Mercedes Schneider wrote a post about the abysmal failure of Measure EE in Los Angeles, which needed a 2/3 vote to pass but did not receive a majority. The turnout was shockingly low. Probably the measure should have been added to a general election. Special one-issue elections always have low turnout. That could cut either way but in this case it cut against the needs of children to have a quality education.
She zeroes in on the issue of teacher salary. The average pay for teachers in Los Angeles is $74,000. She notes that Rick Hess of the rightwing think tank American Enterprise Institute sees that number as “reasonable,” and that sets Mercedes off.
In his June 06, 2019, Forbes piece about the failure of Measure EE, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) career think-tanker Frederick Hess does not address the issue of low voter turnout. Instead, he focuses mostly on the teacher salary component.
Hess implies that the average LAUSD teacher salary of $74,000 a year “strikes a lot of Americans as pretty reasonable.”
Let us take a moment to contextualize AEI and Hess.
The mission of AEI as listed on its tax forms is as follows:
The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. AEI pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the highest standards of research and exposition.
It should be noted that in 2018, Hess drew a comfortable $235K (up from $197K in 2013) as an AEI “resident scholar,” which has our armchair educator hovering nowhere near that “pretty reasonable” $74K he mentions. Furthermore, AEI president Arthur Brooks garnered an amazing salary boost from 2017 to 2018, doubled from $1.1M to $2.2M, and executive VP David Gerson also doubling his salary, from $526K to $1.1M.
At the end of 2018, AEI listed total net assets of $321M.
Hess pens his think-tankery about education from a plush perch.
Is $74,000 a “reasonable” salary for a professional in Los Angeles (or for those professionals who make less)?
Mercedes says she makes $60,000 after many years of teaching in Louisiana. Is that reasonable? It would be unreasonable in Los Angeles or D.C. or New York City.
Well, read it. It’s Mercedes doing what she does best: using her razor-sharp intellect to dissect condescension.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hess and his brethren at ALI seem like highly-paid lobbyists who get paid to think a certain way.
Perhaps teacher salaries need to be subject to market influences. Since there is a shortage of teachers, our salaries should be going up like those of the ink tank inkers. After years of an over abundance of teachers, we are supposed to be experiencing a shortage. My own salary has shot up recently as the republican free market people who control my salary predicted that it would.
Well! That was a nice dream.
“ink tank inkers”
Now that’s a good one!
Well that explains that. Had to dig a little, but found 2 interesting ‘achievements’ in Hess’ bio: 1) He was one of the original TFAers; 2) He received a Broad prize. Mea culpa that I’m just noticing Hess now. –But it all makes sense…
Lets be real, in America white elite males spend there time telling everyone else what is good for them. The candidates running for president are also telling people excluding Bernie and Warren that $15.00 wage is good for them because like a teachers salary you should be happy at 74k.Despite the fact that you have no security because the testing companies are in charge
Where everything was fair and Amazon paid there taxes and helped communities vs running up home prices, if in the same manner that Seattle has been destroyed by technology companies, where the police didn’t shoot citizens in the back, paid maternal and paternal leave, places to take family members who have dementia an adult day care if minority families were intact because minorities were able to get a job like Rick Hess then we can have a discussion. Till Ric and the rest of the white men get off there high horse there is nothing to discuss.
As long as racism is the foundation of this country then salaries will always be off for everyone who is not a white elite male or female. Facebook has employees who had teachers that provided them with the educational opportunities that others were denied.
The issue is not salary but the establishment of a class system in America where elites are the only ones who deserve to have a good education. Private school teachers have no say in there salaries like serfs.
So a society that doesn’t value teachers, students, education is a society on the skids.
“Till Ric and the rest of the white men get off there high horse there is nothing to discuss.”
Methinks I see a case of pot calling kettle black.
How many hours a week does Hess work?
Even with the wealthy funding the front for his posts, how many readers of Hess’ opinions are there and, how many of the 99% abhor what he stands for? AEI staff may be forced into reality and, they won’t find any oligarch-funded protection because rationalizers and deflectors will have become obsolete.
I did read comments on my neighborhood site in Los Angeles, wherein some people did think teachers were compensated more than enough – add in health benefits and pensions and they should be grateful! I spent too much time correcting misinformation, reminding people that salaries are public knowledge, the only way you can move up that pay scale is to self-pay for continuing education, and that LAUSD does NOT pay into Social Security, so teachers ONLY get that pension, which is a state-wide program. I also tried to remind people to focus their anger on the guys at the top taking the king’s portion, rather than being angry that a fellow worker is making a living – although not enough to buy a house here. It didn’t matter – the Realtors and Howard Jarvis and commercial property owners were out in force. It showed me that the support for teachers everyone proclaimed in January was only there if it didn’t cost someone else anything.
While the cost of living is high in Los Angeles, it should be noted that many single women are the head of households. They are trying to support themselves and their children on their teacher salaries. How can teachers send their own children to college without being paid a living wage?
Support for teachers is there all the time. It’s always there when we’re fighting for our students. It’s there when we’re fighting for a better salary. The people who support us give us smiles and waves and coffee and come out in the tens of thousands to stand with us in the rain. They’re our neighbors, not represented by internet trolls. Our neighbors support teachers. They don’t necessarily support a district with Eli Broad’s purchased school board members hiring superintendents who try to use building bonds to buy iPads, and who hold secret meetings about turning us into a portfolio district. They don’t trust or support Beutner. They support teachers.
John Arnold and others in the ruling class who oppose pensions, don’t want citizens to know that teachers in many states have pensions in lieu of Social Security and Medicare.
What have either Hess or John Arnold contributed to America. Answer, nothing. Arnold’s miserable existence was spent at Enron, hedge funds and privatizing the common good.
A lot of the wealthy critics are bully billionaires and wealthy types that believe a profession that attracts a lot of women should be low paying. Some of the criticism is old fashioned misogyny. Yet, all the reports keep stating that teachers are paid less than other careers for a comparable education level.
Americans underestimated the loathing that the rich have for Black people, for women, for the vulnerable, and for labor and, Americans didn’t understand that the rich wanted to replace democracy with a White, misogynistic, racist dictatorship. Still, there’s no excuse for 53% of women voting Republican e.g. Meagan McCain.
Or, Anna Navarro.
It’s up at OpEd https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Do-Teachers-Make-a-Reason-in-General_News-Educators–Teachers-190615-375.html
with this comment from another of your blogs.
‘Our society shows its disrespect for teachers by not paying them a salary they can live on without working a second job.
In state after state, the powers that be have cut taxes, cut education spending, and boasted that they are not “throwing money” at schools.
Meanwhile, as this feature in the New York Times shows, many teachers have to work extra jobs to meet their expenses.
This is shameful!
Legislators think it’s fine to “throw money” at those who are the 1%. The less they need money, the more they get it from the state, while teachers give up their days off to patch together a living.Having paid as little as possible to hire teachers, legislators complain about them, demand more of them, strip away their collective bargaining rights, attack their pensions and healthcare.
We have a crisis in education: a crisis caused by greed. Pure, unadulterated greed, which enriches the richest and neglects those upon whom we depend to educate the next generation. Into this crisis come the Reformers, with their cost-cutting ideas, their plans to replace teachers with technology or increase class sizes or import low-wage temps from TFA, but no proposals to guarantee that teachers are paid as professionals.’
Greed and maintaining the status quo: that’s what this is about. Not only do TFAers (Hess is one) teach just 2 years. Their master’s degrees are often covered, as well as ‘fellow’ stints before policy. TFA, KIPP and so many ‘nonprofits’ work almost exclusively w/ the donor class. I assert that nonprofits insert themselves into the equation, acting as the barrier between teachers and the donor class. It is social reproduction at its most insidious.
Articles in SSIR (Stanford Social Innovation Review) confirm your argument, Kelley. The site, AWrenchintheGears.com shows us how insidious and corrupt the elite are.
Sour pusses! Jared and Ivanka make millions and they don’t even take a salary! 🤮🤑
“make”
“make”. The distinction between “profit taking” and “profit making”- the first is accurate in describing the American economy.
Hess is confused. We didn’t go on strike over our modest salaries; we went on strike because our then campaign money laundering board hired an investment banker to privatize education in Los Angeles, causing us to fight to reduce class size as a stopgap against charter takeover. We were fighting to save our schools from destruction — fighting against the charter friendliest district in the world. The lines were clearly drawn.
I know some of the same people who picketed and protested with us and were against Measure EE because it was supported by the charter friendly district. It was difficult to campaign for holding hands with Melvin, Beutner, Garcia in support of EE. The lines were not drawn so clearly. The defeat of the measure had nothing to do with our salaries. Going forward, we need a superintendent we can trust to help students instead of charter company executives and their related businesses.
I’m in agreement with everything LCT said, but would also add that the “raises” we received after the February strike only acted to bring our salaries to what they would have been had we actually been receiving cost of living adjustments on a regular basis [we didn’t receive COLAs for 5 of the last 10 years and had our salaries cut back in 2008.]
My personal situation:
After 26 years teaching in LAUSD I make exactly the stated average. Factoring in benefits and pension contributions it costs the District somewhere beween $110-120K per year to employ me. I’m a decent teacher, by any measure, but I’m certainly not one of the best. I work 9 hours per day and get paid for 6 [I figure the other three per day account for my summer pay], and I have also spent my entire career working 200-1000 hours per year in addition to that, for free.
Is my current salary acceptable? Yes, but it was beyond deplorable for half of my career [I started at $26,800 back in 1994.] I currently make what I consider an acceptable salary, but my pay actually went down from 2007-2010 and then stagnated for another eight years. If the union had not clawed tooth and nail I would still be making what I was ten years ago. Also lucky for the people of Los Angeles is that starting salaries have risen to $50K per year – if they hadn’t there would be several hundred thousand kids roaming the streets of Los Angeles every day.
That said, California teachers do need to move to ONE primary health provider (probably Kaiser Permanente), to one or two dental plans (those deemed best), and bolster our personal pension contributions to 10% (rather than the 9% that it is going to be next year.) Those changes will help ensure the longevity of the State Teacher Retirement System and allow districts like LAUSD to survive the next 10-20 years. These are not popular stances, but they are necessary.
We also need to cut out the cancer that are independent charter schools and take control of the State’s education policies. Teachers, nurses and firefighters (only as of ten years ago) have been the only people that have demonstrated an ability to guide California.
I wish we could disabuse ourselves of the notion that working many hours for free is somehow laudable or noble. If you are doing it because you love it and it gives you energy, that’s one thing. But if it’s depleting your reserves and you have no balance in your life, you’re burned out, tired, depressed or on drugs, like many teachers I know, then it’s unhealthy and destructive. I wish we could get over this idea that we need to give all of ourselves at every moment. We need time alone, time to be with our families, time to pursue interests. I think we need to remember that even though teaching is an important job, it is still just a job and it’s not worth destroying your life to do it. I don’t think any job is.
The median household income in LA county was $61,015 in 2017, so a household with only a single teacher earning the average salary as the only working member would earn more than the median household income. If the household had two teachers earning the average salary, the household income would be about 2.5 times the median household income for LA.
Of course half of the teachers earn more than the average, and half earn less.
Source:https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/losangelescountycalifornia
TE,
Los Angeles has a very large impoverished population. Are you suggesting that teachers should live in poverty and be grateful?
Someone needs to review some basic math: mean, median, and mode.
And I’ll add that one reason the average teacher salary isn’t much lower is the 2008 recession. They laid off young teachers and kept class sizes high instead of hiring them back. The workforce is aging. In 2019, we fought to reduce class size, and we will. And in 2020, we will close Prop 13 tax loopholes and get the ultra rich — why do people defend them — to pay more of their rightly fair share to support public education. I’d like to see the household annual income range for Los Angeles county. That’d be interesting.
LCT,
You are correct: I should have said about half earn more than the average, half less. Still, the basic point is true, is it not?
And per capita income was $30,800.
There are apparently a lot of single people in the County making somewhere between $30-60K per year.
Go figure…and take a long step back.
Steve,
It is difficult to go from per capita income to measuring income for people who are working. For example, if a family without children is made up of two teachers earning the average wage, their contribution to per capita income is the wage that each earns, $74,000. If, however, there are three children in the household, that household’s per capita income is $148,000/5 = $29,600.
What if a teacher is not married to another teacher?
Why do you assume that the teacher’s income must be doubled?
Do you do that for everyone or only teachers?
Dr. Ravitch,
If the teacher was married to a thoracic surgeon, the household income would be a good deal higher. If the teacher was married to an Uber driver, the household income would be a good deal lower. It really does not matter for my point.
If your family income relies on two incomes, then neither is a decent professional wage.
In terms of futility, correcting te is like telling Fox to do better.
I have a very brief answer to your post, Teaching Economist:
Los Angeles cost of living is 195.1
Late and long
Regarding teacher salaries. The usual claim is that teachers “have the summer off” and for that reason they are overpaid.
I know that the writers of ESSA (as amended and effective January 20, 2017) want evidence that public schools are operating under a cost/benefit performance management system (12 mentions) with “continuous improvement” (10 mentions), per-pupil expenditures (51) mentions), and much more data at the school level, not district or state averages.
Here is the legal language (LEA refers to local education agency).
A State must develop a single statewide procedure to calculate LEA current expenditures per pupil and a single statewide procedure to calculate school-level current expenditures per pupil, such that—
(1) The numerator consists of current expenditures, which means actual personnel costs (including actual staff salaries) and actual non-personnel expenditures of Federal, State, and local funds, used for public education—
—-(i) Including, but not limited to, expenditures for administration, instruction, instructional support, student support services, pupil transportation services, operation and maintenance of plant, fixed charges, preschool, and net expenditures to cover deficits for food services and student body activities; but
—-(ii) Not including expenditures for community services, capital outlay, and debt service; and
(2) The denominator consists of the aggregate number of students enrolled in preschool through grade 12 to whom the State and LEA provide free public education on or about October 1, consistent with the student membership data collected annually by the State for submission to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Calculations of per-pupil spending at the school-level are due by December 2019—a first-time federal requirement. Most districts have few or no methods of accounting called for in the law. And few educators are aware of last-minute amendments to the ESSA put into effect January 30, 2017.
The per-pupil spending requirement is part of the usual quest for the biggest bang for the buck, and coincidently providing data of use to amplify the economic virtues of larger class sizes, more use of online instruction, an expanded role for paraprofessionals, and money-follows-the-student policies (as in versions of vouchers).
Here is the part of USDE policy not widely known or appreciated.
The USDE has outsourced help on ESSA’s per-student accountability measures to specific “technical support services” There are two providers of these services.
One is the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. The Lab is led by Dr. Marguerite Roza an expert on school finance. She was project leader for the Finance and Productivity Initiative at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), and former Senior Economic Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Edunomics Lab has four key staff and nine affiliate researchers with prior posts and training from Education Pioneers (5), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (3), the charter friendly Center for Reinventing Public Education (3), and Teach for America (3). Other background experiences include work with Bridge International (for-profit schools in Africa, India for poorest of poor), and Bellwether Education Partners (charter promoter).
The work of the Edunomics Lab is funded by the Institute of Education Science (our tax dollars) plus funds from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Center on Reinventing Public Education, Council of Chief State School Officers, Raikes Foundation, Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho, Smith Richardson Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation…and the Building State Capacity & Productivity Center (see below) https://edunomicslab.org/services/#
The “Building State Capacity & Productivity Center (BSCPC)” is the second technical support service for help on ESSA per-pupil funding reports. BSCPC functions as a manager of services provided by other subcontractors. These subcontractors are:
1. Edvance Research, Inc. “committed to providing exceptional value to clients through outstanding quality and best practices” (acquired by Westat in 2016). Edvance does contract research for clients, including The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation for “performance management tools” and other services described at https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=133984888
The Academic Development Institute (focus on strategic performance management) seems to function an umbrella for subcontracting technical assistance to state education agencies. These services are offered through partnerships with (a) Building State Capacity and Productivity Center (Westat), (b) Innovations in Learning (virtual reading tutor) and (c) School Turnaround. The School Turnaround website has a link to ALEC’s 2018 School Turnaround model legislation) https://www.alec.org/model-policy/school-turnaround-and-leadership-development-act/ http://www.adi.org/aboutadi.html#next
This is to say that ESSA’s little-known requirement for per-pupil accounting, has supercharged the prospects for targeted cuts to budgets, based on school level data about the costs for each teacher, in each subject, by grade level, and measurable “outcomes” (meaning state test scores and other measures in state plans).
All of these services to support ESSA were hatched way back in 2012 with an Obama era USDE grant to the Center on Reinventing Public Education. You can see how proud the CRPE was at the time and the long reach of the charter/choice enthusiasts into federal policy.
https://www.crpe.org/news/crpe-partners-new-building-state-capacity-and-productivity-center
One final note. The amended ESSA requirements were effective January 30, 2017. Trump was inaugurated January 20, 2017. The main point of continuity between the Obama and Trump administrations on the amended ESSA seems to have been Hilary Malawer, Assistant General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, US Department of Education. Betsy Devos was not confirmed until February 7, 2017.
In other words, the writers of ESSA were full-on supporters of a law that would make teacher salaries and per-pupil costs part of the new accountability and performance management systems in every state. Just what ALEC and the friends of vouchers and charter schools wanted.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/11/29/2016-27985/elementary-and-secondary-education-act-of-1965-as-amended-by-the-every-student-succeeds (Effective January 30, 2017)
Presidential candidates who support ESSA, as written and amended, are not friends of teachers, students, and public education.
Hess is shameless! He takes this proposal…
“Proceeds from the Tax shall be used for: lowering class sizes; providing school nursing, library, and counseling services and other health and human services for student support; providing instructional programs, school resources, and materials; retaining and attracting teachers and school employees; and providing necessary administrative services”
…and translates it as: “LAUSD teachers make median $74k: voters saw this & concluded, ‘Well that’s not bad.’”
Voters didn’t in fact see that & probably don’t even know it; even if they did, how much of a teacher raise is going to happen after additional teachers, nurses, librarians, counselors & other health & human services & addl admin get their piece of the proposed increase??
Hess has his own ax to grind, apparently: teachers make an OK middle-class salary (despite being incommensurate w/their reqd ed level & consequent student debt): they’ll get by living w/multiple roommates when they’re beginners; let them marry other teachers if they want to make enough to rent a 2-BR apt & raise a kid– but if they expect to ever buy a home in CA, they’ll have to marry a dr/ lawyer/ broker.
Since he was a TFAer, he looks through the lens of a 1st or 2nd year teacher. In that regard, $74k ain’t bad.
Melvoin voted himself a raise, from $45K to $120K.
That’s the TFA mantra…
Hess says after inflation, per-pupil expenditures have risen 400% in 50 yrs, but quality of ed hasn’t changed appreciably… $1 in 1970 was equivalent to $6.32 in 2017, so that’s 632% just in inflation; if he’s right, per-pupil expenditures are up 1000% in 50 yrs.
But that doesn’t mean teacher salaries went up tenfold., as he seems to imply. The $7400 I made in Syracuse NY as a private hisch teacher in 1971 [starting salary for Syracuse pubsch teachers was $8k] did not magically become $70,400k today. In fact, the average public school teacher salary in Syracuse today is $56,366… If my math is right, Syracuse public school teachers have lost 30% purchasing power in 50 yrs.
By the way, that beginner privsch salary of $7400, plus just ¼ of my then-husband’s $7400 at the same school was enough to rent a very chi-chi 2-BR apt w/pool-clubhouse [we saved the rest toward his lawsch tuition]. And tho we attended an Ivy U, neither of us had a penny of student debt thanks to my Regents scholarship & his Natl Merit Scholarship.
Mr Hess: you lie with your figures. Syracuse NY like most cities nationwide has lost major revenue to automated/ offshored industry & trickle-up voodoo economics in 50 yrs: they don’t pay teachers as they once did. Scholarship $ has dried up: those teachers whose purchasing power is now down 30% carry significant student debt, so their ability to purchase RE is negligeable even if married to another FT teacher. My dad was a housebuilder so I can tell you an upstate-NY property selling for $40k in 1970 would sell for $350k today even in that RE-slumped area, which is 38% above inflation. Even if they wait until 40y.o. to have a kid, Mom loses salary for a semester, & then they have to pony up ½ of one salary for childcare: there goes the mortgage!
And could it be per-pupil expenditure has grown 400% beyond inflation in 50 yrs despite lower-paid teachers has something to do w/the fact that we no longer send the devptlly-delayed to a class in the school basement & exclude the severely-handicapped entirely, & provide ed support to bring LD’s up to full potential instead of tracking them into “slow,” and provide extra support to an ESL pop 10x what it was then (as opposed to sink-or-swim wink wink drop out)– or that child poverty is several %pts higher now?
Frederick Hess’ America- from today’s news- a 4-year-old little girl is at a Dollar General store and allegedly takes a doll home without paying for it. The police follow her family’s car and then reportedly confront them, pulling guns and threatening to kill them while cursing them out with words like “f_cking”.
AEI- the tool of the elite’s cruelty.
Dollar General is owned by BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, Price T Rowe,…
Only about 50% of Americans have any piece of Wall Street. and, of those, only a few own much. The richest 0.1% wallow in the profits taken from stock ownership. In the “richest country in the world”, why isn’t a little girl forgiven for wanting a doll that costs less than $5?
In a land that refuses women the right to an abortion, the ruling class’ cruelty punishes children for wanting to care for a baby doll-
Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 2020 America.
Correction- the store where the family was may have been one of the others with a similar name- the idea remains the same, why are tax dollars being used for enforcement and why are guns being used in these types of situations
Here’s an older article that might interest you. Dollar General’s business model is based on policies that make more people poor:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/retailwire/2017/12/14/dollar-general-is-banking-on-the-disappearance-of-the-middle-class/#32a7134c2e7b
Thanks for the link – the America created by Gates, Arnold, the Koch’s and people like them- very sad.
Well, in the last few years, I switched to teaching again, so now I can finally have the yacht and the Bugatti and the summer villa I’ve always wanted on the Amalfi Coast. One thing I hate about the job, however: once you have these teacher big bucks rolling in, suddenly, everyone’s your long-lost pal. I mean, can I really trust that people like me for me now and not just for the my portfolio and stock options and supply of white board markers?
See below.
Christiano Ronaldo beat you to the one-of-a-kind Bugatti Chiron. You’re such a loser! 🤓
https://www.motor1.com/news/347474/bugatti-la-voiture-noire-cristiano-ronaldo/
Too flashy. As a teacher, I have a certain decorum to maintain.
Seriously now, who is most valuable to others? Nurses and teachers. Their pay should reflect this.
Water should clearly have a higher price than diamonds as water is essential to life, diamonds are not. Yet water is cheap, diamonds expensive. This has long been an issue for economics (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value) and resulted in the rise of marginal analysis.
What should we do about Mum?
Well, at her age, her marginal utility is significantly diminished.
Listen to you. That’s a rough way of putting it?
Hey, I don’t make up the laws of economics. I just apply them.
cx:
What should we do about Mum?
Well, we’re both married now. And she’s old. So she has significantly diminished marginal utility.
Listen to you. That’s a rough way of putting it?
Hey, I don’t make up the laws of economics. I just apply them. Time you grew up and faced the facts, bud.
The American Enterprise Institute is merely a shill for corporate greed. Arthur Brooks, AEI’s president, wouldn’t know an honest argument it it walked up to him and slapped the rest of the hair off of his head.
Brooks as long cited the conservative canard that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. What Brooks avoids saying is that few corporations actually pay that rate. What he also avoids is that the loopholes, and “incentives” and outright give-aways lobbied for by corporations and groups like the AEI mean that many of the very largest businesses pay nothing (ExxonMobil, Chevron, Bank of America, Citigroup, Being, for example) or next to nothing (Goldman Sachs) even while they sup at the taxpayer trough.
Brooks is okay with this.
What Brooks also fails to cite is that the supply-side economic policies pushed and implemented by conservatives, and supported by Brooks and the AEI, are directly responsible for the last thirty years of big budget deficits, for the ballooning of the national debt, for abetting greed and rampant corruption on Wall Street, and for the breaking economy and harming millions of Americans.
Brooks also fails to note that conservatives, Brooks and the AEI too, opposed the 1992 tax increases by Bill Clinton that helped lead to job growth, balanced budgets, and prosperity for all citizens. And Brooks fails to recount that all of those gains were destroyed by George W. Bush’s stupid resurrection of supply-side policies…supported by Brooks and the AEI. Naturally, Brooks and AEI supported the Trump tax cuts that have ballooned deficits and the debt.
It’s probably too kind to simply call Arthur Brooks a liar, because his lies have very serious consequences.
Rick Hess is a guy who unabashedly believes in the “market” and who has written that “competition only works when it hurts.”
In terms of school vouchers and competition, Hess wrote this nonsense:
“The absence of competition means that public schools, like other government agencies, typically are not subjected to this kind of discipline. No matter how inefficient, employees have little to fear. Subjecting school systems to real competition would indeed produce more effective schools –and other benefits as well. It would provide quality control beyond that afforded by standardized testing, empower entrepreneurial educators to offer alternatives to reigning orthodoxies, and permit good schools to multiply without waiting for permission from resistant district leaders.”
In other words, fear in the workplace is a “good” thing. It leads to “effectiveness.” It causes “quality control.” It fosters the proliferation of “good schools.”
The AEI — and presumably, Rick Hess, since he takes their money and stooges under the AEAI name — is against all of the core values embedded in the Constitution.