ToDaZeD Chill
cold summer
WSJ: Barack Obama believes you get what you pay for—in business, in health care and in teaching. And in each of those spheres, he doesn’t think the way the U.S. pays professionals is designed to get what the nation really wants and needs.
...Obama wants to pay professionals more only if they deliver more of what he thinks America needs, a bold bet on the economic principle that incentives do matter
Thus spake the arrogance of the socialist/fascist perspective. Even Soviet economists admitted that humans were unable to keep up with price-setting for the comparatively limited bits and pieces produced by the Soviet economy. Result: 12 hour lines for TP—at the end of which there was a supply of combs— and idle factories waiting for desperately needed machine parts sitting in warehouses until someone got around to setting their price. Or deciding they were allowed to be used even though they were painted green instead of red.
Marvelous system. And the reason Reagan’s economic shove was able to push them over.
So what’s ∏eh iW∅n©DM‘s brilliant noob approach to this failed approach?
In business, Mr. Obama [is]... trying to redirect calls for imposing salary caps to mandating “pay for performance."
Staggeringly innovative; the idea that you produce more you earn more. Almost free-market-like.
[/sarc]
This isn’t foreign to companies: They have long said they intend to peg compensation to numerical results and aren’t insulted by the notion that professionals are motivated by money.
“said?? intend”?? “Insulted?!?” That from the Wall Street Journal.
In health care, Mr. Obama… insist[s] that the only way the nation can afford to cover the uninsured and keep health costs from devouring the federal budget is to [leave it entirely in the private sphere] find better ways to define and measure quality in medical care—and then pay doctors and hospitals for providing it. “We need to move toward a system in which doctors face stronger incentives for providing high-quality care rather than simply more care,"
With similar logic, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insists that improving American schools requires evaluating and paying teachers, at least in part, on how much their students learn—as measured by gains in standardized-test scores. “Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions,” he told a skeptical National Education Association convention last week. “That would never make sense. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible."
Wel that made about as much sense as anything taught in a state skool…
Equivocating in 3… 2… 1…
"[My students] don’t perform well on standardized tests in their second or third language. How can anyone possibly suggest that my family’s paycheck or my performance evaluation be based on their test scores?”
... As a result, often the only quality that gets rewarded is the sort that gets measured—teaching to the test instead of inspiring students.
Just me©? Or is that phrase “inspiring students” utter bullshiite strangely amorphous? Is his job description <>not to “inspire students” to learn the material on the test and the language it’s written in?
I heartily endorse the WSJ author’s parting comment. In fact, I suggest we start there.
Maybe Mr. Obama will turn next to measuring the performance of Washington officials so they, too, can be paid for quality.
I’m trying to remember my college civics classes - what’s that form of government where they decide how much businesses pay their people, or where they take a big company from group A (stockholders and executives) and give part of it to group B (the UAW), and keep part to themselves?
Posted by ZZMike on 07/09/09 at 09:59 AM
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