Dear Thinker:

Here in Tucson, hordes of striking teachers are standing on street corners in red shirts today, apparently oblivious to the irony of demanding on May Day that the "wealthy" be taxed to pay for the 20% increase promised by the governor.  They either don't care or are unaware that their pinko slips are showing. 

Naturally, trained seals passing by in cars honk in support of the teachers.

Naturally, trained seals in the local media also honk in support of the teachers with their biased coverage.  They don't mention how skyrocketing Medicaid spending has crowded out school spending.  For example, Medicaid spending has grown to 18.5% from 12.4% of the state's budget in just one year.  It's a similar story with respect to pensions for cops and firefighters.

Nor do the seals mention what parochial school teachers are paid.

It's irrelevant to the honkers that Arizona has a much smaller percent of wealthy citizens than California, Mass., New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and other states.  Relatively speaking, we are not a rich state.  In fact, Tucson ranks well blow the national average in household income.

Across the country, teacher unions in states such as Arizona that are below the national average in teacher pay are demanding that pay be increased to the average.  Apparently, knowledge of statistics isn't a requirement for a teaching degree.  If it were, then they would know what happens to the average when everyone below average is perpetually brought up to the average.

By the way, my wife worked for the state for ten years without a pay increase before retiring in Jan.  She left corporate life and took a whopping pay cut to join the state, but she no longer had to travel on business or attend dreadful corporate conferences, so it was a good trade-off.

She and I have extensive training experience and would consider teaching high school classes part-time and pro bono in our areas of expertise, but there are too many restrictions on this, due to union featherbedding.

Anyway, below is a bumper sticker on my car.

Cheers,

Mencken's Ghost