Your argument is borderline dishonest. Teachers in Finland don't have to worry about a lot of things U.S. teachers do because they're taken care of by the government via taxes, which results in said utilities and services being cheaper. For example: health care. I also bet that Finland teachers don't have to spend their own money on buying supplies for their students, which is sadly really common here.
Teachers in the US typically have full health benefits paid for by the government as well as a pension and other benefits. So using health care as an example is just inaccurate. Finland teachers also pay a higher tax rate than US teachers so their real income is even lower by comparison. The problem isn't compensation, it's that it's almost impossible to fire a bad teacher and therefore the personal incentive for individual teachers is less than it would be if teachers were paid based on outcomes rather than time in service. Teacher quality is unrelated to seniority. Yet pay scales are almost completely biased towards seniority rather than results. The rules of economics don't end at the schoolhouse door.
Are you claiming that teacher's don't have copays? Because that's patently false. How about before Obamacare when you could be kicked off your insurance roles for having a "pre-existing" condition and then you couldn't find healthcare anywhere? Do you think that didn't effect teachers? People in the U.S. pay more for healthcare than people in Finland do when you take into account the amount of taxes they pay. When the costs of programs are spread among the public, things tend to be cheaper.
Let's take a look at the Finland school system. They have strong unions that are allowed to take an active role in helping decide what's taught. They have seniority. They don't care about standardized tests, which differs dramatically from the U.S. They don't have any No Child Left Behind bullshit.
The students defer drastically, as well. All the students in Finland have healthcare. When they are sick they can go to the doctor and not have to worry about a gigantic bill. They have a poverty rate of 5.3% compared to the U.S. which has a rate of 23.1%. I'm also willing to wager that a significantly larger chunk of their population believes in evolution and global warming compared to the U.S. It's hard to learn when your hungry and sick.
" that it's almost impossible to fire a bad teacher and therefore the personal incentive for individual teachers is less than it would be if teachers were paid based on outcomes rather than time in service"
For what it's worth, it's probably even far harder to fire a teacher hired on a permanent basis in Finland.
you're missing the point. No system is failproof: Obviously I have no data to back this up, but I think it's probably easier to close down a charter school that screws up than a non-charter with an equivalent screwup.
It's worth pointing out that the author of that New York Times article, Mike Soraghan, has in his Twitter bio "Frac(k)ing is my life" and that he links to the same articles you linked to.
There's obviously something nefarious going on. Why else would all of these natural gas companies be paying people off and making them sign confidentially agreements?
Side-note: Before today I didn't realize how lax the laws on natural gas companies are. The New York Times has a great graphic on the subject.
"The natural gas industry has exemptions or exclusions from key parts of at least 7 of the 15 major federal environmental laws designed to protect air and water from radioactive and hazardous chemicals. Below are the seven laws listed in the order they were passed."
Northern Irish here. We have a cultural division that aligns roughly with a religious division. The political leanings of Unionism and Nationalism stem from that cultural division - the historical inequalities and injustices. Religion is not the source of the division.
Sometimes it has been part of the problem. It has encouraged the establishment of separate school systems for Catholics and Protestants and it has been used a tool by the extremists to give legitimacy to their violence.
Sometimes it has been part of the solution. It has given emotional healing to victims, and it has motivated community leaders on both sides to push for peace.
I'd suggest that the same is true of most conflicts that you think of as stemming from Islam.
In actual fact, it's pure tribalism. When you are born into one tribe, you adopt the cultural aspects of that tribe. Those include the religious denomination and political beliefs, including hating the other tribe.
In Northern Ireland, religion is correlated to political belief because the two major tribes are divided along those lines. Nobody who believes Northern Ireland should be part of the UK does it because of their interpretation of the Eucharist.
And you could say exactly the same about Islamic terrorists too.
Funny enough, they actually edited that article. I believe the quote was originally something along the administration losing all credibility without the specification on the issues of transparency and accountability.
And this acquisition is brilliant - they acqui-hire, kill competition early for a relatively low price, and get to maintain their cozy duopoly with H&R Block in the tax prep market.
Regardless, it's a pretty sleazy way to do business. And I say we let these types of businesses die if given the chance. Practices like these divert resources (capital, time, manpower, etc.) which only serves to hinder both economic and technological progression. One might argue that some of the technologies that arise from these types of businesses count as advancement, but I would wager that if the same resources were used for creating things that truly simplify life (rather than keep them unnecessarily complicated) we would all be much better off by now. But of course, what's done is done; so to maximize our potential and our throughput in the future, we really need to do our best to prevent businesses from acting similarly.
I'm totally with you on that. The amount of resources wasted is immense, but what are you going to do? Prevent lobbying? Tough luck, where else do politicians get their campaign contributions from?
No really, the political system is broken in that respect, which is why companies like Intuit can pull off things like this.
It would be nice if they actually got the tax laws right on the overly complicated system they protect. Cost my Dad a bit of money on some of their errors.
