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Suicide is Painless

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DrFrylock, Jan 26, 2011.

  1. Nom Chompsky

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    I think D26 nailed the teaching question absolutely perfectly. If I can add anything, it's that it would be nice if there was a better way to evaluate teachers, as the gulf between "good" and "terrible" can be so massive; this really isn't true for a burger flipper.

    With respect to CEOs, I'm going to edit my statement; as the ensuing argument has shown, it was ridiculous to put it forth in such broad terms. Amended statement:

    From my research and reading, the CEOs of large multi-national corporations, especially when they've been hired from outside, are often overcompensated relative to their demonstrable effect on success. This effect is magnified in fields that are highly volatile.

    As for "foreign students" vs. "united states students": do you want to live in China? School performance, especially as it relates to obedience, can't really be extracted from a country's culture. I'm not sure at what point it's worth it, but in my mind it's somewhere well short of China and the USSR.
     
  2. BrianH

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    I totally agree.

    I make a totally decent amount of coin in the Army. Granted, where I work there are a lot of additional special duty pays that most don't get, but including combat deployments I probably make $70K a year. That's not bad for an enlisted soldier. When I get married and make my next rank this year, that will go up to close to $80K.

    The beauty is that I still live month to month on the same amount of money I did when I was a private. I'm able to bank over $3K a month, sometimes much more (when I'm deployed). I do buy the occasional toy now and again, but everything I buy is paid for in straight cash. Not a bad place to be.
     
  3. Nom Chompsky

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    Halfway agree with the actual points, I think I totally agree with the whole sentiment.

    I don't think that the minimum salary players are overpaid; I think that in order to field a reliably competitive product, and attract the very best talent, American leagues pay huge salaries. Generally, this model has worked, although it's obviously subject to the same financial whims as any other business. Also, I'm not sure there's quite the one-to-one correlation advanced metrics simulate; I imagine that there's a sort of chaining effect where if minimum salaries were matched to economic contributions (because lets face it, with rare exceptions like Jeremy Lin, nobody gives a fuck who the 12th man is, and they're definitely not paying to see them), the league would be much weaker as a whole and thus make less money.

    However, athletes aren't really underpaid.

    Take somebody who is in the top .00003%, talent-wise, of a given industry. Now that person works their entire life, basically, towards getting to the top of that industry. That industry is extremely lucrative.

    That person should get lots of money. And they should have the right to value their services properly, regardless of whether they add much to "society" at large. Adding in the fact that in some sports, one hit can ruin a career, and it's perfectly understandable that players want to get everything they can in a short window.

    EDIT: Thought of a good analogy. You know how in the first few months of a job, you're pretty much useless no matter how qualified you are? Techinically, you're costing the company more than you're producing, but the idea is that there's a good chance the company will get a bunch of surplus value down the road. In any event, having jobs filled at all is a benefit, even if every individual person isn't profitable.
     
  4. Disgustipated

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    Perhaps this is a better way to look at it: (on the proviso that this is totally off the cuff and I haven't thought it through fully)

    Maybe the pay rate should bear some relation to how much shit goes down if you don't do the job right.

    - A burger flipper makes a mistake, someone gets food poisoning (let's avoid death, too much of that in another thread);
    - A teacher makes a mistake, the kid generally has ample opportunity to recover;
    - A CEO makes a mistake, stock falls and there's repercussions all over the place including potentially damaging the economy.

    That's looking at one isolated example. On that basis, it's critically important that the CEO not make as many mistakes as, say, a burger flipper. Accordingly, they can command more pay.

    Not all encompassing, but something to toss in the pot.
     
  5. Omegaham

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    I would say that you need higher than average intelligence, but it's much more important to be well-spoken and charismatic.

    My physics teacher was one of the smartest people that I have ever met. He had a Ph.d in biochemistry, was set for life thanks to his work on developing the morning after pill, and taught because he didn't want to be bored in retirement.

    He wasn't really a good teacher when he was talking to a class. He had a tendency to ramble, and he had trouble explaining things differently. I liked the class because I got the material pretty quickly, but the kids who were having trouble were completely lost.

    Meanwhile, I had plenty of teachers who were definitely smart but weren't impressive. They were good teachers because they knew their material and could relate it to students. You don't need to be a genius to do that.

    I think the biggest problem with measuring teaching performance is that it's very difficult. How do you measure how good a teacher is? Testing knowledge of the subject is one way, but it doesn't account for the teachers who are smart but don't care. If you test the kids, you can screw over the good teachers who happen to have crappy kids.

    In reality, the only thing you can do is give that authority to the principals. And right now, the principals are far worse than the teachers.

    I think the reason for that is the fact that public schools don't really have an incentive to teach their kids well. Private schools have a really big incentive - if they don't teach their kids well, then the parents say "What am I paying for" and leave. But public schools can be bad, and the budget still comes in. I don't know how to solve that problem, especially when parents couldn't care less about how their kids do in school.
     
  6. Kampf Trinker

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    I didn't mean to say they don't bring money in, it just seems like a lot to be paid for playing a sport. They are the best in the world at what they do, it just seems excessive in my mind. Economically it makes perfect sense, but they get a lot more time off than people who work most jobs (although they have to bust their ass during the season) and whenever I hear about an athlete complaining they aren't making enough or that they deserve more it's hard not to get pissed off.
     
  7. Harry Coolahan

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    Actually, you'd test how the classes for a specific teacher did for multiple years in a row, to account for exceptionally performing or exceptionally low-performing classes. If you compare two teachers' track records for, say, 7 years, it will be pretty clear which is the better teacher.

    Note this article which looked at data that did exactly that—and then shared that information publicly. The comments in that post are worth reading as well.

    I don't have anything I feel like contributing to the debate, but I thought this was an important point to mention.
     
  8. MoreCowbell

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    And this is why, despite seeming logical enough at first glance, the Labor Theory of Value is a crock of shit. One gets paid for doing things that are in demand, scarce, and valuable, not for merely working hard.
     
  9. Kubla Kahn

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    I live in china, thus am the authority to speak about it, imaright folks?


    But seriously, it is obviously a culture thing. The parents are almost like slave drivers when it comes to their kids education. It has good and bad effects. Creating a legion of bookworms that can ace test from K-PHD looks good in international competitions and standardized test evaluations. On the other hand when it comes to actually running the companies here it is the big joke that they have no ability think outside of the box and lead effectively. My brother works in construction management and his new Chinese boss has multiple masters degrees in science fields from two Ivy League schools. My brother is at his wits end having to handle this guys inability to actually lead and run a real world project. Most people blame this on the authoritarian communist culture that really stifles various key decision making skills for this and you hear a lot about the chinese inability to innovate. But the whole culture of education is providing much better results than the shit show our system has become.


    Note to teachers: If you are willing to make a move China pays pretty handsomely for American teachers. Substitute english teachers with no formal teaching education can start out making 15-25 bucks and hour. People with the els/tefl certificates can make 25-30k (US dollars) a year. If you have a college degree in education Ive known people to make 80k and up. Added to this the insanely cheap price of living, including free housing and health benefits for you and family provided by school, and it adds up pretty quickly....
     
  10. Volo

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    Seems reasonable, save for the fact that a shitty teacher might very well fly under the radar for a good 7 years. Just food for thought.
     
  11. ParkerBro

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    It's a little more complicated than that. In low income schools, you can be dealing with out-of-control students on a daily basis. Parenting or problems at home can be a factor. If they don't listen to parents, why would they listen to you? Most students know that teachers can't touch students or even go too far with yelling. Sometimes students will beat the hell out of each other in class and you can't even physically break them up. It's against the rules. Just read this horror story here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/924317/posts

    It is very emotionally draining work and highly involved.

    Now do I think CEOs and NBA stars are overpaid? Well, absolutely they are overpaid for the work they do (well for CEOs it varies; thats a really broad category. The smaller the company the more fair they are paid; the larger the more grossly overpaid they are typically).

    You say: well, Kobe's skills draw in ticket sales above his salary. And CEOs may bring in revenue above their salary. Yes, that is an elementary fact that is true of pretty much every salary in every private business. No one is hired to lose money. But they are still overpaid in the terms of the effort of the job or the value they provide to anybody.

    The only reason they are paid such monumental sums is because they are moving around monumental sums of money, and then taking a cut. I'm not even sure how cerebral a CEO's job or day-to-day decisions really are. A genius CEO may come up with ideas that give the company billions. But an average joe-schmoe who played the corporate ladder game, or inherited a business from his father, or what-have-you who is a CEO --- well, he's not exactly going to bankrupt the company with any decision -- he'll teeter by and get paid handsomely. First off - how many of his decisions are delegated? A shit ton I bet.

    If a CEO started his own company, then sure, he's earned every dime. But someone who took over the reigns, makes executive decisions on -- well, it doesn't matter what he does, he's probably going to command a fat, handsome salary. It's just like the Presidents of private universities or the Presidents of law schools --- they get paid figures like $400,000/ per year plus another $100,000 - $200,000/ per year in benefits. And how is their performance measured? In fact, has any university or law school president EVER been fired for incompetence or poor decisions, barring a sex or fraud scandal?

    Do they need to attract bright people? Sure they do. But those guys' day jobs are fucking easy as balls. Just sayin. Call me a skeptic.
     
  12. KIMaster

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    There's an awful lot of strong assumptions in this paragraph, while still being very vague, and never mentioning any specific details, let alone CEOs.

    Tell me; where are you getting this information from? Can you name me a CEO who is an "average joe-schmoe" or "delegates his decisions"? I've never even read about such a fascinating specimen! Hell, I'm interested to hear about the supposedly lazy bastard who "inherited a business from his father".

    I don't seem to recall many family businesses in the Fortune 500, but "ParkerBro" has some inside info, apparently. (Actually, there are CEOs that generally fit that last type, but they're all relegated to one very specific industry, and I doubt it's what the guy had in mind.)

    ...And with this, ParkerBro proves he knows absolutely nothing that he's banging his fingers against the keyboard for.

    The presidents of universities indeed do relatively little; that job requires less than 40 hours a week, let alone the 80 plus that virtually every CEO is putting in. Which makes sense, you know, considering many CEOs, politicians, generals, etc. retire to a job as a university president.

    But if you're seriously comparing the responsibilities of running a university to that of a private business, you're an idiot.

    I'm not completely belittling the responsibility of the former either, but it's like commercial air flight compared to flying planes for the military.

    Yes, in fact. Happens all the damn time. They're not "fired" per se, but they quietly step down, and a new guy is hired.

    Not a "skeptic", more like "guy who doesn't respond to logic or facts in the face of preconceived opinion".
     
  13. Durbanite

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    FOCUS: What have you been grossly underpaid for? What have you been grossly overpaid for?

    Grossly underpaid at my last job, despite it being part-time. I was on-call 12-16 hours a day and no basic salary, working only on commission. The work itself wasn't difficult, you just had to be available for many hours a day.

    ALT FOCUS: What professions are grossly underpaid? What professions are grossly overpaid?

    Grossly overpaid: Major actors, soccer players and most other sports stars, auditors, people benefitting from BEE in South Africa. Every one of those could take a 50% pay cut and still be more well-off than most of us.

    Grossly underpaid: Track and field athletes (do they get anything besides sponsorship money? Sucks for a short career), S.A. miners, teachers and lecturers.

    UNFOCUSED: Don't click if you don't want to read my ramblings on inner-city teaching...

    Why are they still trying to teach regular subjects (eg. social studies, history, etc.) at inner-city schools? It's fucking USELESS for those kids because 99% of them will never give half a fuck about those subjects - they're more interested in goings-on at the corner. Isn't it better to rather get those kids into some sort of ABET (Adult Basic Education & Training - basically reading comprehension, basic grammar, basic maths, basic computer literacy, etc.) program and teach them trades with the remaining hours? If the kid isn't eating because he can't afford food, how the fuck is social studies going to help? Teach the kid how to fix a car properly and he/she can get a job and feed him/herself. I think the bigger problem is finding correctly qualified people (i.e. not teachers) who are willing to train these kids in trades. Maybe the local government can step in with some incentives for people to train these kids? OK, rambling over.
     
  14. Omegaham

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    The problem is that the process literally takes years to do. I can imagine a way for this to work - you get an Effectiveness Index that says how good you are at teaching, and if you don't reach a certain level, you don't get tenure and you get axed.

    But over those seven years, the teacher is ruining the kids' lives. If your boss hired a bunch of people and said, "I'm going to see how good you are in seven years, and go from there," you'd rightly think that your boss was retarded.

    The only way to get good teachers is to have a good principal, one with a backbone and no touchy-feely retarded theories about teaching. A disciplined, intelligent principal makes the difference between a good school and a bad school. If you don't have good administration, then the teachers aren't held to a good standard, and the good ones don't have any recourse to deal with issues.

    I'm biased, but I see it like the military. If you don't have good officers who back their enlisted personnel up and hold them to a good standard, then the job doesn't get done. A good officer can bring a bunch of mediocre people together; a bad officer can completely waste the talent of a good crew.
     
  15. caseykasem

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    Focus: Firefighters. While I'm not one, my cousin and many of my friends are firefighters. They are all very dedicated and don't get paid nearly enough. In my mind they are the most underpaid people in our society. They work 24 hrs. on and 24 hrs. off and while this seems awesome, many I know work a second job to help support their families. The danger involved in what they do is staggering and the training is gruelling. Each one of the firefighters I know would die for a stranger and not think twice about it. This kind of dedication needs to be rewarded.
     
  16. Harry Coolahan

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    I'm currently going through the pipeline to start volunteering in PG County, which is the 10th busiest county for emergency response calls (for comparison, NYC is obviously number one, but considering PG only has about 500K residents, the call volume ratio is staggering). More than half the fire stations in PG are entirely volunteer-based.

    Granted, Maryland is a shit-hole, but I still wanted to emphasize your point. We have multi-billion dollar weapons systems that will never get used, meanwhile my fire station has so little funding that it's only open to respond to emergency calls on weekends (during the week, calls are routed to another station, which obviously reduces response time).
     
  17. Fireblade-650

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    No, you're not. Surprise...I read these forums too douche.

    I don't mean to derail this thread but I thought it would be pertinent to chime in on this as I have lived and worked in China for a while now. I could write a book on why the Chinese aren't threatening the US in relation to anything other than resources but I'll save that diatribe for another thread, there are actually a lot of interesting things I've learned since living here that are completely misrepresented by the western media.

    In regards to education: First let me say that back when I was in engineering school I had a lot of classes that were half full with Chinese students. It didn't matter if they were ABC/HK/Taiwan/mainlanders*, at that time I didn't know the difference. They all studied 20 hours a day, got A's in every class and had little to no social life (Amy Chua really does represent the vast majority of Asian mothers). But what I didn't get was how, regardless of how much they studied, they still didn't seem to grasp the material. They would sit at the front of the class and ask the most obvious questions. At the time I chalked it up to the language barrier. Plus tests are easy enough if you memorize everything.

    What I've learned since being in China is that it wasn't the language barrier. They just can’t do problem solving. They aren't wired to think that way. And it's not just a result of the educational system (although that’s a huge part of it), it's also the how they're parents raised them. It is ingrained in their brain not to challenge authority, not to question the system. Do as you're told and don't ask questions. Makes for wonderfully obedient students but it destroys creativity and critical reasoning skills. My other expat colleagues and friends joke about how worthless their educations are. One of the guys who works for me is older than I and has two masters degrees in fields related to what we do. I would literally take a non-Chinese speaking HS grad from butt fuck Louisiana over him if I had the choice. And he's the best educated one, all the rest of my "engineers" that went to top Chinese universities are worse than worthless. Sure they can memorize a set of tasks, or follow clearly written instructions laid out for them. But solve a problem that they've never encountered before? Most couldn't do it if their life depended on it. I wish I could even quantify how backward they think, to apply some kind of logic to their illogic but I can't. You have to actually live it to understand.

    So when I hear how bad the US education system is because of some standardized test it makes me want to stab someone in the eye with a rusty nail. What a joke that comparison is. Regurgitating memorized information is great if you're trying to learn 8000 Chinese characters in order to become literate, not so much if you're looking to create the next iPod, jet engine, space tech etc. So no, I don't think our educators are doing such a bad job.


    *I will say that in comparison to the Mainland Chinese who grew up under communist rule, the Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and first generation American born are quite a bit better critical thinkers. Most sill had the Amy Chua type of parents though which, IMHO destroys creativity.
     
  18. KIMaster

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    Dude, you're completely right that China's education system is all kinds of fucked up. And the funny thing is, as much as banal memorization is stressed in that country, it's even worse in India. (South Korea is a little better in that regard)

    That being said, for every 10 or even 100 (exaggeration) Chinese dudes that can't solve any new problem, there is one Chinese who CAN, and very well at that. In a country of 1.4 billion people, that's really all you need.

    And yeah, the deficiencies in their education system would be a bigger deal and weakness if students in the West, but especially the US, were actually being taught anything substantial themselves. But they aren't.
     
  19. Omegaham

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    For the majority of students in the US, you're correct.

    However, the top students in the US are probably the best qualified in the world to make advances.

    Basically, even if the average American high schooler / college graduate isn't really that great, the fact that we give huge opportunities for the outliers makes us do better than most.
     
  20. KIMaster

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    In the entire world? Why? Of course, a modern country with a large population, lots of opportunities, and a good quality of life is going to have plenty of quality domestic students no matter how atrocious the public education is, but when you compare our very best students to the very best in Europe or Asia...we're not better. Maybe "roughly the same", but definitely not better.

    This is further confirmed when you realize that the US has a relative dearth of high-level mathematicians, and a disproportionately small number of top guys in a number of sciences.

    Agreed, but these same opportunities are available to students in other countries, too! There are a lot of international students at any top US school, and they do extremely well there.

    By the way, speaking of "horrible public education but really great top thinkers", the best example of this is Iran. They learn little in their schools, but they always do extraordinarily well at all the International Olympiads for Physics, Chemistry, and Math. They have a very effective system for identifying bright kids early on and giving them additional resources.

    Considering how fervently they're building up their weapons program, it's not a very pleasant thought, is it?