Daily Archives: 4 November 2019

A Teachers Union Struck Chicago

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The Chicago Teachers Union struck Chicago (closing out the children of the city from 11 days of education; although, that may have been a net benefit for the kids, given the lack of education the city’s public education institution provides), and it got everything it demanded.

  • A new joint class size council will be created to address overcrowding. The council will get weekly updated data and will have $35 million per year to address situations on a case-by-case basis
  • The contract will run for 5 years, giving the board time to implement some of the massive changes in staff
  • Pay raises: 3.0% for the 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22 school years; 3.5% for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school year
  • Freezes health insurance premiums through 2022
  • A net zero increase in the amount of Board-authorized charter schools over the contract’s lifespan
  • The Joint Teacher Evaluation Committee—made of five union members and five Board members—will provide annual recommendations to the chief talent officer and CTU president on how to improve teacher evaluations. Student growth scores will make up 30% of an evaluation’s summative rating
  • Hundreds more union positions: librarians, social workers, and psychologists.

More money, more union jobs (more dues money), less cost, and especially less competition from those embarrassingly successful charter schools.

Rik Moran thinks Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot abjectly surrendered to the union.  I think she’s in cahoots with it.  The 11-day strike just provided a fresh layer of snow to cover that Chicago dirt.

Tariffs

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The Wall Street Journal led off one of its Wednesday editorials with this gem.

The great counterfactual of the Trump Presidency is how much faster the economy would be growing without the damage of his trade protectionism.

Never mind that the great counterfactual of the FDR and Wilson Presidencies (among others) is how much better off the nation would be without the damage of their warfighting.

Once again, WSJ Editors choose to misconstrue the nature of tariffs as tools of international diplomacy and conflict with the nature of tariffs as protectionism. International conflict unavoidably involves domestic damage.

The real consideration is whether today’s temporary damage from deploying tariffs as tools is worth the long-term gain. Was the damage suffered in those wars worth avoiding the damage of abject surrender to brutal conquerors, worth the gains from winning those wars?

Would these Editors prefer abject economic surrender to the PRC, the payment of our intellectual property and technological advances to the PRC as tribute, to be followed inevitably by political subjugation after the collapse of our economy, to the long-term gains of getting a more honest trade regime?