Luring the Best and the Brightest

A Facebook Friend who lives in New Mexico asked the day after Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin, "Why do so many people hate unions, teachers and public servants in general?" 

That was in response to this cartoon: 

My answer was,  "Because they're easy targets and the Repubs have been working on this for decades. They way to defund the Democrats (noun) is to get rid of or defang their funders. Unions have long been big donors to the Democratic (adjective) Party. It's all about money, control and power."


Another Facebook Friend said,  "...all three have done a miserable job in selling themselves and their roles to the public. They need to study the GOP playbook on the utility of lying, cheating and deception. Only way to succeed in these partisan days. A sad commentary on America.


Yet another Facebook Friend commented:  "They hate Unions because unions make corporations follow the laws and uphold the rights of workers. They hate teachers because they help to inform individuals, spread the information about all sides of the issue (good, bad and ugly), because we force people to express themselves and make the THINK instead of being drones. They hate public servants in general because they think of them as leaches of their tax dollars. What they fail to remember is ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS are PUBLIC SERVANTS TOO! And Elected Officials and Administrative position salaries, benefits, and retirement packages far exceed those of your average union trade worker, average teachers ( whole salary with a Masters degree and 5 yrs of experience is about $40,000 yr.), and your police, fire, and other emergency services. The outcome only indicates how uninformed society really is -- These groups want drones and to turn America into a for-profit society."


This brings to mind a conundrum that has long vexed me. 

Corporations and their Boards of Directors -- which are generally composed of other corporations' CEOs -- justify CEOs' obscenely bloated compensation packages by saying it's necessary to pay them that much so they can attract the brightest and the best.

I've heard the same about university chancellors and top administrators, most recently in Wisconsin where the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents rationalized a 10 percent raise for that system's chancellors, while faculty has gone for three years with no raises.

I also keep reading and hearing that state and local elected officials and parents say schools want only the best and the brightest teachers for their children and that schools need to weed out bad and mediocre teachers. Yet their idea -- which a growing majority of the public is embracing -- is to cut teachers' already modest pay (I have yet to see any public school teacher living in a McMansion, driving a Mercedez or owning a yacht), their healthcare and pension benefits.

So the incentive to hire the best and the brightest corporation CEO and university chancellor is money, money and more money, plus expensive perks (which we consumers and taxpayers pay for), but the incentive to attract the best and the brightest teachers is to pay them mediocre salaries, provide a swiss-cheese type of benefits package, make the pay out of pocket for many classroom necessities because school budgets have been slashed, and demonize them.

What kind of thinking is that? And yet voters fall for it.