Saturday, September 03, 2022

Rings of Power First Impression

 I saw the first two episodes of the first season of the Rings of Power, a series on Amazon Prime.  I enjoyed, overall, those episodes, and I look forward to watching more.  But, I cannot say that I am excited or impressed with the quality of the program. There were a few things I did not like. 

First, Galadriel.  She was of such a high status that she would not have needed anyone to help her get an audience with Gil-Galad, and the episode portrays her as just a high-ranking elf whose brother happened to die “while searching for Sauron”.  The rule for the creators should have been to only change things in the original stories that needed to be changed to make for a better story. These changes diminish, rather than enhance, the quality of the story. Galadriel’s brother Finrod was killed in barehanded combat with a werewolf as he protected Beren, during a mission against Morgoth. Finrod engaged in a battle of song with Sauron shortly before this.  That is a better story than the one in Rings of Power where Finrod is merely some guy (he was in fact a king) killed while hunting for Sauron, and it was stupid to change that story.  On the other hand, the creators of this show do not have rights to portray anything outside the appendices in the Lord of the Rings, so maybe they were not legally able to explain events that took place in the Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth or The Book of Lost Tales and so forth.

And more about Galadriel.  She established the realm of Eregion, which she ruled under Gil-Gilad.  So, she would be one of the most important lords of his realm.  And, she is the younger sister of Gil-Gilad’s grandfather Angrod, aunt to his father Orodreth.  Why would she need Elrond to help her get an audience with Gil-Gilad?  I have no objections to making Galadriel obsessed with killing orcs and finding Sauron, or portraying her as a younger elf (she is already thousands of years old, but she could still look young, I am sure).  All that is fine.  But, by diminishing her status I do not see what the story creators for Rings of Power are adding to the story. It was unnecessary to demote her, and doing so makes the film more cliched than if they had presented us with a more unusual situation of the highest ranking female elf in the world going off on dangerous missions. On the other hand, I think the series may be able to show character development and growth for Galadriel, and so I am objecting to the context of her personality and its significance, rather than her personality in general.  

Gil-Galad should not be the one determining who can go to Valinor.  The Elves decide for themselves when they go across the sea.  The show creators have given the elves a far less interesting culture and civilization by portraying them as having an intrusive absolute monarchy where the High King can make such deeply personal decisions for his subjects. Tolkien was suspicious of power, and the High King of the Elves should not be exercising such power.  The show creators have missed an opportunity to show something great and significant, and instead followed a boring trope about powerful kings.  Sigh.

Most of the portrayals of elves in the several film and television adaptations of Tolkien’s world miss the sense that elves are not entirely like humans (they are like the better aspects of who we should aspire to be). They are capable of flaws (some were corrupted, and there have been instances of kin-slaying), but in many ways, they have motivations and behaviors that are unlike those of mortal humans. For example, they don’t get old, so whether an elf is 500 years old or 1000 years old or 5000 years old, they might exhibit psychological dynamics humans could associate with younger adults or middle-aged adults or senior adults.  Had the show creators considered this, they might have seen that portraying Galadriel as being obsessed with finding and destroying the last traces of Morgoth’s damage to Middle Earth and eliminating his captains (Sauron in particular, since it was Sauron who was responsible for the death of her brother Finrod) could have been consistent with portraying Galadriel as one of the greatest and most heroic of all the elves in Middle Earth (in the same class of lords as Gil-Gilad, Cirdan, and Elrond). She should not be portrayed as a junior up-and-coming officer in Gil-Galad’s kingdom.

 During the time of the story (later Second Age) Elrond should meet and fall in love with Galadriel’s daughter, Celebrían. I wonder if we will meet Celebrían in a later season. Elrond and Celebrían do not get married until early in the Third Age, so Galadriel won’t become Elrond’s mother-in-law during the Rings of Power series, but their friendship should be portrayed in such a way that this eventual fate should be plausible. In the first two episodes of Rings of Power there is no indication that Galadriel is married or that she has a daughter.

I do not mind it that the show creators have female dwarves without beards.  That is a trivial detail, and the idea that female dwarves had beards and were nearly indistinguishable from male dwarves seems like exactly the sort of story element that can be changed to make a better television show.  Do we want all the dwarf women to be portrayed by male actors or female actors with false beards?  Maybe that would be more interesting, but I think the use of dwarf females without beards is fine. It doesn’t matter to the story.

The races of actors and actresses is unimportant, and I am entirely indifferent to that, and do not see any reason for controversy on that point.   

Elves should be both extremely wise and good and powerful, but also merry and full of laughter and light-hearted humor. So far, we are only seeing the serious side of elves, and that is too bad. Showing their laughter and light-hearted aspect could give them greater complexity.  The show creators seem to think that Elves are merely a special race of humans.  They are not human; they are closer to angels than humans, or at least something in-between, and should be shown as masters of speech and song.  If the show-creators and screenwriters are not masters of language, perhaps they will fail to adequately portray the nobility of elves through their speech. I am not impressed with the dialog in the series so far. The screenwriters ought to improve their writing.  I suggest that they read Tolkien, and draw inspiration from his writing.

As to all the non-canon characters, I’m fine with those stories.  There is so little written about the Second Age, and what is written is mostly not part of the story that Amazon has rights to portray, so I expected the show creators to mainly use non-canon characters doing things that fit in with the broad framework of the Second Age. In fact, given how I dislike some of the things they have done with characters that Tolkien wrote about, I am hoping we will see more of the characters that Amazon created. Telling stories about such new people will reduce opportunities for show-creators to contradict the points that Tolkien did make about the Second Age.  I used to play Iron Crown's Middle-Earth Role-Playing (like D&D, but set early in the Third Age of Tolkien's world).  In playing campaigns in that setting, I saw that given the Tolkien framework, one could create new characters and stories, and do so without trying to change significant aspects of Middle Earth history or the characters who are named or described in Tolkien’s books. I wish that the show creators had taken an approach like that, with Tolkien's heroes being present but distant. 





Were I designing a massive Rings of Power television series to span seven seasons, I would do it like this:

Season one. In the first two episodes, show events around 950-1000, including the rise of Sauron in Mordor and the beginning of the construction of Barad-dur. Episodes 3 & 4 skip ahead, set in 1200, we see Sauron (disguised and appearing fair and helpful) meet Gil-Gilad and Elrond, and they reject him, but he goes to Eregion, and cultivates the trust of the elves there. The skills of the elves increase. These episodes would show Numenor becoming more imperialistic and the strong friendships between the elves of Eregion and the dwarves of Kazad-dum. Episodes 5-8 would show Sauron forging the One Ring, and season 1 would conclude in 1693 with the beginning of the war between the elves and Sauron. In episode 6 we would meet the Blue Wizards, and in episode 7 or 8 we would be introduced to Glorfindel, returned from the Halls of Mandos and Valinor.  I can imagine the scene where he meets Galadriel and brings her news of her dead brother Finrod, given a new body and reincarnated so that he could enjoy life in Valinor with his wife Amarië and their father Finarfin. I wonder if this Amazon series will portray that.

Season two would be the war between elves and Sauron. We would see the years 1693 to 1701. Harfoot and human characters introduced in the second half of the first season could have their stories continue in the eight years covered in this season. 

Season three would be from 2220 to 2280.  We would see the last year of the reign of Tar-Atanamir The Great in Numenor (440 years old and dying in episode one), who would exhibit pride and greed, and we would see the last of the messengers sent by the Valar to him, and witness his complaints about the doom of men and mortality. Then the rest of the season would take place during the early reign of Tar-Ancalimon. We would see the construction of the new city of Pelargir and the fortress of Umbar as Numenorian outposts on Middle Earth. We would see the transformation of Sauron’s captains (introduced late in Season 1, developed in Season 2) into the Nazgul. The rings would have magnified their power and extended their lives.  Presumably there would be dwarf lords who would use their rings of power and have amassed tremendous treasures and founded powerful centers of mining, culture, and trade (and we might see one of these dwarf lords betrayed by Sauron and consumed by a dragon). We would see the corruption and strife within Numenor contrasted with the nobility and virtue of its people. The season would have some of the deepest philosophical critiques of modernity, because the Kings’ Men (Numenorians who despise the Ban of the Valar and share Tar-Atanamir’s distrust of the elves and the Valar) would be very recognizable in their pursuit of wealth and diversion and their desperate desire to extend their life-spans. There would be interesting and speculative conversations about death in this season. The Kings’ Men should be “good” in their sense of fairness, their courtesy and kindness, and their generosity, but their flaws should be shown to spring from their pride, their fear of death, and their greed. 

Season four would skip ahead 900 years and show us the years from 3175 to 3262. We would see civil war in Numenor. We would see Tar Palantir take the throne after the death of his father, and his attempts to get the Numenoreans back on track, devoted to the Valar and the old customs, but opposed by his brother Gimilkhad and his nephew, Gimilkhad’s son Pharazon. Pharazon should be extremely likeable, and heroic, and the opening episode should introduce him fighting bravely against Sauron.  The final episode would show Pharazon returning to Numenor where his military victories over Sauron in Middle Earth and his generosity and charisma would enable him to force a marriage upon his unwilling cousin Miriel, and usurp the Numenorean throne. Elendil would be a central character.

Season five would be from 3262 to 3319. We would see Numenor destroyed at the end of this season. Al-Pharazon would bring a massive army from Numenor and capture Sauron, and we would see Sauron corrupting the Numenoreans. Elendil, Isildur, and Anárion would be main figures of the story

Season six would be from 3319 to 3429, and would depict the establishment of Gondor and Arnor, and the return of Sauron to Mordor. There could be interesting stories about the establishment of the Kingdoms in Exile (Arnor and Gondor).  

Season seven would be from 3429 to 3441, and would conclude with the Last Alliance of Elves and Men in a great war against Sauron, and the end of the Second Age.

In a seven season series like this, the Elves (and any wizards or ents) would be consistent through all seven seasons.    Some Numenorians and dwarves could be found in multiple seasons, as Numenorians could live perhaps as long as four centuries, and dwarves could live nearly three centuries. Elendil, for example, would be introduced in the first episode of season four as a young 56-year-old Numenorean prince (his father was the Lord of Andúnië in Numenor), and he would perish in the final or penultimate episode of the seventh season as the 322-year-old heroic king of Numenoreans in exile.    Normal human and harfoot characters would have to have their stories contained within one season in general. Some could be in the final half of season one and all of season two, or late in season six and all through season seven. No problem there. 

The stories so far, in the first couple episodes of the Rings of Power, are interesting, and entertaining, and I am certainly interested in what will happen next. I care about the characters, and I intend to watch the whole series. However, it seems to me that the characters are just being established, and so far, things are happening to the characters, but they are not driving the plot.  That is, in good story-telling, I think characters make decisions and have goals and aims and purposes, and they try to do these things, and make decisions and plans, and their actions bring them into situations with which they must cope, but so far, the series mainly has things happening, and characters responding to these events, which is not really so interesting.  I trust that this will change as the new episodes come out, and we will come to know and care about these characters more than we do now. 

All-in-all, from these first two episodes, it seems to me Amazon has made a good effort and produced something worth watching. It is mostly enjoyable.  It is not great on the level I had hoped, and where it falls short, I fear it falls short because the show creators have lacked the vision and creativity to get past some story-telling tropes and cliches. But, the series succeeds sufficiently to have caught my interest, and I look forward to future episodes with more anticipation than dread, although both those feelings are certainly present.


Monday, May 09, 2022

Why I oppose legal restrictions on abortion even more than I oppose abortion

 I’ve read the draft resolution from Justice Alito, in which the 1973 Supreme Court Case Roe v Wade is attacked.  Let me propose several horrible and barbaric outcomes:

  1. children who are unborn are killed (this is the outcome Alito is most concerned about; it's nearly his only concern).
  2. The maturity and autonomy of women is dismissed by the coercive power of the state; so that instead of allowing women to seek their own spiritual guidance and consult medical opinions when making a decision about terminating a pregnancy, they must instead obey the coercive power of the state telling them what decisions they are allowed to make.
  3. We could lose the right to privacy, a traditional right that was widely understood back even in the 17th century, and certainly in the 18th century when the philosopher-founders of our nation were drafting and approving the Constitution. Privacy was one of those rights not specifically named in the Constitution, but we had the Ninth Amendment in the Constitution to protect such rights.  That is, the rights that are spelled out and directly mentioned in the Constitution are not the entire set of all rights Americans have; they are just those rights specifically named in the Constitution.  Other rights exist, and belong to the people, and the general preference in Constitutional law and interpretation should be to assume that people have more rights, and the government has only a narrow scope in which to diminish those rights. The right to privacy, and the general idea that Americans have many rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, should be a basic assumption in the judiciary, and Alito’s argument against Roe v Wade, 1973 undermines this understanding of our rights.  
  4. The state could violate the sacred relationship between a doctor and a patient. In general, I trust a medical profession more than I trust government bureaucrats and members of the legislature.  I’d rather allow the medical profession to make decisions about how and when abortions should be performed. I think professions should be self-governing and self-regulating, and the government should only bring in its coercive powers to ensure that the medical profession is respecting the rights of the citizens and treating patients in accordance with basic standards of fairness and safety.  That is, the government should have a limited role, mainly in oversight, and delegate to the professions and their leaders most of the decisions about how those professions should practice their skills. Laws restricting the medical use of abortions and removing the medical profession's opinion as a consideration is a gross overreach and tyrannical intrusion by coercive state power into realms where it does not belong.
  5. An ethical dilemma that ought to be resolved by spiritual searching and examination, with decisions made through motives of love, will instead be resolved by force and coercion, with decisions made with motives of fear. 
  6. In a question that has no objective scientific answer (when does the sacredness of life begin, as it must surely begin at some point between conception and the approximate time a fetus reaches viability?) will be decided by a decision that forces all citizens to conform to the assumptions of religions that are not even part of the spiritual life for a majority of Americans.  The idea that abortions must be banned is an idea promulgated by a religious minority in this country.  Most religions would allow for exceptions to a general rule forbidding abortions, or would not even have a general rule forbidding or discouraging abortions.  Most secular persons do not even agree that the life of the embryo or fetus has a status comparable with the preferences of the mother until late in the pregnancy anyway.  It would be a very bad situation for our country if our courts and legislatures tried to impose the religious beliefs of a minority on the whole society, and I believe Alito wants do exactly that.  If a political party dominated by Hindus came to power, and outlawed beef consumption, or an alliance of Jewish and Islamic political parties got into power and banned the use of pork in human foods, or if a group of vegans gained power in alliance with certain high-caste Hindus and strict Buddhists, and simply outlawed all consumption of animal-based foods, those situations would be wrong; and it's wrong for the people who believe human life—with attending human rights—begins when an egg is fertilized to force everyone to live by their idiosyncratic faith system.


I think Alito is correct when he suggests that abortions used for birth control in the second trimester are a barbarity. I suppose that abortions after the second week of gestation are probably a great moral harm to the mother when performed electively as a form of birth control. But, there are many other harms to consider in imposing laws that forbid abortions. Looking at the scientific evidence for how many fertilized eggs go on to develop into babies born in life births, it seems this universe is already set up in a situation where perhaps 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 “conceptions” do not lead to live births. This, therefore, seems to be a natural and common phenomenon, although of course the fact that it is natural does not make it a good situation.  Cancer is natural, as is heart disease.  


I’m for free choice in cases like this, where there is ambiguity and doubt about what harms are included in one of the possible choices. When the choice is abortion, this is probably a great harm to the unborn child who is a developing potential person, but I do not know how great a harm it really is.  Is it like murder?  I don’t think so.  And, there can be great harms to the mother if she is coerced into keeping the developing body inside her womb to give birth to it. 


Allowing abortion will allow tremendous moral harms, but taking away the right for women and doctors to decide to have an abortion creates even more moral harms. In modern, complex societies, we allow many things that cause harm to innocents. The USA practices war and helps other nations practice war, generally justifying war by pointing out that the targets of the war have done terrible things, and are likely to do more terrible things, and kill many innocent persons.  Yet, in our conduct of wars, even wars that are perhaps very justified and righteous (e.g., the war against Japanese imperialism and Nazi Fascism in the 1930s-1940s, the war to stop Communist aggression in Korea in the 1950s) many innocents will be harmed, possibly as bombs kill civilians, or as soldiers, even from the “good side,” commit atrocities and rapes on or near the battlefield. That is the nature of war, and we continue to tolerate an international world political system in which war is a frequent condition.  


There are other examples. We allow widespread use of personal vehicles, but tens of thousands of innocent persons are killed in car and truck accidents, which could be dramatically reduced if we devoted more public resources to public transport. We recognize a right to own guns, although every year many people die from gun-inflicted suicides, random gun violence, and mass shootings.  If we removed all guns, we would save many lives, but we value the right to own guns above the value of the lives that would be saved. We use chlorine in water treatment, although a number of persons die of cancers caused by some of the byproducts of this form of water treatment, but reverse osmosis purification of water is far more expensive, so we save money and allow a number of persons to die, sticking with chlorinated water instead of water distilled through reverse osmosis. The burning of coal kills a substantial number of persons through lung diseases, but economists and lawyers estimate the cost of not burning coal, and assign a value to each life lost, and decide that it’s okay to continue operating coal-fired power plants; we don’t need to shut them all down.


 So, like these situations, arguing that abortions should remain legal is an argument that there are things more valuable than the lives of the potential children that are lost (possibly as innocent human lives) in abortion. The Germans, Italians, Slovaks, and Hungarians could stop using Russian gas completely, and thus force Russia to end its war against Ukraine sooner.  But, the Germans and some other Europeans value the convenience of lower cost energy over the lives of innocent Ukrainians and the soldiers of Russia and Ukraine who perish in the Russian invasion and war of conquest against Ukraine. Deciding that something is more important than human life is often done in ways that are dubious.  With a political will we now lack, the USA could rescue people in Yemen and West Tigray from the genocidal wars and starvation that results in those war-torn lands There are thousands of lives at risk in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Haiti, South Sudan, Myanmar, the Congo, and so forth. Americans could save those lives by bringing tens of thousands of refugees into our country from those places, but we don’t do that. 


Normally, life and the preservation of life is the highest value.  But, there are times when the prolonging or preservation of life is not the highest value.  Ask a hospital ethicist about quality of life versus preservation of life, and you will hear some horror stories about lives prolonged too long. And, in the many examples I’ve given, human lives are not valued more than other aspects of life. In the case of banning abortion, the harms from imposing such bans are many.  I think it entirely reasonable that a person could cringe in horror at the thought of the barbarity of using abortion as a birth control method, and still strongly oppose legal attempts to restrict access to abortion, because such laws and their enforcement would impose even greater barbarities on society.  

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Thoughts on the labor situation at UIS

 Five years ago the faculty at my university went on strike, and we have just voted this past week to approve a strike again this year.  That doesn’t mean we will certainly go on strike; it means that ten days after we file an intent to strike, we may choose to do so.  So, on May 2nd or thereafter, we could go on strike

There were 139 faculty in my bargaining unit back in September, but two of us have passed away, and three have retired, so currently there are 134 of us remaining. My guess is that about 120 of us would be either marching around striking or else at least refraining from crossing the picket line. I suppose about 14 of my colleagues would work in defiance of a strike, but I might be too pessimistic about that. 


The intent to strike reflects several things.


  1. We have been bargaining for over 13 months.  I’ve attended the last seven or eight bargaining sessions. In the past two or three bargaining sessions I saw things happening, but in the first four or five sessions the pace was very slow.  I can’t imagine what it was like in the 18+ bargaining sessions back in 2021 before I started attending. Anyway, impatience and frustration are feeding the dissatisfaction that prompted our faculty to vote to strike.
  2. Our faculty feel that our university is neglected by the larger university system of which we are a part.  That is, our Board of Trustees uses a formula to send some of state’s appropriation to the U of I system that perpetuates inequality, and should revise that formula. In essence, our faculty earn less because we teach students who are more likely to be from households with modest incomes, and our students have a high percentage (relative to UIUC) who are first-generation college students, African-American, Hispanic (although UIC has a far greater percentage Hispanic than we do), and veterans. We think this unconsciously pushes the board to undervalue our university, underpay our faculty, and generally exclude us from benefiting from system-wide assets. 
  3. We think the administration can come up with the money pay us what we want to be paid. We believe the administration at the System level and the campus level have the power to stop or slow the rate of decline in enrollments, possibly modestly increase enrollments—at least in the next couple years, raise more revenue from tuition, allocate a fair share of state allocations to our campus, trim salaries and staff position costs in non-teaching areas, and work more effectively in convincing the state government to provide more funding. We do not expect revenue increases to keep up with inflation, but we expect that revenue increases can come close to that target over a three-to-five year period.
  4. We believe the administration at the System level and campus level could invest more in the core mission of our campus, and reduce some of the other costs.
  5. We believe it is fair and appropriate and possible for the U of I System and our campus to plan out payments to us that would, by the final year of a five-year contract (in 2025-2026), have faculty receive compensation that would be at approximately the same level we had in 2020-2021 in inflation-adjusted dollars. 
  6. We are also interested in striking because of the way the university has been responding (or not responding at all) to our proposals.  Not just compensation proposals, but on matters related to workload, parking, and other matters, we have not been pleased with how the University responds.
  7. We think that threatening to strike, or actually striking, will get us a better contract.  And, we are so angry at our administration, that even if the cost of striking (we assume that we will lose our pay for the days we strike) exceeds the increases we could get through striking, we want to express our strong negative emotions against the administration.




Entry to PAC on the UIS campus



The vote to strike, the threat to strike, and the possible strike that may come, are all mainly done to speed up the process, and push the administration to make some reasonable concessions.  We would like them to pick up the pace so that we can exchange proposals and counter-proposals going back and forth between our bargaining teams every few days, rather than waiting weeks or months to get responses.


The state of Illinois claims that public Universities are supposed to support various public goals.  We want to produce an educated workforce that will make Illinois attractive to employers, and we want to produce nurses, school teachers, social workers, public administrators, accountants, business managers and executives, scientists, medical workers, and doctors to meet the needs of the public and the state.  We also want to create opportunities for persons who have been historically excluded from higher education and the middle class to gain access to American prosperity.  That is, we especially want to take bright and hard-working persons from working-class or impoverished backgrounds, and persons who are African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and so forth, and give them a high quality education at a low price so that they will enter the middle class without having a burden of extremely high student debt. 


If you examine research on the incomes and the financial need of students who attend UIS and compare that to UIC and UIUC, you will find that in most respects, our campus is doing that second part, and giving a very affordable high-quality education to our students, and our students include a greater number of persons who are in those groups where their grandparents and ancestors were likely to have been excluded from many benefits of public investment. If you look at UIUC, you will see that they mainly draw from a population where the parents are better educated and enjoy higher salaries. They are more selective, and students who can afford to attend private schools, or get coaching and tutoring on standardized tests, or do interesting extracurricular activities instead of working to help bring in extra income to their households are more likely to be able to choose UIUC.  That’s how it is at flagship Universities and the selective private universities. Regional teaching-oriented universities do attract students from advantaged backgrounds. We’re convenient, and in the case of UIS, the quality of teaching in many classes is equal-to or superior to what students might get at an expensive private school or in Urbana-Champaign. Some students just want to stay away from the massive major campuses, and prefer a more personalized experience, especially in their undergraduate studies. But, the point is, schools such as UIS have more students who are lower in social-economic status compared to the students at the flagship schools, and for elite persons serving on Boards of Trustees or in the Executive levels of System administration, this tends to feed a bias against the students and staff at regional schools. 


So, when the state of Illinois hands out its public subsidy to higher education, the students at UIC and UIS ought to be getting more than UIUC.  They will get more financial support such as the state’s grants to low-income Illinois residents, but also when it comes to the subsidies that go to the campuses, the spending per student ought to reflect a formula that considers typical household incomes, proportion of the students getting veteran benefits, and perhaps also the percentage of students whose ancestors were blocked from accumulating assets for many generations when our nation blatantly excluded some people from schemes of public investment and support (e.g., persons who are African-Americans). 


It is possible to calculate how the state invests its public higher education budget on a per-student basis by examining the Illinois Board of Higher Education’s website to see the most recent Full-Time-Equivalent (FTE) enrollments at the 12 public universities (9 universities, but U of I has three universities and Southern Illinois has two, if we exclude hospitals and medical schools, which are things apart from typical universities).  Looking at that ratio of funding per student, you can find that over recent years the U of I Board of Trustees has been passing on about $5,900 to $6,100 per student to UIS, and a figure of $6,000 per FTE student is almost exactly right for the most recent allocation (UIC gets about $6,020, and UIUC gets about $4,560).  The state spends more on UIS and UIC students than UIUC, but I’ve just explained why the spending-per student at UIS should be compared to schools more like the regionals, Northeastern, Northern, Western, Eastern, and Governors State. The  FY 2021 state fiscal allocation to those campuses per FTE student are: Northeastern, $7,610; Northern, $6,390; Western, $7,960; Eastern, $6080; and Governors State, $7,200.  If the U of I System invested the state’s money in our campus at a rate of $6,500 per FTE student (rather than $6,000), that would bring in about $1.5 million more revenue to our campus each year.  An increase of $1.5 million in revenue distributed to our campus presents a shift of 00.329% of the $456 million in state revenue distributed to the campuses.  So, if the U of I System sent 4.35% of its $456 million unrestricted state subsidy to UIS instead of the 4.02% it sends now, that would give our campus $1.5 million more. 


Let me say a little more about the University of Illinois budget. The University of Illinois is a massive system, with about $2.5 billion in general operating revenue each year. But, if you include all the restricted funds (housing fees that can only be used for housing, research grants that must be used for research, money generated for the hospital that can only be used in the hospital, etc.) it’s a $7.2 billion organization in terms of the total system budget. Within this system, about $622 million is given by the state government (through the Illinois Board of Higher Education according to the budget passed by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor) toward general education on the three campuses. The state also gives students grants, and those are paid to the universities in our system, but we’ll just look at the award of the direct appropriation. Of that $622 million, about $456 million is totally unrestricted and goes to the campuses, where it can be used for anything. Of that $456 million, about $235 million goes to the UIUC (Urbana-Champaign), about $203 million goes to the UIC (Chicago), and about $18.4 million went to Springfield this fiscal year.


However, in addition the $622 million appropriated for FY 2022, earlier in April of 2022, when the state passed its fiscal year 2023 budget, an additional $29 million was given to the University of Illinois system for this fiscal year (FY 2022).  Will the UIS get any of that?  The UIS got 2.9% of the $622 million initially given for this fiscal year (4.0% of the completely unrestricted funding).  If we are given 2.9% of that supplemental FY 2022 allocation from the state, it would bring in over $850,000 to our campus to use this fiscal year.  Considering how hard faculty have worked during the Pandemic to switch to online instruction, and now give instruction in combined formats of classroom and online, and considering recent high inflation, we would like some of that to be awarded to faculty.


Another problem is that UIS has a “structural deficit” with the University of Illinois system.  That means that expenditures at UIS are greater than revenues, so the University of Illinois system lends money to UIS, and UIS pays this back.  This repayment to the University of Illinois System from UIS is seen by many UIS faculty as a way for the “middle class and upper class mainly white campus” of UIUC to extract resources from the “higher proportion of veterans, African-Americans, and working class student campus” of UIS.  The University of Illinois System could wipe out the so-called “debt” owed to the System by UIS, and could do so with some of the supplemental $29 million received this year. Our strike will hopefully bring attention to this matter.


Let’s next consider enrollment.  Faculty have some responsibility when it comes to graduate student enrollment.  When someone is interested in a graduate program at UIS, faculty generally need to follow up with e-mails, phone calls, or meetings to explain the graduate program and assess whether a potential student would likely succeed in the program.  The Admissions Office and the Marketing Department and Financial Aid Department have important roles to play, and there may be an academic professional who does much of the explaining to prospective students, but faculty do have an important task related to recruitment and admissions in graduate programs.  When I was the chair of a department with a modest graduate program, I would say the communications with prospective students could take from two hours a week to eight hours a week, depending upon the time of year.  The administration of my college decided that program would be okay if no faculty had the responsibility of caring for recruitment of graduate students, and I left that department, and was not replaced. The lack of any faculty in that graduate program caused an enrollment crash, and the department is now being phased out of existence.  It used to bring in about 15 to 25 graduate students a year, and the administrators decided the program was too small, and could be handled without any cost-centered faculty in the department. They were wrong.


Although faculty do have some role in recruiting graduate students, most of the marketing, recruitment, and admissions work for graduate programs needs to be handled by skilled non-teaching staff in the university’s marketing department, admissions department, and financial aid.  Colleges also need academic professionals who help with the inquiries from potential students. One reason we faculty are upset at the university administration is that we feel that the administration has failed to employ an adequate number of skilled persons in marketing, admissions, financial aid, and also academic professionals in our colleges. This harms enrollment, and does far more harm than anything faculty could do to correct the situation.  Also, the administration has successfully pushed several graduate programs to close on our campus. These were programs that faculty wanted to keep, but the administrators did not want them, so they were closed. I do not believe any of those graduate programs were losing money.  When faculty pointed out that the tuition and fee revenues generated by the programs exceeded the portion of faculty salaries devoted to teaching and mentoring in those programs, this information was dismissed and ignored. Whenever the administration complains about declining graduate enrollments, the faculty remember this.


Looking out the (dirty) windows of Brookens toward PAC


Another problem at UIS was the fact that from about 2011 to 2017 there was a boom in international student enrollment, but this was followed by a bust. This enrollment was mainly in the computer science department and the accountancy department, although there were generally many graduate students from India and China coming into other programs in the business college. Changes in the mood in the USA, changes in student visa policies, changes in visa policies for persons with demanded skills, and changes in public health policies (the 2020-2022 Pandemic) popped this bubble of high international graduate student enrollment. During the peak of the boom, in 2015 and 2016, there was investment in non-teaching staff, but only modest investment in faculty in computer science and the business college. One budget problem faculty believe faces UIS is that we built up a non-teaching infrastructure to help with the high international graduate student numbers we had around 2012-2016, but now that revenue has deflated, and the administration has not adequately considered how to build back up the numbers of graduate students.


Faculty at UIS are frustrated because they know they are underpaid.  We suspect that one of several contributing factors to our being underpaid is that our campus is somewhat too “top-heavy” and we have, on our campus, allocated slightly too much to some non-core activities and administrative leaders, and this has contributed somewhat to low faculty pay.


First, how do we know faculty are underpaid?  We can compare ourselves to similar schools, look at our salaries, and see than we generally earn less than others.  At UIS our full professors (there are not many of them) tend to be paid at rates similar to averages at comparable schools, and the faculty in our business college, on average, also earn slightly higher salaries than business faculty at comparable schools, but most of our departments, and certainly our junior and mid-career faculty (assistant professors, associate professors, and even the lecturers and adjuncts who are outside our bargaining unit) are paid too little.  


We can compare our salaries to state averages at public universities.  We assume that state averages should, in general, be a bit higher than our salaries. There are many reasons for this.  Many public universities are near Chicago, and the cost-of-living in Chicago is 15% to 20% higher than in Springfield. Faculty at major research universities (SIU-Carbondale; ISU, UIUC, and UIC are research universities) tend to earn more than those in comprehensive and teaching-oriented universities.  Faculty at community colleges in Illinois tend to be paid well, as their salaries depend mostly on property taxes, which in Illinois are a major source of public revenue, whereas faculty at the 12 public universities depend more on total state revenue, which is more dependent on income and sales taxes and the instability of state politics. Still, even if we accept that our salaries might be equitable if we were paid 8% or 10% below state averages, we are even below that in most departments.  


At UIS, our biology and chemistry professors earn more than 25% below state averages for public post-secondary instructors in their fields.  Political Science, Environmental Science, and Communications professors also earn more than 20% below state averages for faculty in their respective disciplines. Psychology faculty are right at 20% below state averages in psychology.  Our history faculty earn about 17% less than average for public history faculty in the state, despite the fact that two of our fairly well-paid Lincoln scholars are in that department. Our English, philosophy, and math professors are all below 90% of state averages. We can also compare average faculty salaries at our campus to the 19 public universities considered peer institutions by either/both of the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Faculty salaries are published on a government websites, and we have determined that our faculty have average salaries about $4,000 below the average faculty salaries at the 20 schools in our comparison groups. 


We can compare our salaries to the average salaries for K-12 teachers in Illinois, and our colleagues down the road at Lincoln Land Community College.  The median salary for our bargaining unit is below the state average for K-12 teachers in Illinois, and we earn many thousands of dollars less than our colleagues in Lincoln Land Community College. Incidentally, K-12 teachers have widely varying salaries, depending upon how long they have been working and in which school district they are working. The lowest paid full-time tenure-track member of the bargaining unit is paid $47,620, which is well above the state mandated minimum for school teachers is a bit more than $10,000 lower than that, but in the local Springfield school district new school teachers tend to earn $39,000 to $45,000, and the average salary for teachers in District 186 (Springfield) is $65,889.   As of September of this year, 44 of the 135 faculty (that’s nearly a third of us) who were in our bargaining unit as of January 2022 earned less than $65,000 per year.  Another 41 of us (30%) earn between $65,000 and $75,000. That is, 63% of the faculty in our bargaining unit earn less than $75,000 per year. 


We can also compare our faculty salaries to the salaries of administrators at UIS.  Looking at the salaries of 20 faculty who were in the same rank back in 2010 as they were at the start of this academic year, we can see that their salaries increased by 28.3% over those dozen years, but when you control for inflation, their salaries actually dropped by 2.6%.  You can then compare those faculty salaries to a set of the 25 top administrative positions at UIS, and see what persons in those positions were paid in 2010, and compare it to the salaries for persons in those positions now. That shows that these administrative position salaries increased by 37.1%, and after adjusting for inflation, they increased by 4.2%.  So, the faculty, who think they are underpaid, have seen inflation-adjusted pay decreases of 2.6% over the past 12 years, and administrative leadership at UIS has had their real inflation-adjusted pay increase by 4.2%. Not all administrative positions have seen pay increases.  The person in charge of IT on campus has had an inflation-adjusted decrease of 10.8% since 2010, and In 2022 the position of director of admissions had a salary that was 7.7% lower than the salary of the person who was in that position in 2010, after controlling for inflation.  Perhaps we need to put more money into admissions and recruitment and faculty, and trim some of the money going to administration. We don't mean huge changes. Something along the order of a few percent more to us. It just seems fair.  


The amount of money we are suggesting we should be paid is a reasonable amount. Using reasonable forecasts of likely inflation, the amount of compensation we are requesting now would get us to about 105% of where our salaries were in August of 2020 (using inflation-adjusted dollars) by 2025.  If you total all the compensation costs for our salaries over the five years of the contract with what we are proposing, and adjust each year for inflation (use constant 2020 dollars using a variety of reasonable inflation models), the total cost to the university accumulated over the five years of the contract we are proposing would be a net decrease in labor cost of over $1 million (compared to just paying us exactly what we were paid in 2020-21 in inflation-adjusted dollars, keeping our salaries unchanged by perfectly matching inflation).  That is, although we would see increases in “current dollar” compensation each year, so that labor costs of our bargaining unit would cost the U of I a little over $9.15 million over five years more than what it would cost the University to freeze our wages at salaries we were paid in 2020-21, when you adjust for increases in cost of living and the deflating value of the dollar, the U of I System actually will be paying us less over those five years.  


By the way, our salary increase in current dollars would bring our salaries up to about 130.5% of what we earned in 2020-21 (not adjusting for inflation), and the university management’s proposal now would raise our salaries up to 118.6% by the same metric.  The Chancellor recently sent out an e-mail that did not have the same figures, but her point is correct, that we are asking for more than the university is offering.  Keep in mind that right now to have our salaries match what we were paid two years ago, we would need to be paid 113.6% more than what our salaries were two years ago, due to inflation. Just reporting current dollar amounts without adjusting for inflation is an inadequate way to examine the question.


What are reasonable inflation forecasts?  Well, we already know what inflation was in the year before this contract started: depending on which summer month you pick and which adjusted consumer-price-index you use, inflation was around 5.1% to 5.4% leading up to our first year (this year).  This year the inflation rate is certain to be close to 8%.  What will it be next year, or in the next two years that follow?  This is an important question, since we are intending to get a five year contract.  We analyze our offers and the counters offered by management using three inflation models.  Both start us with the 5.2% and 8% we’ve already experienced preceding years one and two of our contract, and then we have an optimistic model that runs 4%, 2%, 1% in the subsequent years.  A middle-range that runs 4.5%, 2.24%, and 2.24% in subsequent years, assuming that the last two years match the historical average between 2006 and 2020.  We also have a pessimistic scenario that runs 5%, 3%, and 2.24%.  In every case, we look at what our inflation-adjusted incomes would be in the final year of a five-year contract (2025-26) and determine that our inflation-adjusted incomes would be above what we earned in 2020-21.



Our initial offer suggested that our pay increase should be 0.25% plus the inflation rate of the previous year, and then on top of that there would be additional money distributed according to a formula to make pay more equitable on our campus.  It’s unusual to have contracts negotiate for a pay increase that is indexed to inflation, and that approach was dismissed.  But, we should keep in mind some points.  Between 2006 and 2020 the inflation over those years averaged about 2.24% each year.  When inflation is around 2%, contracts might have pay increases of about 2%.  That is what we would bargain for in normal times; something a little better than inflation. If inflation is going to average 2.24%, perhaps our annual pay increases could be about 2.5%.  But, just now, inflation is about 8%.  Therefore, we want pay increases that are higher than normal.  If we had some way to know for certain that inflation will drop to 1% or 2% in a couple years, we would be able to accept a lower annual pay increase, just trying to catch up to the over 13% we’ve fallen behind since the summer of 2020 (5.2% in 20-21 and 8% in 21-22 actually puts us 13.62% behind).  We accept that it will take years for our pay increase to get us back up to where we were, in inflation-adjusted dollars.  In our current proposal, if the administration accepted what we have on the table, our inflation-adjusted salaries for this year, next year, and following year would be below our 2020-2021 salaries, although a one-time hardship pay we’re seeking as a non-salary benefit would put us above that threshold either this year or next, if we received the full amount we’re asking for). 


The administration’s current offer would have us at about 97.46% of our 2020-21 salaries by the end of the contract using the optimistic inflation model, and  94.44% with the pessimistic scenario.  Our most likely counter-offer, which is hardly different from our last offer, would put our salaries in the fifth year of the contract at 103.8% of 20-21 in our pessimistic model and 107.2% in the optimistic inflation case model.  Because we have accepted that our pay will sink below its 2020-21 level in inflation-adjusted dollars for the first few years of this contract, in order to balance out our pay over the five years, we want to come out over 100% of 20-21 in the fifth year of the contract (ideally in both the fourth and fifth year of the contract).  We also think that if our argument that we are underpaid is correct, we should get over 100% of what we were earning in 2020-21. So, an inflation-adjusted salary target of 104% to 107% in the fifth year of the contract seems about right to us.  For faculty earning our median salary of $70,780 in 2020-2021, their salary in the fifth year would be $91,273 in 2025-2026, but adjusting for inflation and converting that $92,273 into 2020 dollars, the salary would be $72,653 (in the pessimistic inflation model, 2020 dollars) and $74,980 (in the optimistic inflation model, 2020 dollars).  As our average salary is about $4,000 less than the average faculty salary across peer institutions identified by the Board of Trustees and the Illinois Board of Higher Education, an inflation-adjusted salary that jumps from $70,780 in 2020 to $74,980 in 2025 is just about perfect, so if our optimistic inflation model turns out to accurately predict the future, our current proposal makes up the difference between our current salaries and the average salaries at peer institutions.


The faculty in our bargaining unit are not the only underpaid staff at UIS.  Strong enrollments and good retention of students requires our university to have well-staffed departments in marketing, admissions, and financial aid, as well as excellent tutors, advisors, and student support staff who help our online, commuter, and residential students succeed in their educations. Since we recognize the need for the university to increase the salaries of staff in these critical areas, and hire more persons with excellent skills in these areas, we of course don’t want all the plausible increases in revenue to only go to faculty.  But, we desire good stewardship of the public resources invested in our campus.  This means, largely, that we are upset when we see tens of thousands of dollars given to outside consultants and contractors who deliver to us products or services that are of dubious value. We are also irritated when resources are diverted into major efforts (in campus reorganization) that promise no improvement in educational value for students and no reduction in administrative overhead costs. 


Also, we are interested in the correct ratio of support staff and administration to persons who are involved in direct instruction.  We can examine the Gray Book for 2021-2022, a list of all University of Illinois employees and their salaries, to see the salaries of all the employees at UIS who have salaries (ignoring all those who earn hourly wages, and a few special cases, like the campus police, where their salaries are not reported), and see where the salary dollars go.  We’ve studied this, and find that the faculty in our bargaining unit get about $10.96 million, or 20.5% of all salaries.  Another group of faculty who aren’t in our bargaining unit (mostly department chairs and non-tenure-track faculty), plus online coordinators, tutors, and academic advisors, who we all consider front-line educators in the same category with us, are paid an additional $5.9 million, or 11% of all salaries.  So, putting those together, about 31.5% of the salaries at UIS are paid to people who directly help students learn and complete their degrees. There is another group of employees who provide college services and student services, including 16 administrators and 42 staff, counselors, coaches, trainers, etc.).  This group includes the deans for four colleges and their non-teaching salaried staff.  Many of these people are absolutely necessary, and probably deserve significant pay increases. Many of these people are critical to helping us recruit and retain students.  The cost for all these persons is $4.7 million, or 8.8% of all salaries and wages. Although we need many of these people, some of these positions might be cut as people retire, and perhaps we should not  replace them. We wonder if possibly the campus could function just as well with perhaps 53 rather than 58 of these college and student service persons, and perhaps $4.5 million rather than $4.7 million could go to the salaries in this group. 


 Then, we have 74 administrators and professionals who do not teach.  They pull in $6.4 million, or 11.9% of all salaries and wages.  This includes also many critical staff and administrative support.  The people in admissions, financial aid, and marketing are all in this group.  We actually want more of them, and want to pay them higher salaries.  Our Information Technology Department includes several of these persons, and we couldn’t get our work done without their help.  A campus needs lots of people who don’t teach, as these people keep the campus safe, prevent the buildings from falling apart, keep the grounds lovely so students like being on campus, and allow faculty to focus on their scholarship and teaching, so we don’t have to run everything ourselves.  But, we just think that our campus could probably do with fewer than 74 of these salaried supportive administrators and professionals, and the budget allocation ($6.4 million) to that group could be slightly decreased (maybe to $6 million for 65 of them instead of $6.4 million for 74 of them). 


The campus has many full-time employees who earn wages instead of salaries, or whose salaries are simply not included in the Gray Book.  According to the UIS report to IPEDS (the federal data-collection center for higher education), we have 724 full-time employees at UIS, and we know the salaries and names of 366 persons.  So, there are another 358 persons on campus who work full-time, and then also some part-time employees, including our adjunct instructors.  The salaries and wages for all these other full-time and part-time employees should take up about $14.6 million (that’s just taking the total amount reported as UIS expenses for salaries and wages in the budget and subtracting the salaries of everyone listed in the Gray Book or whose salaries we otherwise know about).  I don’t think we know enough about this group and their work to suggest there are cost savings to be had from them. Many are probably underpaid.  


Much of the IPEDS data are nearly (but not quite) useless to make comparisons among schools.  A couple variables that are more reliable and comparable are the counts of full-time faculty and all full-time employees.  These can be compared to create a ratio of faculty to all other full-time employees.  Looking at this ratio for the 20 schools in our peer group (as determined by the Board of Trustees and the Illinois Board of Higher Education), UIS comes in dead last, with faculty making up 27.9% of all employees. University of Southern Maine is pretty close to us with 28.4%, and Lake Superior State University (30.3%) and University of Baltimore ($30.6%) are not much better.   At most schools faculty make up 33% to 37% of all employees, and at the University of Nebraska at Kearney the faculty are 42.4% of all full-time faculty.  This statistic doesn’t just measure efficiency of campuses, however.  A school in financial distress may be cutting all non-faculty positions as its enrollments spiral down and state funding collapses, leaving a high proportion of faculty among the employees, since faculty are often among the last employees to be cut. Nevertheless, the fact that UIS comes in dead last among comparison groups fits with several other measures of efficiency we examined. In comparisons of various measures that should theoretically correlate somewhat with university efficiency (resources going directly to helping students learn) UIS falls in the bottom half or bottom third of almost all measures, just as it does with faculty salaries.  In Illinois, compared to the public universities, UIS has the lowest ratio of faculty to full-time employees among the teaching-oriented universities (UIC, UIUC, and SIU Carbondale are research universities, and have even lower ratios, as expected, and Illinois State, the other research university, is close to UIS with 28.7% of its employees among the faculty).  


Getting our campus from 27% to 29% (about where Northern and Northeastern are) if faculty counts remain at 202 would require a reduction of non-faculty employees of about 30, from 522 to 492, very approximately.  Among the comparison schools identified by IBHE and our Board of Trustees, a 29% faculty-to-all-staff ratio would move us from the lowest ratio to the second-lowest, just above the University of Southern Maine.  We believe the campus needs about 138 tenure-track faculty who don’t serve as department chairs or school heads; and about 64 faculty who are serving in department or school administration and non-tenure track faculty, which is close to the number we think we have now.  Our bargaining unit is down to 134 at the moment because of deaths and retirements so far this year, and more will retire in May, but we have assumed about 138 faculty will be the average number in our bargaining unit for the duration of the contract.


Trees on UIS campus near PAC


The administration has encouraged a reorganization of the university and proposes continuing with a four-college model, when it could have easily consolidated us into three colleges. A three-college model would surely have gained us some efficiency and reduced administrative cost, but that was not what the administration wanted to do. We were told that the reorganization was not about reducing administrative costs or increasing efficiency. 


So, if the Board of Trustees allocated 4.40% instead of 4.02% of the state’s allocation to the U of I System to UIS (bringing in about $1.6 million more than this year, given the 5% increase in funding to the University System for FY 2023), and the UIS campus had 14 fewer persons in administrative and support positions to save about $0.6 million, our administration would have $2.2 million to reallocate next year.  If we further suppose that undergraduate admissions can go up by 50 FTE and graduate headcount can hold steady, we would gave about $500,000 in additional tuition revenue.  That would give the administration $2.7 million more than they had this fiscal year, in total. Our current proposal asks for about $1.7 to $1.8 million more in salary or one-time bonuses in the next couple years, so that would be about 63% to 66% of next year’s increase.  Presumably state funding would continue to increase by about 2% to 3% the following year, and if inflation falls down to its normal 2.24% in subsequent years, state funding for the University of Illinois might come down to 1% per year. With those increases, the campus would have resources to meet our proposal. If we could increase student enrollment by 100 FTE instead of merely 50 FTE, and then hold that number of students without significant declines, that would increase tuition revenue by about $1 million in every subsequent year. The Board of Trustees could also increase tuition by a rate slightly lower than the previous year’s inflation rate, allowing tuition costs to hold steady or slightly fall relative to inflation. 


Tuition increases only apply to about 27% of our undergraduate students, because most of our students have guarantees for flat tuition rates for four years, but still, tuition could be increased to a level keeping pace with inflation, and that would build more revenue, which could further cover increased costs. When inflation is devaluing employee salaries by 13.6%, the salary increases of 2% keep all university employees in a state of declining living standards, and this stirs up anger in faculty who know they are already underpaid.  For the university to raise morale of staff and faculty, given that the state is increasing subsidies by 5%, raising tuition by 5% or 6% (well under the 8% inflation we have this year) would help all the workers employed by UIS.


All this is to say that when we look at reasonable forecasts for what UIS might have in increased revenue in the five years of our contract, we think that our current proposal is reasonable, and the campus and the University of Illinois System could afford it.   

Sunday, April 03, 2022

Reflection on taxes and universal health care

I've just finished our taxes, and figure our income for 2021.  I looked up the estimated median income of 2-person households in Illinois (Census Bureau estimates), and our income was 111% of that, but I also checked the median family incomes of metropolitan residents in Illinois, and our income was only 96.2% of that.  So, in other words, we are very close to the median incomes for our part of the country (and probably lower than persons with similar educational levels). 


Our sources of income


66.6% Most of my income comes from my employment as a professor at UIS.


24% I also inherited some money, which I invest in a hedge fund, and I have a small income from that, although I usually don’t touch that money, and just let it grow. I have a few other small investments that yield a few dividends or interest payments. 


8%.  I also inherited half ownership of a house in California, and my sister and I (we each own half of the property) derive some rental income from that.


1.4%.  My wife has worked a little in some restaurants owned by her friends when they were short-handed, and has earned some income from that. 


Keep in mind, we only earn 68% of our income through our labor, and the other 32% of our income is derived from assets we inherited from grandparents and an uncle. For middle-class and upper-class Europeans-Americans, this is common, but it's uncommon for Black and Hispanic and American Indian households. 


0%.  My family has a business, but that business has not done much in 2021 or 2020, during the pandemic.  We had expenses associated with keeping the business license active, and earned a trivial amount of money as well. The expenses were only about $300, and our income from the business was slightly less than that, so this year our business wasn’t a significant part of our household finances.  In past years we have earned almost 40% of our household income through this business, but as it is a family business, and we mainly ran it to earn money to pay for expenses related to our sons, we distributed the business income mainly to them, and didn’t claim much of it for ourselves.  But, this year, the business didn’t get us any income.


TAXES


Local property taxes are our largest tax burden, but we are glad to pay, as these taxes maintain the infrastructure around our property; the salaries of police and fire protection workers are covered through local taxes, and a significant percentage of local property taxes fund K-12 education, community college education, libraries, and parks. I think property taxes on second homes or rental properties (such as we have in California) should be fairly high, because landlords shouldn't be able to get rich of property investments.  Property taxes on rental properties should be set up so that landlords have incentives to maintain and improve the properties they rent out, and property ownership should give people a safe investment against inflation (if rents can be linked to consumer price indices), but since landlords don't really produce anything, they should not get wealthy from owning property.  I'm for very low property taxes on primary residences, as property taxes tend to be slightly regressive (a heavier burden on residents with low incomes compared to residents with high incomes).

5.5% of our income went to pay property taxes in California.

5.8% of our income went to pay property taxes in Illinois.





I don’t keep track of local and state sales taxes. Every time we buy gasoline, we pay taxes on fuel, to pay for roads and transport infrastructure.  When we travel, we pay restaurant, motel, and sales taxes (in 2021, this included taxes paid in Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho).  We never pay any sales taxes in Oregon (no sales taxes there), but in Illinois we pay taxes on groceries (very low), and regular things like soap, paper, and so forth (much higher).   My guess on our total sales tax expenditure is an educated guess, as I do keep track of our spending, and have a fair estimation of the taxes we have paid when purchasing things:

1.2% of our income went to sales taxes.


Our state income taxes in Illinois pay mainly for healthcare, K-12 education for children in Illinois, public universities and community colleges, social services, child protection, and human services.  There is also a small portion that pays for corrections, infrastructure, and state services. A tiny bit pays for environmental protection, parks, and things like that. I’m happy to pay state taxes.  I think families such as ours, who have incomes very close to the median household income for married couples, ought to pay slightly more than we do.

4.4% of our income went to Illinois through income taxes.


Our federal income taxes are split about 50/50 between payments for military and veterans services, and everything else.  The everything else is mostly Medicaid, but there are also contributions to NASA, the Foreign Service, low-income housing, food support for the poor, federal transportation infrastructure, medical research, and so forth.

5.3% of our income went to federal income taxes.  It seems to me we should have paid closer to 9%, but I won’t complain too much.


Our Medicare payroll taxes only are taken from our wage/salary incomes, as we don’t need to pay for Medicare out of our income on our business, our property, or our investments. Medicare will be our health insurance when we reach 65 years of age, if we live so long.  I will also have supplemental health insurance as a retired state worker.  

We paid 1.1% of our income to Medicare.


Most Americans also pay 6.2% of their income into a Social Security pension scheme, but I do not, because I work for the state, and will have a state retirement plan.  However, this means that I have about 6% of my income taken out of my pay and placed into my retirement plan, and the state of Illinois is supposed to also put a matching amount into that fund. This retirement account contribution is deducted from my income, just as social security taxes paid by other workers is removed from their adjusted gross income.  My wife, however, did pay into Social Security.  Both she and I have paid thousands of dollars into Social Security, but because we have worked as state employees for most of our lives, and only paid into Social Security for five or six years, we are unlikely to ever qualify to receive any Social Security benefits. 

We paid 0.1% of our income to Social Security in 2021.


Adding up all the taxes we paid, it seems almost exactly one-third of our income went to local, state, and federal taxes. I estimate 33.3% of our income was paid to the public. 


Personally, I think a middle-class family such as ours ought to pay about 12% to our state and local government. I think this should mainly be taken through income tax, not so much through sales or property taxes, but anyway, I would rather that we paid 0.5% in sales taxes (I approve of the gas tax and various utility and energy taxes), about 2% in property taxes (rather than the 5.8% we did pay) to Illinois, and 9% (rather than the 4.4% we did pay) to Illinois in income taxes.  That would put us at a 11.5% total tax rate to Illinois (instead of the 11% I calculate we actually paid).  I think middle class residents of Illinois ought to contribute about 11.5% to 12% of their income to the state, and wealthy residents should contribute 13% to 16%. A reduction in sales taxes and property taxes would lower the tax burden on residents of Illinois with lower incomes, who currently probably pay over 12% of their incomes in taxes (because sales taxes are a much higher burden to them).  


Likewise, I think federal taxes, to cover the costs of ending homelessness, improving medical research, and ensuring that everyone can get good health care, should be higher. Basically, middle class families such as ours ought to pay about 9% instead of the 5.3% we paid.  


So, I think I would be happy paying 37.5% of our income in taxes, if the money went to the sort of public expenditures I’d like to support (ending the use of fossil fuels, ending homelessness, improving medical care, achieving the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals around the world, etc.). 





My W-2 shows me that my employer believes the insurance policy my wife and I had this year was worth $31,075.  There are only two of us, so that’s a little over $15,530 for each of us.  I calculate that we paid a little less than $1,000 out-of-pocket for medical and dental costs this past year. So, about $16,000 per individual in our household went to health care or health insurance paid for by my employer.  I believe if we had a more efficient health care system in which everyone had medical care, the cost would decrease, because of lower administrative costs.  In other words, my employer could just pay me $28,000 directly instead of paying an insurer $31,075, and giving me a benefit instead of income.  But, with that $28,000 additional income coming to me, I would expect the government to tax me to get most of it as our household’s contribution to the universal health care system. So, my income would go up by about 33% because I would get paid with money rather than getting a health insurance policy through my employer (and the employer would save some money as well, paying me only 28,000 to cover health care rather than paying an insurer $31,075).  I would expect my state income taxes to go up to 5.5% from the 4.3% we pay now, so Illinois would get about $2,500 of that $28,000 in additional income, and then the federal government would need to tax me at 25% instead of the 5.3% it taxed me this year in income taxes.  But, my after-tax income would actually still increase, and I’d end up with about $1,750 more than I get now.  

  

In summary.  With a universal health care plan, my employer would save $3,000 in labor costs, and pass on to me a salary increase of $28,000 and stop paying insurance companies $31,000.





The state would then tax me at a higher rate and get about $2,500 more in income tax from me than it gets now, bringing my net pay increase down to $25,500. However, that additional $2,500 paid to Illinois would help my state improve the quality of life where I live, for me and for persons who are in greater need of public assistance. For example, we could ensure everyone had permanent housing, and we could provide detoxification and drug abuse recovery services, and improved mental health services. 


The federal government would then also raise my taxes so it could provide a good universal health care system, and maybe even institute a sort of basic minimum income.  Raising my taxes from 5.4% to 25% would take another $23,750 of that $25,500 left over from my $28,000 pay increase, but I’d get a better health care system than I have now.  Instead of having $1,000 in out-of-pocket health expenses each year, my out-of-pocket expenses would drop to maybe $200 or $300.  And, I’d still have $1,750 more in income than I have now.  Best of all, I’d get to live in a civilized society where everyone had good health care, and perhaps there would even be some sort of a basic income or negative income tax to eliminate poverty.






Currently, my employer pays $31,000 as a benefit to give me and my wife insurance.

With a universal health care system, the employer could pay me directly $28,000, saving $3,000 in my employment costs.

My state could take $2,500 of that to help improve health services, education, and social services in the state.

The Federal government could take $23,750, which would allow a universal health care system.

I’d be left with $1,750 more income to spend (after all the increased taxes) and an additional $700 in extra spending money that I now pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses (but would no longer need to spend with a universal health care system covering those expenses).


The federal income tax of 25% rather than 5.3% I now pay, and the state income tax of 5.5% rather than the 4.4% I now pay, seem like terrible burdens, but in fact, I’d end up with nearly $2,500 more in net after-tax income I could spend on things other than medical expenses.