BC Teachers have voted 87% to escalate the strike...

[RGA]

I generally appreciate anyone's attempt at being snide but your logic is operating in a vacuum.

You're seemingly arguing that "X" amount of dollars in the hands of the 65,000 teachers of British Columbia will be spent better than that same "X" value of dollars in the hands of BC's 4.7 million population---when, in fact, it's most likely that the same "X" dollars would have been invested in consumer goods and services, albeit different ones.

You're going to have a difficult time getting anyone above Grade 4 in either of our countries to believe that 1 dollar in the hands of an individual has a greater value (potential purchasing power value) than 1 dollar in the hands of a different individual.

Your argument was, and should remain, that teachers provide an invaluable service and face ever increasingly difficult obstacles and a pay increase is based on merit. You can't play economic shell games and expect the taxpayer to come off the paper

No what I am saying is the system used to work because it was a closed system - with a global market things fall apart because employees in Canada in the private sector have to compete with the wages employees make in cost to the bottom countries like China.

It's not an either or situation (or it shouldn't be). We all get that public servants are paid by tax dollars. Hopefully we all get that tax dollars being spent on services make sense - Essential services are supposedly services that the public deems as absolute critical to the survival of society. BC Liberals call Education an Essential service (I'm a teacher and I disagree with that notion since no one is dying if you can't go to school) but anyway.

If you take a really simple example 10 people make $50,000 each. Each of them pays $5000 in tax. That tax for sake of argument goes to pay for one teacher - $42,000 and the remaining $8k goes to various benefits package. That teacher pays $5k in tax as well.

Now everyone was all fine and happy enough to go along with that - even the folks who don't have kids and don't really want to be paying tax for someone else's brat. They can sort of understand that have good kids means less of a chance they'll key his Porsche or mug him.

But corporations and it always comes down to them, are purely and only interested in the bottom line. Why pay someone a $50k salary when I can get the same job done for $5k. Back in the 60s you needed a staff of 50. Computers came in and now you need a staff of 5. A one time outlay and maintenance and you can get rid of 45 people. I worked for the steel foundry - they had locations around the globe - but when they bought Oracle I and most others became expendable. They could now do the world's accounting in one office.

It's not all the companies fault - they're bulldozer business basically had one major competitor - Caterpillar. They were far bigger than ESCO but ESCO had the rep for better quality which leads to less downtime which is important. But the Chinese came in offering he same things for half the price - you now have to cut cut cut.

My concern is the snowball that this is creating. So now private sector employees are not getting raises - or losing their jobs because the top 1% have decided that a billion a year isn't enough they want Ten billion a year. The best way to get that is to get rid of the most expensive associated cost of making product - LABOR. Labor is an enormous cost in civilized countries because it's not the wage - it's all the benefits associated with such employees. Opening shop in China dramatically reduces all costs but especially labor.

All those jobs begin to disappear so what is left are part time positions. Companies hiring more part time can avoid benefits - more-so in the States but it's in Canada now as well. Taxes go up - but people are making far less money.

So don't think I don't get it - I was the guy saying teachers should not have been asking for a pay increase and that I would not have. I sort of see some teachers saying the excuse of no money has been used now for 2 decades. I mean they're 30% behind Ontario in salary precisely because the union agreed with government and basically said we'll take the cut to help out the province.

My fear is that it's not just public sector not getting a CoL increase it's almost everyone not getting one.The drive that corporations have on cost to the bottom idealogy is that in order to do that you have to dump the employees making any real money. If you do that you have people who can't afford anything because they lost their $50k job so now they're working a hair over min wage at Starbucks.

I don't know how to fix that - but it sure isn't by lowering the buying power of large amounts of the population. 40,000 isn't as much as 4.6 million but again it snowballs. A little bit here a little bit there and it snowballs. The right wing government in BC has made the financial system in BC worse since they've been running the show. I was no fan of the corrupt sleazy clowns in the NDP either mind you which is why i voted Liberal back in the day.

I think the issue is fairly clear from the Liberal standpoint - they want to cut costs - they've chosen to cut costs to education. There is a surplus of teachers so why not push them hard?

And then they can decide how to respond - I saw the education system in BC and hey I got out. I'd thank God if there was one for that small mercy.

It's really the teacher's business now how to proceed. Personally, if I could not be here teaching in HK and I was still in Canada I would be changing careers "again." I agree with the folks who say "don't like it then leave"

I really wanted the teachers to choose an "en masse" resignation day. On May 1st all teachers in BC will tender their resignation. And all teachers in all other provinces support by not moving into the vacancies.

I just want to see what would happen - call me curious with these mental exercises.

Then all the teachers should open private schools - class sizes of 15 with two teachers per class (the way it ought to be) and no special needs allowed - no thugs or violent offenders allowed). Both teachers make a salary of $100,000 full benefits. Then only the parents with money can send their kids to the schools.

But hey why not do that? Personally I like that system better - it's far more profitable to gear your service to the rich. Doctors do it in the States - no money you don't get the best doctor or service. Can't pay - then get lost.

Universities operate that way - you want to learn some **** then you pay. Indeed, I like the idea - why the hell should I, RGA, pay tax because some putz I don't know pumped out some special needs baby because she was on crack at the time.

Why am I paying for other people forgetting to put on a condom? Then I have to pay tax for some teacher? Puhleeze.

I'm only saying this semi-sarcastically because I am confident in my teaching and would be quite happy to fight for rich clients in a complete pay per educate system. Less teachers working but much higher pay.

Right now private schools pay teachers less than public school teachers but that is only because public school is competition - remove the competition and you teach to the rich. 1 in 11 British Columbians has a net worth of a million dollars or more. So they can afford it.

The great thing is that then no tax dollars need to be spent on education at all. Parent pay the whole shot - the building, teachers books, copyrights.

Perfect.

And really we only want the poor to be working as janitors anyway right. They get in the way of the rich kids and frankly make my job as a teacher a nightmare. Give me the rich kids any day - I had the rich kids in Wenzhou - really nice not at all snotty and it was wonderful - they were raised well - work hard and learn and the ones who were weak at least made the attempt. Canadian kids with their self entitlements and "rights" and emotional status taking precedence over academics - bah - raising a bunch of sniveler babies.

I can make $50 - $75 Cad an hour tutoring here in Hong Kong on top of my job. Cater to the rich.

The poor can have baby-sitters or we'll fill a bunch of rooms with video games to let them kill time. For a good number of them it's not like they're going anywhere anyway so why waste time slowing it all down for the blunt instruments.