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[–] 148 points 6 months ago (2 children)

the other can disappear tomorrow and nothing would change

Not true. People would be living in less fear, and the world would be a far better place.

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  • [–] 45 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I've heard ICE described as a militia of the unemployed mobilized to declare war on the working class

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  • [–] 64 points 6 months ago

    The money is always there. I spent a decade at a job where they constantly told us there was no money for pay raises, constant pressure on employees to cut or manage costs, shitty schedules, etc.

    Then there was a hiring boom. They were throwing money at recruits like crazy. Better pay. Huge signing bonuses that were more than I made in an entire year.

    The money is always there. It’s for the shareholders. Not you.

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  • [–] 56 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    This, and also teachers disproportionately consider their job too important to do to quit completely when mistreated.

    Which the dystopian profit machine takes advantage of to mistreat the shit out of some of the most important and laudable people in the world.

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  • [–] 20 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    I have a friend in Kentucky. Lovely lady. We've known each other about twenty years now. Long time ago she was a waitress earning decent money but wanted to be a teacher. It was going to be a financial hit (the fuck?) but I encouraged her to follow her dream.

    Long story short she lasted two years before being crushed by the machine and quitting.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    Yeah, I was a year or so into a job that paid close to 2x when I got my degree and couldn't justify it. It wasn't a great or high paying job either.

    I really looked into it though and there are a lot of systemic problems with public schools. I didn't think I'd have the stomach for it. Plus you need another six figure degree to pay for with less money.

    Now to clarify, where I live this is because of race. The government has absolutely failed the African American population. The drug war and public schools were all that was really required.

    When they integrated the schools, they just abandoned the South and let local and state government handle it. This is the Jim Crow government that requires the national guard to integrate schools.

    Now you've got a separate but far superior education. That's kinda been in place for a couple of generations.

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  • [–] 35 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)

    they are terrified of everything. there's nothing more affraid in life than a racist right wing fascist turd.

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago

    Fear is definitely a reason they love to drive 3-ton trucks to rugged wild places like the office and McDonald's. I have heard my fair share of rednecks call ANY small or normal sized car a "death trap" or "tin can," or comment something like "I'd hate to have somebody crash into me in that thing!"

    "Winning" in a crash is a big unspoken feature that drives vehicle choice for a lot of paranoid/scared iamverybadass turds. Around me it's a pretty varied mix of trucks, truck-based SUV barges, and luxury SUVs.

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  • [–] 26 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    What have y’all been reading lately?

    I just finished The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, which I thought was an incredible read. I would recommend anarchists and communists (and really everyone) read it for a pre-historic and historic view of social organization and freedom. What I thought was one of the more interesting concepts they developed was that in pre-contact North America, individuals had three essential freedoms that we have either lost or had greatly diminished: the right of movement, the right to refuse orders, and the right to create new social realities. (I’m slightly paraphrasing their exact language here, already returned the book to the library) They also go pretty deeply into the impact Indigenous North American societies had on European Enlightenment thought. If any of that interests you, I highly recommend it.

    I also just finished The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which is much shorter but a very lovely examination of gift economies and viewing nature as a gift economy. Solarpunk people, this is probably up your alley.

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  • [–] 52 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    If anybody's tempted by those numbers, remember Trump's track record of not paying people.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Are you under the impression he's paying them out of his own pocket

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    Not at all. But that "$45,000 sign on bonus?" That was only for experienced, returning agents and only for a limited time (now passed). They didn't say that anywhere in the advertisements. That proves they're willing to lie to further their own ends, and nobody's able to hold them accountable when they do.

    The fact that the salary comes out of the taxpayers' pockets also means it's contingent on politics, and the democrats are likely to win in the midterms, and they're starting to indicate that they may actually respond to public pressure and start pushing back.

    You only have to look at all the homeless veterans and people killing themselves in VA waiting rooms to see how the empire "rewards" those who serve it. The McDonald's employee who snitched on Luigi never got the reward they'd promised either.

    Sign up, be so hated by the public that you have to hide your face, drag innocent people away to secret torture dungeons, get scammed out of your bonus, and yeah maybe you can get your 30 pieces of silver. But at that point, why not just sell crack? More trustworthy employers and less harmful to society.

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  • [–] 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    It's always been that way. No money to pay for teachers, no money to pay for universal healthcare, no money to pay for public infrastructure projects...

    But will happily burn 100s billions a year on the military and enforcement agencies.

    The money is in keeping you down, not helping anyone up.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    That may be true to an extent, but pay has stagnated more and more each year.

    Adjusted for inflation, a teacher's salary in 1969 was well over $77,000. Today is at $60,000, with purchasing power being substantially lower.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    I learned today that Texas pays a little over $6000 per student to each school. With 30 students in each class, that is $180,000 per classroom. You would think half of that intake would be paid to the instructor. Ziprecruiter says the average wage for teacher pay is around $50k in Austin TX.

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  • [–] 14 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    This holds true for almost any "modern" and "civilized" country, not just for the United States.

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    Read the books

    Kinda hard when the education system fails to teach you how to read.

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    The other can disappear tomorrow and nothing would change

    Not true. If you get rid of jobs that are actively making the world worse, things will almost certainly get better, at least in the short term.

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago

    You could sign up and gum up the fucking works from the inside.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    I seem to recall hearing they weren't even getting those bonuses, so I had a little poke around on the internet.

    It seems that the $50k sign on bonus only goes to retuning agents that were retired, and paid in $10k chunks, most of which went to taxes.

    Despite the government's attempts to keep the exact details of the offer secret (for instance, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, another DHS agency, placed an asterisk on the $50,000 bonus without seemingly clarifying what its terms are), reports suggest that only retired employees returning to the job are eligible for the bonus and that it comes in $10,000 chunks.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/unpacking-rumor-ice-agents-arent-152800052.html?guccounter=1

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Yeah. The whole statement isn't as accurate as they make it sound. Those bonuses aren't going out to hardly anyone. And only a few would even qualify for that salary.

    Even the basic salary is reported as not being paid as expected.

    I agree with the overall idea behind this post. More money for teachers less money for the gestapo.

    But let's not misuse stats to try and make a point.

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  • [–] 83 points 6 months ago (19 children)

    Not that I disagree with the point generally, but there is a difference of scale here.

    There are around 22k ICE agents. At 150k, that's 3.3b for the first year, and then 2.2b in following years.

    There are around 4m teachers in the US. To raise them all from 55k to the 100k that ICE agents make (ignoring the hiring bonus) would cost 180b/yr. Two orders of magnitude greater.

    I'm not saying it's not worth it. I'm also not saying that ICE agents are good. I'm also not saying this disparity is justified.

    I'm simply saying that the analogy, as given, implies that if we had the money to pay ICE agents 100k+bonuses, then we should have just paid the teachers that much instead. But that's not how the math works. And just because the argument feels good emotionally doesn't mean it's accurate. And the truth shouldn't need a lie to drive it forward. There are plenty of good, factual arguments to make, and this isn't one of them.

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  • [–] 43 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)

    This is true, but the scale goes both ways. For every dollar of public education you get $1+X out. This has been true for the vast majority of public education programs for at least the past half century. So public education is literally a good investment. I’ve never gone looking for data on ICE, but I’d bet good money that for every dollar in there’s a net loss.

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  • [–] 22 points 6 months ago

    In order for that argument to be valid, the country would have to be run as if it could see beyond the next financial quarter.

    It is currently being run as if they are selling off parts of a stolen vehicle for scrap money, and maxing out all the cards they found inside.

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  • [–] 73 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    To be fair, there are plenty other jobs thst could be cut, like CEO of Amazon

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    Note that the CEO's also don't go very far for teacher pay. It looks like a few hundred CEO's cut would raise teachers pay by ~$100/month. Same mistake: 4 million is a big number to divide by.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    How about all the money made by health insurance companies that shouldn't exist? That'd go a long way toward funding education.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    If we believe the internet, all of that is funneled to the CEOs, and so the previous post applies?

    (Which seems absurd to me, but maybe the bills are rare enough that this makes sense? Does anybody have data on how big that figure is vs actual cost of the buildings+labor+materials? We could compare to other countries, but then I think we're seeing a difference in infrastructure, social and physical, more than malfeasance.)

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    There are around 22k ICE agents.

    They increased payroll by 120% in the last year alone. This does not include private contracts for construction and maintenance of new detainment facilities, coming out of the $45B earmarked by Congress last year.

    There are around 4m teachers in the US. To raise them all from 55k to the 100k that ICE agents make (ignoring the hiring bonus) would cost 180b/yr.

    $45B -> $180B is not two orders of magnitude.

    if we had the money to pay ICE agents 100k+bonuses, then we should have just paid the teachers that much instead

    Pete Hegseth is currently asking Congress for an extra $200B in Pentagon spending, after increasing their budget $71B this year already.

    We clearly don't have a problem with finding more money.

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  • [–] -4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    We should use symmetric data where we can. We also have lots earmarked and moved around for education, it's just a much bigger project. The cost comparison for signing bonus of ICE vs educators was apples to apples, and what was literally suggested in OP. Make another post with the honest comparison if you want that to be the standard. Feeds can be both informative and honest if we make them that way.

    (Also, only a few thousand jobs are offered the signing bonus. It's a last mile carrot to get people talking, which we seem to be gullible enough to upvote and spread. I'm not enjoying being an ICE recruiter.)

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Also, unless I'm mistaken, teachers aren't paid from the federal budget. I believe that the vast majority of public school funding, including teacher salaries, come from local taxes. In fact, I believe school funding is paid mostly from local property taxes. There isn't one, national public school system that's centrally funded. It's decentralized and can vary significantly from one district to another.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    I completely agree with the message but had to snicker at “populous”.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 19 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    In developed countries teachers unionize. They have fair wages, ample benefits, lots of vacation. Their job is still very hard but they somehow feel more valued.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Are you not aware of the teachers union in the US?

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago

    No I wasn't, I'm not from the USA.

    You are correct, it's not even just one there are several apparently. AFT, UFT, NEA... Honestly I'm confused.

    I'm glad the USA does have unions. But there seems to be some roadblocks when I read that some teachers are getting underpaid.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago

    I mean, I need a job, and I'd love to be a mole while I'm at it.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago

    power always seems to instill a firm belief in one's own immortality.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago
    [–] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Join ice. Take the money. Be incompetent. Profit

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    We truly don’t have what they’re offering ICE agents after looking at the way the federal deficit has grown under Trump.

    Just remember that those ICE agents are a bunch of obese, untrained, unprofessional federal agents that continually break laws.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    The wealthy aristocracy that controls both parties needs a paramilitary police force in the streets to quell the inevitable uprisings that will occur once enough Americans realize that the aristocracy has dispensed with economic populism and constitutional order

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Downvote for advertising ICE?

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    JOIN THEM — please work to take them down from the inside, Mr. Snowden.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    that's how people disappear in the desert.

    no thanks.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    My local taxes say y'all got shit tons of money. The schools just do an absolute shit job blowing it on other things besides walls and salaries for the teachers.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    My state allows you to unenroll your student and take the money towards you home schooling, or charter schools, or other education which is a whole quagmire I'm not gonna get into

    But it's fucking mind blowing

    They get $10,000/student/year and they're cramming 32 students into a classroom.

    $320,000 and the teacher makes $45,000 of it

    Where the fuck is the rest of it going?

    We're getting subpar education - 39% below grade level in reading. 36% in maths. But I would be the bad guy if I choose to take this and "continue the cycle of destroying public education".

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    All the bullshit deals with corpos that sell textbooks and videos and online learning programs and tablets. Don't forget the portal subscription to crap like ClassDojo.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

    We're in the "poor" school district. Nobody has a tablet. Textbooks are older than the original sin.

    And everyday for at least an hour they jumble multiple grades in the auditorium and have them watch "Whatever is on PBS" today.

    Is that where it's going? Do they just forward it along to the nice schools?

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (10 children)

    Well, it's also kind of shitty teacher pay is based on taxpayer contribution! I get it, publicly funded locally vs federally for ICE, also idk how bad ICE pay was before Trump.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago* (3 children)

    Not to mention the unmentioned difference between number of teachers and number of ICE goons making that salary.

    I’m all for teachers making more money. I think pay should be based on need and workload. Teachers rank high in both.

    But the argument above is not great argument. It uses something I hate, something I agree with, and makes a false equivalency argument out of both. As inclined as I am to agree, the argument could be a lot better

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    Idk I kinda get it:

    Federal salary employee that teaches young people to be intelligent members of a future society they'll grow up to create:

    Peasant pay, overloaded classrooms, stripped authority over class disruptors. 😭🍎📚

    Federal salary employee that yanks families apart and throws kids in the back of vans to get shipped to concentration camps, and sometimes just shoots people because they were having a bad day and didn't feel the customer service spirit:

    SIX DIGITS AND A SIGNING BONUS BAYBEEEE💰💰💵🤑 (AIR_HORN.WAV x 5)

    Our taxes fund both and they choose how to spend it.

    It shows where the government's priorities are, and it's quite telling how they feel about We the People and our children.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I shouldn’t have to fucking care what they think about me and my children. God fucking damn it.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Absolutely.

    We the people are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights, among these: Being left TF alone.

    But they really can't seem to handle just letting people be, can they? They've always gotta be manipulating and incarcerating and exploiting and killing others to feel like they're worth anything.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    What are you trying to say? Public school teacher's salaries are funded federally. Also, the cost of the Iran War alone could help pay teachers more. Instead trump's goon squad is cutting education and making it more christian.

    The truth is that it depends on whether the teacher is working for a private or a public school. If he or she belongs to a public school, the money he receives comes from the government, related and concerned government agencies, and the taxes of the people of the United States. Same goes for all the maintenance crew, cafeteria servants, guards, and all the staff of the school. On the other hand, teachers who work for a private school get their salary from the school itself. The money being paid to them comes from the students

    https://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/funding/

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    No usually teacher's salaries are from local city taxes whereas ICE is federal.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    Did you see that I sourced it, lol?

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  • [+] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    You're right

    Public schools receive funding from three different government sources: local, state, and federal. Local and state governments contribute the majority of funding to support public school systems, while the federal government provides a small fraction (only about 8% on average). Even with recent infusions of federal funding related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal share remains the smallest.

    https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED656592.pdf

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  • They don't want use to be prosperous, they wants us to be compliant and accepting of the station they will give to us. To unquestioningly toil in dangerous environments similar to cyberpunk themes. Until we break this two party system and their billionaire hold on us we'll never advance as a race.

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