Are Teachers In Gloucester, Virginia Being Paid Enough?

If you have been watching the local Board of Supervisors meeting about the present budget or watching the school board meetings, there is always a cry that the county is under funding the school board and that teachers simply are not getting the pay they deserve.

  What are the real facts about this claim?  From the looks of it: teachers are paid above a living wage.  For years it was always claimed that teachers were not being paid enough money and that what they were being paid fell below or at best was just barely a minimum living wage.  A living wage has nothing to do with minimum wages in general.  A living wage in the present economy is about $45,000.00 per year.  Anything above that level allows a better standard of living.

The present pay for teachers in Gloucester is an average of over $49,000.00 per year which is above the $45,000.00 level allowing for an above minimum living wage for their positions.  Assistant principles and principles in my view are way overpaid for their positions exceeding $86,000.00 for the average Principle here in Gloucester and above $60,000.00 for assistant principles affording comfortable living wages for these folks.  If they are not making it on those salaries, then they have serious cash management issues they personally need to address.

  School programs have all been cut to bare bones while pay for teachers, assistant principle, principles and the tremendous bloat of administrative personnel runs rampant.  It has now become more advantageous to work in the public sector than to work in the private sector.  A complete inversion of the way it used to be for well over a century.

2014 2015 Virginia Teachers Salary Report from Chuck Thompson

The above information shows where we got our numbers from used in this article.  So the next time you hear anyone complaining that teachers are not being paid enough and that the school board needs more money, you need to stop and ask a lot of questions.  Who is making the claim?  Why are they making that claim?  What is that claim based on?  How are they justifying those claims?

  When it comes to playing with numbers: anyone can play with the figures to make them say anything they want them to say.  I can always justify why I do not have enough money at anytime for any reason.   The bigger the budget the easier it is to create the claim of shortage to meet the budget.  Inflating a budget is a very easy trick to pull as well.  

Related articles

• Tens of Millions Now Employed In US At Sweatshops
• The White House, Raise The Wage, This Is Too Funny!
• Anti Federalist Papers No 13 - The Expense of the New Government
• Main Street Gloucester Preservation Trust Updated Jan. 2014

Tens of Millions Now Employed In US At Sweatshops

Photograph taken in a 'sweatshop' c.1890 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sweatshop Defined:  A place where people work long hours for low pay in poor conditions.

B:) A shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sweatshop

From Wiki

More recently, the anti-globalization movement has arisen in opposition to corporate globalization, a process by which multinational corporations move their operations overseas in order to lower their costs and increase profits. The anti-sweatshop movement has much in common with the anti-globalization movement. Both consider sweatshops harmful, and both have accused many companies (such as the Walt Disney Company, The Gap, and Nike) of using sweatshops. Some in these movements charge that neo liberal globalization is similar to the sweating system, arguing that there tends to be a "race to the bottom", as multinationals leap from one low-wage country to another searching for lower production costs, in the same way that sweaters would have steered production to the lowest cost sub-contractor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop

Today we see a new format emerging throughout the entire United States. With ObamaCare however, the hours are not long on a single job as corporations downsize how long they will allow workers to actually work during any given week.  The conditions in the work environment may be clean, but the wages are ridiculously low and not in the least bit a living wage.  More and more workers are depending on two, three and even four jobs just to try and scrape by anything that resembles a living and are still barely clinging on.

  McDonald's, Wal Mart, K-Mart, Sears, Burger King, Lowe's, Home Depot, and plenty of other places can now be considered modern day sweatshops as not one of them pay the majority of their workers anywhere close to a living wage.  Most of the workers in these locations are part time, little to no benefits, making barely above minimum wage which comes no where close to a living wage.

A living wage allows for a person to pay their rent or mortgage, car payment, insurance, medical expenses, clothing costs, food, utilities,  furniture expenses, and also allows for entertainment expenses and money left over to put into savings for a rainy day.  For a single person in the US today, the average income, outside of major metropolitan areas is around $45,000 per year and rising in order to be making a living wage.  Again, that is for one person.

Recent complaints in raising the minimum wage to anywhere between $10.00 or $12.00 per hour falls horribly short of coming close to making a living wage.  What difference does it make if you pay a person $25.00 per hour if all you are going to work them is 20 hours a week?  That is only $500.00 per week before taxes.  Rent in most areas throughout the US anymore is going to eat up half of the monthly wages leaving very little left for anyone to try and survive with.

The days of the 40 hour work week are for most, a buried memory, left in the dust of yesteryear.  Businesses are paying less and less of the benefits for employees and paying low wages to boot.  It's a mix that simply does not work.  That makes Wal Mart, Target, Subway, Chick-Fil-A and others the new modern sweatshops and tens of millions of people are stuck in the rut of these new deals.  

It's time for some new thinking about.....well.....every aspect of modern society.

English: Walmart Home Office, the headquarters of Wal-Mart - Bentonville, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• The White House, Raise The Wage, This Is Too Funny!
• Michael Tellinger - The Ubuntu Liberation Movement
• Constitutional Law Regarding Income Taxes, 1913
• Kellee Maize, The Fifth Element - Free Album Downloads
• Governor McAuliffe Signs Executive Order Establishing Inter-Agency Task Force on Worker Misclassification and Payroll Fraud
• Undermining The Constitution A HISTORY OF LAWLESS GOVERNMENT (Part 11)

The White House, Raise The Wage, This Is Too Funny!

In the 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, and soon after signed an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for the individuals working on new federal service contracts.

Raising the minimum wage nationwide will increase earnings for millions of workers, and boost the bottom lines of businesses across the country. While Republicans in Congress continue to block the President's proposal, a number of state legislatures and governors, mayors and city councils, and business owners have answered the President’s call and raised wages for their residents and employees.Read a report on the progress that's been made so far across the country.  (This is another good laugh if you read between the lines on what is said and what is not said.)

Learn more below about why we need to raise the wage, and share this page with your friends and family.

This first map shows the current minimum wage for each state, as well as the number of workers in each state that would be affected by raising the wage to $10.10.

(We are not porting in the maps. It's not worth the time to even bother to look at.)

In this second map, you'll see how raising the wage could help workers make ends meet. For example, a $10.10 wage could, over the course of a year, help a full-time, full-year minimum-wage worker in Arizona afford either 4 months of rent, 24 weeks of groceries, 68 tanks of gas, or the equivalent of 31 months of electricity.

(Wait;  did we read that right?  Someone working full time, all year, may be able to afford 4 months rent in Arizona?  What about the rest of the year and the rest of the bills that poor schmuck will be stuck with?  SOL?) 

Raising the federal minimum wage would not only benefit more than 28 million workers across the country, but 19 million workers from all types of households would see a direct increase in their wages.

(Did someone have to have a college degree to figure this one out?)

Today, the real value of the minimum wage has fallen by nearly one-third since its peak in 1968. And right now, a full-time minimum wage worker makes $14,500 a year, which leaves too many families struggling to make ends meet.

(Isn't this what happens when you ship all the good jobs out of the country and then flood the country with illegal immigrants?)

Since President Obama called for a minimum wage increase in his 2013 State of the Union address, 13 states and Washington, D.C. have passed laws to raise their minimum wage. According to estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers, about 7 million American workers will benefit from these increases as of 2017.

(Oh boy.  That has to make anyone earning only $7.25 per hour real happy.)

(Wonder what would happen if people were actually paid a living wage for the work they do?  Something more to the tune of $25.00 per hour?  Imagine.)

Related articles

• President Obama Speaks at the Working Families Summit, June 23rd, 2014
• Governor McAuliffe Announces Grant to Put Long-Term Unemployed Back to Work
• Broke, A Man Without A Dime
• Governor McAuliffe Statement on Conflicting Federal Rulings on the Affordable Care Act
• Undermining The Constitution A HISTORY OF LAWLESS GOVERNMENT Part V
• Obama Can't Get Dems To Back Horrible Trade Deal