mathbabe

I totally agree with you. Looterism is rampant in our society. It has taken four decades for this destructive philosophy to penetrate our society’s thinking and to wreck havoc with our economy. I live in a suburban New Jersey community which is economically diverse from poor to middle-class. Our high school graduates range from those admitted to top tier colleges to those directly entering the work force. I was employed as a School Social Worker in a neighboring middle to upper middle class school district with a small pocket of poor families. There are similar school districts throughout New Jersey with a few under performing school districts in very poor communities. Our Governor immediately attacked our schools as troubled and blamed it on greedy teachers and self-serving unions. He completely negated the fact that New Jersey Public Schools have been highly-ranked for many years and that the troubled schools were in very poor communities. He ignored the facts that the extreme income inequality within our state factored more on school performance then the teacher’s unions. What was his solution? He would save the schools through privatization and eliminating collective bargaining for the education unions (actually associations). The Governor wanted to dismantle functional school systems throughout New Jersey until some of his Republican suburban voters began to push back on charter schools in their districts. It was a case of ‘not in my backyard’. He is still pushing private charter schools as his solution in poor school districts.

As someone who spent my professional life inside public education, the majority of teachers truly love their jobs and want their students to succeed. Because the work is stressful, difficult, and increasingly paper intensive, I saw both young teachers and senior staff leaving the profession. I saw young teachers leave because they couldn’t do the job which is one factor in why 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. People complain about tenure. It allows ‘bad’ teachers to remain in their teaching positions and they ‘slack’ off and lose their motivation once they get tenure. They push the idea that ‘money’ acts as ‘motivator’ just like in the private sector. This is based upon the faulty argument that money is what motivates others instead of the true motivator which is autonomy, love of teaching, and contributing to the betterment of society. I worked with some great teachers and they didn’t do it for money. They could have gone to the private sector and made much more money, however, they saw value in their work. They enjoyed working collaboratively with others. This is something that ‘looterics’ can’t even imagine.

What truly baffles me is why so many low-middle and middle class voters would vote for Mitt Romney and others who propose cutting social programs while further reducing taxes on the wealthy? It simply boggles my mind that so many of the people who were negatively impacted by government policies that resulted in the deregulation of the financial sector which led to our current economic disaster in the USA and Europe; tax policies that rewarded shipping US jobs abroad, cut taxes on investment income that enabled people like Mitt Romney, hedge fund managers, investment bankers, CEO’s to receive the majority of their income through compensation taxed at 15% to 0%, if they used special tax loopholes designed just for them; global corporations to legally keep their profits off-shore at 0% taxes; target decent-paying USA jobs particularly union and public sector jobs and health/pension/sick days/vacation time as the source of our economic difficulties. They can’t see that ‘trickle-down’ economics is nothing more then a con-game to distribute money and power from the middle to the top. The bottom has never had the power and, now, the 30% to 99% are joining their powerless ranks unless they wake up to the real facts that the top 0.001% don’t need them and won’t give up their power unless they are pressured to do so by the rest of us.

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