be interesting to watch the recall efforts which will almost certainly be launched against at least one Republican State Senator in a district Obama had won.
Interesting times.
I say this while sitting in a cafe on the Capitol square in Madison, watching protesters, sheriffs, and police walking around that magnificent building.
24. February 2011 at 14:17
Pat! shhhhh! Mark’s narrative already felt bad about itself.
24. February 2011 at 14:24
@Morgan,
Biggs isn’t clear how he comes up with the 15% premium for job security, and I’m not sure how one would measure that except as a residual after accounting for everything else. It sounds large to me.
I didn’t mention total compensation globally because Economix didn’t. It is important, but perhaps it’s harder to measure such differences. My point was that a voucher system probably would lead to lower teacher compensation. I can post the link since I’m rationed one per comment (See Sweden, third graph):
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-world/
I myself went to an independent private school from Pre-K through 12th grade (Sanford School in Delaware). Even though I spent over 4 years as a public high school mathematics teacher I would never dream of sending my children (if I ever have any) to public school, even if it meant an enourmous amount of financial hardship (which these days it would, given the current cost of Sanford). (Actually, having experienced both, one as a student, the other as a teacher, probably makes me feel that way.)
I think a lot of the problems we have now with education relate to the fact you have a monopsony employing a tightly organized union. If you decentralized it through a voucher system I think it would be better for everyone (students, parents and teachers). The market value of the teachers employed by such a system might be lower but I suspect it would still be more effective.
As for the world views of teachers, I think that you’ll find most people attracted to education tend to be more “progressive” than average. To get the kind of teachers you would prefer you’d probably have to pay a premium for it (or give up something else in exchange).
@Patrick,
I find the EPI results to be believable, and I think Biggs is having a hard time criticizing them. I think public sector employees place premium on job security and that probably explains the 5% difference in compensation (ceteris paribus) in Wisconsin.
24. February 2011 at 15:00
Thanks contemplationist.
ChacoKevy, Yes, Summerfest is so good it was copied by Chicago.
Mark. All good points, but just to clarify, the Green Bay Packers are not government-owned, as many assume by the term “community”, they are owned by their shareholders.
Shane, I oppose single payer health care, because the industries are quite different. In education we assume that kids need to be educated, in health care the entire problem is deciding how much to provide. So I’d favor Singapore’s HSA approach, it’s much cheaper than single payer.
Even in education I prefer the original Swedish model, which allowed parents to top off the single payment with some extra money of their own, over the more recent Swedish iteration, where that is not allowed.
Tim, That’s exactly right, I’m a huge fan of decentralizatrion, and indeed I don’t think either conservative or liberal solutions to America’s problem can occur without radical decentralization–as in the Nordic countries. When progressives say they want us to be more like Sweden and Denmark, they don’t really mean it literally, as they would involve states rights (and community rights) beyond the wildest dream of conservatives.
Statsguy, You responded to me;
“Wisconsin has a far more egalitarian culture than Massachusetts.”
THAT is true. Even within city – though I don’t think Boston has the equivalent of Metcalfe Park since it demolished the Combat Zone. But if you compare Beacon Hill to Jamaica Plain, I think the gap is greater”
Yes, but I was thinking about culture more than income.
You said;
“When you talk about why it’s so highly ranked, you mention a lot of things that rely on public goods.”
Thay have pretty good public education–better at the college level that Massachusetts. But with privatization it would be even better, as we’ve seen in Sweden.
Regarding public employee salaries, I don’t see that as the main problem. The problem is that we have far too many public employees, most services should be privatized.
Evergreenlibertarian, I agree.
bababooey, Where is that midwestern enclave? Maybe I’ll move there someday.
Patrick, I wished you hadn’t reminded me. Senator Proxmire was their best senator.
Mark, Do teachers in Catholic schools make more than teachers in public schools? If so, why are Catholic schools so much cheaper?
Morgan, Yes, I doubt a masters in education makes one a better teacher.
Benjamin, The LA area has many small suburbs, the city of LA should be broken up into similar bite-sized cities.
OGT, I agree that Wisconsin hasn’t moved very far right since 1988, the much bigger change is California moving left.
You said;
“The West LA comment seems odd for someone from Newton to make!”
Our Taj Mahal, (which my daughter will attend) only cost $200,000,000 (about twice what it should have.)
Philip, Thanks. I’m looking forward to visiting in June.
24. February 2011 at 15:00
@Mark
“However, I believe such comparisons are extremely difficult, and probably very much besides the point of what is happening in Wisconsin.”
Nice read. It’s possible Wisconsin’s wealth has dropped to the point they simply can’t (or won’t) afford it, even if it is fairly priced compared to the private sector. Still, there is probably some excess aggregation by degree type, since (even within broad industry sectors), the value of a PhD varies widely. It would be useful to see the the study replicted for, say, 1990, and see if the ratio of public to private has changed, controlling for all the factors they used. (Maybe wisconsin was used to getting relatively cheap teachers, and now can’t.)
24. February 2011 at 15:27
Great post. As a Midwest-to-Boston transplant I second your observation that Wisconsin’s Nordic and German ancestry has a great effect on economics and public sentiment.
24. February 2011 at 15:40
Scott wrote:
“Mark, Do teachers in Catholic schools make more than teachers in public schools? If so, why are Catholic schools so much cheaper?”
No. Actually I taught mathematics at Archmere Academy (Joe Biden’s alma mater) for a semester. As an independent, as opposed to a diocesan school, they actually paid better and the pay was still, em, unsatisfactory. And at one point I substitute taught AP calculus and statistics at St. Marks in Delaware, a diocesan school. But honestly, I must be dense because I’m not sure I comprehend the relevance of your response (but you’re excused as you respond to hundreds of comments every day).
But let me see if this addresses your point. My perception is that teachers at Catholic schools in part accept lower pay for the opportunity to work in a Catholic school (and let’s face it, the students are usually very well behaved). And diocesan Catholic schools hold down costs in large part by having huge class sizes (the row upon row of desks reminds one of a primitive factory assembly plant).
My other perception is, having gone through the gristmill of teacher education and certification myself, and having worked in both Catholic and public schools, public school teachers are far better trained in both subject matter and method, and face a much greater challenge in terms of classroom management.
24. February 2011 at 15:50
Scott: “bababooey, Where is that midwestern enclave? Maybe I’ll move there someday.”
Well, surely it would be Solvang? 😉
24. February 2011 at 16:37
Scott,
Have to disagree on your analysis of the conservative portions of the state being where they “make things.” Most conservative part of the state is suburban/exurban Milwaukee, Waukesha county and the like. This is white flight, business owner, megamansion country, not where they make things.
Scott,
Have to disagree with your hypothesis about the people making things being the conservative ones. Biggest conservative area in the state is suburban Milwaukee, Waukesha county and the like. They do not make things there. Except for Waukesha, the 50,000 pop. towns aren’t there either. My guess is it’s the conservative professionals, business owners, and McMansion types that fill those counties out. They don’t make things, unless you count the business owner as the maker as opposed to the employees.
Assume Ryan’s district, Janesville and Beloit, has gotten more conservative. They make a lot fewer things there than they used to. What does that tell you?
24. February 2011 at 17:35
Oh yes, one more point..
Scott, no wonder you are biased against falling home prices you dad was a Realtor!
http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/18/the-truth-about-housing-prices
24. February 2011 at 17:37
bababooey, Where is that midwestern enclave? Maybe I’ll move there someday
public school teachers in L.A. are lousy, unless they have Asian students, who tend to excel.
Click for the answer to both. By 2017 it’ll be just like Venice or Santa Monica, alas & egad.
24. February 2011 at 21:33
Apparently, Wisconsin is the worst state for binge drinking. And an economy the size of Finland’s.
The comments here are much more civilised than over at Will Wilkinson’s. This is a general phenomenon but particularly conspicuous in these two posts.
I was once a workplace delegate for a public sector union: I find the attempt to harness the toil-trouble-and-struggle history of private sector unions for public sector unions risible. The interesting question is why public sector workers clearly find union membership a much better investment than private sector workers do.
24. February 2011 at 21:33
They do, but with limitations. The schools that take Sweden’s vouchers have to use a certain curriculum, with other limitations, if I recall correctly. It’s like how France offers public funding for catholic schools, provided that they accept the state curriculum.
You would need to
1. Get districts to stop using the whole “I’d like to pay you tuesday for a hamburger today” payment system, where they offer greater pensions and job security because they don’t want to have to pay as much in the near future.
2. Severely cut down on some of the administrative overhead (primarily in the form of administration workers, of which the US is particularly top-heavy) and put more power in the hands of teachers.
Otherwise, what you’ll get is mass exit of teachers (and particularly good teachers) from the public school system. It’s already bad enough, what with half of new teachers leaving by the fifth year. Scott would probably approve of that, since he opposes public school systems, but it has very real and negative effects in the near future.
Singapore basically is Single Payer health care. It’s state-mandated HSAs combined with socialized catastrophic insurance and subsidized hospitals.
Considering the history of states’ rights in the US on social and racial issues, I think there’s some warranted concern. I’d rather have a more centralized government than a system where a gay couple can go to jail if they happen to drive through the wrong municipality.
I’d also like to raise a point. How do private schools do in terms of teaching when you compensate for the fact that they can kick problematic students out? Public schools usually have to teach the students.
24. February 2011 at 22:55
@Lorenzo:
“The interesting question is why public sector workers clearly find union membership a much better investment than private sector workers do.”
The money is extracted non-voluntarily based on what voters want, the unions are voters AND the recipients of the money, but only a tiny tiny portion of the tax revenue, so it allows them to play both sides of the game to the detriment of everyone else involved.
24. February 2011 at 22:57
@Brett:
“‘d rather have a more centralized government than a system where a gay couple can go to jail if they happen to drive through the wrong municipality.”
There is /nowhere/ in the US where you description is accurate. A ban on gay marriage just means the state doesn’t recognize those marriages not that the gay couple can’t act as if married.
24. February 2011 at 23:31
Not anymore. But are you willing to bet that it will stay that way, if we ended up in a much more decentralized US?
25. February 2011 at 01:13
“There’s an interesting EPI paper that’s circulating the progressive blogosphere that looks at Wisconsin public sector compensation. It controls for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability, and finds that both state and local public employees earn lower wages and receive less in compensation (including all benefits) than comparable private sector employees (about 5% less).”
Oh dearie me. That paper looks at mean incomes. And we shouldn’t, when looking at incomes, look at the mean but the median. Partly because when we’ve a zero lower bound and no upper limit, the median is a better measure than he mean. But also because we know very well that the public sector incomes are more compressed than the private sector. So comparing means will deliberately make public sector look lower than median.
Do recall that it’s that very same EPI which refects using means as a way of measuring how well average income has increased (or not) over the decades: there they insist upon using median.
25. February 2011 at 07:31
Brett, yes I’m willing to bet, and I love the gays.
You labor under the delusion that public school teachers have someplace else to go.
Look, the good ones are able to make more money if they throw out the bad ones and work on a model with a bigger class room.
Let’s not argue, let’s just say it this way:
1. we’ll fire the bad teachers
2. we’ll make cuts in benefits until the quit rates avg. are 20%
25. February 2011 at 08:57
The fact that half of them are gone by their fifth year suggests that, yes, they do. Quite a few teachers hold bachelor’s degrees, remember?
What makes you think the good ones will stay on if you crack the unions without more fundamental reform? More likely, you’ll end up with the teachers the administrators love – the ones who basically teach on auto-pilot, keep the records right and the classrooms quiet, and teach the pre-written lesson plans that can conveniently be graded by machine. The only problem, of course, is that those teachers tend to suck.
The quit rates are already above 20%.
25. February 2011 at 13:31
Brett read the wsj article above, the quite rates PER YEAR need to be 20%.
That’s 20% of teachers quit every year.
25. February 2011 at 18:56
“Brett read the wsj article above, the quite rates PER YEAR need to be 20%.
That’s 20% of teachers quit every year.”
Just wow. Have you ever run a business? Also, I thought that Sweden’s teachers were essentially 100% unionized.
Scott- How do you reconcile our poor, by your estimations, public schools with our world class universities?
Steve
26. February 2011 at 10:58
Thanks Christina.
Mark, I was responding to your claim that public sector workers receive less pay than private sector workers.
Regarding classroom conditions in public vs. private schools–that’s exactly why I oppose public schools, spare the rod . . .
Richard, Solvang’s just too far from Hollywood.
Jay Z, You said;
“Have to disagree on your analysis of the conservative portions of the state being where they “make things.””
You are disagreeing with an assertion I never made. I’d guess the small towns and rural areas are pretty conservative too.
I was arguing that states that make things are trending GOP, and states where people deal in information are trending Democrat. I stand by that claim. BTW, eastern Wisconsin makes lots more things than southwestern Wisconsin, but is also more Republican (outside Milwaukee).
Morgan, Except I was an inflation hawk in the 1970s.
bababooey, What a coincidence–Culver City was a place I was considering.
Lorenzo, Yes, I’d guess Wisconsin’s GDP is bigger than Finland in PPP term, assuming they have the same population, which I believe they do.
You said;
“The interesting question is why public sector workers clearly find union membership a much better investment than private sector workers do.”
Workers love to unionize industries that face no competition. Deregulation weakened many private sector unions.
Brett, I would not characterize a system using HSAs as “single-paper”, but that’s just me.
You said;
“Considering the history of states’ rights in the US on social and racial issues, I think there’s some warranted concern. I’d rather have a more centralized government than a system where a gay couple can go to jail if they happen to drive through the wrong municipality.”
I’d favor a bill of rights at the national level, and economic decentralization. It’s fine for liberals to say they want a centralized governance system in America. What is not fine, and indeed is intellectually dishonest, is to claim they want a centralized political system and a Nordic type-welfare state. One cannot have both. It’s impossible.
You asked:
“I’d also like to raise a point. How do private schools do in terms of teaching when you compensate for the fact that they can kick problematic students out? Public schools usually have to teach the students.”
In that previous sentence should “teach” be in quotation marks? Seriously, that’s exactly why I oppose public schools. I don’t want any school that can’t kick out bullies.
Tim, I agree. And I really wonder how they value those state pensions. Last time I looked the Wisconsin pensions were increased every year, as the price level rose. How much would it cost me to buy that sort of annuity? A million dollars?
Steve, You said;
“Scott- How do you reconcile our poor, by your estimations, public schools with our world class universities?”
Easy. Our public schools are often local monopolies. At the university level we have a partially voucherized system, where student can take federal aid and go to Catholic colleges like Notre Dame. So universities have to compete harder for students. Foreigners think our K-12 schools are a joke, but flock here to attend our universities.
26. February 2011 at 20:30
Lorenzo wrote:
“Apparently, Wisconsin is the worst state for binge drinking. And an economy the size of Finland’s.
The comments here are much more civilised than over at Will Wilkinson’s. This is a general phenomenon but particularly conspicuous in these two posts.”
Ok, you’re definitely getting the wrong impression about the Money Illusion and about the US as well. We can be just as uncivilized as the worst of them.
Put up your dukes.
27. February 2011 at 16:28
steve, wow what?
20% of the teachers leaving would lead to a far more excellent results.
Also, 20% is the private sector turn over rate.