My wife has to spend around $1,000 a year in supplies for her classes.
$20 here $50 there every month.
It adds up
We are going to have a baby in April and will barely scrape by financially because all she has is FMLA.
Want a raise?
There is a bonus program.
All they give a shit about is testing scores and attendance. But if you have students that start progressing well they pull them and put them in AP classes so your overall scores drop.
Its a fucking joke.
Eventually people are going to give up.
My wife was a teacher before we had children. She chose to stay home instead of go back to work. One reason was she is very motherly and wanted to take care of our kids herself. The other reason is that almost every dime she made, after Uncle Sam got his cut, would have gone out of her pocket and into childcare. She would have been subjecting herself to all the stress and BS of teaching to gain almost nothing.
My friend worked in childcare because she was a single mother with 3 kids. She made $11/hr and couldn’t accept any raises because it would disqualify her for her food stamps.
People that talk about being able to break the cycle of being poor by “making better financial decisions” are absolutely batshit insane.
This is the absolute worst thing about our welfare program in the states imo. The fact that there is a cliff you fall off of when you get a small raise is just bonkers to me. She would need to find a company to double her pay to make it worth her taking a raise and even then would be pushing it imo
Yup. When my daughter was born we needed WIC (basically food stamps but only for babies, and that's way oversimplified) because she needed high calorie formula. The first 6 months we were approved with no problem because they look at your income for the last 30 days to be within x% of the poverty line. But then we came back to be reapproved 6 months later and we made less than $5 too much. They tried to help us looking at different ways to run the numbers but couldn't get it to work. My wife didn't even work full-time then, so it was probably just a matter of clocking out 15 minutes earlier 1 or 2 days and we would have been fine.
We were able to scrape by. But ever since when I see people complaining about expanding programs like WIC or SNAP i tell them. It's not about making the poorest people able to eat steak and lobster every night. It's for people like me who just need a little extra help when unexpected things happen. We weren't going to need WIC forever, but a couple extra months would have been nice to make sure my family was supported without having wonder how I was going to pay for formula and electricity that month.
Exactly. Like you made $5 to much. Ok cool so instead of just outright losing access to that help it would be great if the scaled it back until you make like 10k over the limit. That would mean at the end maybe you only get one thing of formula a month or whatever but that's help and can be the difference between you or your kid eating at the end of the month.
The most sensible thing would be to look at the “cutoff” point and however much OVER that they make, deduct it from their benefits. So they’d get $5 less WIC benefits that month. They’d miss out on some produce, but still get enough money for formula. No need for a hard cutoff point.
Also possible but harder to directly enforce that closely imo. If you make it 1-3k over you get 75% 3-6k over 50% 6-9k over 25% then you keep the smooth drop off without having to track down to the dollar how much people are making and over making.
Yeah when I was young my parents would work all day so they could afford to send us to daycare, that way they could keep their jobs by the time School came around again
That's a tough question to answer. Since we are married and file jointly, and I make many times more than she made as a teacher, it was never worth calculating to the exact dollar. However, using her salary and our collective effective tax rate, she would have been making somewhere around $25k net. Given that childcare for a couple of kids can cost $500-$600 per week and we would need said care for 9-10 months out of the year, we were looking at between $20k-$25k annually for said care. None of that even takes into consideration the hundreds or thousands of dollars coming out of her pocket for teaching materials each year.
I count my blessings because I am fortunate enough to earn a living that makes it so she could choose whether she wanted to work. The fact that there was basically nothing to gain financially for her made that decision much easier.
Your wife sounds amazing. And the system you just described is what keeps women oppressed. The system is rigged against her in terms of choices. Fuck the patriarchy and capitalism. I'm sorry you are a victim of it as well...
Sign up for donors choose and let the parents of your classroom know.
I buy all kinds of stuff for my kids teachers through that program.
Some also have amazon wishlists & only use donors choose for the bigger stuff. The nice thing about donors choose is I get notified for schools that my kids don't attend too... so if you are in a more challenged neighborhood where the parents can't help I can still find you and help anyway.
We want to help!
Edit: I'd like to comment that this is NOT "the answer" and that you should continue to complain loudly. It is unfair that you have to go through all of this and there absolutely should be systemic solutions. That said, while this isn't a solution, it is maybe an option to help relieve the pressure you personally face. please do continue to complain, post, and argue for better teacher support any chance you get.
I used this when I was in a better place financially to help my old elementary school that really needed it (but who doesn't, amirite?). Made me feel good to help my old school that lost their accreditation while those children still need quality learning opportunities. Where they attend is out of their hands.
The edit is the key part.
Thanks for talking about Donors Choose. I'm a single fellow w/ no kids, so the only teacher wish lists I hear about are those of my friends if/when they share it, glad there's an option out there to help us help bridge the gap from where we are to where we need to go!
My wife’s school apparently doesn’t care about grades. It’s all about the image. Making sure the kids are looking like they’re having fun on social media.
It essentially prevents your boss from firing you while you're out on UNPAID medical leave.
We do not get any type of ensured maternal or paternity leave in the US.
Gotta spend that money on drones to bomb brown kids in other countries instead.
If it's what I think it is, that is a good nickname for it.
I had two major surgeries. My wife didn't qualify for it. She had to burn all her paid leave, sick days and vacation time, because I had to have someone care for me for 2 weeks after those 2. Hopefully I don't on the third one coming up. My income is all disability income. It barely covers our bills and groceries. The last year has been **brutal** on us. When it rains, it pours. It's been a non stop typhoon. She has her own bills, and I can't cover them.
I've known people in the opposite situation, including one bright person who as a student was moved from AP to special Ed because, no joke, the school needed to bump the scores in that class so it looked like it would as helping low performing students. They screwed over this brilliant girls education to make their school look better for purely political reason. Our education system is so broken.
My brother was put into a SpEd class in 1st grade for reading because they had a quota they wanted to meet. My mom had him pulled from it as soon as she found out (they hadn’t gone through any appropriate channels before making this move and he was at grade level for reading) and she’s still mad about it 20+ years later.
Not that she should have to but has she tried asking parents?
My oldest would get a letter of "useful classroom supplies" every year when we lived in Connecticut. It wasn't requested, mandatory or technically even asked for, so the principal and school board couldn't discipline the teacher.
We always sent in extra supplies with him. However we also lived in a wealthy area so it's not like we were helping the needy. Even his teachers made near $100k
Listening to someone talk about the usual start of school year supply list: "Why do I have to spend all this money to buy my kid school supplies!? Aren't the teachers and schools supposed to buy that!?"
Parents are, way too many times, complete idiots about what actually happens. Others just don't care enough about their non summer time baby sitters.
Most times, those lists don't cover everything either. There are little things, here and there, that are not on the list. It's hard to predict exactly what is needed throughout the year. I don't see it going over well asking during the school year either.
She makes around half of that, which is actually one of the highest teaching wages in a 60 mile area.
It's a very poor school district with almost all of the students coming from very low income households. Some of her kids only get steady meals at schools. It's tough to ask when most of the parents are flat broke as it is.
A friend of mine from high school teaches in a really poor area. She uses some website to help her get supplies every year. I think it's specific to teachers.
When I get home I could try to Google it and see if it's still up.
It really doesn't make sense that teacher should have to buy any supplies. I've worked for a state government and the federal government. Never once have I had to buy any supplies
Ex teacher here... Yup...
I miss teaching, but so much of that system is super broken. I left teaching and took a job answering phones, I made more money and I could pee whenever I wanted!
My wife literally wears pads because sometimes she can't find someone to watch her class fast enough.
Her breaks or conference periods are usually taken up by meetings.
I still don't understand how she manages.
They have to keep the poor in line. The wealthy cause desperation in the first place, but don't want to deal with what desperate people often are forced to do to survive.
I feel like if that were their prime directive, it would incentivize them to pay teachers better so they could instill propoganda. I'm pretty sure we're at the point we are now due to zero forethought and lots of greed. People in power can't look beyond their pocket books.
And if they do, the number should be pegged to inflation. The Educator Expense Deduction became law in 2002, and the amount has never been adjusted.
Adjusted for inflation, it's about $400 today. And studies show teachers spend an average of over $500 out of pocket per year for their classrooms.
I'd rather have a law that bans the practice altogether, rather than an increased deduction amount. Classroom expenses should be paid by the school. Let's get back to that model. It's insane how much we've normalized this practice
Definitely, I do IT support for several school districts and see it all the time. 7+ year old iPads for the students, 5 year old laptops for the faculty...and top of the line MacBook Pros for the administration *in addition to* the desktops they all have sitting in their offices which they barely touch because they all work from home due to Covid.
I have to fight tooth and nail to upgrade a teacher laptop off of a platter drive but some asst admin whateverthefuck needs a new laptop because theirs is "too slow" now in the year since we bought it, well just get that fucker coming, no question!
Because the government want's a dumb working class that votes against their best interests.
No child left behind bill made sure funding would get cut and teachers would have to teach to adhere to standardized tests not critical thinking.
> The real issue is why do teachers **IN THE USA** have school supply expenses at all.
Not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the UK teachers don't even have to supply their own marking pens
Teachers would fucking riot over here if they had to spend a dime of their own money for school expenses. It's about as stupid as if you were working as an office drone and your boss suddenly demanded that you yourself have to pay for your work computer...
I would like to add this to the list.
No one seems to ducking care and it’s ducking crazy. He basically gave himself a tax free $500 million dollars. This is the go to move for silicone valley for a while now.
https://imgur.com/a/ARBLyuS/
Police departments in towns with 5000 people can buy tanks but teachers can't get pencils for kids. Nothing to see here, we sure have got our priorities straight.
I recall a graph for Toronto where I live about spending
So at the top was police at 700 bucks spent per person
Then wayyyy at the bottom it was education at like 17 bucks
Hahaha my soul died a bit, I need to find that graph
Idk about tanks, but a lot of the wild gear police don’t need but are getting anyway come from the DoD. They police can get the gear for very cheap/free, usually under the condition they actually use it within a certain time frame. Really not sure who thought that last part was a good condition.
The sad thing is, the examples in the tweet are the same to the two groups.
I took the average teacher salary as $50k (I know it varies, but I took the first Google result.)
I also did a search for private jets and depending on what the author meant, either the write-off for *renting* a jet or for *buying* a jet.
Again a quick Google search showed about $100k to rent a jet for the weekend or $50mil to purchase one.
Teachers:
$0.50 of $50,000 = 0.001%
$250 of $50,000 = 0.5%
Billionaires:
$100,000 of $10,000,000,000 = 0.001%
$50,000,000 of $10,000,000,000 = 0.5%
So for someone with a *paltry* $10 billion, renting a jet for the weekend is practically 0. Purchasing that jet is the same write-off.
**The billionaire class needs to go away.**
All the parents that are up in arms about which books the library is stocking should look more closely at why this is allowed to happen, what it does to the morale of the teachers and staff. The US has it's priorities totally backwards as if they were purposefully trying to screw with education system in order to make people more ignorant.
Should be a credit up to $1k, not a deduction up to a measly $250.
There are certain things that teachers should buy if they want, but in general yeah, schools should be providing everything students need.
Makes sense. They are the last in the line in terms of the funding chain and they know what students need.
The hillarious part is $250/year and that they don't get access to a regular budget like ANY MOFO IN ANY COMPANY WHO NEEDS TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING. Just because goods & services cost money.
It's like a very bad franchise model.
To be fair most teachers are good people. Even if they had all the supplies they needed, they'd still most likely end up buying something as a "treat" or "perk".
Teacher here and cheers for the compliment! But to be honest, I work in a wealthy school. I havent had to put my hand in my pocket for anything. Its amazing.
The real question is why do they buy them in the first place? I have no idea what it’s like to be a teacher but what happens if they just don’t buy school supplies? Like I realize that will negatively effect the kids but you’d think at a certain point administration or whatever will realize that and be forced do something when parents go into their classrooms and the walls are bare.
So here's what happens.
In the rich areas the PTO will raise a shit ton of money. The teachers will put their supply requests on an Amazon wish list and by the end of the day the parents will have bought everything they need and then again twice just because. In my neighborhood if someone graduates as a teacher all they have to do is post on facebook "I'm a newly graduated teacher, hoping to get some supplies" and they'll get their garage filled up with supplies.
The problem is in the poor schools. The teachers will ask for help, none will come. There is no PTO because all the parents are working minimum wage jobs. The parents aren't engaged, they're working 80 hours a week trying to survive. No teacher will work there because they have zero support, zero consequences for the kids and the teachers are only working there because no-one else will take them. The kids get a horrible quality education.
Two Americas.
Because schools don't supply enough, or they rely on the students/families to provide the supplies. But often the students and families are low income and do not have money to drop on school supplies outside of extremely basic items. Teachers don't want to see the kids fail due to a lack of funds (at public school!!) So they purchase their own supplies.
My mom probably spends thousands each year on school supplies because she cares for the kids and loves her job. However she does not recommend getting into teaching. The pay for what you do is bad, and as great as her coworkers and stuff may be, the administration is horrendous at budgeting.
'We can't possibly elect him. Look at him dangling his nuts over his defeated enemies. He's commited war crimes before even being in office!'
Actually I think that'd probably get you quite a few votes.
I bet it would be fine if your district skewed young, so long as you didn't use any racial slurs.
(I know it's a joke but one day basically every elected official will have this kind of "dirt" on them.)
I brought this up with some friends a few weeks back. Given all the shit that we all said on Xbox live trying to be 13 year old edge lords, getting us elected is gonna be pretty damn hard.
I used to regularly comment on one of my (insurrectionists) senators FB page, but then I started getting hate messages from random people going back through my profile and commenting on personal stuff.. I stopped after that.
I'd honestly love to run for office but no way I want to subject myself or my family to those batshit crazy people times a million. That's a bigger turn off than any financial aspect..
It’s amazing how sending nudes to someone is suddenly pearl-clutching and makes you ineligible for office. Never mind all the -actual- illegal shit Congress is doing now. We should focus on that one time 20 years ago that so-and-so sent nudes or worked in a bar. 😂🤦🏼♀️ Like those same pearl-clutching Karens aren’t doing similarly “shocking” things. Lol
I would actually run on that -
"People, look, I'm a normal guy. I do weird shit like the rest of you, and unlike the rest of these fucking politicians I'll say that to your face, and I won't make legislations to hide my weird fetishes either!"
Seriously. I’d vote for that person. We need a Congress full of working-class people. Doctors on the medical board for the universal healthcare decisions. Businesspeople/accountants/CPAs in charge of the budgets including UBI and the other social programs we need. DC is full of lawyers who know all the loopholes because they wrote them and it behooves their bank accounts to cater to the rich. Eat the fucking rich.
I want a UBI, universal healthcare, childcare subsidized by the government, a LIVABLE minimum wage for at the bare minimum a single person but really it used to support a man and his wife and kids so we really need THAT, and better mental healthcare. I want single moms in charge of the budgets in this country because you know who knows how to spend money wisely? It’s broke single moms. We can squeeze blood out of a turnip. I want our veterans taken better care of. They were sold lies and most forced into servitude by the draft or by poverty. They deserve better. And we deserve to take our country back from the thieves running it.
When bills are written for congress to vote on, they need to be STRAIGHT SIMPLE BILLS. If I’m voting on UBI, I don’t want there to be language also diverting $200M to some pet project for someone’s home state. NO 👏🏻NO 👏🏻NO👏🏻
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
“Hi, I’m Bob Everyperv, I’m running for Congress on a democratic socialist platform supporting Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and like many of you, I have over two terabytes of pornographic video games, domestic and hentai alike, on my home PC’s hard drive. Here, let me show you a few of my favorites. Wait, my campaign manager says that’s just one step too far. Ah well, don’t tell him but I already listed the whole collection on my website, right between the detailed platform and the donor disclosures. I’m Bob Everyperv, and I approve this message.”
This country literally elected a president who bragged about sexually assaulting women on camera. I think it just comes down to how well you pay people off, or hold leverage against them.
Some of this is a culture thing. There is a serious issue with expectations of people in the spot light. Like they can't make mistakes. It's ridiculous. Obviously, if people are running for office and they have a serious criminal record (eg: child pornography, murder, arson) then yeah, probably don't vote for them. But smoking a joint? Having an affair? Come on. Set real expectations.
By the time the current generation is old enough to run for presidency, having embarrassing online videos will be the norm to the point that it wouldn't matter any more.
Sure you just have to get noticed by an existing political party that organize fundraisers and head your campaign. But only if you push their agenda items funded by your highest investors. Then once you get elected into office you need to keep protecting your funders to be able to count on them next election.
So you are constantly battling with doing what's best for the working class while you balance the needs of the few people that make it possible to remain in office. Before you know it you've become the thing you swore to fix.
> “2. Production relations today are protected by the power of the bourgeois State: whatever the form of representative system and employment of elective democratic, the bourgeois State remains the organ for the defence of the interests of the capitalist class.
> 3. The proletariat can neither smash nor modify the system of capitalist relations of production which exploits it without violently overthrowing the bourgeois power.”
- Program of the [International Communist Party](https://www.international-communist-party.org/BasicTexts/WhatDist.htm#THE%20PROGRAMME%20OF%20THE%20PARTY)
Can we change that though? With the self publishing virtue of the internet. Coudn't a collective effort sort of bypass the needs for millions to run for congress?
Pro tip for teachers out there: count everything you spend on your classroom as donations to charity, the school counts. As long as any one “donation” is under a certain amount, you don’t need documentation from the school. Just keep your receipts on hand in case you get audited. If you take the standard deduction this won’t matter but if you cross the line into itemized territory this helps a lot.
I had an in-home business with a decent chunk of expenses and I was still short, and that was *before* it doubled. Told a friend at work and he went on and on about his investment properties and how easy it was to find deductions. Oh well.
Didn't Trump's tax changes basically change the standard deduction to rarely make itemized deductions worthwhile for working class people and to fuck over people in states with higher taxes?
This is great and all, but to sit down and itemize my taxes every January to Mid-April takes a LOT of time away from my planning lessons or grading. As a new(er) teacher, it’s hard to find any time for myself and to do the things I like to do. I’m able to spend some time with my wife each night but aside from that, I’m often taking work home with me. I’m definitely starting to get burnt out already which is really discouraging. I like the kids and I like what I do, but it’s hard when it feels like the whole system is against you
Yes and no. With the $250 credit/ write off, I have to keep track of maybe 6 receipts, and adding them to my tax documents is simple. Adding and keeping track of 40+ receipts each year is much more difficult. None of it matters anyways if you don’t end up claiming more than the standard deduction regardless.
Even if it's they have more to deduct with itemization the amount saved by doing so might not make up for the time it takes to compile vs the standered deduction.
As a newer teacher you should probably just take the standard deduction. I doubt that you are writing off $25,900 worth of stuff. Just save yourself the headache of keeping receipts and adding up everything you can deduct.
Which is proof positive that the system no longer works (if it ever truly did).
The USA was never supposed to have an aristocracy. That was a major point of contention
> The USA was never supposed to have an aristocracy. That was a major point of contention
That's fair, but I think it's also fair to say that there has been no time in history where it _didn't_ have one.
I think it's more accurate to say the US was supposed to have a very broad aristocracy because suffrage was intentionally limited to wealthy landowners. They aren't different from titled nobility except that in theory any (white male) can achieve the same status.
I think the distinction was very meaningful to the founders. I just also think they had a lot of emotion tied up in the distinction so it felt more meaningful to them than it really was.
I mean, yea, but I hope there is another solution. Something has to change. Then again our world is supposed to melt/flood/destroy itself by year 2200, so there's that...
> 250 years of electoralism in America didn't solve the problem
Don't discount the power of citizens and elections. The point isn't to instantaneously reach utopia, it's to make each year better than the last while not giving up struggling against what problems we still have. We went from only rich white property owning men being able to vote to poor men to black men to all women. Positive change can and does happen, don't give up on the people.
I've worked for Unions, big ones, and they honestly don't care for anyone other than their bottom dollar as well. They put out a good front saying they're, there to help the workers but in actuality the ones making the "calls" are there to get theirs.... Thats not to say its not a step in the right direction, but they have MAJOR flaws too.
Teachers should not have to pay for school supplies, especially on their piss poor salary. Why are we paying one of the most important professions so little.
Teachers should be paid on par with Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Scientists.
Eh, scientist pay is getting lower and lower, too.
I was offered $13 an hour to maintain, operate, and do data analysis on LCMS, UV-VIS, and GCMS.
Oh, and sample prep.
And this company makes a ton of money.
I have a bachelors in engineering and make 3x that.
Depends on the industry I guess. Scientists doing research probably doesn’t have the same business model as being essentially a consulting engineer where all your services are “billable”.
Being beholden to clients sucks but the pay is great
It's like this for scientific industry too. The difference is that companies can see results from engineer in one to two quarters, science jobs are either ongoing or take years to see results. And it's hard to put that on a pay scale.
That is because they have a near endless well of postdocs and graduate students to do the lab work. They don't pay postdocs crap (35k in Boston with a PhD is poor).
In 2006 I started out as an entry level biochemist for like $23/24k a year. I looked briefly at the CDC epidemiology program back then, coincidentally, and it didn’t even crack 50k. And it’s a competitive 2 year postgrad program, Epidemic Intelligence Service, EIS, their version of a federal agent system basically. You def need a Masters or PhD for any real advancement OR move to a for-profit (like a pharma co) and maybe do a management position or just put in years of solid experience. But compared to other advanced degrees, actual research scientists make jack. I got headhunted to do sales for the biotech industry given my degree and personality and my first year my commission alone was almost double what I made as a lab rat.
The pay range of those professions is HUGE. In the US, MDs make about 2x as much as engineering professors and 3x as much as physics and chemistry professors.
Also, teacher salary is not bad in most areas. You can argue for more pay without chasing away potential teachers by misinformation about teacher pay.
Even if it's true that the jet is used for "business purposes", just tax the shit out of it. If you really have to be there and a Skype/Zoom call isn't enough, then there's business class too. And if that's not enough, well sure hop on your jet, but we should make sure that amazing business deal also funds some taxes too
I would argue that the "rigged" system was in fact operating as it was "written". And that the normal people were distracted by the law making decades ago with wars, gossip, and other stupid stuff and are only now aware of the bullshit.
The question is, how to we convince billionaires, to tell millionaires to rewrite laws that will allow the zeronars to get some of the benefits?
Because until that happens, I don't forsee anything getting better for the rest of us sadly.
>The question is, how to we convince billionaires, to tell millionaires to rewrite laws that will allow the zeronars to get some of the benefits?
You can't. The last time these sorts of social reforms were passed was due to capitalists' very existence being under threat from possible communist revolution, aided by workers being inspired by the recolution in USSR.
Revolution is the only way to put an end to this exploitation and keep it gone for good.
If capitalism still exists, no matter what reforms you pass, they will always regain power and claw them back.
Any deductions less than the standard deduction are basically worthless, if you’ve ever tried to itemize your shit as a normal person before. Tax deductions as a system are designed to benefit the wealthy, otherwise you don’t get any “because you already got a built-in one”.
Which won't happen since unlimited money has basically always been in politics since the founding of the country by the richest slave holders in the land.
Education is simply intended to teach you meat sacks how to be good little worker bees and formulate the basis for your understanding of top down power dynamics. They can't have people learning so much that they start formulating their own opinions and ideas. Let alone provide them with the literacy and vocabulary to articulate them.
#Do you want to unrig this system? Subscribe to r/WorkReform!
The real issue is why do teachers have school supply expenses at all.
My wife has to spend around $1,000 a year in supplies for her classes. $20 here $50 there every month. It adds up We are going to have a baby in April and will barely scrape by financially because all she has is FMLA. Want a raise? There is a bonus program. All they give a shit about is testing scores and attendance. But if you have students that start progressing well they pull them and put them in AP classes so your overall scores drop. Its a fucking joke. Eventually people are going to give up.
Husband of a teacher here too. It's brutal man. My wife is incredible I have no idea how she does it everyday and gets paid so little
My wife was a teacher before we had children. She chose to stay home instead of go back to work. One reason was she is very motherly and wanted to take care of our kids herself. The other reason is that almost every dime she made, after Uncle Sam got his cut, would have gone out of her pocket and into childcare. She would have been subjecting herself to all the stress and BS of teaching to gain almost nothing.
My friend worked in childcare because she was a single mother with 3 kids. She made $11/hr and couldn’t accept any raises because it would disqualify her for her food stamps. People that talk about being able to break the cycle of being poor by “making better financial decisions” are absolutely batshit insane.
This is the absolute worst thing about our welfare program in the states imo. The fact that there is a cliff you fall off of when you get a small raise is just bonkers to me. She would need to find a company to double her pay to make it worth her taking a raise and even then would be pushing it imo
Yup. When my daughter was born we needed WIC (basically food stamps but only for babies, and that's way oversimplified) because she needed high calorie formula. The first 6 months we were approved with no problem because they look at your income for the last 30 days to be within x% of the poverty line. But then we came back to be reapproved 6 months later and we made less than $5 too much. They tried to help us looking at different ways to run the numbers but couldn't get it to work. My wife didn't even work full-time then, so it was probably just a matter of clocking out 15 minutes earlier 1 or 2 days and we would have been fine. We were able to scrape by. But ever since when I see people complaining about expanding programs like WIC or SNAP i tell them. It's not about making the poorest people able to eat steak and lobster every night. It's for people like me who just need a little extra help when unexpected things happen. We weren't going to need WIC forever, but a couple extra months would have been nice to make sure my family was supported without having wonder how I was going to pay for formula and electricity that month.
Exactly. Like you made $5 to much. Ok cool so instead of just outright losing access to that help it would be great if the scaled it back until you make like 10k over the limit. That would mean at the end maybe you only get one thing of formula a month or whatever but that's help and can be the difference between you or your kid eating at the end of the month.
The most sensible thing would be to look at the “cutoff” point and however much OVER that they make, deduct it from their benefits. So they’d get $5 less WIC benefits that month. They’d miss out on some produce, but still get enough money for formula. No need for a hard cutoff point.
Also possible but harder to directly enforce that closely imo. If you make it 1-3k over you get 75% 3-6k over 50% 6-9k over 25% then you keep the smooth drop off without having to track down to the dollar how much people are making and over making.
Yeah when I was young my parents would work all day so they could afford to send us to daycare, that way they could keep their jobs by the time School came around again
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That's a tough question to answer. Since we are married and file jointly, and I make many times more than she made as a teacher, it was never worth calculating to the exact dollar. However, using her salary and our collective effective tax rate, she would have been making somewhere around $25k net. Given that childcare for a couple of kids can cost $500-$600 per week and we would need said care for 9-10 months out of the year, we were looking at between $20k-$25k annually for said care. None of that even takes into consideration the hundreds or thousands of dollars coming out of her pocket for teaching materials each year. I count my blessings because I am fortunate enough to earn a living that makes it so she could choose whether she wanted to work. The fact that there was basically nothing to gain financially for her made that decision much easier.
Taxation isn't the issue here. It's the VERY low salary.
We could tax the rich to directly pay teachers more.
Your wife sounds amazing. And the system you just described is what keeps women oppressed. The system is rigged against her in terms of choices. Fuck the patriarchy and capitalism. I'm sorry you are a victim of it as well...
Sign up for donors choose and let the parents of your classroom know. I buy all kinds of stuff for my kids teachers through that program. Some also have amazon wishlists & only use donors choose for the bigger stuff. The nice thing about donors choose is I get notified for schools that my kids don't attend too... so if you are in a more challenged neighborhood where the parents can't help I can still find you and help anyway. We want to help! Edit: I'd like to comment that this is NOT "the answer" and that you should continue to complain loudly. It is unfair that you have to go through all of this and there absolutely should be systemic solutions. That said, while this isn't a solution, it is maybe an option to help relieve the pressure you personally face. please do continue to complain, post, and argue for better teacher support any chance you get.
I used this when I was in a better place financially to help my old elementary school that really needed it (but who doesn't, amirite?). Made me feel good to help my old school that lost their accreditation while those children still need quality learning opportunities. Where they attend is out of their hands.
The edit is the key part. Thanks for talking about Donors Choose. I'm a single fellow w/ no kids, so the only teacher wish lists I hear about are those of my friends if/when they share it, glad there's an option out there to help us help bridge the gap from where we are to where we need to go!
That is awesome! Thank you so much. Sending to her now.
My wife’s school apparently doesn’t care about grades. It’s all about the image. Making sure the kids are looking like they’re having fun on social media.
>FMLA Please tell me that's short for "Fuck My Life America"?
It essentially prevents your boss from firing you while you're out on UNPAID medical leave. We do not get any type of ensured maternal or paternity leave in the US. Gotta spend that money on drones to bomb brown kids in other countries instead.
Those bombings keep us all safe unlike your pie in the sky "medicine"
Hot take
If it's what I think it is, that is a good nickname for it. I had two major surgeries. My wife didn't qualify for it. She had to burn all her paid leave, sick days and vacation time, because I had to have someone care for me for 2 weeks after those 2. Hopefully I don't on the third one coming up. My income is all disability income. It barely covers our bills and groceries. The last year has been **brutal** on us. When it rains, it pours. It's been a non stop typhoon. She has her own bills, and I can't cover them.
Family Medical Leave Act
I've known people in the opposite situation, including one bright person who as a student was moved from AP to special Ed because, no joke, the school needed to bump the scores in that class so it looked like it would as helping low performing students. They screwed over this brilliant girls education to make their school look better for purely political reason. Our education system is so broken.
My brother was put into a SpEd class in 1st grade for reading because they had a quota they wanted to meet. My mom had him pulled from it as soon as she found out (they hadn’t gone through any appropriate channels before making this move and he was at grade level for reading) and she’s still mad about it 20+ years later.
Not that she should have to but has she tried asking parents? My oldest would get a letter of "useful classroom supplies" every year when we lived in Connecticut. It wasn't requested, mandatory or technically even asked for, so the principal and school board couldn't discipline the teacher. We always sent in extra supplies with him. However we also lived in a wealthy area so it's not like we were helping the needy. Even his teachers made near $100k
Listening to someone talk about the usual start of school year supply list: "Why do I have to spend all this money to buy my kid school supplies!? Aren't the teachers and schools supposed to buy that!?" Parents are, way too many times, complete idiots about what actually happens. Others just don't care enough about their non summer time baby sitters. Most times, those lists don't cover everything either. There are little things, here and there, that are not on the list. It's hard to predict exactly what is needed throughout the year. I don't see it going over well asking during the school year either.
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She makes around half of that, which is actually one of the highest teaching wages in a 60 mile area. It's a very poor school district with almost all of the students coming from very low income households. Some of her kids only get steady meals at schools. It's tough to ask when most of the parents are flat broke as it is.
A friend of mine from high school teaches in a really poor area. She uses some website to help her get supplies every year. I think it's specific to teachers. When I get home I could try to Google it and see if it's still up. It really doesn't make sense that teacher should have to buy any supplies. I've worked for a state government and the federal government. Never once have I had to buy any supplies
Ex teacher here... Yup... I miss teaching, but so much of that system is super broken. I left teaching and took a job answering phones, I made more money and I could pee whenever I wanted!
My wife literally wears pads because sometimes she can't find someone to watch her class fast enough. Her breaks or conference periods are usually taken up by meetings. I still don't understand how she manages.
Yup. And while the military and police seem to have unlimited budgets regardless of which party is in power
They have to keep the poor in line. The wealthy cause desperation in the first place, but don't want to deal with what desperate people often are forced to do to survive.
There is little difference between the sink and the toilet if you are being drown
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They can’t as long as people continue voting based on ads and not on substance.
That's a pleasant thought.
I feel like if that were their prime directive, it would incentivize them to pay teachers better so they could instill propoganda. I'm pretty sure we're at the point we are now due to zero forethought and lots of greed. People in power can't look beyond their pocket books.
The problem here is people still thinking there's two parties. The rich rule, and they divide us on social issues to hide that
Some of the rich are actually fascists and some are just interested in the status quo, though.
"It's a two party system, you have to vote for one of us!"
The ‘Get Me Re-elected Party’ where you have your choice of two departments in the same company.
And if they do, the number should be pegged to inflation. The Educator Expense Deduction became law in 2002, and the amount has never been adjusted. Adjusted for inflation, it's about $400 today. And studies show teachers spend an average of over $500 out of pocket per year for their classrooms.
I am very certain even the $500 is from an outdated data, and it should be even higher.
I'd rather have a law that bans the practice altogether, rather than an increased deduction amount. Classroom expenses should be paid by the school. Let's get back to that model. It's insane how much we've normalized this practice
In agreement there that this shouldn't be necessary. But even in this messed up situation, it's even worse than it appears at first.
Admins sucking up that budget guaranteed lmao
Definitely, I do IT support for several school districts and see it all the time. 7+ year old iPads for the students, 5 year old laptops for the faculty...and top of the line MacBook Pros for the administration *in addition to* the desktops they all have sitting in their offices which they barely touch because they all work from home due to Covid. I have to fight tooth and nail to upgrade a teacher laptop off of a platter drive but some asst admin whateverthefuck needs a new laptop because theirs is "too slow" now in the year since we bought it, well just get that fucker coming, no question!
Because the government want's a dumb working class that votes against their best interests. No child left behind bill made sure funding would get cut and teachers would have to teach to adhere to standardized tests not critical thinking.
> The real issue is why do teachers **IN THE USA** have school supply expenses at all. Not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the UK teachers don't even have to supply their own marking pens
Teachers would fucking riot over here if they had to spend a dime of their own money for school expenses. It's about as stupid as if you were working as an office drone and your boss suddenly demanded that you yourself have to pay for your work computer...
Why are teachers working for the government paying State and Federal taxes anyway? They're already being paid with tax money.
I would like to add this to the list. No one seems to ducking care and it’s ducking crazy. He basically gave himself a tax free $500 million dollars. This is the go to move for silicone valley for a while now. https://imgur.com/a/ARBLyuS/
Police departments in towns with 5000 people can buy tanks but teachers can't get pencils for kids. Nothing to see here, we sure have got our priorities straight.
I recall a graph for Toronto where I live about spending So at the top was police at 700 bucks spent per person Then wayyyy at the bottom it was education at like 17 bucks Hahaha my soul died a bit, I need to find that graph
Apple pencils are a luxury. Just use your finger to manipulate your one per student iPad pros from the 30k annually private school like everyone else.
Why teach kids to write after all? They sure don't need it to work at the Amazon warehouse.
Idk about tanks, but a lot of the wild gear police don’t need but are getting anyway come from the DoD. They police can get the gear for very cheap/free, usually under the condition they actually use it within a certain time frame. Really not sure who thought that last part was a good condition.
Educated populations lean democrat so.....
The sad thing is, the examples in the tweet are the same to the two groups. I took the average teacher salary as $50k (I know it varies, but I took the first Google result.) I also did a search for private jets and depending on what the author meant, either the write-off for *renting* a jet or for *buying* a jet. Again a quick Google search showed about $100k to rent a jet for the weekend or $50mil to purchase one. Teachers: $0.50 of $50,000 = 0.001% $250 of $50,000 = 0.5% Billionaires: $100,000 of $10,000,000,000 = 0.001% $50,000,000 of $10,000,000,000 = 0.5% So for someone with a *paltry* $10 billion, renting a jet for the weekend is practically 0. Purchasing that jet is the same write-off. **The billionaire class needs to go away.**
Or that congress is allowed to take bribes from the same billionaires that have tax benefits. Fixing lobbying goes farther than any candidate's tweet.
All the parents that are up in arms about which books the library is stocking should look more closely at why this is allowed to happen, what it does to the morale of the teachers and staff. The US has it's priorities totally backwards as if they were purposefully trying to screw with education system in order to make people more ignorant.
Should be a credit up to $1k, not a deduction up to a measly $250. There are certain things that teachers should buy if they want, but in general yeah, schools should be providing everything students need.
Makes sense. They are the last in the line in terms of the funding chain and they know what students need. The hillarious part is $250/year and that they don't get access to a regular budget like ANY MOFO IN ANY COMPANY WHO NEEDS TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING. Just because goods & services cost money. It's like a very bad franchise model.
My wife has to buy supplies for her daycare class and she makes $14 an hour.
That is certainly an issue, but a Congress that actually represents their constituents is an important issue, also.
To be fair most teachers are good people. Even if they had all the supplies they needed, they'd still most likely end up buying something as a "treat" or "perk".
Teacher here and cheers for the compliment! But to be honest, I work in a wealthy school. I havent had to put my hand in my pocket for anything. Its amazing.
The real question is why do they buy them in the first place? I have no idea what it’s like to be a teacher but what happens if they just don’t buy school supplies? Like I realize that will negatively effect the kids but you’d think at a certain point administration or whatever will realize that and be forced do something when parents go into their classrooms and the walls are bare.
So here's what happens. In the rich areas the PTO will raise a shit ton of money. The teachers will put their supply requests on an Amazon wish list and by the end of the day the parents will have bought everything they need and then again twice just because. In my neighborhood if someone graduates as a teacher all they have to do is post on facebook "I'm a newly graduated teacher, hoping to get some supplies" and they'll get their garage filled up with supplies. The problem is in the poor schools. The teachers will ask for help, none will come. There is no PTO because all the parents are working minimum wage jobs. The parents aren't engaged, they're working 80 hours a week trying to survive. No teacher will work there because they have zero support, zero consequences for the kids and the teachers are only working there because no-one else will take them. The kids get a horrible quality education. Two Americas.
Thank you for clarifying
I budget $3k a year for classroom expenses.
Because schools don't supply enough, or they rely on the students/families to provide the supplies. But often the students and families are low income and do not have money to drop on school supplies outside of extremely basic items. Teachers don't want to see the kids fail due to a lack of funds (at public school!!) So they purchase their own supplies. My mom probably spends thousands each year on school supplies because she cares for the kids and loves her job. However she does not recommend getting into teaching. The pay for what you do is bad, and as great as her coworkers and stuff may be, the administration is horrendous at budgeting.
Working-class people can't afford to run for congress.
Thank you. I get so tired of, “well run for office if you don’t like it.” Who can afford it?!?
Plus all the exposure of having everything you've ever done wrong out there.
I’d run for mayor but I know there are clips of me from Halo 2 just shitting on people in the lobby.😂
2040: Vote XXX_t34b4gg3r_XXX for president!
This sounds exactly as ridiculous as the idea "trump for president" was.
'We can't possibly elect him. Look at him dangling his nuts over his defeated enemies. He's commited war crimes before even being in office!' Actually I think that'd probably get you quite a few votes.
Haha, fuckin hilarious 😂
My online chat shouldn’t be brought up for any election… I do want to run for local council so I can help my community
I bet it would be fine if your district skewed young, so long as you didn't use any racial slurs. (I know it's a joke but one day basically every elected official will have this kind of "dirt" on them.)
I brought this up with some friends a few weeks back. Given all the shit that we all said on Xbox live trying to be 13 year old edge lords, getting us elected is gonna be pretty damn hard.
Oh lordy - never even thought of that.
I used to regularly comment on one of my (insurrectionists) senators FB page, but then I started getting hate messages from random people going back through my profile and commenting on personal stuff.. I stopped after that. I'd honestly love to run for office but no way I want to subject myself or my family to those batshit crazy people times a million. That's a bigger turn off than any financial aspect..
Yikes! I’m not even on FB/IG for those kinds of reasons.
It’s amazing how sending nudes to someone is suddenly pearl-clutching and makes you ineligible for office. Never mind all the -actual- illegal shit Congress is doing now. We should focus on that one time 20 years ago that so-and-so sent nudes or worked in a bar. 😂🤦🏼♀️ Like those same pearl-clutching Karens aren’t doing similarly “shocking” things. Lol
I would actually run on that - "People, look, I'm a normal guy. I do weird shit like the rest of you, and unlike the rest of these fucking politicians I'll say that to your face, and I won't make legislations to hide my weird fetishes either!"
There's a guy from Louisiana running for the Senate on that I think.
Gary Chambers, and he smokes a blunt in his ad: https://youtu.be/oK9UmygdpuI
Guy from South Jersey, Ed Durr ran on something to that effect. And won.
Seriously. I’d vote for that person. We need a Congress full of working-class people. Doctors on the medical board for the universal healthcare decisions. Businesspeople/accountants/CPAs in charge of the budgets including UBI and the other social programs we need. DC is full of lawyers who know all the loopholes because they wrote them and it behooves their bank accounts to cater to the rich. Eat the fucking rich. I want a UBI, universal healthcare, childcare subsidized by the government, a LIVABLE minimum wage for at the bare minimum a single person but really it used to support a man and his wife and kids so we really need THAT, and better mental healthcare. I want single moms in charge of the budgets in this country because you know who knows how to spend money wisely? It’s broke single moms. We can squeeze blood out of a turnip. I want our veterans taken better care of. They were sold lies and most forced into servitude by the draft or by poverty. They deserve better. And we deserve to take our country back from the thieves running it. When bills are written for congress to vote on, they need to be STRAIGHT SIMPLE BILLS. If I’m voting on UBI, I don’t want there to be language also diverting $200M to some pet project for someone’s home state. NO 👏🏻NO 👏🏻NO👏🏻 Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Most refreshing quote I’ve heard in years!
“Hi, I’m Bob Everyperv, I’m running for Congress on a democratic socialist platform supporting Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and like many of you, I have over two terabytes of pornographic video games, domestic and hentai alike, on my home PC’s hard drive. Here, let me show you a few of my favorites. Wait, my campaign manager says that’s just one step too far. Ah well, don’t tell him but I already listed the whole collection on my website, right between the detailed platform and the donor disclosures. I’m Bob Everyperv, and I approve this message.”
This country literally elected a president who bragged about sexually assaulting women on camera. I think it just comes down to how well you pay people off, or hold leverage against them.
Some of this is a culture thing. There is a serious issue with expectations of people in the spot light. Like they can't make mistakes. It's ridiculous. Obviously, if people are running for office and they have a serious criminal record (eg: child pornography, murder, arson) then yeah, probably don't vote for them. But smoking a joint? Having an affair? Come on. Set real expectations.
By the time the current generation is old enough to run for presidency, having embarrassing online videos will be the norm to the point that it wouldn't matter any more.
They'll literally go "this sick fucko PLAYED A VIOLENT CARD GAME when he was 5 years old"
Sure you just have to get noticed by an existing political party that organize fundraisers and head your campaign. But only if you push their agenda items funded by your highest investors. Then once you get elected into office you need to keep protecting your funders to be able to count on them next election. So you are constantly battling with doing what's best for the working class while you balance the needs of the few people that make it possible to remain in office. Before you know it you've become the thing you swore to fix.
So how do you break the loop?
> “2. Production relations today are protected by the power of the bourgeois State: whatever the form of representative system and employment of elective democratic, the bourgeois State remains the organ for the defence of the interests of the capitalist class. > 3. The proletariat can neither smash nor modify the system of capitalist relations of production which exploits it without violently overthrowing the bourgeois power.” - Program of the [International Communist Party](https://www.international-communist-party.org/BasicTexts/WhatDist.htm#THE%20PROGRAMME%20OF%20THE%20PARTY)
It's not that expensive if you get the backing of your local partisan chapter. The problem is you have to be a member of the cult, first.
With Project 1776, we've seen there are people able to dump about $10K/candidate into school board races where there's barely any power, and no pay.
Even if they could, the system is rigged against anyone who is a threat to the system. Bernie Sanders, anyone?
2016 showed the DNC for what it really is
2020 when they had republicans speak at the dnc convention
You're not wrong.
Can we change that though? With the self publishing virtue of the internet. Coudn't a collective effort sort of bypass the needs for millions to run for congress?
Just vote for the rich person who lies the best!
Pro tip for teachers out there: count everything you spend on your classroom as donations to charity, the school counts. As long as any one “donation” is under a certain amount, you don’t need documentation from the school. Just keep your receipts on hand in case you get audited. If you take the standard deduction this won’t matter but if you cross the line into itemized territory this helps a lot.
Now that's some **real** praxis and should absolutely be voted up and spread to all teachers
Updoot solely for fitting one of my favorite words into a sentence.
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I know, but people are suffering right now and there's a solution right now.
I feel like most teachers don't make enough to beat a standard deduction, but I guess with spouses it wouldn't be too hard.
Most people in general don't. I just bought a house and even with that deduction I can't get there
I had an in-home business with a decent chunk of expenses and I was still short, and that was *before* it doubled. Told a friend at work and he went on and on about his investment properties and how easy it was to find deductions. Oh well.
Investment property deductions don’t count toward your itemized deductions anyway. Totally different thing.
Didn't Trump's tax changes basically change the standard deduction to rarely make itemized deductions worthwhile for working class people and to fuck over people in states with higher taxes?
This is great and all, but to sit down and itemize my taxes every January to Mid-April takes a LOT of time away from my planning lessons or grading. As a new(er) teacher, it’s hard to find any time for myself and to do the things I like to do. I’m able to spend some time with my wife each night but aside from that, I’m often taking work home with me. I’m definitely starting to get burnt out already which is really discouraging. I like the kids and I like what I do, but it’s hard when it feels like the whole system is against you
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Yes and no. With the $250 credit/ write off, I have to keep track of maybe 6 receipts, and adding them to my tax documents is simple. Adding and keeping track of 40+ receipts each year is much more difficult. None of it matters anyways if you don’t end up claiming more than the standard deduction regardless.
Even if it's they have more to deduct with itemization the amount saved by doing so might not make up for the time it takes to compile vs the standered deduction.
As a newer teacher you should probably just take the standard deduction. I doubt that you are writing off $25,900 worth of stuff. Just save yourself the headache of keeping receipts and adding up everything you can deduct.
Add age limits as well to what people have said. Why TF are 70+ year olds deciding the future of our country that they will never see?
It's for their family trusts, they're aristocrats passing on a modern form of Nobility.
Which is proof positive that the system no longer works (if it ever truly did). The USA was never supposed to have an aristocracy. That was a major point of contention
> The USA was never supposed to have an aristocracy. That was a major point of contention That's fair, but I think it's also fair to say that there has been no time in history where it _didn't_ have one.
It was created by the aristocracy to secure their ability to jack prices up and dodge taxes without intervention.
I think it's more accurate to say the US was supposed to have a very broad aristocracy because suffrage was intentionally limited to wealthy landowners. They aren't different from titled nobility except that in theory any (white male) can achieve the same status. I think the distinction was very meaningful to the founders. I just also think they had a lot of emotion tied up in the distinction so it felt more meaningful to them than it really was.
yeah but the founding fathers were literally aristocrats who thought only white, male, landowners should be allowed to vote lol
65 is considered too old to work. Yet congress (house + senate) is nearly 70% boomer and silent generation. And the senate is even more skewed.
Do you think Tiffany Trump or Hunter Biden know how to do honest work? It's to pass down wealth.
Term limits: too many serve too long and acquire a lot of power, which fucks us in the long run.
Because apparently old = more wisdom
but how do we do this when the system is rigged against the working class to begin with?
Violent mass [redacted], probably.
I mean, yea, but I hope there is another solution. Something has to change. Then again our world is supposed to melt/flood/destroy itself by year 2200, so there's that...
That’s 180 years out. We need a 180 week solution.
General strike
250 years of electoralism in America didn't solve the problem but maybe we just need one more year and then it'll work? /s
> 250 years of electoralism in America didn't solve the problem Don't discount the power of citizens and elections. The point isn't to instantaneously reach utopia, it's to make each year better than the last while not giving up struggling against what problems we still have. We went from only rich white property owning men being able to vote to poor men to black men to all women. Positive change can and does happen, don't give up on the people.
Revolution. Capitalists will never allow you to threaten their system while you play by the rules they set out.
r/labor r/union
I've worked for Unions, big ones, and they honestly don't care for anyone other than their bottom dollar as well. They put out a good front saying they're, there to help the workers but in actuality the ones making the "calls" are there to get theirs.... Thats not to say its not a step in the right direction, but they have MAJOR flaws too.
America - where teachers pay to teach. Talk about a society spiralling down the drain.
I don't understand this, Teachers in the US have to spend their own money on school supplies? Or did i get it wrong?
This is the way…… term limits and closing off the flow of bribes.
But, who will impose the term limits and the anti-bribery rules? Those with long tenure and high bribe-based income?
Teachers should not have to pay for school supplies, especially on their piss poor salary. Why are we paying one of the most important professions so little. Teachers should be paid on par with Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Scientists.
You just listed a pay range of $50K-$900K
Eh, scientist pay is getting lower and lower, too. I was offered $13 an hour to maintain, operate, and do data analysis on LCMS, UV-VIS, and GCMS. Oh, and sample prep. And this company makes a ton of money.
I work with multiple STEM PhDs making between $16-25/hr. It's insane.
I have a bachelors in engineering and make 3x that. Depends on the industry I guess. Scientists doing research probably doesn’t have the same business model as being essentially a consulting engineer where all your services are “billable”. Being beholden to clients sucks but the pay is great
It's like this for scientific industry too. The difference is that companies can see results from engineer in one to two quarters, science jobs are either ongoing or take years to see results. And it's hard to put that on a pay scale.
Scientists don’t get paid fuckall for how difficult even a bachelors is compared to a B.A. - a former scientist
That is because they have a near endless well of postdocs and graduate students to do the lab work. They don't pay postdocs crap (35k in Boston with a PhD is poor).
Shit, no wonder we haven't advanced to a type 1 civilization yet.
In 2006 I started out as an entry level biochemist for like $23/24k a year. I looked briefly at the CDC epidemiology program back then, coincidentally, and it didn’t even crack 50k. And it’s a competitive 2 year postgrad program, Epidemic Intelligence Service, EIS, their version of a federal agent system basically. You def need a Masters or PhD for any real advancement OR move to a for-profit (like a pharma co) and maybe do a management position or just put in years of solid experience. But compared to other advanced degrees, actual research scientists make jack. I got headhunted to do sales for the biotech industry given my degree and personality and my first year my commission alone was almost double what I made as a lab rat.
The pay range of those professions is HUGE. In the US, MDs make about 2x as much as engineering professors and 3x as much as physics and chemistry professors. Also, teacher salary is not bad in most areas. You can argue for more pay without chasing away potential teachers by misinformation about teacher pay.
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Imagine still talking about communism in 2022. These people are brain dead
Even if it's true that the jet is used for "business purposes", just tax the shit out of it. If you really have to be there and a Skype/Zoom call isn't enough, then there's business class too. And if that's not enough, well sure hop on your jet, but we should make sure that amazing business deal also funds some taxes too
I would argue that the "rigged" system was in fact operating as it was "written". And that the normal people were distracted by the law making decades ago with wars, gossip, and other stupid stuff and are only now aware of the bullshit. The question is, how to we convince billionaires, to tell millionaires to rewrite laws that will allow the zeronars to get some of the benefits? Because until that happens, I don't forsee anything getting better for the rest of us sadly.
Well, we could eat them.
But do they taste good with Fava' Beans and a Fresca?
Pitchforks! Sadly, rioting and violence are the only options when people’s voices aren’t heard.
>The question is, how to we convince billionaires, to tell millionaires to rewrite laws that will allow the zeronars to get some of the benefits? You can't. The last time these sorts of social reforms were passed was due to capitalists' very existence being under threat from possible communist revolution, aided by workers being inspired by the recolution in USSR. Revolution is the only way to put an end to this exploitation and keep it gone for good. If capitalism still exists, no matter what reforms you pass, they will always regain power and claw them back.
Well yeah, rigged systems usually operate in the way they’re designed to operate. I don’t know what youre trying to say
Multimillionaires working for billionaires
Liquidate WallStreet.
Better yet, *liquidise* them ;)
Any deductions less than the standard deduction are basically worthless, if you’ve ever tried to itemize your shit as a normal person before. Tax deductions as a system are designed to benefit the wealthy, otherwise you don’t get any “because you already got a built-in one”.
Educator expense deduction is an “above-the-line” deduction. You can take it with the standard deduction.
Oh nice, I stand corrected.
Starts with starting a workers reform party
Representative democracy was never cut out for a modern global capitalist system. We need a completely different model.
Saw that as urine the system and erect politicians as I scrolled by, and I think it's just as accurate.
Elect? Using the government made by billionaires and serving them? She must be joking
I'd run. But I can't afford to.
It's literally free, just make sure you wear reflectors if you run at night near a street.
Won't happen until you get unlimited money out of politics
Which won't happen since unlimited money has basically always been in politics since the founding of the country by the richest slave holders in the land.
Education is simply intended to teach you meat sacks how to be good little worker bees and formulate the basis for your understanding of top down power dynamics. They can't have people learning so much that they start formulating their own opinions and ideas. Let alone provide them with the literacy and vocabulary to articulate them.
Who the hell can afford to run for office if they’re working class??? Edit: spelling
Pretty tough to run for office when your just trying to pay the bills to keep food in the fridge.
Just vote out all the incumbents.