I don’t agree with your conclusion. Sometimes it’s better to fight and sometimes it’s better to give the mugger your wallet. It all depends on the alternatives in the particular situation. IMO the unionized teachers are like Afghan tribal chiefs: better to bribe them if by doing so you can avoid bloodshed. It’s the lesser of evils. I think that almost anything we could do to stop the intellectual destruction of another generation of children would be worth it, assuming the remedy really worked. Head-on political attacks of the type you suggest (”Threatening them with being fired, with loss of all pension benefits…”) are not going to succeed in education any more than they would succeed with the UAW.

Tatyana:
Jonathan, do you think they will prefer early retirement packages to endless massive milking of this cow?

I don’t know. My idea is lightly conceived, as I made clear. Maybe I am naive and other alternatives would work better. Thus I present my speculations for critique.

BTW, union incompetence and outright corruption in investing union members’ retirement funds is an enormous scandal that is rarely discussed by the media. I keep thinking of the Westin Diplomat Resort (google it), which is an extreme example of what I think happens routinely. The project was very expensive at a projected $300M for 1000 rooms. Actual cost was ~$700M. What is the annualized rate of return on union members’ pension money that funded this project?

In any case, to answer JJ’s question: yes, Jimbino is insane, and I’m glad he is not going to procreate. I think we, Americans with children, should thank Jimbino for his decision – for the sake of our own kids’ future.

About teacher’s unions and their cost: 3.5 years ago I happened to do architectural work for a biggest office building in NY – 55 Water street. I was stunned learning how many floors in that 54-story building (actually, it’s two buildings with an enclosed private plaza) were given to Teacher Union’s retirement fund and even more amazed to find out that the buildings are own, partially, by that fund – the 14th largest public pension (i.e. pension for “civil servants”) fund in the world (click on “Ownership” @the left-hand menu). Apparently, teachers’ retirement fund is “one of the largest pension systems in the United States”.

It is all our money they have invested in their “biggest public golf course”, their secure $57bln are basically ours, what we had paid them in the first place. And what did the schoolkids of NY got in return?

Jonathan, do you think they will prefer early retirement packages to endless massive milking of this cow?

Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian. Paul was not a “convert” to Christianity; it was he who invented it.

One, what gives you the idea that my view on life in general, or this question in particular, is somehow determined by what is said by Paul in the NT? He was a fanatic as a jew, and an even worse fanatic as an exuberently dogmatic convert to christianity.

two, to repeat, the goal of Paul and the others you cite, esp. Jesus, was not the continuation of human life on earth, and earthly happiness and success, but the imminent coming of the judgement and the ascent of the saved into the kingdom of heaven.

Repeatedly, in the gospels, and in the other writins and pronouncements by the various saints and popes down through the centuries, the focus of living has been centered on achieving eternity as a spirit being, not living here on earth, except as it results in salvation.

There were any numbers of holy men who rejected family and women and procreation and went to some desert location to live in a cave, safe from temptation. Perhaps you should join that tradition.

At least it would spare us any more of your pathetic attempts to join in adult conversations about real life and complex issues that concern grown up people with actual responsibilities.

You must know that Paul, the inventor of Christianity, did comment on the virtues of not contaminating your life with a family.

For those not as smart as Veryretired, here is what Paul says in Holy Scripture:

1 Corinthians 7

1Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.

7For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.

8I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I.

9But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

32But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:

33But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.

37Nevertheless he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his virgin, doeth well.

38So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better.

40But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the Spirit of God.

Jimbino is just as flippant and clueless in that comment as his earlier one. When you don’t understand something, the best choice is to keep quiet and not advertise your ignorance.

If the educational establishment is as you say guilty of holding us hostage through their rent-seeking activities, then it would be immoral to “buy” them out. That’s paying tribute to evil, no?

Threatening them with being fired, with loss of all pension benefits is the moral thing to do, and probably would yield the most positive results, in the shortest timeframe. For the children, right?

Free enterprise does not subsidize Luddites, because it’s detrimental to the gene pool.

You first, okay?

Robert Schwartz…ditto

But the issue may be moot. The network effect will soon be too demonstrably effective to continually shove under the carpet, or misrepresent, or obfuscate by everyone involved.

Mini, home-schooling enclaves and distance-learning networks with hi-speed, real-time intervention by teams of top quality instructors already work, excepting where regulation of standards adheres. Kids’d be safer too.

http://www.hackwilson.blogspot.com

Since we’re being blunt, though, let’s be blunt. People without any interest in producing another generation to carry on their own family name, and assuming the various burdens that decision entails, are dead ends, in every meaning of that phrase.

They contribute nothing to the future continuity and progress of the culture other than the modest contribution they make through taxes, and about which they whine continuously because they could obviously use that money for another vacation, or a fancier car.

The childless are drones. They have no personal stake in the future, neither genetic or emotional. Their ideas about any number of public policies, esp something like education, are valueless, as their only concern is their own current lifestyle and personal interests.

Those who spend all their time pursuing their own desires and interests, with no connection or emotional stake in the future of the species, are worse than free loaders. They will attempt, in every instance, to demonize the marvelous experience of raising a family, while exalting the meaningless triviality of their own sterile existence as some form of superior, enlightened way of life.

There are almost 75 million youngsters in the “boom echo” generation, many more than most demographers expected. The only reason that drones, or anti-natalists, like jimbino can have any expectation of a secure life in old age is the simple fact that many of those children will grow up to be productive, innovative adults who can provide the wealth and skills to support an aging, unproductive, familyless group of people who have no claim on their generosity and wealth other than the younger generations’ own compassion and sympathy for people so foolish and misguided that they would fail to live for anything but their own day to day self-gratification.

It is not my children and grandchildren who will be the burden on their fellows, drone, but people like you who have abandoned the future for the sake of your endless naval-gazing.

We, the childfree, can damn well buy whatever products and services we really need, including personal services, on the world market

Only if (1) the people that provide those goods and services are born in the first place and (2) that somebody spends the hundreds of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours needed to train them up to the point they give you what you want. Yes, you could probably pretty cheaply hire a 15 year old from a 3rd world slum to perform brain surgery on you but I doubt you would like the results.

Your problem is that you just assume that fully capable people who can fulfill your needs just economically pop into existence ex nihilo. You assume that everyone else will just keep cranking out the capable and competent adults you need even if they physically incapable of doing so. You think you can get a free ride on all those people forever.

Well, you can’t. Eventually, people like John Jay simply can’t physically do anymore. The economy simply won’t provide resources today for a project that will produce a diffuse return 18+ years down the road.

Furthermore, our need for smart, young workers can no doubt be better served, in many cases, by importing them, already potty-trained, from Mexico and elsewhere than to spend millions dumbing down our domestic brood for 13 years in Amerikan public schools. No smart cabinetmaker or horse-breeder would confine himself to domestic products, of course. Half of our best inventions of the last century came from Germany, Estonia or Finland! And it needs to be considered that what Amerika seems to need, if not actively encourage, is kids “educated” to be hard-working and subservient, not intelligent and enterprising, as the latter have too much sense than to spend their youth contributing to Social Security, Medicare and the Obamacare of the sick masses.

In answer to John Jay: Do you really feel the need to start off with an ad hominem (maybe tu quoque?) insinuation?

Yes, you are right: Amerikan kids are not worth anywhere near what they cost society or even their parents, and especially not with all the government subsidies. If they were Walmart products, they would forced off the shelves by common sense and lawsuits.

Yes, you and your wife no doubt don’t mind enhancing your private pleasure with no regard for the externalities you force on others by your unexamined breeding. Just wait until your wife is properly taxed for doubling or tripling her carbon footprint by breeding!

Your most telling statement is your recognition that “The Chinese and Indian immigrants around here run their own Saturday schools, and they don’t jut teach Hindi and Mandarin, they teach math and science, too. And they pay for it. Out of their own pockets.”

You state that “Unless you have kids, you don’t have a clue what a good upbringing costs” and I submit that I understand better than most parents what it costs to breed and bring a child to taxpaying age better than all but a few parents do.

Yeah right: What really improves my life and prospects for peace and liberty in the world is to support all the Hassid and Catholic breeding. HaHa.

I agree with Walmart: if you have a good, proven product to sell that the Amerikan people will pay good money to buy, bring it on. Walmart does not say: here’s billions in breeding money and we’ll take whatever Merde you and the others turn out!

We, the childfree, can damn well buy whatever products and services we really need, including personal services, on the world market. We don’t think we need to subsidize helter skelter Amerikan breeding. The Japanese wouldn’t have a problem either, if they weren’t so racist and anti-immigrant. Here in Texas, whatever service I need, including childcare, housecleaning, plumbing, roofing and electrical installation, I can get by hiring any of the many fine Mexicans and Cubans that knock on my door. Thanks for your offer, but I don’t need your expensive home-brewed kids.

For example, in 1987, while there were 3,300 employees in the central and district offices of the Chicago public school system, a mere 36 administrators oversaw the schools of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, although its student population is 40 percent of that of the public schools and it serves a much larger geographical area.(12) In the nation’s largest school district, New York City, John Chubb of the Brookings Institution found an even more striking contrast: 6,000 administrators in the government schools and only 25 in the Catholic schools, although the Catholic schools served about one-fourth the number of students the government schools did.(13) Evidence on that point continues to mount; just recently, the Baltimore Sun reported that the Baltimore Archdiocese manages 34,000 students in 101 schools with 7 administrators, while the nearby Harford County public schools need 64 administrators to oversee 36,000 students in 51 schools.(14)

I’ve seen similar figures on LA schools.

My former high school, Leo High School, whose own web site is down for revision, is doing a good job with lower middle class black students. The white alumni have been helping but the last reunion I attended (my 50th in 2006) had a number of tables of black alumni who seem to be picking up the slack as my generation fades away. One of my classmates paid for a new roof about 10 years ago, a donation of $ 500,000.

The problem isn’t that there aren’t organizations who couldn’t save all these kids, giving them a much better education. There are. The problem is that the incumbent administrations don’t want to step up and have an open and fair competition so that all children can get the best education possible. The DC voucher program has limited slots because the Democrat party did their best to limit the slots. The GOP would be happy to have universal vouchers and save everybody.

Obama’s reprising the infamous story of the kid who kills his parents and asks for mercy from the judge because he’s an orphan. He wants the vouchers limited, and then pretend that the limits were done by somebody else, not his own party.