Your political inclinations - who do you vote for?

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Originally Posted by keysersoze

Now, on the other hand, I'm a schoolteacher (in a private school). It is difficult to quantify what I produce. It's more than nothing, sure, but arguably less than my friend.

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A class full of students will eventually go on to become both people who provide labour in the economy and taxpayers. A teacher in principle adds value to the workforce, which has benefits on a year by year basis going over possibly 40 years of productive working life.
You can't quantify that in the short term but to suggest that the value adds aren't that valuable is incredibly short-sighted.

Over the lifetime of a person, I suggest that the value adds of a teacher amortised across all students would be roughly worth 80 times the input costs.
(40 years/12 years)*24 student = 80 times the input costs
Education in principle is an investment in maintaining and improving the quality of labour.

"arguably less than my friend" - really?

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Originally Posted by Rollo

A class full of students will eventually go on to become both people who provide labour in the economy and taxpayers. A teacher in principle adds value to the workforce, which has benefits on a year by year basis going over possibly 40 years of productive working life.
You can't quantify that in the short term but to suggest that the value adds aren't that valuable is incredibly short-sighted.

Over the lifetime of a person, I suggest that the value adds of a teacher amortised across all students would be roughly worth 80 times the input costs.
(40 years/12 years)*24 student = 80 times the input costs
Education in principle is an investment in maintaining and improving the quality of labour.

"arguably less than my friend" - really?

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Do you know, I really don't care for the notion that one can work out in any detail how much a teacher is 'worth' to society. Not everything should be, or can be, given a financial worth. This is not the be-all and end-all.

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Originally Posted by Rollo

A class full of students will eventually go on to become both people who provide labour in the economy and taxpayers. A teacher in principle adds value to the workforce, which has benefits on a year by year basis going over possibly 40 years of productive working life.
You can't quantify that in the short term but to suggest that the value adds aren't that valuable is incredibly short-sighted.

Over the lifetime of a person, I suggest that the value adds of a teacher amortised across all students would be roughly worth 80 times the input costs.
(40 years/12 years)*24 student = 80 times the input costs
Education in principle is an investment in maintaining and improving the quality of labour.

"arguably less than my friend" - really?

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Yes, really. I don't prepare them all by myelf. And you sort of proved my statement--it's difficult to quantify. And I certainly wouldn't use some hocus-pocus formula.

My friend's payroll is well over 500K annually--this year, and every year. Those employees pay taxes immediately--this year, and every year. Thing is, there is no guarantee that, without him, all of his employees would be as well off.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Do you know, I really don't care for the notion that one can work out in any detail how much a teacher is 'worth' to society. Not everything should be, or can be, given a financial worth. This is not the be-all and end-all.

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True. But contributing to the economy is a very real problem, and I'm attempting to tell you that to pay one public school teacher, who has a job that produces an unquantifiable product, would take the entire tax liability of 5 taxpayers. That schoolteacher, in turn, contributes taxes that pay for only 1/5 of another schoolteacher. It's an unsustainable system.

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Originally Posted by keysersoze

True. But contributing to the economy is a very real problem, and I'm attempting to tell you that to pay one public school teacher, who has a job that produces an unquantifiable product, would take the entire tax contrbution of 5 taxpayers. That schoolteacher, in turn, contributes taxes that pay for 1/5 of another schoolteacher. It's an unsustainable system.

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I don't believe it is, on the grounds that there is no viable alternative short of forcing all parents to pay over and above taxation towards school fees, which is not socially acceptable and does not, I have to tell you, guarantee a better education. Far from it, in fact. One meets some extraordinarily useless people who have come out og the British private/public school system, just as one meets many hugely intelligent people who went to state schools.

I must say, I don't at all like the idea that a teacher 'produces' a 'product' — these are human beings we're talking about, after all — and don't believe it matters one jot that the end result is 'unquantifiable'. Not everything in life is, and nor should we think of everything that way. This is the language and the thought process of the person obsessed with business and the superiority of the private sector, a superiority that, when it comes to running public services, I would question.

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Originally Posted by keysersoze

My friend's payroll is well over 500K annually--this year, and every year. Those employees pay taxes immediately--this year, and every year. Thing is, there is no guarantee that, without him, all of his employees would be as well off.

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There isn't, but to my mind there's no comparison between the two things. Personally, I would class your contribution as being superior on the simple grounds that I place a higher emphasis on learning, but this is just a matter of opinion.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I must say, I don't at all like the idea that a teacher 'produces' a 'product'

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Teachers deliver a 'service'. I mean to be blatantly honest, if we applied keysersoze's logic, the entire of the financial industry should also be done away with because they also do not produce a 'product'; neither does any form of management for that matter either.

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Originally Posted by Rollo

Teachers deliver a 'service'.

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To my way of thinking, they provide, rather than 'deliver', a service. 'Delivery', in my view, should only be applied to the physical delivery of objects.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I don't believe it is, on the grounds that there is no viable alternative short of forcing all parents to pay over and above taxation towards school fees, which is not socially acceptable and does not, I have to tell you, guarantee a better education. Far from it, in fact. One meets some extraordinarily useless people who have come out og the British private/public school system, just as one meets many hugely intelligent people who went to state schools.

I must say, I don't at all like the idea that a teacher 'produces' a 'product' — these are human beings we're talking about, after all — and don't believe it matters one jot that the end result is 'unquantifiable'. Not everything in life is, and nor should we think of everything that way. This is the language and the thought process of the person obsessed with business and the superiority of the private sector, a superiority that, when it comes to running public services, I would question.

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Not necessarily obsessed with business--consider that perhaps some are concerned with a government that will not manage their resources responsibly.

I taught in public schools for the first 7 years--the last 13 have been in private schools. Now, if you go by the notion that the better educated are bigger earners--a fairly conventional idea--then you might be impressed to know that over 99% of the private school students I've taught have matriculated to a 4-year university (I currently have a former student attending Harvard). By contrast, the percentage of my public school students who went to a 4-year university was under 20%. The likely destination was junior college (a 2-year school). About one-third to half never set foot in a college.

The per pupil spending is not that different, if the school is a parochial one.

Another interesting fact: the private schools where I've taught have graduated around 100-110 students each year. And each year those 100-odd students earn 1.5 to 2 million dollars in scholarships to attend college. One of my weaker students walked away with a $120,000 scholarship. My point is that the private education pays these families back for their investment.

Another random factoid: 2/3 of my property tax liability (thousands of dollars) goes to fund public education. Guess what? We don't have any children. Not only is this situation socially questionable, it's downright immoral IMO.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

The notion that car parking charges are to blame for declining town centre footfall really does strike me as rather fanciful. Town centres are declining because not enough people actively need or want to go to certain shops any more; therefore, they close. If a shop is good enough, or meets a particular need, people will go to it. It's all very well beating about the bush, but this is the central reason for the decline you outline, not car parking prices. Nothing's going to make the problem go away, and we need to bear that in mind rather than adopting a 'finger in the dyke' approach.

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I don't think I suggested that car parking charges were responsible for the decline in High Street shopping :confused: I merely suggested it might make people shop in Town Centres more if they could park their Jam Jars without getting robbed blind by Local Councils obsessed with squeezing every last penny out of Motorists. A prime exmple of needless jobs for the boys comrade seeing as you asked for examples. :D