Fran Tarkenton

[detlef]

Most places I have worked including now give managers a set amount they are allowed to give out in merit pay - this has been very small or nothing the last 2-3 years but usually it is up to the managers discretion to pay that amount out how he/she sees fit. I have seen many occsions where one employee gets a 5% raise and another in the same department with same title gets zero.

 

Our sales guys here get paid on a commission basis and the good salespeople (yes it is not hard for us to see who is good and bad) are rewarded more than bad salespeople.

 

Maybe the places I have worked are in the minority and maybe that is why my opinion is what it is??

That's why I excluded sales. If there's ever a job that equates performance to pay, it's commission sales. If you sell a bunch, you make a bunch of money, if you don't, you don't. Obviously it's not perfect because not all territories are the same, but it's close.

[Deathpig]

 

Public education is broken? What public schools do your kids attend? Mine attend Victor H. Hexter Elementary. Nothing broken there.

 

Blowhards who want public education to fail so that it can be replaced by the "free market" say that a lot but of course they say that because they hope public education fails. There is nothing on the free market that can come close to competing with Hexter Elementary and even if there were, there would be no way I could afford it for my kids. That school certainly doesn't need "help" from anyone who incorrectly thinks public education is broken and the only thing it's missing is profit motive.

 

If your local public schools in Colorado suck, go fix it with your "free market" approcah but leave ours alone, it doesn't need fixed to begin with and if it did need fixed, why would I listen to someone who wants it to fail anyways?

 

I actually loved this response for a whole bunch of reasons.

 

First, because Ditkaless used the term 'market forces' to show how the union rewards tenure rather than performance (meaning that the implied value of the teacher isn't their ability to teach, but rather their ability to not be fired) somehow he was saying that public education was supposed to be replaced by 'the free market'. And then Club completely overreacts to the strawman he created.

 

Second, he advocates for education to be a State issue instead of a Federal one. Possibly not a mistake, but seems out of character compared to his stance on other issues.

 

Third, he uses an anecdote to show how education is perfectly fine in this country, even though numerous studies for the last decade (or more) have shown a decline in the quality of education in the United States.

 

 

Maybe we should tackle education like health care (another place where our country spends way too much but doesn't get the results you'd expect). Clearly the problem with education is that revenue is generated by property taxes, but this doesn't really account for population density. Hence, high density areas are going to be underfunded relative to low density areas. So clearly, we need to make EVERYONE pay property tax or otherwise face a fine. And then we could use the revenue to finally 'fix' education.