DTEJD1997

Average US median wage is 51k. For teachers it's 56K. I do not think a 10% premium is so extravagant. Teachers in DPS make about DOUBLE what local residents make ($26,250). This is purely in take home pay...They also get summers, holidays, healthcare, pensions and other benefits. I personally know of some educators that are making 3.75x average Detroit resident, and one that makes almost 7X local residents. Please see: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/05/18/detroit-median-household-income/622687002/ As for "teachers" not imposing/being able to impose discipline in their classrooms...Teachers should not get 100% of the blame, and I will also rail against the administrators. DPS teachers have a difficult job, a very difficult job...but too many of them are simply there to go along to get along. They are part of a corrupt & failed system. It is true that many of the teachers have little to do with discipline, but they sign the checks, they take the money. There has to be some amount of blame and shame, some amount of accountability. They may be a small cog in the wheel, but they are part of the failure factories. How many of the teachers are fighting the unions? Fighting the board of education? Trying to fix or at least make substantial changes to the system? How many of them are railing against single parent households? Trying to improve society? Very few. Very few indeed.

I always wonder when these types of criticism are made against a certain "rent-seeking" class: Where are the customer's yachts? These fat-cat teachers, where are their yachts? Do they keep them docked on the private island to make sure they can back the 2004 toyota corolla out of the driveway to work? Here's a pretty accurate representation of what teaching is really like (particularly in large minority urban areas): https://quillette.com/2019/02/10/public-educations-dirty-secret/ LC: What you've got to remember, is that $58k ayear in the Detroit area is probably like $120k in NYC. A person making $58k a year can EASILY afford a house in Detroit OR most of it's suburbs. You can afford to drive a car, take vacations, and so on. This is DOUBLY the case with pension, A+ healthcare, and paid time off. In fact, most people would go so far as to state that you are "rich". Please see: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/05/18/detroit-median-household-income/622687002/ As for the conditions in the skools...that is kind of sort of what is going on here....Detroit might arguably be worse...but end result is that GENERATIONS of students are not educated. That is one of the reasons why I so adamantly opposed to compulsory education. Think of how much of society's precious capital is being wasted in these institutions of learning. It has been going for longer than I've been alive. Trick now is that the educators are seriously milking the system. It is simply not going to be able to go on too much longer. Schools need to be for learning and DISCIPLINE. They are not test beds for SJW non-sense and make work for "teachers" and administrators. Schools are to teach/train the next generation. Institute reform, start teaching & learning. Let those who wish to learn come in and benefit, throw out those who do not. Simple as that.

i don't have any problem with anybody making a living doing honest work. The problem with primary educators is several fold: 1). The general populace thinks that skools are simply starved for funds. Here in MI, nothing could be further from the truth. Untold BILLIONS are poured into edukation. For example, DPS spends about $14k per student/per year. The actual capital put into that system is actually a bit higher than that even as there are donations from the private sector and an insane amount of real estate held in the system. 2). The results of the DPS are much improved. Close to 65% of it's students are now managing to graduate from high school. This is simply a stunning improvement over years ago. How many of those graduates are barely literate and in truth under educated? What happened/happens to the hundreds of thousands that never graduated high school? How/where do they get work? Form business/families and become productive members of society? In other school districts, it seems that students are less prepared as time progresses. So the efficiency and quality of education has gone down quite a bit, even as $$$$ put to it has gone up. 3). The general public thinks that most teachers are eating ramen noodles cooked over an open flame under a bridge overpass. Average wage of DPS teacher is about $58k a year. Please see: https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary/detroit-mi While $58k is not a tremendous amount of cash, consider that they get EXCELLENT healthcare, they get a pension, they get summers off, and they get plenty of paid holidays and other minor benefits. Add it all up, and it is rather significant. Teachers with a Master's degree, or special certifications make more. Teachers in suburbs can make significantly more than in DPS. So hopefully people will see this and realize what exactly is going on.

I'm not sure what the Teacher pension situation is in other states, but in Illinois - it a great deal. I hear these teachers bitch about how hard they work etc, --- but check out some of these pensions - here a slice from Naperville, ILL schools, fairly close to me: https://www.openthebooks.com/map/?Map=1803&MapType=Pin&Zip=60527 (when the map opens, just click on Naperville) Not bad if you've been teaching driver's ed or an art class your whole life! Not bad if you've been teaching, English, literature, working in the library, or teaching just about anything. Remember, these people largely had 2-3 months off in the summer. If they were desperate for cash they could have painted houses, drive big rigs, delivered pizzas, or done landscaping. Heck, they could have even bought & rehabilitated real estate! Banks love to lend to teachers. I think IL is somewhat above the average for pensions in the USA. However, here in MI, I know of one teacher who get almost $90k a year in pension, and another who was teacher/admin, who makes about $200k a year in pension. They also get "Cadillac" health care coverage. So while teachers in MI don't appear to make quite what they make in IL, they generally do pretty darn good.

Oh the delicious irony! Teachers are complaining about student loans! https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/16/536488351/teachers-with-student-debt-the-struggle-the-causes-and-what-comes-next hahahahaha They are also mad that only about 1% are getting PSLF. Well, tough luck, they didn't read the small print correctly OR made mistakes that disqualified them. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/11/739860400/broken-promises-teachers-sue-u-s-over-student-loans-that-werent-forgiven Too bad, so sad. Pay up! These people truly don't understand how well they have it. Most teachers get their summers off. They also get a Christmas break, and a Spring break. I also think they have several other paid days off, such as Thanksgiving and some other days. So when you look at their pay divided by the actual number of days they work, they get paid pretty good. Most teachers also have healthcare and pension programs. A lot of workers in private industry don't have either. Well, now they know better and can redouble their efforts to make $$$ and pay off their loans.

Hey all: The lower yields go, the fewer people are going to have pensions and stable retirements. The city I live/work in is almost certainly going to have to go bankrupt eventually. They are underfunded on their pensions. They are even MORE underfunded on their medical/health/other benefits. Of course, a huge portion of their assets are invested in bonds. If you have zero or one or two percent long term bond rates, saving for retirement becomes an incredibly difficult proposition. A lot of people are going to learn a very difficult lesson.

Hey all: Here is another thing to ponder. If the education being peddled by "educators" is valuable & worthwhile (certainly some is), why are there so many people so far in debt? Why is the amount owed easily $1.5T? If graduates get good jobs, jobs that pay $$$$ commensurate with the time & money invested in them, then why so much debt? People with valuable educations would be making more $, and easily paying down/off their student loans. The simple fact of the matter is that a shockingly high percentage of education is simply no where near as valuable as what it is made out to be. Thus, you get the shocking amount of debt. The way edukation is set up in America is now a wealth transfer from the tax payers to the edukators, with students/graduates trapped in the middle. Meanwhile, the "educators" laugh all the way to the bank.

Hey all: Here is another factor to the student loan crisis. A lot of borrowers are stopping payments on their loans. They are doing this as there is a lot of uncertainty of what is going on with student loans. Why make payments if there is a possibility of them being discharged/significantly altered? So get them deferred, or get on IBR. Try to postpone making payments as long as possible. If you have to make payments, make the smallest payment possible to see if the situation changes. Kind of stupid on the part of government.

Hey all: I've been talking about this for years. Sure, you've got entitled "goofs" who squandered their time & money, who got useless degrees in underwater basket weaving or grievance studies. You've also got swarms of people who "did everything right" and they either can't find gainful employment in their field of study OR they find employment in their field at pay rates FAR below what the skool & USNWR represented it to be. So what do you do? You are trapped. You've got $100K+ in debt. How do you pay that off with a $35k to $45k salary? Especially when you've got to pay for room & board & transportation & everything else? Do you chuck all your education and start big rig truck driving to make decent money to pay off your loans? I am going to suggest that almost everybody on this board is relatively successful and has not had to deal with dismal job prospects and huge student loans. So it is easy to condemn the idiots for borrowing too much. It is easy to believe that all "educators" do a good job & are underpaid. What about the so called educators? They are laughing all the way to the bank! They got their money. Cancelling student loan debt or "free" education is not going to deal with the grifters in the education system.

Hey all: it has been a long time since I updated this thread. There has also been discussion of Detroit in the political thread on Baltimore. I am updating this thread as there are some developments, and I don't want to derail the other thread too much. Here is a an interesting video showing a few interesting places in Detroit. It is exceptionally well done and worth 30 minutes of your time: 2 interesting things in the video are the Fisher Building in the beginning. Photos and words can barely begin to describe how simply stunning the building is when you are actually there. It is one of my favorite places and if you are ever in Detroit it is worth taking time to visit. The other is of Cooley High School. Cooley was largely built in the 20's. It is absolutely stunning how well built that school was. Not really like a high school as I would think of it, but more like a university? Another update is that one of the empty property lots as described in the photo/post three above is now sold and under construction! I've also teamed up with some other more experience property developers who work in/around Detroit and have seen/learned some great stuff that I didn't know about. So I hope to have some more interesting updates in this thread relatively soon!

Hey all: Years ago I heard about the incredibly high youth unemployment in Europe...so I found some Europeans and asked them about it. They told me that it was indeed bad, very bad...but that there were a few things going on. The first is that those figures are somewhat inflated. Some people are actually employed, but claim to be unemployed for benefits and such. Another big thing that they pointed out to me was that a lot of youth worked in the underground/informal economy. Another thing was that a lot of youth worked part time/seasonal/on off. A lot also worked in the "gig" economy. A good chunk also traveled overseas and would on cruise ships/resorts/foreign countries. So the people I spoke with said that things were indeed bad, but not as bad as you would first think. This was maybe 10 years ago? Have things changed at all?

Much if the US power grid is 2nd world standard at best. Wooden poles leaning over until they fall down, transformers that look they are from the 60’s and high voltage lines strung and cobbled together are the norm. I list power last winter in an apartment I rented for a week. However on the plus side, electricity is fairly cheap compared to Europe when you get it. Most larger industrial facilities have multiple power connections for redundancy. Which just goes to show how massive infrastructure projects could easily increase productivity. Would be such an amazing positive economic investment. What is the US currently missing? The one thing I can think of is mobile network and wifi capability. But this is already really good. Especially when you think about how big the US is geographically. And in the high population areas access to these services is already good. Practically everything needs upgrading. A few examples in this thread. Another one: http://t4america.org/maps-tools/bridges/overview/ "68,842 bridges – representing more than 11 percent of total highway bridges in the U.S. – are classified as “structurally deficient,” according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Structurally deficient bridges require significant maintenance, rehabilitation or replacement. A number of bridges also exceed their expected lifespan of 50 years. The average age of an American bridge is 42 years." I get that, but the majority of those highways and bridges are still being used regardless. It's more about safety than efficiency. Now if we're talking about adding new routes and lanes sure I get the efficiency/productivity argument. It's like companies who are still running Windows 8. Yeah there is a better product available; but can you justify the cost with the marginal (arguably zero) productivity increase? Castanza: Replacing/repairing bridges & infrastructure can absolutely increase efficiency. Here in the Detroit area, most of the infrastructure is literally falling to pieces. This is manifested mainly in road problems. Michigan has diverted a substantial portion of the "gas tax" to education for a number of years. As such, our roads are probably the worst in the country. With these bad roads, our vehicles get damaged every year. I've had tires blow out and suspension problems with my vehicles in the past 3 years. I am an EXTREMELY careful driver. I have family members who have had THOUSANDS of dollars & lost work days due to damaged vehicles. Perhaps even more importantly than that, we now have extensive repair/rebuilding taking place on the freeways. This is resulting in massive traffic backups. I frequently make a trip that takes 20-25 minutes on clear roads. When rush hour starts at about 2:30 PM, that trip will now take DOUBLE the time, sometimes more. Multiply that extra 1/2 hour times 10,000+ people twice a day. This has been going on for a long time now. Another example of bad roads: some people won't consider driving/owning certain vehicles. I used to own a Corvette when I lived in Texas. I would not even consider owning one in the Detroit area, the roads are simply too bad. So I won't even consider owning a sports car while I live here. I doubt I am the only one who thinks this way. Another infrastructure problem we've got in the Detroit area is the water system. It has not been managed well for a number of decades. We've also got problems with water going to abandoned areas of the city. End result is that we've got some of the most expensive water/sewer in the country. Simply outrageous. So run down, mismanaged infrastructure is a drag on efficiency and a real cost.

I thought this was proven false in the crash of 2008? Here in the Detroit area, my father bought a house in 2006 at a decent discount, in a decent neighborhood. By about 2010, it had gone down by about 60% in value. Fast forward to today, and it is worth a bit more than he paid. I know some people who actually live in the Detroit city limits who have bought houses that have gone up in price 8X in the last 10 years or so. Of course, Detroit is a weird, wild place. Prices go up & down (mainly down) over the decades. At one time, Detroit was a vibrant boom town. Housing was in short supply, heck, there was even a housing shortage. Obviously, Silicon Valley is different...but will it ALWAYS be a "hot" place? I wouldn't be so sure of that.

Hey all: Sad to hear of his passing. Mr. Iacocca was truly a patriot and great man, he will be missed. May he find peace in the afterlife.

Good idea. Are there any legislators talking about this kind of program? These sorts of programs already exist. Many public service jobs, governmental jobs and non-profit jobs can qualify. Teachers, nurses and doctors are pretty obvious professions that are specifically targeted, but they even have programs specifically for lawyers. The devil is in the details, and there are some severe problems with PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness). Tens of thousands of people thought they were eligible for this and were enrolled, but come to find out that there were problems with the paperwork and they are out. This is a scandal in of itself, but it is being addressed. The BIGGER problem with this is that the skools still get the money! The institutions should by and large not be getting the capital that they are. There is no cost/benefit analysis, there is no underwriting with this. Finally, the institutions have no skin in the game. If 80% of their graduates are in PSLF or IBR (or other programs), how is that a good deal for ANYBODY other than the educators? Students have huge debts that the government pays off if they do community service for 10 years? The market is not working and there is no value or price discovery of the value of all this education.

You are right that a lot of the "for profit" skools are indeed frauds OR up to their hips in unsavory stuff....Not 100% are, but perhaps the majority? Of course, things are not quite as bad now as they were 5-10 years ago. There have been several that were sued and shut down. If you go in the "way back" machine, you'll see I was railing against them back then even. So I've been 100% consistent over the years with that. HOWEVER, there are PLENTY of shenanigans going on with "traditional non-profit" skools also. Obviously not all of them are...then there are some that are generally good, but have some problem programs...and then are a bunch that need to brought to heel or shut down. I would submit that "non-profit" simply means that there are not shareholders or owners in the traditional sense. The "shareholders" of the non-profits would be the administrators & tenured professors. They are the stakeholders that are getting the money. The law skool problem is especially egregious, and I'm not going to go into too many details here. There have been MANY lawsuits against them, and enrollment is down at most law skools. Some skools have finally been shut down! Obviously, some are law schools better than others. For example, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are probably worth paying full freight for. There are maybe a dozen others that are also solid choices. Once you get past the top 20 or so ranked schools, then you are starting to gamble...go down another 20 rankings, and it is insane to pay full tuition. Heck, there are maybe 100+ law skools (out of about 200) that are NOT worth attending even with a full ride scholarship. Law skools are perhaps the worst example of things gone amuck, but I've heard there are problems with architecture, journalism and some other fields of study. Obviously most liberal art programs are not worth the money & effort. This could be discussed for hundreds of pages...but make no mistake, there are SEVERE problems with a surprising number of "non-profit" skools. Things have got to change!

Jurgis and "Read the Footnotes", is it so far outside the realm of possibility that educators are not engaged in shady stuff? That with $1.5 trillion of student loan debt, that something funny might not be going on? Obviously not all teachers, educators, and administrators are in on the scam, but I think most people would be shocked by how many are. Obviously some education is worth every penny and then some...but a shocking amount is not. Think about this, educators are paid up front. Once they've got the money, it does not matter so much the outcome for the student. It would be interesting to see how many students wind up in default on their loans, in forbearance for an extended time, OR in IBR. So let us say that a school has 10% of their students not paying the loans back. Not good, but certainly not a catastrophe. What if that hit 20%? 35%, 50% or more? Why should the educators not have "skin in the game". Clearly there is a problem with the quantity and quality of what they are producing. Is it so far outside the realm of possibility that some skools are fudging, manipulating and lying about the worth of their diplomas(education) and the results of their graduates? There is a problem with this, and it is unfortunately going to grow in the near future.

Yes, and the degrees should be repossessed in the process. That is a perfectly acceptable solution...BUT FOR ONE THING...the educators that profited in the creation of these things also need to be addressed. Perhaps they should also pay a penalty? I know SCORES of attorney that have paid TENS of thousands of dollars toward their student loans, that have worked for YEARS, that would GLADLY give up their license and be barred from ever practicing law in the future in exchange for simple cancellation of their remaining student loans.

What is almost never discussed is the culpability of the educators. Sure, there are stupid students who have absolutely no idea what they are doing...but what about the students who are told, "we've got a 90%+ placement rate at $70k+ salaries upon graduation". Student finds out at graduation that the employment rate is about 50%, and the average salary is in the 30's? There are TONS of skools who are fraudulently inflating/promoting the outcome of their graduates. That plays a HUGE part in the explosion of student loan debt. If a lot of skools were honest about the outcome of their graduates, they would either close down OR have to totally redo their programs and a lot of profs and admins would be shown the door. Those that remain would have to work 2x or 3x as hard. So yeah, let us see some accountability on the part of the educators.

it would be very interesting to see what was in those briefings. I am sure that the military has more information than what they are letting onto the public. Once again, I am shocked that these incidents and stories are not getting more play/attention.

Moviepass? That is funny! I had a couple of different names in mind! if the cost of capital were a few percentage points higher, a lot of these megabillion dollar companies losing money never would have gotten any traction. The investment environment would look a lot different today.

hey all: Simply selling, or swapping, or exchanging properties would NOT solve the situation. At best, it might help a bit. Taxes & property values are not solely based on the price paid for the property in an open market transaction. The price paid (in open market transaction) is a determining factor, but it is not the only one. The adjustment board will also look at other properties values & open market transactions in the city. When I bought my properties, I was looking for an 80% reduction (price I paid). After arguing & going in front of the board for 2 years, I finally settled on a reduction of just over 40%. I talked with other property owners in my area, and they were simply SHOCKED that I got as much off as I did. Right now, in my city, not too many property owners are making concerted efforts to fight their taxes & appraisals. If they did, I am sure the city would be in a more difficult position than it already is in. Crazy thing is this...properties in Detroit tend to be highly taxed, but the situation is not nearly as bad as these close in suburbs. Detroit's rate, while high, tends to have a more accurate "market value" of the property. One way to solve the over assessing of values might be to have a "put" to the city. For example, you can sell your property to the city at 70% of assessed value. Perhaps that would make the assessments a lot more accurate? Then if an assessor has more than a couple properties "put" back to the city, they lose their job? I'll bring this up at the next city council meeting!

Hey all: I looked at a property the other day in my area. I felt bad for the owner, as they are JAMMED up over property taxes. The building/land is very nice. It was last used as a medical office/facility. Almost no expense was spared when it was built about 15 years ago. Very nice, excellent appointments inside. it is also on a wonderful piece of land. It is set back from the road and there are all sorts of trees providing natural shade. Land is just over 1 acre. Plenty of parking. Arguably the nicest building in my area. It has been vacant 2+ years. Still in pretty good condition. It is just over 6,000 sq. ft. and they are ASKING $300k. Property taxes are set at about $29,500 per year. Local government is valuing the building at about $700k. The owner has contested the city's valuation. They hope to eventually get taxes cut down by about 40%, maybe. Who is going to buy the building with taxes being darn near ten percent of it's price? They would have to gamble that they are a success in getting the appraisal lowered. Meanwhile, the owner is probably stuck. I'm sure that they spent MORE than $300k to build the building and the city is reluctant to lower it's tax value. City thinks, "you spent $600k 15 years ago, why should we lower the taxes?". So the building is stuck. Will likely to remain "stuck" unless the owner marks it down substantially. If they sold it for $125k, then the new owner would almost certainly be able to get the taxes lowered. Crazy situation here in Detroit! Either way, the current owner is simply jammed.

I would recommend reading, Reading, and then some more READING. What/where would I read? I would bring a laptop with me to the local library. Get the Value Lines 1st thing. Then go to the periodicals. Get the WSJ, Forbes, Fortune, local business magazines and then start reading. When you are reading a story of a company, say GE, look it up in the ValueLine. Look at the company performance over time and where they are now, and what projections are. Spend a couple of hours doing this. Do it a couple/few times a week. Do it for a few years and you'll gather quite a knowledge of companies and current trends. I would also join different clubs on the interwebs. This is a good place to start, but there are others. The microcapclub and Value Investors Club are two other good websites. When you are at home/driving/walking, listen to investing/business podcasts in the background. Finally, perhaps the best thing of all, is the contacts that you will make and the ideas that you will trade/learn of. If you can find some interesting insights, others will reciprocate and over time you will do well. I have a small circle of investors that I've met on the interweb...all of them very educated, very accomplished businessmen/investors. From time to time, I trade ideas and information with them. Mind you, only the top ideas are traded. That has been one of my very best ways to get information! Good luck!

I was privileged/lucky enough to be invested in 2/3 of the situations you mentioned. As an interesting aside, it appears that the successor to CASA (Williston Holdings) is bidding to take out KONA from bankruptcy.