Y2HH

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 12:39 PM) You should get SS like everyone else. The pension thing was originally because you were paid less. Since that isn't the case, if it is good enough for the general population, it is good enough for teachers as well. They also don't pay into the SS fund, so it's not like they lost the money.

Anyone remember this? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29515785/911.mp3 Or this? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29515785/911-2.mp3

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 12:20 PM) Well, let's be real, that "overtime" gets teachers to a normal level of working - those who actually do it. You cannot say with any breath of seriousness that 3 straight months off, plus 2-4 weeks in December, plus Spring Break while also getting weekends off during the school year is not having more time off compared to other professions. It's just blatantly inaccurate. I don't think teachers work any extra hours than most any other professional profession. What I mean by professional is white collar. Lawyers work just as much. Nurses, just as much. IT people often work even more (I'm an exception to this rule because I'm awesome and do network security which almost nobody does)...point being, there are a LOT of professions that work long hours/after hours with no additional benefits of doing so...oh...and most don't have pensions and health/dental for life, either.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 12:16 PM) Forgot one more key one... 6. Teachers work a lot of hours outside of work, more so than most any profession. The idea that it is a job with some huge amount of time off compared to others is completely false. When you add in all the extra, unpaid overtime they have to put in, they are probably getting a similar amount to everyone else in professional jobs. And they don't get to choose when to take it like others do. This is entirely false.

Do you want to make more money?! Sure! We all do. In this age of infomations and interwebs and wireless communications...go into IT...more jobs available than people to fill them...higher salaries than most industries...with excellent benefits and vacation packages! The catch? I know you think I'm going to say there is none...but there is! In IT, unlike in any other industry, every job you apply for, including entry level jobs requires at LEAST 5 years of experience! How does that work? I have no idea! Maybe if you were born in the 70's/early 80's, and entered the Internet Age before anyone knew what the Internet was, you wouldn't have needed that experience...but you do now, suckers! This public service announcement has been brought to you by Y2HH.

This thread has helped me realize that I have the best job out there. Thanks. Yay me.

To be honest, the last time they went on strike I was in grade school...and I was all for their strike. Not because they got more money, but because I got an extended summer vacation. Yay being a kid!

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:34 AM) We'll see if that pension is around in a decade or two. My wife isn't counting on it. I wouldn't either...but if things go as they should, it SHOULD be around. Then again, when union employees keep allowing unions to steal their pensions right under their noses (and it's not a secret they do it, they do it quite openly)...yet they keep allowing the same officials to be elected to oversee their union pensions...well...you get what you get.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:32 AM) I received my first raise in 4 years this year. Teachers aren't getting any more benefits than most others. Aside from a publicly funded pension + lifetime health/dental benefits, you mean.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:31 AM) Their job requires significant planning and grading outside of instruction hours. I've been saying that, during those instructional hours, they're required to be more "on" than typical white collar jobs, so direct comparisons of hours may not be apples-to-apples.I had already said teachers don't work the same total number of hours in a year earlier in the thread. This isn't some new admission or revelation. But it turned out that I was incorrect, and when you factor in after-school hours, they work just as much as everyone else. So I don't even need to bring up that defense and can simply say that teachers work just as much as the average 40-hour worker does throughout the year, they just do it in a compressed schedule. In light of that, the argument that they only work 3/4's of the year and get all this time off doesn't hold weight. 52 weeks - two weeks vacation - 10 federal holidays = 48 work weeks. I get 5 weeks of vacation + 10 federal holidays.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:29 AM) Their job is also to prepare for the instruction. If you really think that most teachers (I know there are some but it is the minority) don't spend more time outside the instruction time then you need to go work with one for a month. They are not the only profession with off hours work, I think it's been pointed out by many. I work after hours almost daily. And? That's part of the job I have...can't make changes to production environments during business hours. This is pretty common throughout the IT industry. It's NOT, however, something only teachers have to do. Live with it, or change professions. It's not like this is a secret in these industries.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:24 AM) I know I put in more time out of the classroom between preparation, Grading etc. than in the classroom. Teachers must do more outside the workplace than most other professions. Also the compensation is slightly different from a law firm to a school. Do law firms make you buy your pencils and such on your own? Many teachers purchase thing for their classrooms that schools do not provide any longer. And most law firms won't continue to pay them 70-80% of what they were making AFTER they retire. Nor do they pay for their health/dental care for the remainder of their lives after retirement. There are trade offs to every profession. For those benefits, I'd be GLAD to buy my own pencils.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:22 AM) Tests and quizzes are not given daily. Videos are strongly discouraged in many school districts because it's lazy teaching. Same with silent reading. Much more often than not, teachers are up in front of the classroom for 50+ minutes out of every hour they're instructing. I went to school...so did you, including 4 years of college... You KNOW for a fact this isn't and has NEVER been true.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 10:20 AM) Many workers do not. That's why it's the average full-time employee hours. When taking into account all of their non-instruction hours, teachers work about half a week less worth of hours in a more compressed schedule. No one is claiming that teachers work more than anyone else in this thread. You're being intentionally obtuse. Warden Samuel Norton: What? What did you call me? Andy Dufresne: Obtuse. Is it deliberate? Warden Samuel Norton: Son, you're forgetting yourself.

I'll never forget this day for a very specific reason...I remember it quite vividly, actually. In hindsight, it's a pretty funny story. I was working from home that day, back when I worked for Cable & Wireless, and I was doing maintenance on my roller-blades that morning because I had messed up the rail slide on them pretty badly the night before. Of course, I wasn't actually "working" on anything for work. So my phone rings, and a good friend of mine, who relayed 3rd party hyperbolic news to me that he had received from his mother -- without confirming it himself -- is yelling into my phone, "We're under attack! Missiles just hit buildings in New York!" Keep in mind this is what he was told by someone else, he had not confirmed it because he was just woke up to this news... So I grab my TV remove and turn on the news because apparently WWIII had begun...where I see an airplane crashing into a building. I shrugged and was like, "Dude, it's just an airplane that crashed into one of the WTC Towers...relax!" In hindsight, when compared to WWIII, I turned off the TV saying, not a big deal. In comparison...it wasn't. It was a big deal...but you have to put yourself into the context in which the news was reported to me. While a lot of people were panicing...I was like, "Jeeze...relax, it's not like WWIII or anything!"

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 08:43 AM) The Deafness Before The Storm The Bush administration was even more negligent than we thought: To be fair, the US government gets about 500 threats like these a day, if you and these people are actually inferring they "should have known" that these were actually going to happen... I'll just shake my head and leave it at that.

The issue with this is timing, or a lack thereof. We have a presidential election approaching, where all the news is about the economy...states having their credits downgraded, cities hemorrhaging money, raising sticker fees, sales taxes, property taxes, etc...people being laid off, high unemployment, salary freezes...and in the midst of this, we have teachers wanting additional raises/benefits/perks to the tune of going on strike. Ignoring the fact that a lot of struggling families really needed their kids to be back in school so they could work part time, or, you know...get a f***ing education. So in the face of all of that, they want me/you/us to sympathize with them? I know teachers, I won't sympathize with them...so I sure as hell won't sympathize with the ones I don't know, either.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 12:37 AM) lol those exact fanboys took the exact same stance Joe takes now 15 years ago. Back then, being an Apple user meant you were different. The problem is, back then, it was kind of different to use Apple stuff, since only about 1% of the world did. Today, more people/devices use Google's Android than Apple's iPhone...so you aren't different for using Android, when a majority of people use them. This makes zero sense.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 10:24 PM) It's because I AM BIASED! I f***ing hate Apple. I don't know why every time I make a comment about them, people are surprised. I'm not hiding my feeling about them. I hope the company goes bankrupt, and Steve Job's ghost will stop "reinventing" and "revolutionizing" everything. Somehow I think I'll survive with Apple. I don't even eat the fruit, because I hate them so much! Actually, that's a lie. I absolutely love apples. Apple juice, apple cider, apple pie, apple slices. I'll buy ANYTHING apple! (heh, heh, sounds familiar) So you're the exact same as the Apple fanboi's you claim to hate, only on the opposite side. That's pretty dumb.

I sincerely wish Anonymous and groups like it would go die in a f***ing fire already. Morons.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 03:08 PM) The trib is reporting they average lik 76k or something, more than twice as much as the average pay of the people the teachers want to raise taxes on . Oh and the rest of us don't get 4 months vacation. Friend of mine is a teacher, doesn't work 24/7, or hardly at all after hours...never works on vacations, nor does he work all summer long (refuses to do summer school because he says he makes enough money without it). Other friend of mine is married to one, who confirms. A few years ago, he was playing World of Warcraft with us, during the school year, 4 nights a week from 7pm-12 or 1am. That's how busy he was with all this "after school work", which he said was nothing more than lazy teachers bringing work home that they didn't need to bring home, because there is plenty of downtime during the school day to get ALL of that work done...but most of them don't. They text message, make phone calls, or sit around watching TV in the lounges. Anecdotal or not, I call BS on all of this. I went to high school. I saw how much downtime teachers had then, and I'm guessing they have even more now. In all, with a city/state nearing insolvency, this is pretty much the worst time to be strong-arming taxpayers for more. f***wads.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 07:41 PM) Seriously? holy s***, I meant to upload that to Facebook, not Soxtalk. No idea why the f*** I did that on Soxtalk for. BAHAHAHA You are a FB addict. There is something wrong with you.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 01:46 PM) And yet people are still blindly in love with Apple. I hate my generation sometimes. Samsung, HTC, Nokia, Motorola...well, all of them partake in this exact same nonsense...yet you single out Apple? That doesn't make you sound biased or anything. If you aren't aware, please go do some reading...Apple is merely a storyline that generates hits, which is why it's all you read when it comes to patent litigation. Apple is just the latest to join the battle, but they aren't the first...or even the second, third or fourth company involved. They were one of the last involved in these patent wars, but of course you know that...well, actually, you had no idea...based solely on the way you are talking. You had nothing to say when Nokia sued Apple, and won a judgement of over 700 million dollars. Go read up on who is suing whom, and you'll basically see that for every Apple lawsuit, there are 50 of the same from every other company out there you think is awesome.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 7, 2012 -> 10:08 PM) I lived this part. I didn't realize it until one time I said to my dad "Tom's got a pool, they built a room addition on the back just for him and his parents bought him a car. What do they have that we don't?". And my dad replied "credit card debt". I had not much of a clue what he meant so I read up on it and figured it out. Then it made sense why instead of an Izod in high school, I got the damn Sears dragon. I didn't get Levis, I got K-mart stretch denim. I try to pass this knowledge onto my kids, sadly not sure it succeeds all to well some days. I know exactly what you mean with the clothing. Same with my family.

QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) First, I rather disagree with the word "lazy"... I promise to you that I feel rather differently about the situation. (I dunno how much older you are than I am, but I was born in 1980) Is this based on data, or the plural of 'anecdote'? I don't mean lazy in that they're hard working/smart yet unemployed through no fault of their own, as I understand this happens to people, but usually when it happens to people like that, it's temporary. I meant lazy in that they feel entitled to almost everything, and no matter how much they have, it's not enough. And I don't mean entitled via the government, but via their parents and the environment surrounding them. They grew up with a television in their bedrooms, an XBOX, a computer and probably an iPhone or some Android equivalent...none of which they pay for or care about, because if it breaks, someone else will fix it. This also points to our massive success as a nation, the fact that a generation of kids like this can be raised shows we have it all...despite not seeing it. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) I will fervently agree with you that life is infinitely more interesting now. After all, in 1982 (heck, possibly not even in 2000) I wouldn't be having this conversation with you. I find it more interesting...and better. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) Everything around us has not "gotten better", and I am not the "problem", and thankfully it's not just "me" that believes that the world could be better. Yes, it has. Everything around you HAS gotten better. That's not to say it can't get even better than it is, but it IS better in comparison. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) I congratulate your family and father on being able to make it in this country. There's some sort of dichotomy here though, where it seems to be assumed that because you're out of work you're automatically lazy. I reject that black-and-white assertion. I was laid off myself, along with fifty people in 2003... I was not lazy. I was out of work for six months, supporting my family on unemployment insurance and credit cards while letting my college loans reinflate past where they were when I left. I'm *still* paying off those credit cards and the loan, despite paying some of the card balances twice over already. I'm trying to tread lightly here, lest you think that I'm espousing *forcing* companies to keep people employed. I'm not.. I want a dynamic economy where people don't have years of their financial future decided by a company's officers one thousand miles away when it is often in the company's best interests not because the company is in any sort of trouble, but because the company's officers gain an extra $2m from their stock options. I never said that out of work people are automatically lazy. Those that care will be sure to make their situation temporary, not permanent. I was speaking generationally when speaking of laziness. Those born after the 1990's are what I like to call the entitled generation. They grew up with every advantage, yet most did almost nothing with them. The world is passing us by academically (not higher education yet) because our youth just doesn't care about studying or hard work...because almost everything they have was handed to them with no strings attached. They don't understand what it is to struggle, and while we all deserve to take a bow for that, because it means "we've made it", I'm not sure it's good for their upbringings/futures...they've lost that "fire", so to say, to better themselves. When you tell them there are kids that can't afford to go to school so they work in sweatshops for dollars a day, they don't understand...it just doesn't reach them. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) Now, here's the tricky part... what do you do in this situation? Companies should be allowed to remove personnel for good and legitimate reasons, all the way down to "it's just not a good fit". If we had an economy where someone could find another job in four weeks, or eight weeks, it's not a multi-year financial sinkhole for someone who did not deserve it. That's a two way street. There are economic times where companies have nothing to choose from because all the best are employed, giving the employee the advantage, and there are times when the opposite is true. What do we do in that situation? We endure. It's what we've always done. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) And lastly comes the huge jump... we have an economy that's built on consumption. If consumption by all these lower- and middle-class people goes down, then jobs will go down. It's a vicious cycle. We used to have an economy based on exporting... which is why your father was able to keep a job throughout his life, we needed goods in order to export in order to gain money. That's not how money is made anymore... leveraged buyout companies can come into a company with a low initial investment, pull dividend money as they reorganize a company, and sell it off for a profit. In other words, it benefits them to literally let people go. Are these people lazy? Hardly... they helped BUILD the company and give the company the money and credit for the leveraged buyout company to be able to gain the credit to issue bonds. This is dealing with the reality that as technology advanced, the world became "smaller". While it's the same size, the time in which information travels, or how fast goods can ship are infinitely shorter. We are no longer dealing with our own economy...because nobody has their own economy anymore, that's all an illusion. We are moving into a world economy now, and the competition will only grow more fierce as time goes on. Therefore, while our competition for most jobs are localized, the next generation will have it even harder, because they'll be competing with the entire world for practically any/every job available. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) A lot of nuance, I admit, but this is not an isolated part of the economy. It's absolutely frightening, especially to the millions of people who are coping with prices far higher than in the 80s. History is replete with hard times. Yet we've somehow made it. Remember the gas shortage in the 70's? Imagine that today. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) I suppose that this is where the "rising prices" part goes, but it's seriously frightening to face even food costs if you have little money. I'm sure that there are stories of people buying steaks on food stamps, and I am sickened by those stories just as much as you are. On the other hand, if you are able to prove that even 15% of the people are getting too much in food stamp benefits then that means two things. 1) I will be in the group of people to ask the government to reevaluate a program that is spending money unnecessarily, while still 2) realizing that this means that for every three people that are getting too many benefits that there are seventeen people that are surviving on meager rations as best as possible... or worse, not getting enough, and starving. You know, many of our best entrepreneurs came from very humble beginnings, but we still need to give them the tools to succeed. It's not that they're "getting too much", it's how some of them abuse the system, or how some stores abuse the people that use them. I see Liquor Stores with signs in the window that say "we accept food stamps"...seriously? And while some of them aren't even allowed to do so, they do it anyway...only they give the customers 50cents on the dollar. Because why not? However, this is a discussion for another time...as it's an entire can of worms that I don't have time to discuss at the moment. I don't think everyone on welfare is lazy, either. The program is a good program...it's just become bastardized from what it was meant to be. In short, I believe welfare was incepted to help bring people back to their feet when they fall upon hard times...only politicians found a way to use it to keep them on their knees, instead. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) Nope, not what I asked. I asked if you personally were perfectly happy with the past twelve or thirty years. I phrased it that way because while, through hard work and through luck (being in the right place at the right time), I managed to claw my way through the last twelve years into a position where I can finally start paying down my debts, yet it only takes one car accident, one of my family contracting a disease like cancer (or heck, even the flu) and what I've built can be shattered in an agonizing heartbeat. It's not hard to find those stories either. So, if I were to hear the same question, I would have to say that while I'm content with many aspects of life, that doesn't mean that we should stop striving to make the world a better place. Heck, I thought that the marketplace was all about striving to make things better, not just sitting back and declaring everything perfect. That almost sounds... lazy. I am personally happy with the past 12-30 years, yes. This doesn't mean things can't get even better. But I'm not sad about where I am right now, either. QUOTE (Zoogz @ Sep 8, 2012 -> 12:05 AM) And on that note, I agree. This world is absolutely amazing... and I want to leave the world in a better place so that my children have the same access to energy resources so that food can be grown and so that food can go from field to market, so that they can learn anything they want to fit in the best way to an economy that has jobs, and if Heaven forbid they get sick, they don't have to mortgage the rest of their life. I want a vibrant market that doesn't consider all people under company officer level as possible fodder for bigger bonuses. They may not be reality now... but that doesn't mean I should just sit back and dream. Good conversation. Hope to see you around these parts more often.