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Open thread July 14, 2017

Dan Crawford | July 14, 2017 8:48 am

Tags: open thread Comments (4) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
4 Comments
  • coberly says:
    July 14, 2017 at 11:11 am

    The 2017 Social Security Trustees Report is out.

    It doesn’t show much change from last year (despite the “Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” attemt to make it sound scary worse).

    You can still “save Social Security” by raising your own payroll “tax” (money you will get back with interest) by one tenth of one percent per year for about the next ten years, then at decreasing intervals after that. That’s about a dollar per week in today’s terms.

    Or you could raise your own tax about 1.4% all at once (and no more for the next seventy five years). That might sound like a lot, but it isn’t. It’s 14 dollars a week out of a thousand dollar per week paycheck, and it will pay you back enough to live for an additional two (or more) years in retirement… about 40,000 dollars.

    Or you could wait until about 2035 and raise your own tax about 2% all at once, and no more essentially forever.

    There are some differences among these in who pays, and when, and how much compared to how much they will be making at the time, but essentially the total cost is the same for all of them: it’s the cost of paying for your own retirement.

    That cost will be higher than in the past because you will be living longer, and not necessarily able to work longer. And the cost will be higher as a percent of income because your income is not projected to grow as fast as it has in the past.

    It’s as if the price of bread goes up but your salary doesn’t. You still need the bread, so you budget for it. After the initial “shock” it’s no big deal and you forget about it.

    I’ll try to have more to say about this in a few days, but I thought it important to at least suggest to those willing to listen than the scary stuff they are likely to hear is not necessarily so. You can find out the facts by reading the Report (not the Summary), and using a pencil to calculate what the numbers mean to YOU.

    That 12 Trillion Dollar unfunded deficit, divided by 200 million taxpayers, divided by 75 years is…800 dollars per year per taxpayer, or 15 dollars per week. Detailed calculations take a little longer, but the result is essentially the same.

    I say “essentially” because these figures are estimates to start with so there is no point in carrying them out to two decimal places, but there are people who read this blog who get hysterical over the difference between 80 cents per week and a dollar per week. Or take “a gradual increase in the tax of about a dollar per week per year while incomes are going up over ten dollars per week” to mean “a tax increase ever every year! we’re all going to die!”

  • Denis Drew says:
    July 14, 2017 at 5:35 pm

    CROSS POSTED FROM COMMENTS AT ECONOMIST’S VIEW — 7/14 LINKS: http://microeconomicinsights.org/charter-schools-teach-test-evidence-boston/

    Re: Charter schools do more than teach to the test – Microeconomic Insights

    “The [admissions] lottery allows us to compare students offered a seat and students not offered a seat, removing from our analysis confounding factors such as motivation, ability, and family background.”

    Boy oh boy; they could not have gotten this more wrong.

    Berkeley political scientist Martin Sanchez-Jankowski spent five years on the ground in five New York and Los Angeles poverty stricken neighborhoods. In his book Cracks In The Pavement he writes that students in ghetto schools (and even teachers!) don’t try hard enough because they see nothing remunerative enough waiting for them in the (de-unionized, American) labor market to make the effort.

    Actually, he puts this down to about half of students. I forget the language but he has about half the folks on the poor side of town trying very hard in every category and the other half giving up hope. (Sounds parallel to half of Chicago gang-age males in drug dealing street gangs.)
    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/

    The “lottery” is likely to be made up of trying hard families. Those who don’t win but are followed for comparison are the trying hard kids who return to the local public school system. Maybe a better comparison would be with trying kids who return to local Catholic schools instead. The better comparison might be between two school systems with BOTH motivated families AND as much working discipline as the school wishes to effect because attendance is voluntary — meaning if you didn’t agree with the discipline you wouldn’t be there.

    Or any school with voluntary attendance. Or are kids of color supposed to be of inferior academic ability and need turbocharged education?

    The real place to look for answers of course is where the problem originates in the first place — the de-unionized American labor market.

    Nota bene: Boston charter schools are non-profit and heavily regulated. Note well: influxing poor neighborhoods with lower paid/higher turnover teachers and managements motivated by profit — which spells most charter schools in most of the country — in the most promising path to elevation.

  • Denis Drew says:
    July 14, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    JUNE 12, 2015

    “U.S. News and World Report just released its annual rankings of the nation’s best high schools: Six of the top 10 in Illinois are in CPS and another three in the top 20.”

    “from 2003 to 2013 and found Chicago students grew 11 points on the 8th grade math test and 7 points on the 4th grade reading test. The state grew just 7 points and 3 points, respectively.”

    “[B]etween 2006 and 2014, the percentage of CPS students earning a bachelor’s degree within 6 years of high school graduation jumped from 8 percent to 14 percent. The national rate is 18 percent. … They found that Latino students enrolled in CPS are more likely to graduate high school than their counterparts in many suburban districts, including Maine Township High Schools and Evanston Township High School.”
    http://www.wbez.org/series/curious-city/were-chicagos-public-schools-ever-good-112025?utm_campaign=E-Update%205-14-15&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua

    [Late Addition] Headline: High-Poverty, All-Black School Beats Odds, Earns Top CPS Ranking
    CHATHAM — Students and parents from Arthur Dixon Elementary school said they were ecstatic this week to learn their school had earned the highest ranking on the 2015 CPS School Quality Rating Report for the first time.
    http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20151106/chatham/high-poverty-all-black-school-beats-odds-earns-top-cps-ranking

    “Salary figures provided by the Chicago Public Schools show teachers here have the highest average salary of any city in the nation. But, according to the Chicago Teachers Union’s calculations, Chicago teachers would rank second behind New York City.”
    http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/how-much-do-chicago-public-school-teachers-make/

    Maybe if you don’t pay the parents it helps if you pay the teachers. Maybe Chicago has the best educated gang bangers in the country just waiting for the “Great Wage Depression” to turn around.

  • Amateur Socialist says:
    July 16, 2017 at 11:13 am

    Wage suppression comes to state legislatures: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/business/economy/boise-idaho-noncompete-law.html?ref=business

    Because why should the big tech companies do all the heavy lifting on colluding to keep wages low?

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