THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Regardless of how small or large the alcohol content on the label is (and it is darn small), if the guy has never heard of hard lemonade, of course he is going to make this mistake.  Who is going to read the label of a drink they think is lemonade?

Am I a terrible person for thinking that a parent accidentally giving his kid alcohol is kind of, um, funny?  I mean, I’m not a doctor, but is a kid drinking a wee bit of vodka really a big deal?

As long as we’re paying social service workers with 5 years experience and a master’s degree 40k a year, we’re going to have crap like this.

I’d love to see a “ladder” voted on, wherein every profession is listed, in perceived order of importance.  The top job is the one you only want the best of the best to do, and the bottom job is the job you don’t care who does (it’s hard to screw up, and doesn’t much matter if it gets screwed up).

Ideally, the ladder should closely mimic salary, but it doesn’t.  This might be because there’s a lot of people that want the low-paying, “important” jobs (like teaching, social service, safety jobs, etc.) due to the personally rewarding nature of them, or some other non-monetary compensation.  Or it could be because in truth, people just don’t care enough about whether or not the teacher and social worker positions are filled by the best people due to the attractive salary.  Sadly, I kind of suspect the latter.

If the former is true - that jobs like teaching and social service have non-monetary compensation (like emotional fulfillment) that make them more attractive, then the problem is not so much that we aren’t incentivizing enough, but that we aren’t selecting well enough. This should be easy enough to check, I suppose.

Couple comments:

1.  Hard to argue that anyone is over or underpaid when it’s all happening where everyone can see it (so excluding hedge fund managers and the like).  Higher pay draws more applicants which drives some of those applicants to accept lower pay in order to get the job - equilibrium, more or less.

2.  Last I checked, the line where you stand to sign up for higher property taxes to pay teachers more wasn’t exactly overflowing… we love to have things both ways, don’t we?

3.  In the “knee-jerk” reaction and “stupid adherence to policy” department, I wonder what would happen if Phil Birnbaum uttered his name in an airport security line.  Would he spend the night in the can?

Things have changed guys, regarding schools.  Every kid is a lawyer, fully aware that no teacher should ever touch them in any way under any circumstances.  They talk back and they threaten to sue.  And the parents aren’t any better.  Teachers are put through a seminar at the beginning, and they are basically told all the legal things to keep them safe.  Emotional fulfillment for a teacher is that they get away from the kids at the end of the day.

I’m a high school student and my mom is a teacher, and for what it’s worth I fully agree with Tango in #6.

I think #6 is a little bit of a jaded view, although, although like anything, I am sure it has some truth to it.

I think it is Tango himself who often points out the danger/futility in painting things with a broad brush.

#2, no you are not a terrible person for thinking that. I am sick of how how prudish this country is AND how many double, triple, and quadrupal standards there are.  You get your kids taken away from you if you give them a drink with 5% alcohol in it, knowingly or not, yet you can take your kid to McDonalds 5 times a week (which is way worse), and let watch whatever crap they want on TV, and spend 6 hours a day on the computer playing games or surfing MySpace, with impunity.

My mother is a principal, and my brother and his wife are teachers. It is true. I teach in another country because I can’t stand Canada. The political correctness in North America is out of control-just visit other countries and see how different the rest of the world is. It is an amazing difference.

mgl/8: I’ll challenge you to find a single teacher in urban or suburban areas in America, in middle or high school, that would contradict #6, 7, or 9.  You will have better luck finding a clutch hitter.

Aren’t teacher, fire fighter, social worker and almost all salaries driven by the laws of supply and demand?  The supply level and demand level of teachers is such that they make 40K a year (numbers, as Tango would say, for illustrative purposes only).

Presumably, there is a greater supply of would-be teachers than would-be neurosurgeons, bank presidents or utility infielders. How _important_ we consider those various jobs is not a large factor in determining salary, is it?

Teachers don’t get payed a lot of money because it does not take a crap load of education, you do not need to be all that smart to be one, it is not a “technical field”, per se (although I suppose it could be), the hours and schedule are pretty good, and most importantly, it is a government job, and the government, by and large, just wants babysitters in the schools.

And despite the constant hysteria in the media about “the children,” all that most people and the government really care about is making money FOR THEMSELVES, and educating our kids has very little to do with that.

That is the same thing as supply and demand.  All salaries are set by supply and demand, plus whatever influences the government has by regulation, taxes, etc. Also, because education is not really a commodity, at least one that can be quantified, you tend to get the least common denominator, in terms of quality.  IOW, if I had a business, and for some reason, the quality of my employees did not affect by bottom line, I would have shitty employees and I would pay them less.

That is a little like how schools and teachers work.  Because there is no bottom line in the schools, and the government, in general, tries to spend as little money as possible, they will pay teachers just enough to get a fairly poor, but passable, quality.  If it were a business and the quality of the teacher affected the bottom line, they would pay more and hire better quality teachers, up to some equilibrium point.  Because a school is not a business, there really is no equilibrium point, at least not the traditional economic one, in terms of teacher quality/salaries versus profit.

In cases like this, it is up to the government (and the people, of course) to determine what level of quality they want in their teachers, and pay them accordingly.  I don’t know what that level should be.  Apparently the government thinks that it is OK now, otherwise they would pay them more and get better quality teachers.  NO ONE, however, is going to support paying 150,000 a year to an expert teacher to teach their runny-nose 6 year olds (and gun-toting, pot smoking, 16 year olds).  That is just the way it is.  I am not saying that it is right or wrong.  The government only has a limited amount of money to spend on everything.  Who knows the correct allocation. I sure don’t. Plus everyone has their own idea about where we should spend our tax money.  There is NO right or wrong there.  Personally, I would spend more on teachers, education, and spend less on wars and bombs. But that is just me.  Apparently the government and a large percentage of the people in the country think it is better to spend a billion dollars a day on the war in Iraq then to spend that money on something else, like education, or cancer research, or nothing at all (let the people have the money back or lower the national debt).
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I see it as a one of the limitations of “zero tolerance” policy.  After a certain line had been crossed no one could attempt to fix the problem with their better judgement because they aren’t allowed to use their judgement.

I am a therapist -and the field is full of well intended folks who love to make policy rather than using their own judgement.  It saves the agency liability costs and it makes everyone feel like they are “doing something”. 

The field (meaning social workers and the like) love to pat its self on the back and moralize about ethics and whether or not something is appropriate (the social workers favorite words are appropriate and ethical).

Social workers love to assign blame and keep score.  They tend to be a concrete bunch.

Lastly, they love to make policies based upon the worst incident (or employee) they can think of --that way no judgement has to be used.  They can point to a law or policy and say “sorry, i would of used my good judgement, but we made a rule about not doing so...have a good day.”

Who is it that makes these “zero policy rules?” Rules are supposed to be a reflection of the prevailing viewpoint of the masses, right (in a free society).  If not, they eventually (quickly usually) get changed.

Is there ANYONE (let alone a majority) that thinks that these zero tolerance policies are good?  Like when a girl gets suspended from school for possessing Midol or a boy draws a picture that is “potentially violent” and gets led off in handcuffs.

According to this ”fact sheet”, zero tolerance policies were initiated on the federal level by the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act (part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1994), which responded to several notorious school shootings across the country. 

During the early 90s, Congress was passing Gun- Free Schools, Gun-Free School Zones, Drug-Free Schools, and Drug-Free School Zones acts pretty regularly (for Congress) and they seemed to all grow together.

Personally, I believe that it is unethical to not allow for administrative discretion.  Granted, discretion can be abused, but the lack of it at all, by its very nature, is abusive.  Many people do not like to have discretion, though, because responsibility comes with it.

all that most people and the government really care about is making money FOR THEMSELVES, and educating our kids has very little to do with that

This is ironic, as the Federal Government claims its powers over the schools via the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.