Californians love to brag about how productive and rich they are. San Francisco should be the richest city in the world right now given that most of the AI companies have set up shop within the city limits and the founders/executives of these companies also live within city limits, e.g., Sam Altman (worth nearly $2 billion) That’s a tax base that municipal governments all around the world can only envy. We are informed that Democrats protect American workers’ interests and there are no Republicans who could potentially prevent San Francisco from taxing and spending.
Separately, we are informed that public employee unions would never use their power to exploit taxpayers by demanding above-market compensation. Our newspapers report as an established fact that unionized schoolteachers are “underpaid”.
This week, however, we learn that the elite Democrats who run San Francisco refuse to provide their public schoolteachers with the fair compensation that the union has requested, thus necessitating a strike. NYT:
On Monday morning, Cassondra Curiel, the president of the union, the United Educators of San Francisco, led a rally on the steps of Mission High School, where dozens of teachers, dressed in red, rattled tambourines and hoisted signs calling for higher wages. Some brought their children, who were out of school for the day.
SF News Report: https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2021066465261257228
Teachers want 4.5% wage increase (Bidenflation) but were initially offered 2% (Fed target)
Teachers want 100% paid for dependent health care, but were only offered 75%.
Free family health care is the biggest sticking point.
The only thing they could agree on was sanctuary policy. (and Medicaid for illegals, presumably)
Think about the class structure in SF:
Tech workers, if they have any children, are paying to send them to private schools and concierge doctors.
Public school kids are mostly illegals and dreamers. They’ve earned their free single-payer Medicaid, EBT cards, and free public school education.
Teachers meanwhile are being asked to co-insure 25% of rapidly inflating health care costs. Teachers are acutely aware they are the only ones in the school paying a portion of their own health bills.
The indignity! The affluent apparatchiks being asked to pay more than the proletariat??? And the revolution eats its own…
If Medi-Cal gives 100% free healthcare “undocumented people”, then why not teachers too? Heck, why not everyone?
Anon: That’s a great point. Californians brag about how rich and productive they are. They also say that health care is a human right and that a universal taxpayer-funded system is the correct approach to delivering this human right. Why don’t they use state funds to extend Medi-Cal to all residents of the Great State of California?
@philg
> Why don’t they use state funds to extend Medi-Cal to all residents of the Great State of California?
Aren’t you just restating your original question? I’d like to think it because they learned their lesson from Obamacare (and Romneycare?). But I think we all know why, and Phil is just being cheeky to get clicks.
The Poop Patrol, the elite special forces of the San Francisco sanitation department, reportedly make $185K total compensation per year (70K base + benefits, about the same as teachers). That doesn’t seem fair either. Anybody else remember the crowd-sourced human feces maps from a couple years ago? Apparently, these elite special forces have been effective, SF is reborn as a Shangri-la, with much less poo-poo clogging the sidewalks:
https://sfstandard.com/2026/02/06/sf-super-bowl-2026-beautiful-city/
My suspicion is that they swept the homeless, their droppings and leavings, under the rug (storm sewers?) and deodorized the city long enough to make an impression on the tourists during the football match. I’ve become a bit of cynic like some of your other readers, though, so my ideas aren’t always credible. I haven’t been in Frisco since the turn of the millennium, and joking aside it used to be a fun trip. Interesting aside about historical immigration laws in California:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Coolie_Act
My mind finally wandered back to what I was trying to say. My theory is that Godwin ending point is now poo, rather than fascism or communism (which are now prerequisite starting points, depending on your political pole.) I mean, the whole world is going to crap, makes sense. I lose. Ta.
I feel ya, OAG. I had a dream last night that the government made us go to Wally*Mart to pay our car registration, because the experience was converging with the DMV anyway. I made the mistake of trying to pay with a check. I remembered that my checks had to have the number filled in because the bank was phasing paper checks out. I was reaching for my flip phone to call my wife for the next number. People in the giant line forming behind me were saying things like “They take ApplePay dumbass!” and “I’ll pay your registration if you just get out of line.” I didn’t have a pen, and the clerk only had the floppy inside tubes of ballpoint pens to write with, and they kept making illegible marks.
Someone started distracting me by drumming on the counter, which made me counter-strike by singing “Three Blind Mice”. Two giant cops appeared, with ticket-pads in hand, threatening to cite me with disturbing the peace. Interestingly and absurdly, the clerk started defending me, saying my singing was provoked. I woke up in a sweat thinking, “Damn I wish I had listened to my parents and become a tech billionaire, so I could have my butler hire a contractor to pay the registration on my Bentley.”
Ta ta, to you too, old man. Off to Home Despot to buy a new mailbox and the correct raised gold address numbers, because the HOA disapproves of ours, which is over five years old. I’m kinda exhausted looking for a rational discussion on the Internet, but I think Phil is trying his best to keep the faith. I also think we are way past Godwin’s naive framework.
According to FDR, public sector unions should not be allowed to strike
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/18/the-first-blow-against-public-employees/fdr-warned-us-about-public-sector-unions
To be clear, in San Francisco, health insurance for the teacher themselves is completely covered. It’s only family health insurance that they currently have to pay additional for.