What teachers have to do with baseball players is not clear. [Welch.]

What's happening is that Bernie, like his infantile enthusiasts, dreams only of the power to tell other people what they're allowed to pay for this, whether a little or a lot.

These are not nice people.

Their daydreams are not compassionate.

They think only of telling others what to do, and warping the constitution and American character in order to do it.

I could not think less of Bernie Bros & Bras. They're lazy, dim, cowardly, and unkind. And needy.

That was supposed to say 'pay for things,' not 'pay for this.'

And now, because you were going to do so anyway, I encourage you to imagine the split-second coordination these people bring to their sexual encounters.

Hey, teachers! You wanna get paid like a basketball player? then get people to buy tickets to pack a 20,000 seat arena and let them watch you work. Sell the broadcast rights as well.

Be advised, tho, that you may make the Sports Center's "Not Top 10" list. And some guy on the radio is going to slag you on your teaching style.

A pro sports franchise.

I often think Amy is glib about this topic, but here's a narrative to consider.

Bernie,

There are 30 NBA teams. There are roughly 12 active players on each team. That makes 360 players. And none of those active players actually, makes "hundreds of millions" - in salary.

Bernie may be talking about the overall payroll, so let's look at that. There are more than 26,000 public secondary schools and almost 11,000 private secondary schools in the US. There are approximately 15.1 million students in the public schools alone. At one teacher for 30 students, that works out to roughly half a million teachers; at $40,000 per year, that's a $20 billion payroll and climbing - for declining results.

As Darth points out, teachers by themselves are not a revenue generator - no one's buying their jerseys at Foot Locker or asking them for product endorsements. Nor is the educative process a public spectacle. So, the only means by which we raise revenue with which to pay public school teachers is through confiscatory taxation, which imposes a natural limit on the amount we can raise without resistance.

In addition, if not for the unnecessarily complicated certification process, almost anyone with a bachelor's degree could teach below the secondary level. A fair amount of those with subject-relevant Bachelor's degrees could teach at the secondary level. Pre-college teaching is not a job requiring hyper-specialized knowledge or absurd levels of physical or intellectual development.

And the public knows this. As a result, the public impression of the teacher's job results in salary demands out of sync with what the market will actually bear.

Perhaps Bernie should be clucking about the ways we fritter away the $12,300 per student we spend on education (hundreds of billions overall). The OECD average is $9,600 per student.

For decades, teacher unions have resisted the introduction of technology into the public school system - e.g., computer-based instruction. Students capable of outpacing their classmates are stuck in a collectivist system defined by the slowest students that hinders individual development.

Efforts to measure teacher performance are likewise obstructed. With basketball players, we can study shooting statistics and reward players for being productive. With teachers, the unions prevent us from implementing any sort of performance measurement metrics.

Granted, there are a great many more factors that determine whether a student learns than whether a basketball goes into a hoop. But we're not talking about acknowledging the difficulty of creating a measurement and working together to develop one, we're talking about obstructing metrics development from even happening.

So, we don't know which teachers are actually "good" and cannot reward them individually. By union rules, we must collectively reward all teachers equally based on seniority, disconnecting teacher salary demands from actual performance.

Oh baseball. Well, the analogy still stands.

It's strange that they leave all the hatches between the modules open on the ISS, such that a single piece of debris could take out the whole thing. Who knows— Maybe a kinetic disruption would be as destructive as a puncture.

Goats, stylin'.

Eyeballs, lookin'.

Playful children, playin'.

Sanders is totally beyond his depth as a presidential candidate. He's had no significant experience at the Federal level, despite having served in both the House and the Senate, and so is trying to play the same character that got him elected in Vermont.

I'd lived near Burlington during most of his congressional career. Sanders was always just a 'lifestyle candidate' who would promote all sorts of unworkable and often silly ideas and then vote Democrat. That's why the hippie VT boomers loved him. They could flatter themselves for having elected a purported 'Socialist' without actually suffering the consequences, because he never actually accomplished anything.

But it's sad that the country is in a state that someone like him can be taken as a serious presidential candidate.

Avoid the Ring Dings and the Honey Nut Cheerios.

It's Not Just Salt, Sugar, Fat: Study Finds Ultra-Processed Foods Drive Weight Gain

Defendant: Your Honor, it was a just a handy! We were on a hike.

Judge: Sorry kid, this one's federal.

Sometimes, age is just a number.

With Her Family Behind Her, 48-Year-Old Virginia Mom Qualifies for Olympic Trials

Ees heero proyekt, da???

A $2 trillion mistake? Here’s what Washington must do to get infrastructure right

But . . . but . . . but they're private companies! /fake conservatives

Why Freedom of Speech Should Apply to Google, Facebook and the Internet

Is this true? NSFW BTW

https://www.oglaf.com/glindr/

A $2 trillion mistake? Here’s what Washington must do to get infrastructure right

And the first step is for Trump to pull an Obama and sic the IRS to the unionized contractors.

Goats, stylin'. ~ Crid at May 19, 2019 11:50 AM

The one in blue looks like Jar-Jar Binks.

And since Lucas has admitted that Chewbacca was based on seeing his dog sitting in the car beside his wife, one wonders if Jar-Jar was based something like this.

So, baseball... According to Baseball Prospectus' page, in which one can learn everything you might want to know about baseball players' contracts:

* In baseball history, 85 contracts with a total value of $100M or more have been signed by players. (Lots of caveats: Some players have signed more than one. Some contracts did not pay out their total value, because of options not exercised by the team, or because the player exercised an opt-out during the term of the contract., or because the player and the team agreed to renegotiate the contract before its term ended.)

* A total of 72 players are playing or have played on contracts with an average annual value of $20M or more.

Baseball's salary structure is convoluted. Players who have less than two years of major league service time have no negotiating leverage, and so most of them don't make much more than the league minimum salary, which is around $500K per year. This includes a lot of the young star players. Most baseball players will retire from the game having less major league service time than this, if they make it to the majors at all. Most players who become free agents do so because their teams were no longer interested in retaining them, and so released them from their contracts. Only a handful of free agents each year sign contracts with an average annual value of $10M or more.

(There's a whole science evolving in baseball as for what a player's skills are worth in actual dollars, and how much a team should expect to pay for a given level of talent. Several sabermetric groups have devised a stat called Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. This purports to be a measure of how much a given player will increase a team's chances of winning, above a "replacement" player which is a player that can be found on the market at any time. By definition, substituting a 2 WAR player for a replacement (0 WAR) player means that the team is likely to win two more games in a season than it would otherwise. The open market value of 1 WAR is currently estimated at between $8M and $10M. A lot of the metrics revolve around how to obtain more WAR at a lower cost than the open market value.)

Conan, your analysis is superfluous.

The single relevant point is that a lot of the same parents who scream that their children's teachers are not getting paid enough are also willingly shelling out the equivalent of really good prep school tuition for personal seat licenses and season tickets to their cities' NFL or MLB facilities.

In other words, the decision to pay athletes more than teachers which they condemn is their own.