The view from Neptune

This thread at Electric City Weblog caught my eye, and reminded me that I live on Neptune. These guys are arguing about the wages of a teacher, and Gregg Smith, condescending in tone, says that the teacher who wrote the following letter doesn’t understand the difference between “wage” and “salary.”

CALCULABLE

In his Jan. 25 letter to the Tribune, Montana state legislator Tom Bur­nett presented the idea that state employees should punch a time clock because he feels that they’re not being honest about their hours. As a “part-time” public school teacher, I have to say I love this idea.

Currently, most of my work is long-term sub­bing. I don’t know how many hours I spend meet­ing with teachers who are planning long leaves, preparing lesson plans for their absences, evaluating student work, submitting grades, cleaning class­rooms and working with parents to solve problems, but I must say if I were punching a time clock, I’d be making twice my cur­rent wage. The same is true of every teacher I know.

They put in hours before school, after school, on weekends, during “vaca­tions” and all the rest.

Montana’s public educa­tors put in an incalculable number of hours of their own time, all of which is not paid.

Maybe Burnett’s on to something. Mount a time clock on my wall, and I’ll punch in while I’m writ­ing constructive feedback on my students’ work dur­ing the time between when school gets out and dinner with my family begins. I’ll clock out while I eat, then I’ll clock in while I enter that grading data. I’ll clock out while I bathe my kids, put them in jammies, brush their teeth and read them their nighttime story. Then I’ll punch back in while I plan tomorrow’s lesson. I’m all for this plan.

— Christopher Cummings, Kalispell

In the mind of the right-winger, people only “earn” what they are “worth.”

Oh, we have markets indeed, but in no way are they “free.” That clever little phrase is merely a mental trick, use of a word that has a pleasant feel about it to mask the true nature of markets. As shown in the photo above – “free markets” place no restraint on the powerful in exploiting the weak. It is not talent or contribution to our well-being that determines our wage (scuze me — salary). It’s power, proximity, acquisitiveness, scaling, enclosure, and the kill instinct.

Power – I am a white male in a society dominated by white males. I have a distinct advantage. Gregg is the same, but more so – when Gregg went to college, someone else paid for his health care and tuition*, so he had an advantage. He didn’t have to work outside of his studies. After college, he was not burdened with debt and forced into indentured servitude for years until it was paid off. If he came from a really wealthy family, he’d assume from an early age that he was somehow special, and expect favorable treatment, access to better schools, and the idea of doing without essentials, like health care, would never cross his mind.

Proximity – Wall Street bankers, who these days are more financial speculators than true capitalists, would be paid far less if they did not have access to other people’s money. If they were playing with their own, they’d not even be employed right now, as it took a massive injection of OPM to keep them in their place after they brought the house down on us.

Acquisitiveness – as I listen to right wingers talk – the wealthy and the “soon-to-be” wealthy, I have to laugh. Most people are not interested in becoming wealthy. They want security, a good job and access to health care and education and a better life for their kids. Most would be happy around $75,000 a year, if such a thing were attainable in our society. There is a minority of people whose lives are dedicated to capturing as much wealth as they can in their lives – but that’s a game they play. I would guess that there is a skewed percentage of sociopaths among them, as gaming is all that life offers to people who don’t suffer emotions. Most of us are collaborative and cooperative and sharing in nature. The acquiring classes don’t seem to get that.

Scaling merely means that a person can take a product and offer it to a large number of people at once, rather than one at a time. The best example is Dan Brown, the author, who wrote his crappy books, and instead of us paying him to read the books to us, one by one, sold them to us by the millions. The best authors are not published, or self-publish these days. Access to the public mind via the media is limited to people of proper mindset, with everyone else marginalized. Dan Brown accounted for most books sold in 2003. It was crap, cheap fiction, contained no valuable inquiry or meaning. Markets offer no barriers to such intrustion, but the works of authors like Chomsky, Finkelstein, Pilger and Fisk are carefully un-reviewed and kept out of view.

Enclosure is the essence of the market as we know it – to build a fence around something and charge people for entrance. The is all that the health insurance companies have done with our health care system – they built a fence around it, excluded millions of us, and charge extortion to those they let in. Property boundaries – government-enforced enclosure, allows persons to harvest wealth from land to the exclusion of all others. Privatization of resources, like our forests, water supply, electrical power facilities, and mail delivery, is enclosure.

And, the kill instinct. Most of us don’t have it. American soldiers have to be desensitized before they are sent to our current wars. Other humans have to be objectified. Most of us cannot stand to witness suffering, and in business cannot deliberately trap someone and steal their money, legally. It’s not in us. Those who have this instinct are the ones that Gregg Smith and others in his profession protect. For the rest of us, we have only government.

So who is creating wealth – a lawyer that protects wealthy clients from just desserts, or a teacher that spends his life working with children and helping them develop into productive citizens? I’d venture that Christopher Cummings has created more wealth in his life than any lawyer, banker, or vulture capitalist. He does not lack for talent, dedication, and love of his work. He only lacks power.

Remember, if Wall Street bankers went Galt** on us, they’d soon be replaced. There’s no shortage of ability in that field. But they are paid wild and crazy sums. If New York City’s garbage collectors go on strike, the place is in deep trouble. Who’s more valuable? Who gets paid more?
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* People are often critical of socialism, saying that it guarantees that everyone crosses the finish line at the same time. Far from it, socialism merely allows for everyone to leave the starting gate at once. Is that what scares people about it? Loss of privilege?
**In real life, no one ever really goes Galt – on some level we all know that we are easily replaced.