But the Federal Government still offers 3% downpayments.  When will the stupid Federal Government realize, along with the people of this nation, that it is not a right to access to low liquidity, high interest, outright dangerous loans for housing!  This is STUPID.  But on a positive note, banks have gone back to the much more logical and market relative 10%, 20%, and 30% down payment options.  They should have never been enabled/pushed (emphasis on enabled/pushed) into giving 0% loans in the first place.  The fact that banks are forced into this to keep a part of the mortgage industry market is absurd.  The Federal Government should NOT be in business providing loans.  Read more about all this in the End of 0% Loans.

The Government allows this absurd and dangerous loans, wait, not they don't allow they provide these stupid loans.  These loans are what has WRECKED THE FINANCIAL SECTOR!  The Government and insurers aren't able to back these things up fast enough and now the lending has stopped cold.  An artificially created spending bubble has ended all because of this artificial inflation through efforts to redistribute wealth by the Federal Government.

This leaves me with two questions.

1. Why can people not see this more clearly?
2. Why do we continue to allow this entitlement mentality to ruin us over and over?

It appears every time we get close to NOT bailing out the dumb asses (the mortgage buyers, Federal Government mortgage lenders, and the few dumb banks that actually jumped on the band wagon) and allowing the market to punish and eliminate this type of behavior the Government steps in these days to save them.  Why perpetuate the leaching bastards in the first place?  Why do the Democrats AND Republicans not seem to understand this?

Idiots the lot of them.

I started churning through the articles, the country is baffled by this insanity with the automakers.  If anyone is confused about my opinion, here's a quick summary.  I'm 100% against any bail out, subsidy, or even a loan.  I however, with what I know about the history of the Union, The Federal Government, and GM itself I can't bring myself to blame GM entirely for this mess.  If I was going to call a split of responsibility it would go like this;  Union 30% of blame, Federal/State Governments 30% of blame, and a whopping 60% of the blame is on the shoulders of GM itself.

For more summary of my take on this situation, here's some quotes and their respective articles;

Why America Is Shunning GM by Rick Newman

There was, for instance, that little exploding gas tank problem on the Pinto, which Ford denied for years. The Vega came with a cheap aluminum engine that couldn't withstand its own heat and often warped or melted before the car reached 50,000 miles. On Detroit creations like the Citation, the Nova, the Omni, the Aspen, the Fiesta, the Mustang II, the Skylark, the Cavalier, the Cimmaron, and many others, fenders rusted after just one or two winters, engines seized up, radiators leaked, switches broke, headliners drooped. In short, bottom-rung benchmarks were set. Millions of customers—many from families with a long history of loyalty to Ford or Chevrolet or Chrysler—swore off domestics forever. Detroit builds better cars today, but many spurned customers from the past don't care. To them, Detroit's predicament isn't a national emergency. It's justice.

I agree, it is justice.  That list of cars just reminds me of the embarrassment they've put us, the citizens of this country through.  How COULD someone have pride in companies that build such unbelievable crap?

Detroit lost its lock on Congress. When Congress approved $1.5 billion in aid to help Chrysler avoid bankruptcy in 1979, the vote in the Senate was a comfortable 53 to 44. In the House, it was even more decisive: 271 to 136. As there are now, there were critics who argued that a failing company should work out its own problems. But the automakers had factories in many states and deep leverage in Congress.

This just points out how the market works.  No matter how much you egg something on, it doesn't guarantee success.  LET THEM FAIL.  The business model is outdated.  We've subsidized the bloody freaking auto industry long enough.  Open up real transportation markets again.  Let it get cut throat.  NEVER again should America ever rely so heavily on a single company in such a way.  Let the viciousness of the market kill it, and also let that market provide alternatives!

All told, foreign-based automakers build cars or their components in more than 20 U.S. states, accounting for more than 150,000 jobs. And they buy parts from many of the same American suppliers that serve Detroit.

Get that now, 150k people employed by the new American manufacturers!  We don't really think it a problem to not have any legitimate TV manufacturers that are American anymore, why keep a car company?  Yeah, it's sad, but why cut our legs off so that we can keep our nice fur coat.  Weird analogy but it makes the point.  Aside from that, if the Domestics die, which really it looks like Chrysler and GM area going, not Ford.  But if they go, that just means that much more demand for Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, and maybe even some high end BMWs and low end Hyundais.  Either way increased demand means more jobs at those factories.  Someone will build those cars and it will most likely be Americans in American factories working for cars built by one of those non-American companies designed for an American audience.

Another article by Rick Newman titled The 7 Worst Ways to Rescue Detroit is great.  The italics are my immediate responses.

1.  
   1. Treat the Detroit 3 all the same.  - Yeah, definitely not a good idea.  GM != Ford != Chrysler.
   2. Force them to build "green vehicles."  -  Yup that's stupid too.
   3. Pre-empt the possibility of bankruptcy.
   4. Appoint a federal car czar.  -  Wow, couldn't agree more on how dumb this is.  The Big Three Domestics are building BAD CARS as it is still, they don't need an entity (The Federal Government) with a PROVEN track record of inefficiency and poor ability to operate in a business context.  The Government IS NOT A BUSINESS.  Never will be, never can be, and will always operate at the LOWEST ability of all entities.
   5. Place the whole restructuring burden on Detroit. - They've screwed it up this far, don't let them continue.  If a restructuring occurs, maybe a board made up of people from some automotive tuner shops, some people that definitely know the business, and general all around smart people should be put together to reform this (and the others) company.
   6. Subsidize cars.  - That's disgusting.  We have a dead transportation industry.  A single choice, automobiles, that is available in large part because of already massive subsidies in the realm of infrastructure, world stability, and other costs.  There is ZERO reasons, since the competitors (transit, rail, etc) have been destroyed by assistance from the Government already, to encourage something that was already artificially pushed on society (look more closely at serious history if you don't believe me).
   7. Penalize their competitors. - Hopefully no one in Government would even contemplate this.  As mentioned in a quote above, 150k people are employed, AT ECONOMICALLY SUSTAINABLE INCOMES, and do not deserve to be haphazardly attacked.  They did this with rail workers and hundreds of thousands of them lost their jobs or were displaced by the harsh onslaught of trucking companies.  No reason to repeat that and then shuffle it under the carpet of history.

Then another article, again by Rick Newman, 4 Myths About Free Markets—and Their Demise really brought up the standard apologetic auto fan.  He brings up the fact that we haven't been in a free market in decades.

They're unregulated. In theory, the less government regulation, the freer the market. But the economy we're used to has multiple layers of regulation that have formed over decades, with general approval from most corners of society. Teddy Roosevelt interfered in free markets by helping break up mammoth monopolies in the oil, railroad, and banking industries—to great popular appeal. After the Depression, we got bank deposit insurance and dozens of other free-market intrusions that most people still favor. The "free market" of just one year ago—before anybody was talking about a bailout—featured all manner of government intervention, from unemployment insurance to federal car-safety standards to an activist Federal Reserve able to pull various levers to keep the economy humming. So when people invoke the power of the free market, which free market are they talking about? The one of 150 years ago, with very few consumer protections? Or the one of a year ago, already heavily regulated?

Fact is, automobiles became accessible because of Government involvement.  Only the upper incomes (as in the past in the US, and even now in Europe) would have been able to get them, and only after decades of pooling the riches money would real road systems been built (like the Interstate, but I'm sure it would be 10x better).  If we'd left the market to do that we'd have vastly more capable infrastructure as we did in the past, often owned and expanded by railroad and transit companies.  Companies that at the time didn't suck off the teet of the Government, but now are authorities with Government powers acting like companies.  Auto manufacturers won against these companies because the Government kicked off the auto age by funding the infrastructure and even the initial exploration for oil and protection of foreign interests.  To me, that doesn't, nor has it ever, sounded like a good deal.  Simply put, we've been getting ripped off in massive ways, the more money an individual makes, the more that individual has to pay for even the simplest of transportation.

It's all really disgusting from and immoral from an ideological perspective.  But back to the articles.

Last article of this write up is by Horacio Marquez titled Buy, Sell or Hold: GM's Too-Big-to-Fail Myth.

When I downloaded the balance sheet for General Motors back in the third quarter of 2000, I was stunned. Something just wasn’t right. These numbers I saw just couldn’t be correct.

“Surely I had made a mistake and downloaded the wrong one,” I thought to myself. “I must have downloaded a subsidiary’s or maybe the parent company’s unconsolidated balance sheet.”

I checked and re-checked. I had the right one. The company’s equity-to-assets ratio was only about 2% – and that was before counting its under-funded pension liabilities. With that deficit factored in, GM had negative equity.

In other words, the leading U.S. car maker was technically bankrupt.

That last sentence really tells the story.  The US car maker has been bankrupt for a long time now.  They've only stayed afloat by a lot of accounting magic (kind of like Enron probably).  Not that I'm against a little accounting magic here and there, but when it is this freaking obvious, it just isn't worth saving when it gets to the point that it is now.

At this juncture I'm done writing about this automobile debacle for a while.  I'll be off to new topics soon.

My friend, who I NEED to go visit, haven't seen in ages, Topher posted a comment on a recent entry in regards to a solution for Detroit.  Many people are one way or another on this bailout mess and the situation Detroit is in.  The op-ed contribution by Mitt Romney (yeah, that guy) "Let Detroit go Bankrupt" is the best piece I've seen on what to do yet.  It's an honest to goodness GOOD solution.  Some of the parts that really just hit the nail on the head;

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

The playing field has to be leveled some, and not under rules, legislation, and law of Government.  That type of leveling is far worse than even the resentment workers can have for the rich elite of these companies.

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

PLEASE, get America innovating again!  We've allowed the world to catch up, STOP playing at that level.  We started the modern world and we can surpass and exceed what we've done better than anyone on the planet.  America has this history, don't squander it in a failure after a measly almost hundred years.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

...and this last statement just summed it up perfectly.  If the Government is to play a role, it must be autonomous enough to not infringe on progress and actually allow progress to be made.  Invest the money research, but also don't stop there.  Get rid of the archaic regulations and limitations that cause Americans to be forced to build some of the most arcane and backwards automobiles in the world.  Let us step up and get that web of strangling Government manhandling out of the way.  Let's play for a win-win and not a win lose, we've been doing that since the 80s and it isn't working out so hot.

So far within just a few days Obama has started to work in some of the greats famous techniques.  Except there are a few major differences.  Instead of radio, Obama is using Youtube to put forth a kind of fireside chat.  He also speaks of Lincoln, even though they had very different, let me rephrase, COMPLETELY OPPOSITE views on individuals, individual economy and work, and the motive of the individual.  I personally hope Obama also does a lot of his own thing besides cycle through the techniques of these past Presidents.

Recently in the Washington Post Article Eliot L. Spitzer wrote, "Although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past, I very much hope and expect that President Obama and his new administration will have the strength and wisdom to do again what FDR did."  He then goes on in several sections to outline why the entire regulatory system needs a serious overhaul.

First thing, I agree, it needs a complete overhaul.  But were I diverge is that it is only the regulatory system that needs the overhaul.  The industry needs focus, it needs to stop "playing".  But at the same time our economy needs to be put back to work.  With that I do NOT mean put back to work by subsidies and more unbalanced economic incursions by the Federal Government, but instead it needs put back to work for itself, for private industry of the individuals out there in this country.  In the article, this seems to be almost completely ignored, instead just mentions a half hearted attack on free-market economics.

He does point out though, that even Adam Smith didn't mean an exclusion of regulations from the economy, but we separate on agreeing what Adam Smith did want the Government to do.  Adam Smith didn't want the Government to interfere and subsidize one part of a market over another, destabilize one while declaring a monopoly for another.  So many Americans truly do not realize how socialist the Government has acted in the last 60-75 years, specifically in large part since FDR.

So in turn, I hope that Obama doesn't act like FDR.  I hope Obama sees were the market can be used and prodded to do the right thing and to move society forward.  I hope he can see were the individual can be left be and remove the yoke of enslavement that the Government, especially the Federal Government puts upon all of us.  He has stated a desire for tax breaks, and I believe this is merely talk, but if he were to move his plan forward in the first 100 days I would prospectively become a true believer in this change he speaks of.  I can't name the last Democrat that pushed forward a tax break, or encouraged their beloved Keynsian Economic Ideals.

So in summary, Obama, don't fall prey to acting like Lincoln or FDR.  Instead act in accordance with what America should do now.  Don't deprive Americans of more cash flow, get that tax break pushed through.  Don't leave the regulations the way they are, get someone working on cleaning those up and getting a new alignment for the financial sector so they stop burning America's money in the money pit.

I have hope, and Obama has time to do this, but the time is short.

So, Now that it is over and we can move on with the catastrophe of the current United States there are things I'm curious about.  What's the plan of attack, when are the troops coming back, when is the tax cuts and tax increases?  Obama is President and I'm somewhat happy with that, which is a lot coming from my Libertarian views of Freedom and Liberty.  He seems far more aware of these concepts than the last 3 Presidents by far.  I also wonder if he'll be more akin the the market philosophy of Clinton, Reagan, or will he actually tread new ground?  I hope with a dreaded fear it isn't toward more nationalization and monopoly via Government manipulation.  Well, one can hope right?

Anyway, on the other political fronts.  I noticed some of the measures I was rooting for passed and some didn't.  Kind of par for the course.  The biggest thing is that there is basically no way to pay for the levies that were passed except to raise taxes.  Not sure if anyone has checked around Oregon, but we're already WAY THE HELL UP THERE in the tax range.  We don't have a lot of disposable income left.  We lose at least 45% of our earned income as it stands, we can NOT afford much more of a tax increase.  If you don't understand how we lose that much, PLEASE, research it and figure it out, explain it to others, expand and spread the knowledge of the income tax joke.  There are already several tax increase lined up just with the existing legislative changes from expiring tax laws.  For anyone in the top 50-60% income bracket (i.e. if you make over about 60k) YOU are going to see a tax increase in Oregon.  Even with Obama's tax break, if it goes through, we'll be seeing somewhere between 1-5% of our money disappear into some type of levy or tax measure.  Somehow the city and state will have to fill these gaps.

The Positive Things

Amid these concerns, there are some ABSOLUTELY HUGE POSITIVE THINGS about Obama.  Here's my list.

1. He speaks clear and concisely when giving a speech.
2. He can actually communicate his ideas and thoughts to the audience and others he is speaking to.
3. He actually knows American History and has an understanding of things that far exceed our last couple Presidents.
4. He already has a positive reputation and view among other nations throughout the world.
5. He will no longer cause the United States to be laughed at nearly as much as we have in the last 16 years (Yeah, you read that right, Clinton didn't help us out too much on being the laughing stock of the developed nations).

So with that, I'm off to do what I do, and be a productive citizen and contribute to the economic activity of the region.

This one jerked a tear from me...

Brutally truthful, and even though it is a comic, the sickening truth of it is...   it's not really funny because it is too damn true.

...and still, only one guy speaking the truth.

Well, it's almost time to get all apathetic and stop watching politics again.  I've been watching and reading a ton of stuff lately about our new President Obama.  I know, I know, he isn't President yet, but seriously...

So anyway, back to reality.  President Obama has outright said some messed up things.  For one, he views the Constitution as an "imperfect document" and one that has "deep flaws".  One, I'd like to see him even cover the basic fundamental concepts of the Constitution.  He studied the document for years and seems to have completely missed many of the key points.

The Positive Parts?

Hopefully Obama will have the brains and brawn of Ron Paul to get the troops home from Iraq so we can deal with places that are hot zones like Afghanistan.  Hopefully Obama can bring home the troops in Korea, Europe, and other countries.  Hopefully Obama can get fiscal restraint put back into place.

The Non-Positive Parts!

I however have no faith in Obama to clean up any of the departments, funding policies, or even straighten out our nation's internal investments.  I definitely do NOT have any faith in Obama to put this country back into the hands of the people.  I know for a fact he will not perpetuate our Constitutional Rights, and this, I fear dreadfully.  He's spoken against it himself, and not much more can be said about that.

I also do not see this supposed tax cut going through.  If he does pass it I'd be highly impressed, but the US is broke, we've been broke and it is even more obvious now.  Our economy and our citizenry has so much weight on our shoulders that we can barely bare our own lives, let alone the burden of Government.  We're on the verge of crumbling and most of what Obama has proposed is to increase that weight, somehow and with unknown funding, and leave productive America in a lurch to cover these costs in some unknown way.

Free-Markets Effectively Destroyed

Our markets, our ability to live with each other, corporatism, have effectively been nationalized now and we've lost the largest base of the economy to the Government.  It is out of the hands of the citizens of the United States.  Ron Paul again states the obvious.

Obama doesn't seem to grasp these points, but I do understand you can't speak about these things like Ron Paul does or you get lumped in the loony category. Heaven forbid anybody actually deal with the real problems instead of merely applying some band aids.

Got my fingers crossed, got some beers in the fridge, and I'm ready to tilt those suckers up to the pending chaos.  I just hope I don't have to lift something else besides those beers.

...and I leave this entry with a post by our last truly great intelligent President and a few of our other greats, what I fear to be our last greats.

I recently received a commentary from a co-worker about this article:  Oregon Live - Greenspan Concedes

We've had our friendly debates about to regulate or not to regulate, or if there is or is not currently regulation in the markets.  It started like this...

…almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending
…
He noted that the immense and largely unregulated business of spreading financial risk widely, through the use of exotic financial instruments called derivatives, had gotten out of control and had added to the havoc of today's crisis. As far back as 1994, Mr. Greenspan staunchly and successfully opposed tougher regulation on derivatives.
…
Mr. Waxman noted that the Fed chairman had been one of the nation's leading voices for deregulation, displaying past statements in which Mr. Greenspan had argued that government regulators were no better than markets at imposing discipline.

"Were you wrong?" Mr. Waxman asked.

"Partially," the former Fed chairman reluctantly answered, before trying to parse his concession as thinly as possible.

One response received from another coworker was this.

It's money people. The only thing you really need is 100% transparency in all accounting invoices. The are enough accountants out there to report publicly on the goings on of these companies and provide accurate 3rd party assessments of risk for investors. People aren't going to intentionally throw there money at truly stupid investments.

One of the biggest problems here was not enough publicity/transparency. There's enough grognards to provide public oversight if the true picture is made easily publicly available.

The original sending coworker then responded with...

Oh, please, that's like saying "the only thing we need to do to put a stop to all computer viruses is just hire a bunch of smart people to write something that detects them".

The entire financial industry is built on the idea of hiding risk.  That was what the article mentioned in passing, but there are better articles that discuss it in detail.  Essentially, the largest cause of the recent financial collapse was the new ways businesses were using to hide the value or potential risk of their assets – in example, the bizarre system and policies around bundling and valuing assets into tradable securities.

Basically, any business looking to maximize quarter-over-quarter results is going to invest the bulk of its resources into finding new ways to overstate its value, and no amount of idealized 'transparency' will get around this.  It's the virus maker vs anti-virus maker problem.  No matter how many well meaning and hard working people are out there trying to combat the problem, you'll never topple a group of people who perceive their entire point of existence is engaging in risky behavior.

Then the regulatory bomb is dropped...

The only solution would be a few regulation changes, not just 'transparency' (I mean, perhaps ideally, such a thing could work – but what you'd need is something like 90% transparency, and I doubt you'll ever get better than 25%).  Specifically:

The idea of 'limited liability corporations' is retarded.  The business owners who run them clamored for such laws, and will probably fight to the end to keep them – but this is essentially taking responsibility for the actions of a company away from those who run it.  Great for them, bad for everyone else.  No problem with stocks letting someone own a slice of a company, but if they do, it must be as private businesses – if a company is sued, or creditors come to collect on it, it's NOT just the value of its assets on the line, but all assets of all owners of it.  Such personal risk would make company owners suddenly a lot more careful about what actions the company takes, and less interested in quarter-over-quarter returns vs long-term stability and responsibility.

The idea of so frequent trades of ownership of a company or, worse, 'trading securities' or 'risks' – is the most brain damaged idea anyone ever invented.  Certainly, you should be able to buy ownership in a company, and later sell it…but there is no valid reason this should happen billions of times a day.  Such out-of-control and wild speculation is inherently unstable and dangerous.  Perhaps the above point (being fully responsible for all actions a company takes at any point you are an owner of it) would mitigate this, but perhaps there is another solution – just put the brakes on how often it's possible to buy or sell ownership of a company.  Perhaps, once you buy a share of stock, you cannot sell it any sooner than 1 year later.

Again, the idea isn't to put regulation into the system to prevent things from happening at all – rather, to slow them down.  Make people think, and I mean, really think, before taking actions.  Heck, the daily massive +500 pts, -500 pts swing in the markets is almost entirely the fault of the knee-jerk, I-don't-know-what-to-do-but-everyone-is-doing-something-so-I-have-to-do-something-NOW-as-well mentality.  My belief is that forcing people to slow down and take time to think about things, and take personal responsibility for the companies they invest in, would be better for everyone.

So what I want to know, is what are your responses?  Lay into the thoughts, and think em' through.  I've kicked off the response list with the first comment.

One of these... Mr. Plato laid down for us in so many words...

“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

- Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

So here's the deal.  Some friends and I got into various discussions about why, what, and how to resolve the education issue.  Well more to the point, why public education fares so poorly in the first place.  First point I'm going to make, dollars that public schools spend don't correlate to actual performance very well at all.  Especially when compared to each other, when compared to private schools they are even more screwed up and performance seems to be the last concern on the minds of teachers in public schools.  The closer and more factually related correlations appear to be on some of the oddest things such as unions, or the lack thereof, and other odd things.  The one underlying factor that seems to come out when things are researched is that when teachers are motivated, students do well, when teachers are concerned with their union, pay, or some other unrelated item, the students suffer.  But it primarily boils down to how the teachers behave and perform.  Little else is as directly related as this.  As for dollars spent per student, either $2k or $20k, the performance difference is null without teacher motivation.

One thing about public schools is they have an inordinate ability to NOT motivate teachers.  This inherently is the greatest failing of public education.  If a motivating system could be incorporated the entire education of America would likely improve some, and definitely would improve greatly.  I digress, enough of me rambling, on to the numbers, charts - and FACTS.

Institute of Education Sciences:

In Oregon the expenditures for 04-05 break out as following.  Amount per capita for elementary & secondary; $1,346.  Amount for college and universities; $750.  Amount per capita for other education (i.e. private education subsidies, school programs, etc); $69.  The total expenditure for all is $2,166 per student.  Total expenditures by state per student amount to $6,520 per student.  A gap of $4354 between the total expenditures of the state and the per capita expenditures of the individual.  Link is available here:  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_029.asp?referrer=list

Another very interesting fact by basis of GDP is available here:  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2008/section4/indicator38.asp

According to that write up the US spends more as a percentage of GDP the the vast majority of countries.  As seen in this graph http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_025.asp?referrer=list one will notice that the percentage of GDP spent on education has continually risen over the long term.  In the last three years there has been a slight decrease of 0.1 percent in two years to decrease from 4.7 percent of GDP to 4.5 percent.  This number also has continually risen for the expenditures per student.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_026.asp?referrer=list here we see in real 06-07 dollars the price expenditures on Elementary and Secondary Schools went from $155 billion in 1959-60 all the way to $972 billion in 06-07 (this later number is derived from a "total", the accumulative total also is noted closer to the 9-10k dollar amount, all these numbers are inflation adjusted dollars!)  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_001.asp?referrer=list

If one looks at the number of students, provided by this chart http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_003.asp?referrer=list we see that in 1959 there were 35,182,000 students enrolled in elementary and secondary public schools.  In 2006 there were 49,370,000 students enrolled.  With the previously stated 06-07 dollars that equals out to a 1959 average per student of $4,405 and a 2006 average of $19,688 per student (this being the fed and state total expenditure).  Even half of this amount is more than double what was spent per student in 1959.

Two facts that can be derived from the above information, is that Oregon has some of the highest teacher pay rankings per state and has some of the fastest growth in teacher pay (regardless of what some policy wonk groups seem to perpetuate).

Considering we've more than doubled, almost quadrupled expenditures per student we haven't seen similar increases in performance.  This chart here http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 also shows this vast increase per student in today's dollars.

The counter is shown in this measurement chart http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_008.asp.  It appears, according to this that the 1960 high school graduation percentage is 63.7 percent while 2007 is 93.5.  I however believe that the measurement has changed several times and have seen numerous measurements in the past that state failure rates or students "quiting" or "dropping out" is high enough to invalidate the 93.5 percent number.

Also it is important to point out, which I haven't collected information for in this blog entry, but overall the ability to graduate has become drastically simplified compared to the qualifications and tests needed in the 60s.  The bell curve has given today's students a drastic increase in high school diploma attainment but has however decreased the quality of a high school educated individual.  This I would hope is a general understanding and knowledge among parents, but I can't trust it to be.

These paltry graduation rates, which seem to miraculously not be represented in the report mentioned above, are written about frequently in media.

• Chronicle
• Bye Bye Bell Curve
• Education Graduation Rates
• KATU Education
• Oregon Drop Out Rates
• NR Today

In a number of these articles the 93.5 theoretical graduation rate is contested.  I would be strongly hesitant to believe that 93.5 percent of students graduate without some direct "forced pass" of classes and or material needed to do so.

Union AFT:  Salary Survey

Oregon Union School Teachers earned an average of $48,320 per year in 2004-05.  Beginning salary pay was $33,699 per year.  The average national pay for a teacher was $47,602 according to the AFT.

Human Resource Development of the Oregon School Boards Association reported the following:  http://www.osba.org/lrelatns/salary/average.htm

In 2005-06 67% of teachers made between $40-$49,999 per year.  18% made more than $50,000.  For the 2006-07 year the $40k-$49,999 range decreased to 60% and the $50k and above range increased to 27%.  The number below $40k actually decreased 1%.  So overall teachers made a substantial increase in pay overall.  With a percentage over 9% jumping into the highest pay bracket.

Another point that is brought forth on this site, that if the salary is figured the same as a private industry worker's base salary and the retirement is not withdrawn from the amount when the salary is quoted, the teacher salary average for 05-06 is actually $50,048 and in 06-07 it is $50,937 per year.  (http://www.osba.org/lrelatns/salary/average.htm)