Do more teachers improve education or is it just a make work program?

According to the Cato Institute it’s a make work program. You might think that increasing the number of teachers per 100 students would have a positive impact on math and reading scores. Not according to this graph which shows data going back over 30 years. Cato concludes that keeping teaching jobs and adding teaching jobs is not about the kids at all, but rather the adults employed in education that also are able to vote for their own jobs.


In Canada the statistics aren’t as clear as the US graph shows, but the Fraser Institute does a pretty good job examining and comparing Canadian Education policies. Their conclusions are not substantially different from the Cato conclusions.

An excerpt from a September 2006 policy study titled Why Canadian Education Isn’t Improving (by Merrifield, Dare and Hepburn) shows how the unions and government are partners for the benefit of teachers rather than students.

Now that some provincial governments negotiate teacher contracts, their teacher unions have even greater political power.

The special interest groups, especially the teachers’ unions, have a great deal of money at their disposal. Each year, every public school teacher has hundreds of dollars deducted from his paycheck at the source, money that the school boards send directly to the unions, providing them with a guaranteed revenue stream of millions of dollars every year. The unions’ financial power, combined with their ability to mobilize thousands of teachers, makes them very influential in the political arena.

Teachers’ unions participate in school board elections, often providing financial and logistical support, as well as urging their members to vote for certain candidates. Since voter turnout is low for school board elections and a disproportionate number of educators vote, the unions are frequently successful in electing a number of union sympathizers to the school boards (Moe, 2006). When contract negotiation time comes around, pro-union trustees sometimes represent management at the bargaining table, thus allowing the teachers’ unions to have representatives on both sides of the table (Moe, 2006).

Democracy in action!

We are PIIGS too

That’s not a misspelling; the PIIGS are Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. These European democracies are verging on bankruptcy and if we add Iceland, which depending on whom you believe has already defaulted the spelling becomes PIIIGS!


We in Canada should not gloat, things while better, are bad enough that problems will inevitably start showing up soon if drastic measures aren’t taken.

In today’s Globe and Mail Neil Reynolds has an excellent article which holds a mirror up to the Western democracies and the reflection is ugly. It’s absolutely worth your time.

Winter Games – why I’m watching.

I’ve always taken an interest in the Olympics and more so this time because the games are on home soil. Sure the games are contrived, elitist, corrupt, generally meaningless and don’t get me started on the IOC, but I still watch.


I’m no athlete, I have never skied, I don’t skate very well, haven’t played hockey in forty years (at least) but I’m still fascinated by the Olympic Games, Winter and Summer.

Getting the games, preparing for the games and presenting the games are all hugely expensive; often leaving communities with debt that lasts for generations. Look at Montreal, the Games of Montreal were in the summer of 1976, the debt was finally paid off late in 2006 (they think), Vancouver could be worse.

So why bother, is it the legacy? Well Montreal got the “Big O”, (or owe) underused, expensive to maintain and it never worked as advertised. There were other facilities yes, but most cater to a small portion of the population just as the Vancouver games facilities will. The Vancouver facilities are sure to be underused because they are less than an hour flight time to Calgary, the site of the 1988 winter games. These are world class training facilities very close together, a recipe for underuse.

These games produced infrastructural legacies like the Sea-to-Sky highway improvements, transit improvements, and others, but all likely would have happened eventually because that’s how governments here work. The games just diverted huge sums of money to different parts of the economy now and away from other parts, created distorted housing prices (more than they already are) and when the games are done the inevitable let down will feel deeper because the Canadian economy as a whole is already in a precarious state due to the Great Recession. Yet I still will watch even though I know this is a government boondoggle, but why?



No matter what you think, the fact is the Olympic Games are a cultural event followed by millions, even billions of people around the planet. The shared experience of the games demonstrates to all those watching the power of individual effort, the single human man or woman overcoming the nerve racking fear of the stage and focusing entirely on the task at hand with one objective. This demonstration of individual heroics is rare in daily life. That’s why we watch sports, go to movies, the theater, the opera and the concert, we need the affirmation that individuals can do great things whether it’s real or contrived. The Olympic Games brings these heroics up a notch because these are the best of the best and they compete for trinkets (medals) on behalf of the tribe (country). That’s why I watch, Go Canada Go!

Inflation so that even children can understand it

This video directs viewers to mises.org/ and while it looks like its for American children, it is definitely worth your time because the lesson is universal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_LWQQrpSc4

Broken Transit II

A few weeks ago (Jan. 21) I wrote about the troubles at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and how its leaders are looking for ways to improve service and reduce complaints. Of course if this service had real competition, riders would by their choices quickly reduce TTC revenues and change would have to happen or the business would fold. But in Toronto, “the better way” as it is often referred to, is for most riders the only way; there are no other real options. (Are there such places where people have options? Check this out.)


Some riders have taken to photographing TTC employees on the job and shown them to be napping or taking extended coffee/bathroom breaks. Needless to say riders are not pleased because TTC employees are unionized and relatively well paid. Yesterday at a news conference the employee’s union leader implored the public to stop harassing TTC employees and treat them respectfully (I was becoming misty eyed). Can you imagine this happening in a real business situation? It’s a head shaker and can only happen in a government-union monopoly.

Things got even worse this week when the young TTC Chairman was accused of having sex in his City Hall office with a 19 year old university co-ed. This same young Chairman was making a run for the mayor’s office in Toronto in the November municipal elections. Today after just a 10 day campaign he apologized and withdrew from the mayoralty race after admitting other sexual dalliances while living with his longtime girlfriend (maybe not too much longer). Obviously he now doesn’t think he is worthy of the mayor’s job. The question should be is he worthy of any public office?

The US Stimulus worked, so why not another one?

Actually the first stimulus, $787 billion US didn't work. Don't take my word, check out what Dan Mitchell a Senior Fellow at CATO has to say. Then check out his blog which links to more videos from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=985C0uh1HKA

A Perspective on Debt

The video below is a repost from a fellow Canadian libertarian blogger who deserves a wider audience. I think the videos are excellent and in fact its worth going to the source and bookmarking it: WPG420's Libertarian Blog.
There really is no need to say more about this video - pretty self explanatory. Enjoy, and check out the others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLUug0Y3RjY

The return of critical thinking?

I can only hope. A poll today published by the BBC shows that the Brits have become a little more skeptical about the causes of climate change. Perhaps the cold winter, perhaps the recent bad press (climategate), whatever, people are taking a more critical approach to the hype brought on by the priesthood of Global Warming.
Naturally there was concern raised by British government officials and university types, but I think this is a healthy turn of events.
People may now step back and view this issue in proper perspective and compare it to other problems that may be more important, immediate and more easily remedied. 

My Friend Sarah

This video is the winner of the 2009 Fraser Institute Video Contest. Please read below for a quick synopsis.


"My Friend Sarah" is about a young girl who was the president of her school's "Progressive" club, and then took an economics class...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olCmbcd4L0U

Ground Hog Day

Just six more weeks of winter folks, that’s what the keepers of the furry rodents of Eastern North American are saying. My horoscope told me otherwise, but I won't bore you with that.


In other silly news it seems that even respected scientific journals can learn to eat crow and peer-reviewed science can be discredited! Go figure! Of course this should be no surprise to anyone that knows science is a process of theories proposed and data collected. Even the most cherished theories tremble at the mercy of verifiable contradictory data. Such was the case this week when the Lancet, a highly respected British medical journal, completely discredited a peer-reviewed study it had published in 1998 claiming that the Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine (MMR) is somehow linked to autism. This resulted is a significant drop in the vaccination rate and a subsequent measles outbreak in Britain and other places.

The original article supported parents whose autistic children had been given MMR vaccine and a cause-effect relationship was presented in the Lancet. Science is self-correcting……eventually.

By the way, up here in the Great White North, six more weeks of winter would be miraculous.