Innocent Bystanders

Doom, Despair, and Agony on Me! September 20, 2019

I just can’t even:

Jamie Margolin, a high school senior who sued her home state of Washington for its role in causing climate change, said: “I don’t think a lot of people in Congress understand the conversations that are happening every day in American high schools.”

In response to a question about how American children are having their lives impacted by climate change, Margolin spoke about deep despair and nihilism felt by younger generations:

“Kids are joking, like, what is even, like, the point [if] the world is ending,” Margolin said. “What are we studying for? What are we doing?”

These tykes seem to believe that they’re the only cohort that has faced prognostications of doom, giving them special whining privileges.

I refer them to the Cold War, where the threat of global nuclear war and the postulated nuclear winter meant that life on Earth would be largely eliminated almost overnight.

Yet despite living under the shadow of the ICBM/SLBM threat, we managed to hunker down and study, never succumbing to despair. Wasn’t even that hard.

Can’t imagine how pathetic the current generation of students would be under similar circumstances.

Bernie & Teacher’s Salaries September 13, 2019

The second part of Bernie’s statement at the debate last night was:

We have teachers in this country who are leaving education because they can’t work two or three jobs to support themselves.

Is that true? Well, some teachers are, apparently, working at least a second job:

Nearly 1 in 5 public school teachers have second jobs during the school year, a new analysis of federal data shows.
…
Across the country, teachers who work a second job earn an average of $5,100 to supplement their incomes.

Meanwhile:

The average public school teacher salary for 2016-17 was $59,660—up from $58,353 in 2015-16.

So on average those teachers are working an extra 4 hours per week. Yawn.

And how underpaid are teachers, really?

Forty-five percent of public school teachers said they are satisfied with their teaching salary, while 55 percent said they are not satisfied, according to data from the 2015-16 National Teacher and Principal Survey

That’s terrible! Except for the fact that hardly anybody is satisfied with their salaries:

According to our findings, less than 1/5th (19%) of the people surveyed are comfortable with their current rates of pay. In fact, when asked to put a number on how much more they would need to feel comfortable, more than half (60%) of Americans say that they would need to earn at least an extra $6000 each year.

Looks like teachers are already way ahead in salary satisfaction.

Finally, how many teachers are leaving teaching due to salary issues? Well, the article about teacher’s having to work second jobs found . . . one:

“Working two jobs and trying to maintain a balance with teaching, it does take a toll, especially when you have a family,” said Joe Reid, who until recently was a middle school language arts teacher in Hebron, Ind.
…
Reid resigned from his teaching job at the end of this school year.

Looks like another manufactured crisis.

Bernie & Child Poverty September 13, 2019

Bernie Sanders at the debate last night:

“We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. And yet, we have the highest child poverty rate of almost any country on Earth,” he said.

What he meant to say, I’m sure, was “almost any developed country on Earth.” But if we spot him that, how much of a problem is child poverty?

Well, from this year’s Census Bureau report on Income and Poverty in the United States, we have this lovely chart, showing childhood poverty (the blue line) is as low as it’s been in almost 40 years:

So, while having any children living in poverty is a tragedy, it’s not a new emergency.

Why is the child poverty rate as high as it is? Well, a Heritage report looking at 2015 data noted that:

Around 70 percent of child poverty occurs in single-parent families. Children in single-parent homes are about five times more likely to be poor than are children in married-couple homes. Most non-married fathers are employed and typically have higher incomes than the children’s mothers. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, about two-thirds would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

Lifting 2/3 of 70% of children out of poverty means that you would cut the poverty level in half, with no cost. Eliminating illegal immigration and limiting legal immigration to those who can demonstrate self-sufficiency (per the old immigration standards) would cut poverty still further.

But I’m guessing that Bernie would rather spend other people’s money rather than promote nuclear families, limit immigration, or address other root causes.

Imaginary Commuting Inequities September 10, 2019

Beto O’Rourke keeps flailing about trying to get some traction in his anemic presidential bid. This time he’s seized upon mixing rich people and poor people neighborhoods together so that poor people can live closer to their jobs:

“Living close to work shouldn’t be a luxury for the rich. It’s a right for everyone,” the former Texas congressman tweeted Monday evening.
…
“Here’s the tough thing to talk about, though we must. Rich people are gonna have to allow — or be forced to allow — lower-income people to live near them, which is what we fail to do in this country right now,” Mr. O’Rourke says in the campaign clip.

Mr. O’Rourke then claims lower-income Americans must drive “one, two, three hours in either direction to get to their jobs, very often minimum wage jobs, so they’re working two or three of them right now.”

Well, first of all, getting to live in a primo spot is not a fundamental right. If it was, we should kick out the current residents and start a lottery for people who want to live on the beach, or in Aspen, or in Manhattan, or in…

Second, do the poor really suffer more than everybody else in terms of commuting time? Naw, in actual fact, they have slightly lower commuting times:

As you can see, a higher percentage of low income commuters have a short commute, and a lower percentage have a long commute. But the differences aren’t dramatic, and certainly not anything requiring corrective government action to reduce commuting inequities.

I know Beto doesn’t care, but the most effective approaches to reducing commuting times would be:

• Reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the country
• Limit future immigration until we adjust the population size such that the infrastructure can cope
• Improve telecommuting interfaces so that employees are more effective and easier to manage
• Get Elon Musk to tunnel under every city and build his subterranean commuting systems

The first three would reduce our carbon footprint, and the first two would lead to wage increases for all workers, but especially lower income workers.

But Beto would rather violate actual natural rights to satisfy an imagined right which hasn’t been wronged.