The Curmudgeon Speaks

I find the process of political campaigning very frustrating. Political ads that are simplistic and I know are making false claims have always been an issue that sets me off. If you ou can’t claim that cigarettes are good for you in an ad, why can you make a false claim in a political ad.

I recently encountered an explanation that addressed this topic directly and is worth reviewing. Yes, lying in political ads is allowed and protected. It is important to understand this so you are not confused and don’t reach false conclusions about the ads you watch on television.

I recently watched an interview with an ad expert who was asked about the effectiveness of political ads and what type of ads are most successful. He was also asked about Republican vs. Democratic messaging. He proposed that Democrats don’t understand what works and that they keep trying to explain things. He suggested that productive ads make simple claims and are repeated many times. I could see myself in this analysis. I just don’t believe a lot of issues – e.g., the economy – are simple and careful analysis and evidence offer explanations requiring a different conclusion than what is often claimed in a simple way. I know these people’s eyes may start to glaze over when I try to explain, but I can’t help it. If you want to actually understand, you sometimes have to go a little deeper and invest a little effort in understanding.

So, this is likely to be my last political post before the election. I want to address what seems to be the top political issue as I understand the polls. Despite significant issues such as climate change, inequity, and the right of women to choose, the number one issue seems to be the economy and whether Democratic leaders are responsible for inflation. My mind generates the image of the sticker of Biden pointing at the total for your gas purchase Republicans have added to gas pumps when this claim is made.

There are many facts I think argue that Democrats and especially Democratic leaders are not responsible for high costs and inflation. First, this is a world-wide challenge and it just makes no sense that Pelosi and Biden control world-wide economic issues. Second, alternative explanations seem obvious. Energy problems have been created because of the war in Ukraine and OPEC. I suppose Biden could stop supporting Ukraine, but is this what the American people actually want? We also know that companies providing goods and services are generating record profits suggesting that cost increases to consumers are not totally a function of political decisions.

Have the Democrats done nothing in response to economic challenges? Facts should indicate that multiple steps have been taken sometimes exclusively based on the votes of Democrats and sometimes despite active efforts of the Republicans to block. The effort of President Biden to reduce college student debt makes an obvious example of this second situation. Biden is trying to reduce student loan debt by $10,000 ($20,000 in some situations) and it is being blocked in court by Republications.

The only major economic move I remember from the Trump years was the reduction of more than a trillion dollars in the tax expectation from big companies. The argument was that this would stimulate infrastructure investments and salary increases from these companies. This is not what the companies emphasized and stock buybacks were a common use for the money. Yes, this drove up the value of stocks and those of us with significant holdings in the market benefitted. However, this is an example of the rich getting richer.

Specific efforts by Democrats to address the economy:

Chips bill – effort to bring industries generating computer components back to the U.S.

Inflation Reduction Act – title of the bill makes the focus obvious. Use this link to see who voted for and who was against.

Infrastructure bill – a jobs bill

One final observation. How people understand the economy varies. Yes, we are paying more for gas and eggs. This is obvious. However, consider that the employment rate shows unemployment is the lowest it has been since the ’60s. If you have been unable to find work, this would seem to be a good thing. One of those complexities people don’t want to consider is at play here. When more people work, there is more money to spend which increases inflation. This is what the Fed is trying to address by raising interest rates which make homes and any purchase made with borrowed money more expensive. When interest rates go up inflation goes down, but when money is more expensive to borrow, spending and employment decrease. Who will politicians blame then? Throw in evidence that the increase in jobs is mainly low paying jobs and objections to raising the minimum wage is not a cause many politicians will support and you have an even more complete picture of the economic situation. Turn this into a fifteen second television ad.

Elon Musk’s successful purchase of Twitter and the questionable behavior that has followed has caused users to quit or at least seek an alternative. I am waiting to see what happens and I would be reluctant to leave until after the election season has passed. This seems a critical time and not the time to withdraw. I am also concerned about heavily populated silos and then impact on individuals who receive little else in daily information. This is the reason I have joined and regularly comment on Truth Social.

I am a member of two alternative social platforms – Mastodon (twit.social) and WT.social.

Here are a couple of sources you might explore if you are interested in alternatives.

Verge article on Twitter alternatives

Mastodon – TechCrunch description

Post secondary education describes education that follows high school (in the U.S.). When we hear this phrase most of us probably assume the topic is college or university experiences, but other experiences should be included. A recent CBS Sunday Morning segment focused on trade schools. I would describe the purpose of the segment as increasing the prestige of these programs arguing that the professions require skill and creativity, prepare graduates for professions that can be quite lucrative, and while the programs may require as much time as college education involve paid internships not available to those running up high college debt. If you don’t watch this program, this segment is informative.

I understand the intent of the segment and agree that professions such as plumber and electrician are important, lucrative, and involve cognitive creativity and problem-solving. I also recognize that the graduates of such programs are often underappreciated. 

However, in attempting to dispel myths about trade schools I fear the message of the CBS progam may have promoted other misunderstandings. I am an academic, but that bias aside I see higher education as more than job prep and starting salaries.

Certainly, we see broader goals in high school. I happen to think it is interesting that there is public disagreement about the skills and knowledge that are goals at this level, but at least the disagreement is over what knowledge and values should be developed. College experiences in and outside of the classroom extend this process of exploring culture, values, and interpersonal relationships. I believe you see some of this impact in what has been described as the political divide between college educated and non college educated adults. It would be challenging to separate the factors that led to the decision of what to do after high school from the consequences of educational experiences that follow, but it seems obvious these groups see the world very differently. It is far more than how much money you make doing whatever it is that you do.

Cindy and I have been able to avoid COVID until this morning. I have had a deep cough. I used a self test kit two days ago and generated a negative reading. Symptoms (the cough) have grown a little worse. I had already decided not to attend this morning’s outing because it is raining and I did think I would like walking in a cold rain. Cindy convinced me to take the test the boat makes available (the one with the deeper sinus swab) and this came back positive. 

Cindy is still negative. It would have worked out better if the self test had come out positive because we could just isolate while we were on the boat. We had extended our trip by four days to spend some time not on the boat in Switzerland. If all goes well, we now must stay one day in a hotel and the find a way to catch up and connect with the tour group. I want to delay the long plane flight until I feel better.

A short note. The Pfizer vaccine was developed in Mainz, Germany. This happens to be where we are. As part of the walking tour that included the museum, the guide identified famous residents past and present. We learned that the researchers working with BioNTech (Ozzie and Tureci) responsible for the Pfizer vaccine live and work here. Ironic. No complaints regard the vaccine. So far I am fairly comfortable. 

We have been stranded.

We were returning from watching one of our grandkid’s games when the engine began cutting out and the check engine light came on. This is not a pleasant situation when trying to get through Minneapolis traffic during rush hour. The reliable Dodge Durango now sits in our driveway until mid-October. We have had to cancel a road trip we had scheduled.

Here is the rest of the story. When we purchased this car we added an unlimited warranty. Why not just take the car in? We tried to phone our dealer for an appointment and were told there were no openings until mid-October. Cindy called Dodge to see where the warranty would be good and we were told we could use other Dodge dealerships, but after checking for us we again were told the earliest opening was mid-October.

I am not a car guy, but based on experience as a car owner my guess is that the problem is a tank of bad gas, a clogged fuel filter, or the fuel pump. We could just go to any repair shop and this would make sense if the problem is the gas quality or the fuel filter, but we would have to pay to replace the fuel pump and I am guessing that is pretty expensive. The appointment falls into the category of “diagnostic” according to Dodge and evidently, there aren’t a lot of slots for diagnostic visits.

We have been getting around with my Ranger pickup so we are not totally dependent on walking. I keep wondering what happens to people with one car in a similar situation? You must have to rent a car for a month or so. Is this another example of the recently common problem of not having enough workers with the necessary expertise? Maybe we should not have told them we have an unlimited warranty.

Strikes seem to be everywhere and the influence for me is close to home. First, it was the Teacher’s strike in Minneapolis. Now, it is the Nurse’s Strike. Soon it is predicted to be BNSF (railroad). Two teachers are married to my own kids. Two of my kids work in health care. The railroad is the most cost-effective way to bring resources to the upper midwest. The consequences are immediate.

One of my daughters is a physical therapist with a practice specific to the physical damage done by childhood cancer and chemotherapy. She was very upset last evening being pressed into service to help in the child cancer ward to substitute there for the nurses that would normally care for these children. These are the same children and families she works with as a therapist. I don’t know if physical therapists have a union or not, but she was not pleased with the attitude of those in the nursing union who thought they should have a 30% increase in salary over the next three years and how they decided to pressure the hospital to respond. I understand the hospital offer to be about half of that amount. She cares for the same children, goes to the same funerals for some of her patients, and is a dissertation short of her PhD. (Not DPT) so I respect her opinion on the situation. 

I have done a great deal of thinking about the recent circumstances that have impacted who are commonly called essential workers.  Are essential workers taken for granted? I suppose so. Are they underpaid? Perhaps more accurately, are they underpaid because they are essential. I don’t know and this is what I have been trying to work out for myself. Clearly, nurses working in critical hospital settings can argue that their labor is essential. Does this type of work warrant more money because it is essential? Ask parents how they considered the absence of teachers to care for their children during the pandemic or during a strike. Aside from the obvious mission of educators to educate, one could argue that any productive engagement of children so parents can pursue their own occupations is essential. Part of the reason the economy was thrown into chaos during the COVID pandemic was the lack of care for children. This role in combination with the concern we now have for children being months behind when it comes to normal academic progress clearly justifies the label of essential worker for educators. I really think that many more occupational roles qualify as essential. How about the role migrant workers play in tending and harvesting crops or butchering chickens and turkeys? If you value fresh fruits, pork, and chicken, you should probably consider their labor to be essential. 

Just what is fair when it comes to salaries? Working conditions are important too, but salaries seem to be the issue that eventually becomes the sticking point and what catches the attention of the general public. What should the role played by a union or the immediate impact of a job be on the functioning of others in influencing salaries? When is leverage acceptable to secure the salary you want?

I certainly don’t have the answers, but I have been trying to review the work of some economists whose work seems to focus on this issue. My investigation has been specific to K12 education because I have an interest in this vocation and because the data are available. 

It is important to admit that I have no background in economics. I can read what economists write and I think I understand the logic related to the arguments they make, but I write this without knowing for sure.

One approach economists take is to compare the average salary for one vocation (educators) with the salary for comparable occupations. This makes some sense, but while this logic was explained in most sources I read online, my background always encourages the examination of the methodology applied in research. How are key variables operationalized? So what is meant by “comparable vocations”?

Finding the specifics was not easy, but here are a couple of examples. 

The NEA offers some data on comparable salaries and in one study I located this list of vocations:

Accountants and auditors, Architects, Archivists, curators, and museum technicians, Clergy, Compliance officers, construction, health and safety, and transportation, Computer programmers, Conservation scientists and foresters, Counselors, Editors, news analysts, reporters, and correspondents, Human-resources, training, and labor-relations specialists, Insurance underwriters, Occupational therapists, Other teachers and instructors (excludes preschool, K-12, and postsecondary), Physical therapists, Registered nurses, Technical writers.

I would not include several of these occupations. I know, for example, that physical therapists and occupational therapists are now required to secure a three-year doctorate to be licensed in the states most familiar to me. You can at least begin teaching with a BA/BS. Comparing starting salaries given these different economical demands would not seem appropriate. What about computer programmers? Anyone can learn to program. I programmed in several languages during my career without ever taking a course. However, I also know that getting an undegrad degree in computer science is challenging and while it may anger some I will suggest that getting through such a CS program is more difficult than meeting the requirements for a teaching certificate. 

Here is a different list. This is the collection used by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) I find it more reasonable.

“ …workers with comparable skill requirements, including accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, clergy, personnel officers, and vocational counselors and inspectors …”

Both the studies conducted by the NEA and the EPI concluded that teachers were paid less than those in comparable occupations.

Here is a related argument I find most convincing. Comparable occupations may be difficult to define in a way that does not involve opinions about competitiveness and difficulty of getting through qualification requirements (e.g., what proportion of entering college freshmen have the aptitude in a given major). However,  trends should be informative if comparable groups are compared over time. From this perspective, K12 educators are losing ground. Whether it be starting salary, average salary, etc., the gap between educators and comparable vocations is growing. So avoiding arguments about whether groups being compared are similar, it seems to me that the gap should not be increasing if fairness was really being applied. 

If you are interested in specifics, here is an interactive page allowing users to select their state from a map and obtain data on teacher salaries.

The Biden commitment to forgive part of college student loans has generated a mixed reaction. Republican critics see it as unfair to those who have repaid their loans and those not attending colleges. This is a complicated issue and not a topic I can address fully here. I would like to take on one piece of this puzzle. This piece concerns the cost of higher education and the role tuition serves paying these costs.

I have a specific context from which I view this issue. I spent 17 years as the chairperson of a Psychology department at a small state public university. I use the word university here in a specific way because so many institutions now describe themselves as universities. My situation was at an institution with multiple graduate programs assuming students in most of these graduate programs would commit to their education full time for several years most likely spending their time working on campus. The institution also generated sufficient external funding and published research to be classified as R1/R2. This ranking is important because it plays a large role in the types of external grant funding you can apply for and are in a position to compete for successfully. Both of these factors are important because they strongly influence both how you must spend money and whether you receive external funding.

The funding for the operation of a university of the type I have described comes from multiple sources – tuition, state appropriations, alumni/other contributions, and grants. The point I want to be understood is that several of these categories are competitive and the institution must spend money to compete for funding. The obvious example here is what it takes to qualify as an R1 institution. To qualify in this category, an institution must have the infrastructure and human capital to be regarded as worth the investment from granting agencies. Grants at this level can be massive and typically come with overhead. This category of the money awarded is intended to cover the infrastructure costs of the university at a general level. So money spent here can be applied to cover costs of buildings and labs, library resources, technology infrastructure, etc. The university’s value beyond supporting the grant’s work is that these services benefit all.

Institutions hoping to compete at this level and perhaps not yet there or on the margin of being successful, face a chicken and egg problem. To compete for this type of money, the institution must have the quality of research faculty producing quality work, the infrastructure necessary to implement a sufficient quantity of such work, graduate students who both support and benefit from involvement in significant work, etc.. You must already be successful to secure the resources you need to be successful. There are special funds set aside for aspiring institutions, but you can only promise so many times and you really need funds from other sources to make it into the highest categories. If not already clear, the faculty and grad students capable of doing the work at this level are more expensive to hire and keep. 

Tuition dollars are another category that involves a significant competitive component. The quality of the institution, money available for student support, quality of the athletic programs, living and dining facilities, access to campus health clubs, etc. are all part of the investments that appear to attract some students. The game involves attracting more tuition dollars than what you invest to attract these students. Increasing the tuition and fees charged students can be part of this process and again where does the investment cause the return to head in a negative direction? What do the buildings look like? What does the student Union look like and what amenities does it provide? What meal options are available on student meal plans? Are the tickets to athletic events reduced in price (or free) and how many seats are set aside at the lower price? Does the health club made available to students have plenty of pool space and plenty of basketball courts? Are aerobic classes available and free? Are the programs with low enrollments, high costs, and little chance of securing external funding available just because they provide opportunities that play a role in offering students a total educational experience? 

It is my impression that the state support category has decreased and the tuition expectation has increased. Of the four types of resources I have mentioned, all are interrelated and tuition and state support are related closely. 

Maybe I am wrong about student expectations for services not directly influencing their classroom experiences. I don’t think so, but I also am careful to describe college as a setting that provides important experiences happening outside of the classroom. Money invested to create a diverse student body is part of this experience. Money spent to encourage a life-long interest in a healthy lifestyle is important.

What about tuition? I believe tuition plays a larger role in the total budget than it used to. Maybe this is fair and maybe not. How much should one expect from the state when only a certain proportion of the citizens benefit directly from a given institution? How much of the increase in tuition is a reaction to the expectations of students and would there be ways to change expectations for unnecessary services? How should state funds be allocated across the type of institution I have described here and the institutions falling into other categories? 

My point to everyone jumping to a quick decision about high tuition costs (beyond the issue of loans and loan costs) is that the factors influencing tuition levels and the role tuition plays in college budgets are complicated and there are many interrelated variables that must be considered. 

A couple of informative sources related to the tuition controversy:

Sacramento Bee

Washington Post

The next school year approaches and the big news is that many districts are still searching for teachers. Solutions range from increasing salaries to retain more existing teachers to allowing first responders to teach. As a retired educator, some of the factors associated with the difficulty of finding and retaining qualified staff are easy to understand and accept, but other issues are infuriating and the solutions irrational. The proposal to bring first responders into classrooms is one of the solutions that seems completely bonkers. Yes, people tend to hold first responders in high esteem, but what about the backgrounds of firefighters or police officers would provide the content knowledge and social skills necessary for them to succeed in classrooms?

Yes, certain factors associated with the decline in the number of those interested in teaching make sense. The pandemic was particularly difficult for those adults trying to accomplish traditional duties at a distance or in environments that might be face to face one week and at a distance the next. Salaries that are marginal given the education required and the college debts to repay. Educators must listen to comments about their summers off.

These issues aside, the assumptions of parents spurred on or lead by politicians telling educators what they can and cannot teach would really get to me. Yes, public educators are employees of the people, but they are also trained professionals. State legislatures have proposed 137 laws in 2022. All but one were proposed by Republicans. Most have not passed, but the sentiment and the attitudes that are conveyed have a chilling impact and also encourage parental activities supporting similar expectations.

The analysis defines educational gag orders as “state legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in K–12 and higher education.”

I can see why many teachers feel disrespected.

Efforts to restrict the teaching of racism and bias

State legislatures propose education gag orders

School culture wars

Becker (MN) teachers sue over school gag order

We took the road from southern Oregon to Winnemucca, Nevada, today. It is an interesting trip for several reasons – i.e., the isolation with no gas stations for at least 100 miles, roads with great views and drop offs into deep canyons.

Here is one of our more unusual experiences. We encountered two herds of cattle being driven toward us on the highway. We had to stop and wait while the cattle passed around us. We had brief conversations with the cowboys as they passed. Not your everyday experience.

Additional experiences from our trip are offered on my travel blog – Grabe Travels.

We have not been able to a long road trip for several years, but we are now driving from Minnesota to the west coast. So far things have been going well and we have had a great time watching the flat lands of mid America drift by.

I have a travel blog keeping a record of our trips for the past five years. The blog is photo heavy with personal comments about the locations we visit,, If you are interested, the blog is available at GrabeTravels.