North Carolina Republicans have a problem with their statistics bumping into reality. We’ve been hearing about the Carolina Comeback and our dramatic drop in the unemployment rate. Unfortunately, nobody’s feeling it. In reality, our job growth is barely keeping up with our population growth and the new jobs pay less than the ones we lost. Finally, we still have more people unemployed and fewer people working than we did when the recession began almost seven years ago. That’s not much of a comeback.
Now, the GOP is having trouble with their teacher pay raises. Thom Tillis and his legislative colleagues crowed about giving our beleaguered teachers a 7% pay raise. Pat McCrory claimed it was 5.5% since he had vowed to veto anything over 6%, and we know he always tells the truth. But when veteran teachers actually got their pay checks, the raise was a lot smaller than either statistic.
All of this goes to once again prove Mark Twain’s quote, “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Governing is hard and the GOP is not very good at it. They do a good job of cutting budgets. They do a lousy job of managing those cuts. Instead of looking at the impact of their policies on the lives of real people, they spout statistics.
I suspect it’s because they believe that the invisible hand of the market will make everything right. In reality, that’s just magical free market thinking. Or maybe its what my friends on the left believe: Republicans don’t care about anybody but the rich.
At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t matter. Their policies have left us with underfunded schools, hundreds of thousands of people without access to health care, a shrinking work force, an economy that’s not producing enough jobs, a dwindling revenue stream and a workforce full of underemployed people. The only people who have benefitted are those wealthy enough to have received a tax cut.
The rest of us are still waiting for those statistics to trickle down.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
I wish employers with two or more permanent employees would be required to list every job opening on a centralized site (e.g. ncjobs.gov). That way, both citizens and lawmakers would have accurate real-time jobs information. Employers already have to communicate their hiring practices to the State, so the idea could be enforced through either tax based incentives or penalties. I realize no one wants to be told they have to do anything, but posting your job openings on a centralized website is a very modest request with huge societal benefits. The process of finding a job is far too unorganized for 2014.
Case in point: Spouse of a friend of mine has worked 16 years as an NC teacher. The GOP touting of a 7% or 5.5% pay raise rings as a lie to her. Her longevity pay add-on is now gone, those monies not rolled into her own pay, but rather apparently rolled into the pool to help give new/junior teachers a better pay bump. In sum, she is now making 2% LESS than last year.
This is what many veteran educators have gotten out of what Republicans erroneously call “the largest teacher pay raise in NC history” (it’s not) and what some political analysts paint as a “good first step” in getting NC out of the bottom of the pay rankings nationally. To those good, experienced, dedicated, patient, and mentoring teachers, hearing those descriptions of the pay raise only make them angry and more frustrated.
The flight of our best teachers to other states (or to other non-teaching jobs) will continue, and K-12 students and their career tracks will be thus adversely impacted.