Are they unionized? Here they are, so through collective bargaining they are able to keep class sizes reasonable (for the most part) and negotiate decent wages.
I wonder if it's people feeling nostalgic for what a union factory job meant in the post-war US: good pay and benefits that provided upward mobility.
People want a simple solution but aren't thinking carefully about all the conditions that led to the post-war middle class boom.
Any factory job nowadays is going to mirror an Amazon distribution centre. So how will that benefit Americans 🤔
In general yes. I think want people want, by and large, is a job with a decent wage, good benefits, and upward mobility. That's what a union factory job symbolizes to people. I live in a rust belt city that has never fully recovered from the loss of steel mills in the 70s.
Which is all to say, the 'bring manufacturing back' talking point is a platitude. What people need is living wages, paid sick leave, access to health care, and access to affordable education. Whether that happens in a factory setting or not is beside the point. Building more factories here is moot if it doesn't address the economic challenges that people face.
Most public school teachers are unionized across the entire country, including districts with strong student achievement and with poor student achievement. Charter/private/religious school teachers are usually not. As far as I can tell from published statistics, median income for US teachers is slightly lower than in Canada, but not dramatically different overall. Their earnings do vary significantly by state/region.
There is a lot to say about K-12 education in the US, student performance trends/correlations and the politicization of public education. But it would really take this thread in a new direction entirely.
Any factory job nowadays is going to mirror an Amazon distribution centre. So how will that benefit Americans 🤔
(Better make plastic bottles to piss in first 🤪)
Forget by state the difference can be huge within a state. City to city or even city vs surrounding suburb. Especially if you adjust for the cost of living in the particular area. Also while many teachers are unionized it's become more common to have teachers working on expired contracts. Resulting in salaries not keeping up with the increases in cost of living. Generally US teacher salaries have not been increasing a the same rates of other professions that require a similar level of education. School funding also varies greatly. In schools with less support staff teachers can end up working a greater number of hours doing more of the non teaching work. Big difference earning 60K working 40hrs vs 60hrs.
We need to better fund education in the US from all angles. Just another reason why it's so crazy to have all this tariff chaos in part to justify cutting taxes on the rich.
PS Abbott Elementary touched on these issues in this past season all the while being funny and entertaining.
Perhaps you can help me understand the funding model better. My impression is that the wealth of the local school district residents has a direct impact on the funding available for the schools in that specific district. Is that correct? My impression is also that the districts are often quite small so limited to a city or even small town.
Here in Ontario it’s a bit complicated because we have 2 school boards. One public and one catholic…long story but this comes from the fact that we are a bilingual country and this is imbedded into our system, and the French are heavily catholic, or at least they were. Back in the day we would have to check a box on our income taxes to indicate if we were public or catholic supporters. But that went away and now the allocation done at the provincial level is done by anticipated enrolment levels in each school district. So the money is pooled to the province from the 16 million or so residents, and then distributed to the 72 school districts by the number of students. The district I’m in has a $1.2 billion budget for example for the public school board, for about 80,000 students.
As an aside, many governments have floated the idea of combining the school systems, because each has its own bureaucracy and there could be massive savings doing so. Some have also floated the idea of defunding the catholic school system because the government shouldn’t be paying for a specific religious education. That would be my preference, but it’s unlikely. One candidate for premier proposed extending funding to other religious schools, but he was handed his arse in the election….
Any factory job nowadays is going to mirror an Amazon distribution centre. So how will that benefit Americans 🤔
Maybe some. But a factory could be more than shoes, it could also be planes or trucks or silicon wafers or wind turbine blades or even knives. We've got all of these now.
But it takes a plan.
Many places require some form of tertiary education to get a job. So as much as I agree with the idea that it’s not necessary for everyone, the reality is often that without it you are quite limited in what jobs you can get.
The latest data I could find was from 2022, but I don’t think these trends change a lot over a short time…
As we have chatted about, the biggest knife steel manufacturer just went bankrupt a few weeks ago .
So all the knives made by most USA 🇺🇸 companies like Benchmade and Spyderco will need steel from the French 🇫🇷 company that bought the recipes and trademarks of the once proudly 🇺🇸 made steel with a Tariff included.
Even a few 🇺🇸 friends who make custom knives are blown away it happened so fast and final in a short time without a 🇺🇸 bail out or another US company to buy/merger . ( the law firm sharks who bought the land and buildings for pennies were the winners it seems )
(More for other forum members knowledge than yours 😉)
