Comments on: Admin costs crowd out teaching

By: Wes

Wes — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 05:48:15 +0000

As John says, in the 1950’s most households made ends meet with a single income, while today it seems it requires two income earners to make ends meet. However, the typical home in the 1950’s was maybe half the size of the average home today, there was one family car, and almost all meals were prepared at home. Most importantly, though, many parents in the 1950’s had lived through the Great Depression, avoided debt whenever possible, and knew how to stretch a dollar. If a family is struggling to survive on a middle class income its spending habits are at least partly to blame. That said, government and entitlements are out of control and need to be reduced immediately before they destroy our economy.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:02:31 +0000

John it sounds good to those of us out here who are at our wits end with government, but the real problem lays with the voters who keep returning the same old faces to government. Until we, the voters wise up and recognize that it is our choices to send Mr. or Mrs. recognizable name on the ballot back to Congress, things will never change.

By: John Seiler

John Seiler — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:45:46 +0000

Richard,

When your dad made $10,000 in the 1950s, it was the equivalent of at least $100,000 today, going just by the consumer price index. Probably more, if you go by the price of gold: $35 then, $1,200 today.

I don’t know how old you are, but America was a much richer country in the 1950s and 1960s than today. I’m old enough to remember the 1960s well. Back then, almost any man could support his family on one income. Today, only a fraction can.

Decades of really bad, expensive government at all levels have driven the middle class into the ground.

By: Richard Moore

Richard Moore — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:25:24 +0000

You write: What can be done to improve matters in the classroom, restoring California schools to the preeminence they once had?

When was that? When my dad made $10,000 in the 1950s? When I made $20,000 in the 1970s? When only 50 % of kids graduated from HS in the 1960s? When was this mythical golden age? Saying it doesn’t make it so. California still doesn’t provide school librarians to 85% of its schools. The first school library I saw was my HS in 1961. The rest of the country has them, we never have.

The closest CA came to a Golden Age was when we guaranteed college (CC, CSU, UC) to every HS grad — back in the 60s. So they started graduating and showing up. Now we are out of room and charging huge tuition.

When was your Golden Age — and what evidence do you have?

Or are you satisfied with myth?

By: EastBayLarry

EastBayLarry — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:05:07 +0000

This information is not surprising as ALL bureaucracies quickly grow into self-interest groups where the main focus is on bureaucratic growth and preservation.
If California, (and the nation as a whole), is ever to regain its’ greatness it will be because a fiscal axe had been taken to the bureaucratic weeds infesting our government.