In the discussion about Ohio SB5 — whether abolishing collective bargaining for Ohio’s public workers is a good idea — there is sharp disagreement as to whether Ohio public employees, at present, earn more than their private sector counterparts.

Two opposite groups have lined up:

• Americans for Prosperity — an 501 C(4) group founded in large part by oil billionaires David and Charles Koch — urges passage of SB5 and says Ohio public employees make far more in wages and benefits than Ohio’s non-public workers in similar jobs. The State Director for Americans for Prosperity is Rebecca Heimlich. Here she explains to a group of supporters that Ohio needs collective bargaining “reform” because state workers make too much.
• Opposing Americans for Prosperity is Policy Matters Ohio — an Ohio-based nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research organization funded by such groups as Sisters of Charity Foundation, the New World Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Heinz Endowment, the Open Society Institute, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, KnowledgeWorks, the Public Welfare Foundation — urges defeat of SB5 and says that Ohio public employees make less in wages and benefits than Ohio’s non-public workers. The State Director of Policy Matters of Ohio is Amy Hanauer. I found no video of Ann speaking specifically about SB5, but here she discusses the goals of her organization.

On Americans for Prosperity web-site, I could find no explanation for Heimlich’s claim that public workers earn more in wages and benefits than their private worker counterparts.

But at the Policy Matters web-site, there is a PDF of the testimony given by Hanauer in which she says, “We’ve worked with several top academic researchers nationally to understand public and private sector compensation in Ohio. The overwhelming conclusion is that public sector workers are, when we control for education and experience, compensated less well than private-sector workers.”

Here is a chart from that PDF:

Excerpts for Hanauer’s testimony:

• Ohio’s budget problem is a revenue crisis, caused by a weak economy and ill- advised tax reductions that have deprived the state of needed revenue. Eliminating collective bargaining is not going to solve a revenue crisis.
• Paying workers adequately and giving workers a voice in their workplace actually strengthens the economy. Workers who are reasonably well compensated create more stable communities, do not have as much need for public services, can build assets and spend locally and are better able to focus on and excel at their jobs.
• The right of public workers to bargain collectively is not the cause of the budget shortfalls and eliminating that right to collective bargaining has not fixed the problem in states that have tried it. Deeper issues –investment, capital markets, trade and currency – are what shape regional economies.
• States with no collective bargaining rights for any public employees saw an average budget shortfall of 24.8 percent in 2010 while states (including the District of Columbia) with collective bargaining for all public employees had an average budget shortfall of 24.1 percent. For the 42 states (and the District of Columbia) with some (or all) collective bargaining rights for some (or all) public workers, the 2010 budget deficit averaged 23 percent. These numbers are all very close. The right of public workers to unionize is not driving the state revenue or fiscal crisis.
• On an annual basis, full-time state and local public employees earn lower wages by 5.7% in Ohio, in comparison to otherwise similar private sector workers in similarly-sized organizations (100 or more employees). When comparisons are made for differences in annual hours worked, full-time state and local employees are paid 3.1% less in Ohio.
• Considering both the cost of employer-provided benefits and direct wages, public-sector workers in Ohio earn less than they would in the private sector.
  A standard earnings equation produced what some may feel is a surprising result: Ohio full-time state and local employees are paid 6.1% less. Full-time public employees, however, work fewer hours on average – when we control for that, state and local public employees make 4% less, including benefits, than private-sector employees in Ohio.
• The wage penalty rose as jobs became higher skill. While low-wage workers received a small wage premium in state-and-local jobs (about 6 percent for a typical low-wage worker), the typical middle-wage worker earned about 4 percent less in state-and-local work, and the typical high- wage worker made about 11 percent less than a similar private-sector worker.
• The lowest-wage private sector workers are often compensated so poorly that they need to receive Medicaid, cash assistance or food assistance. Advocates have pushed for public sector jobs to have higher standards than that, reasonably arguing that workers collecting our trash, helping in our children’s lunchrooms and taking care of our parents should not be left deep in poverty. A 2008 report from Policy Matters Ohio found that the state of Ohio spent more than $100 million to provide Medicaid for the employees of fifty large private Ohio employers, a 29 percent increase between 2004 and 2007 among the firms that could be compared during the two years.4
• Ohio state and local public sector workers teach our children, protect our communities, save us from fires, guard those we’ve convicted of crimes, clean up our parks and do countless other tasks to improve Ohio and enrich our lives. These Ohioans deserve decent compensation and should not be vilified because we chose to cut taxes and make other choices that hurt our economy.

One of the many signs, yesterday, at the rally outside of the Dayton Convention Center

Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 is a bold move by Ohio Republicans to destroy public workers’ unions.  This bill erases a lot of the Ohio Revised Code and completely destroys decades old procedures dealing with public employee contracts. It is incredible that legislation of this scope should be pushed through without a longer and more careful public debate.  It seems a blatant power grab by Republicans who, after the last election, now have the upper hand.

South of Dayton Republican State Senator, Peggy Lehner, had an interesting request of teachers that was quoted in the DDN: “Help us (the State Assembly) figure out a system that blends merit with seniority. … To put the best possible teacher in the classroom should be your goal. It’s my goal and I’d like you to help me get there.”

Yes, I agree, we need a very different organizational structure for our system of public education. In my campaign to be elected to the Kettering School Board, I spoke of the need for “transformation,” and I believe transformation means radical change. But, in my view, this transformation, in order to be effective, must be a cooperative, long-term effort and the goal must be to raise and empower teacher professionalism. Nothing I see in Senate Bill 5 makes me think that this type of transformation is part of the Republican motivation.

This attack on public employee unions by Ohio Republicans parallels what is happening in Wisconsin.  Paul Krugman writes that Republicans want to make America, “less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.”

Stephen Lahanas writing on David Esrati’s blog makes this observation:

The current legislation being proposed by Gov. Kasich has absolutely NOTHING to do with Ohio. This is a coordinated effort across 14 states thus far and this latest strategy was developed by the CATO, Heritage Institutes over the past two years or so. Whatever complaints anyone here might have about unions locally or nationally, the goal of this effort has nothing to do with reforming current practices or even with budget shortfalls. The goal here is clear – to disempower all government services employees by breaking their unions. This is has been combined with a sustained propaganda attack in the media against teachers and state and federal employees (blaming teachers for all issues related to education, claiming state workers are overpaid etc.)”

A big crowd -- at least 1000 -- chanted "Kill the Bill" at the Dayton Convention Center. Senator Peggy Lehner met with a group of teachers inside of the Center.

Lot’s of interesting comments — pro and con — at Cleveland.com:

• pogoaddict writes:  “It is brain washed people LIKE YOU who do not realize that YOU and YOURjob will be next.Unless you own your own business or are a Millionaire everything thing that Unions do benefits YOU. Your pay is based on Union Scales. You work a 5 day work week because of Unions. You work in a safe environment because of Unions, you get vacation days because of unions, you get overtimes because of Unions. … I am truly sorry for all of you people who are so brain washed and brain dead you can not look at the facts and see that you are being lied to by the Republicans AGAIN.”
• larrylicious writes: “The unionthug leadership that relies on other peoples labor to support them in their upper middle-class lifestyles are worried that they may be out of a job. And well they should be. Maybe you should have been more careful with the dues money you collected instead of supporting Democrats 100% of the time. This shameful practice is coming to an end. Republicans are now in charge, and they are going to restore things to the way they should be.”
• lndep1 writes:  “On a strictly political level, there’s a couple of reasons to listen to the safety unions. Unlike the teachers’ unions, AFSCME, and the SEIU, safety unions are not essentially an affiliate of the Democratic Party. They are much more politically independent. … One can understand why Republicans are hesitant to sit down with unions that always support Democrats, and contribute money and and other efforts to defeat Republicans. But that’s not the safety unions.”
• hoipolloi writes: “I support the proposed changes, but frankly I have no problem “slowing down” the process. The more people learn about this the more support it will have. Thevery concept of a public employee union is dubious — they create a fundamental unbalance at best and corruption of government at worst. The more it is talked about the clearer it becomes. And passing this bill after a convincing public debate is the best way for the change to be permanent.”
• Will_444 writes: “If we want to break up unions for first responders, teachers, and other government workers, why hide it in a fear-induced funding bill? We should have the guts to vote on a straight up/down bill to take away collective bargaining for workers. There may be more than one way to get through a budget crisis then on the backs of just one group of Ohio workers. The whole way this is set up in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states seems too much of a political set-up.”

Wow. Watson, the IBM supercomputer, in an impressive display of “simulated” intelligence this week, won the TV quiz program, “Jeopardy” — thoroughly defeating the reining human champions.

Ken Jennings, the all time best human Jeopardy player, finished his losing match with "Watson," by writing below his final answer, "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords" -- a takeoff from an old Simpson show where TV man Kent Brockman welcomed the rule of what he thought were a force of intelligent invading ants.

IBM believes Watson will result in big profits.  By next year, IBM plans to offer a commercial version of Watson for sale — a whole trailer full of equipment and software that will cost several million dollars. IBM believes decision-makers will be willing to pay a lot of money to have the power to sift through enormous piles of written material in seconds.

David Ferrucci is the manager of the IBM development team that created  Watson. He had four years, unlimited funds, and 15 of IBM’s brainiest brainiacs to work full time on the project. Ferrucci is quoted by NYT as saying, “I had no interest spending the next five years of my life pursuing things in the small, I wanted to push the limits.”

Corporate American determines to “push the limits,” when big profits are possible. It seems logical that in the near future, IBM or some hedge fund will work to “push the limits” in creating computer based teaching programs.  Think of a program with Watson’s capacity loaded with every successful teaching strategy. Think of the big profits possible, if professionally paid teachers could be replaced with “intelligent” machines.  It is one premise for my book I’m researching, “Public Education In Kettering, Ohio in 2030,” that, in the near future “teaching machines” will be reliable and cheap.

As I write here — The Dumbing Down Of What It Means To Be A “Great Teacher” Will Lead To Machines Replacing Teachers — in education, the battle of teacher v machine begins at the foundational level, where the very purpose and meaning of education is defined. Increasingly, education is being dumbed down to mean simply acquiescence to the authority of an objectified and identified curriculum. Increasingly, teaching is being dumbed down to mean simply, “the transmission of a curriculum as measured by objective tests.”

If some terminator type intelligent machine was working from the future — implementing a long term plan to take over public education — a good place to start would be the trivializing and “dumbing down” of the whole concept of “education” and the complete discrediting of the teaching “profession.”

The stage is set for machines to take over. We’ve been brainwashed to think a school is “excellent” if only a sufficient number of its students show minimum competence on objective tests. It’s obvious we don’t need high paid professionals to accomplish excellence so defined.  It’s a small step from a teacher reading from a script to a machine reading from the same. And won’t absolute personalization be wonderful? A machine for each child. Yes, there will still need to be humans,

"I, for one, welcome the new insect overlords."

“teachers,” to carry out the commands of the machine, but such humans will not require a professional salary, no more than guards do at the state prison.

The question for humanity, explored in science fiction, is, in the face of overwhelming technology, can mankind maintain its humanity? Can mankind understand and fulfill its human potential?

The futurist, Raymond Kurzweil, in a Time Magazine article, paints an astounding picture. Kurzweil tracks how much computer power $1000 (in constant dollars) could purchase over the last 100 years and says computer power, over time, doubles at a constant rate. He says at the established rate, that within 10 years, $1000 will buy computing power equivalent to the human brain.  (Kurzweil holds 39 patents and 19 honorary doctorates and was early recognized as a child prodigy.)

More than ever before, humanity has the power to shape its own future. And this power comes from our tools. The computer is a tool growing rapidly in power, and at an increasing rate. The question is — how will we choose to use this power?

Kurzweil predicts that the human brain will be successfully reversed engineered and by 2030, a computer will exist with authentic artificial intelligence.  He predicts that the exponential growth of computer power will continue, with eventually computers having intellects billions of times more powerful than humans. This astounding outcome, the coming “Singularity,”  will change human history forever. According to Kurzweil this outcome is not in some distant future, but, in 2045 — within the lifetimes of most humans now living.

The best example of the power of doubling that I’ve heard is to imagine a water glass with some tiny organism growing at the base of the glass. Suppose every day it doubles in volume.  It might double hundreds of times before it is even visible, or before you notice it. But, one day it will occupy 1/4 of the volume of the glass, the next day 1/2 and the next it will be filled. Its rapid change at the end of its cycle will be unexpected — because humans are acclimated to expecting linear change, not exponential change. According to Kurzweil, in technology we are approaching a dramatic crescendo and, soon, results will materialize rapidly and astonishingly.

Part of my research for my book about education in 2030 is to ask and attempt to answer:  If we use the reality of this coming avalanche of “artificial” intelligence as motivation for a prime directive, as an inspiration to redefine education in terms of guiding human development to best actualize human potential, human happiness, human fulfillment, how do we proceed?  What is such an education? After our computer overlords take over, let’s hope they are guided by such a prime directive.