With all due respect to Dr. Krugman, I think he’s missing the local angle.
Posted by: Donna
Per Krugman’s NYT piece today:
There’s no mystery about what’s going on: education is mainly the responsibility of state and local governments, which are in dire fiscal straits. Adequate federal aid could have made a big difference. But while some aid has been provided, it has made up only a fraction of the shortfall. In part, that’s because back in February centrist senators insisted on stripping much of that aid from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the stimulus bill.
As a result, education is on the chopping block. And laid-off teachers are only part of the story. Even more important is the way that we’re shutting off opportunities.
Yeah, okay, but does Dr. Krugman understand what’s going on in many states? A plethora of national conservative groups have been stacking state legislatures and local offices across the country, and particularly in the South and West, with rabid ideologues who simply do not believe in government. At all. They have a special hatred for public education. Many of them also sign pledges to the leader of the anti-tax death cult, Grover Norquist.
The rabid reactionaries who make up most of the Republican legislators in Arizona are over the moon about their majority status and our historic fiscal crisis. They see the situation as a golden opportunity to impose their glorious free market theories on the state and are demanding deep and permanent tax and spending cuts. Federal money is nice, Dr. Krugman, and we’re fortunate that much of it comes with the stipulation that states make a good faith effort to match the funding, but these conservatives will still make every effort to use that federal funding as a backstop for revenue and spending cuts.
At the same time, you have big corporations constantly lobbying legislatures and city councils for tax breaks, tax subsidies, abatements, TIFs, etc. They pit states, cities, and regions against each other, dangling the promise of bringing jobs or the threat of taking the jobs elsewhere. As a result, the competition for those coveted (and rapidly diminishing) “good jobs” is fierce and bloody, as states and cities try to outdo each other in the sacrifices they will make to the gods of commerce in the race to the bottom.
Back in 2005 Intel (my employer at the time) demanded a massive tax cut from the state of Arizona. They threatened to cancel a planned factory expansion at its Chandler site if the Legislature and Governor didn’t comply with what was essentially an extortive 95% corporate tax cut. The majority of lawmakers and Governor Napolitano did comply, though the scenario of Intel pulling a massive project and moving it – after years of planning and putting contracts in place -was ludicrous on its face. The projected cost of that tax cut to the state is $100 million. Our schools could sure use that money right now. Meanwhile, Craig Barrett (former Intel CEO), who owns a lovely mansion in Arizona, is often featured in the local news deploring the sad state of the schools in our state, while being lauded for throwing us a tax deductible bone in the form of a college endowment or donations of computers to junior high schools every now and again. And then he lobbies for more visas for foreign workers and extended visas for foreign students because, you know, the public K-12 schools suck here in the U.S.
I applaud Dr. Krugman’s call for a renewed national commitment to education, I honestly do. But I submit that it’s incumbent upon economic heavyweights like him to pay attention to the looting of state and local treasuries by corporate predators, while ideologues aid and abet them. It’s every bit as important as what’s going on in Congress and the Oval Office.
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You and Krugman are two peas in a pod: you’re both hacks whose arbitrary worldview has clouded your vision. “Extortive 95% corporate tax cut.” That’s rich: it’s like they thought the revenue that they earned was theirs. They had the gall to think that they should keep $100 million that was–in your bizarre ideology–by right the state’s. And their CEO, he has a mansion! That’s damning enough right there.
(Did you know that Barack Obama, besides his present digs, owns a mansion? Or that Al Gore does? Oh, the horrors!)
Get Real – In fact yes, their revenue is in fact not all ‘theirs.’ They rely on publicly funded activities from roads to education to telecommunications infrastructure in order to operate. Asking them to pay for what they use is hardly a ‘bizarre ideology.’
Unfortunately, people like Get Real suffer from a form of Stockholm Syndrome. They identify so strongly with the ruling class that they support economic policies completely contrary to their own best interest. I find it bizarre that someone would be more worried about a billionaire, or his corporation, paying slightly more in taxes (and a few million a year is nothing to a company like Intel) than he is about the quality of schools in his state but that’s just me.
It’s either Stockholm Syndrome or sociopathy.
Don’t discount the possibility of sheer idiocy.
Somehow, the infinite wisdom of destroying public education has taken a new and particularly savage turn for the worse. Our governor has very recently enacted laws that have essentially stripped teachers of any hint of job security. Districts are now prevented from using a system that gives preference to seniority when it comes to laying off, as well as calling people back to work. They are also now allowed to lower salaries of any employees, at any time, for any reason what-so-ever. They previously needed to apply a salary decrease evenly and equitably to all teachers, as well as by a certain date. Not anymore!Districts also are free to withold contracts from their employees for as long as they like. This means teachers could essentially not know if they have a job until the day before the school year starts. Really? REALLY? I am an award winning educator who absolutely LOVES teaching. I am the kind of teacher you want teaching your kids because you would feel secure in the fact that I would go out of my way for your child, and every child in my classroom. I am also the teacher you want in your district because I am the teacher who teaches the kids you want out of your childrens building–the drug dealers, gang bangers, bullies, thieves, disrupters…yep! I make your childs classroom a whole lot easier to learn in. But, I LOVE this population! So, what would ever become such an issue that I would leave it? Answer: being treated with an intolerable level apathy and disrespect. Teachers have been scapegoats for as long as I can remember; I knew that coming in to the field. Compromising the safety and security of knowing whether I’ll be able to pay my mortgage and car note, have electricity, and buy food crosses a line. I came to Arizona from a union state, took a $7,000 cut in salary and the equivalent to another 7,000 in benefits for my family. Loving my job and my students diverted my focus from what I lost. Unfortunately, I can’t love a job that has made it abundantly clear that I will be a liability at a certain point in the pay scale; therefore expendable. Unfortunately, your kids lose once again. Teachers at the bottom of the pay scale are teachers new to the profession. Very few new teachers have any classroom management skills. If your child’s building has a predominence of first and second year teachers, your child’s education is compromised. Not only that, if all the experienced teachers have been let go because the district simply doesn’t want to pay the salary of a veteran when they could get two new teachers for the same amount of money, novice teachers will have no one to guide them in acquiring the skills it takes to run a classroom safely and effectively. Good Luck, Arizona! I’m going back to Wisconsin where we are only moderately discriminated against.
Donna said: “A plethora of national conservative groups have been stacking state legislatures and local offices across the country, and particularly in the South and West, with rabid ideologues who simply do not believe in government. At all.”
So what you are saying is that there are politicians working diligently on working themselves out of a job?