JayB

Not sure what the average is - but something tells me you could staff the ticket booths with people who are qualified to sit in a booth and hand people tickets...for far less than the state is currently paying in wages, benefits, and pensions. I can also think of quite a few other, more socially beneficial things that the state could be doing with tax revenues.

Name Position Agency Pay Type Fulltime Percentage Base PayDescending PAULA M TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 AMANDA TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 BETTY L TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 DONALD E TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 KRISTEN A TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 LEWIS H TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 TERRIE TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 DOROTHY A TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 GENEVIEVE J TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 AMY M TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 JESSICA M TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 RONELL S TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 IRENE TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 TARESA M TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 ERNEST E TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 NANCY C TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 DELORES E TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 LORI A TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 LISA A TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 DANIEL M TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 CARLOS C TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 DANA R TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 DEBORAH L TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 DONALD R TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 CAROLE D TICKET SELLER/A Department of Transportation Hourly 100 $23.83 Etc, etc, etc...... http://www.thenewstribune.com/soundinfo/statesalaries/

Of course - 97% percent of the private sector workforce, ~93% of which is non-unionized makes more than the minimum wage, and your claim pre-supposes that everyone currently working for the government would continue doing so for minimum wage - so that's certainly a strong argument. Now that you've established that the only thing standing between the present and a future in which everyone is earning the minimum wage are public sector unions, you can identify the many other ways in which the unionization of public sector employees benefits the public.

How about you identify commercial monopolies that have persisted for 20 years or more. Add the number of anti-trust cases brought by the government if you like. After which point - we can divide that number by the number of active business licenses in the US and empirically test your claim that all commercial activity would have a monopoly as its endpoint despite changing technology, competition, changes in tastes, preferences, etc.

Strong argument if the highest function of tax money is to provide government employees with the most comfortable, secure living that the taxing/borrowing capacity can support. Not terribly convincing if the highest function of tax revenues is to deliver services that no other institution in society can as efficiently as possible. I'm sure the guy taking ferry tickets in a booth for $18+ dollars an hour in pay, plus the value of his benefits, plus the future costs of his pension - likes the deal he's getting. I'm also sure that the savings from automating that position or contracting it out to whomever is willing and qualified to sit in a booth and issue tickets, for whatever it costs to employ them - would be much better spent on funding the basic health plan, keeping borderline psychotic transients on their meds, etc, etc, etc, etc.

It's prognostication, not a smorgasbord. You don't get to choose the ones you like. "Can I get seconds on the union busting?" "No, shut up and pay for Tacoma's bankruptcy you tool." Not union busting--public employee union busting. If your big gummint daddy is as benevolent as you believe, there should be no reason for public sector unions to hold the rest of us (read: the private sector) over a barrel for extravagant pensions and benefits--or to even exist. Anyone defending public sector unionization should consider what Fiorello LaGuardia, FDR, and George Meany thought of the idea. How, exactly, does the unionization of public employees, already covered by civil service rules, benefit the public?

What sort of climbing stuff do you need that you can't find there? I've had all of the climbing gear I need for a few years now, but when I was still in the accumulation phase I could get all of the regular rock pro I needed there, plus a few pins, ice-screws, screamers, ascenders, etc. Are people going in there looking for bashies and other aid gear and not finding it?

Good question. Seems like the sheer volume of debt we're issuing and anxiety about the long-term fiscal picture here is putting upward pressure on yields, and the "tallest midget in the room" phenomenon vis-a-vis debt issued by folks in the Eurozone is putting downward pressure on yields as all of the folks with real-savings look for a safer place to park their money. All I've really concluded is that I don't have what it takes to do anything but hunker down and hope that the purchasing power of the dollar remains relatively steady. The guy below (guy who scrutinized Enron's books and led the short-selling charge) has some interesting thoughts on China: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10960

Predictions for 2011 from Mike "Mish" Shedlock. Making predictions is difficult, particularly about the future - but I suspect that at the end of 2011 this list will be more right than wrong. We'll see. "Ten Economic and Investment Themes for 2011 1. US Municipal Bankruptcies Head to Center Stage Look for Detroit and at least one other city in Michigan to go bankrupt. Also look for increasing discussions regarding bankruptcy from Los Angeles, Miami, Oakland, Houston, and San Diego. Those cities are definitely bankrupt, they just have not admitted it yet. The first major city to go bankrupt will cause a huge stir in the municipal bond market. Best to avoid Munis completely. 2. Sovereign Debt Crisis Hits Europe The ECB and EU are hoping things return to normal and they can deal with things more calmly in 2013. The markets will not wait. Expect a new Parliament in Ireland to want to renegotiate whatever horrendous deal Prime Minister Brian Cowen agrees to. Portugal and Spain will need bailouts. The surprise play in Europe will be Italy, a country not on anyone's front burner. Italy will come under intense credit market pressure, and when it does the whole Eurozone comes unglued. Europe's banks are insolvent and ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet will have a choice, haircuts or massive printing. 3. Cutbacks in US Cities and States With Republican governors holding a majority of governorships, with Republicans holding a majority in the House, and with a far more conservative Senate, there is going to be little enthusiasm for increasing aid to states. There will be some aid to states of course, but nowhere near as much as needed to prevent cutbacks. Expect to see a huge number of layoffs and/or cutbacks in services. Cutbacks in cities and states will be a good thing, but that will counteract other gains in employment. The unemployment rate will stay stubbornly high. 4. Public Unions Under Intense Attack Public unions will face increasing hostility, not only in the US but also the Eurozone and UK. Look for Congress to consider legislation to kill collective bargaining. If it passes, the president would veto it. The problem however will not go away. Cities and states in distress will increasingly outsource every contract they can. 5. China Overheats, Multiple Rate Hikes Coming China, everyone's favorite promised land, has a hard landing. China will grow at perhaps 5-6% but that is nowhere near as much as China wants, or the world expects. Tightening in China will crack its property bubble and more importantly pressure commodities. The longer China holds off in tightening, the harder the landing. 6. Property Bubble Bursts Wide Open in Australia and Canada Australia, having largely avoided the global recession runs out of luck this time around. Look for the Australian economy to fall into outright recession. Look for Canada to slow dramatically as its property bubble pops. The US property bubble is much further progressed, by years, than Australia, Canada, and China. This matters immensely. 7. US Avoids Double Dip The tax cut extensions and the payroll tax decrease will keep the US out of recession. However, growth estimates are still too high. The tax cut extensions do nothing more than maintain the status quo while the payroll tax deduction is just for a year. Most will use it to pay down bills. Look for GDP at 2.0-2.5%. That is the stall rate. 8. Year That Something Matters For the global equity markets, this will be the year that something matters. Certainly nothing mattered in 2010, and optimism for equities is at extreme levels. I have no targets other than a suggestion this is an extremely poor time to invest in darn near anything. 9. Decoupling in Reverse I do not think any countries decouple in 2011, including China. However, on a relative basis, the US could. Europe is a basket case, China is overheating, Australia is headed for recession, the UK is going nowhere, and 2.0-2.5% growth in the US just might look damn good compared to anything else. Bear in mind far more than 2.0-2.5% US growth is priced in, but on a relative basis that is likely to smash the performance of the Eurozone, Australia, and Canada. China may grow 5.0-6.0% but with 10% priced in, overweight China, the emerging markets and the commodity producing countries is a serious mistake. Actually, equities are a mistake in general and so are commodities. Finally, falling commodity prices would be US dollar supportive and supportive of a decreasing US trade deficit as well, especially if grain prices stay high while oil sinks. Should grains stay firm while other commodities sink, it would help boost US GDP. 10. US Dollar to Strengthen Look for the US dollar to strengthen because of the net effect of all the above issues."

I am for tariffs, subsidies and taxation as determined by developmental policies - and thereby providing cover for consolidation into oligopolies..... cheap stunt, and JayB forgot about antitrust laws, whiich is to be expected since the free market zealots haven't had any use for antitrust laws over the last 30+ years. It's convenient that JayB is also against anti-trust laws so that he can speak from both corners of his mouth. Pretty much the only way that a commercial monopoly can endure indefinitely in the face of global competition, technological change, changing consumer preferences, etc is with the government's help. The only anti-trust laws we need are those that would prohibit the government from granting any subsidies or special exemptions from competition to any commercial enterprise.

I am for tariffs, subsidies and taxation as determined by developmental policies - and thereby providing cover for consolidation into oligopolies.....

No one is defending subsidies and tarriffs here - and I've made clear before the need to deal with unsustainable policies on the local government scale. The difference, however, is that the local governments are beginning to make some steps towards structural change - while the party continues in the financial gaming system - including a lack of transparency, any meaningful oversight, or God forbid - actual penalties for those at the head of the fraud - rating agencies, AIG, and the NINJA loan backers. As usual no pain in the upper brackets, no lessons to be learned. Steady as she goes mate. As long as there's a government willing to give public money to private interests under some pretext or another - there will be people that figure out how to get their hands on it. Some will be more successful than others. Like, say, FNMA. As long as there's a central bank, there will be bailouts. As long as it's possible for legislative bodies to grant public windfalls to private economic interests via tariffs, subsidies, or other mechanisms intended to exclude the said interests from competition - they'll seek and secure them.

Quoting a thought bubble of yours from 1989?

This is not some aberration of the market system, just the latest manifestation. Private industry has a strong background in bailouts: http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts There will be another emerging trend soon enough where the Masters of the Universe figure out a way to game the system, make a ton of cash, and then ask for public money. All the while the Wall Street Journal will be full of Op-Eds on how this doesn't represent the true market system. My guess is that the next trend will make use of Ouija Boards. If the government offers rents, organized interests will seek them. Farmers will continue to use bogus pretexts for agricultural subsidies, the real-estate folks will do the same with the Mortgage Interest Deduction, uncompetitive industries will secure tarriffs to rip off consumers and insulate themselves from competition, etc, etc, etc. Same-o, same-o. If you're for tariffs, subsidies, etc then you really can't make a principled objection to bailouts for the financial sector. They're just playing the same game as the Corn Ethanol lobby, public sector unions, etc - but with way less effective PR.

Glad you're coming around. Hasten thee to the nearest tattoo parlor and have it permanently inscribed on your forehead. None of this is anything new - unless you're a technocrat from Soviet Central Planning department that's been locked in a cave since 1988 and trying to develop computational methods to perfect a bureaucratically defined substitute for market prices, or you're a New Classical/New-Keynesian economist getting angry at the real world for failing to behave like one of the mathematical models you've spent all of your adult life trying to cook up. Or you are....you. Hayek made criticizing the limitations and misapplications of these models one of the primary causes of his career, and used the occasion of his Nobel lecture to re-iterate them. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html

That's because anything other than direct quotes from Mao's Little Red Book look like that to you. All that the author of the above quote is doing is pointing out that the reason that most mainstream economists were so profoundly useless in the last crisis is that sometime around the mid-1940's they got lost in an idealized, purely mathematical meta-world that resembled a market economy about as much as "World of Warcraft" resembles the real world.

Anyone trying to tether Hayek to DSGE modeling doesn't know much about either.

Key quote from the first link: "The common practice of solving a dynamic general equilibrium model of a(n) (often competitive) market economy by solving an associated programming problem, that is, an optimisation problem, is evidence of the fatal confusion in the minds of much of the economics profession between shadow prices and market prices and between transversality conditions that are an integral part of the solution to an optimisation problem and the long-term expectations that characterise the behaviour of decentralised asset markets. The efficient markets hypothesis assumes that there is a friendly auctioneer at the end of time – a God-like father figure – who makes sure that nothing untoward happens with long-term price expectations or (in a complete markets model) with the present discounted value of terminal asset stocks or financial wealth. What this shows, not for the first time, is that models of the economy that incorporate the EMH – and this includes the complete markets core of the New Classical and New Keynesian macroeconomics – are not models of decentralised market economies, but models of a centrally planned economy. The friendly auctioneer at the end of time, who ensures that the right terminal boundary conditions are imposed to preclude, for instance, rational speculative bubbles, is none other than the omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent central planner. No wonder modern macroeconomics is in such bad shape."

Hey Bill: 2)That's an interesting idea, but I'd have to take a look at the paper to see if they've got something more compelling than a set of statistical aggregates and an R-squared value from a regression analysis to offer. My first take is that they've probably captured the typical dynamics of a boom-bust cycle, where you get an investment mania followed by a crash. It could also be capturing political processes where the distribution of economic rewards is increasingly determined by a centralized political process and the resulting capital misallocation leads to an economic contraction, etc. 3) Completely agree with you on 3 with a few important exceptions. You might enjoy the following links: http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/03/the-unfortunate-uselessness-of-most-state-of-the-art-academic-monetary-economics/ http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/file/Commdocs/hearings/2009/Oversight/10sep/Colander_Testimony.pdf

I love the government! It can fulfill quite a number of functions in society that not other institution can. I just think it does those things best when it restricts its attention to them - instead of doing things that other entities can do better. I also think that there are things like determining what sorts of political speech are acceptable, what consenting adults are allowed to do to themselves or to other consenting adults that are absolutely none of the governments business. Most folks are cool with that as long as the things that I claim the government shouldn't have a hand in involve gay marriage or legalizing drugs, but generally become quite hostile when I add things like staffing ferries, operating buses, etc to the list. I don't dispute the fact that there are government institutions that can provide excellent care with a level of cost efficiency that's on par with or better than comparable private institutions - but I think that they are entirely dependent on the existence of a private medical economy outside their walls, they aren't scalable, and that making the government both the payor and the administrator of all medical care delivered in the US would cede far too much direct power and authority over individual lives and liberties to the government. I don't think anyone applauds the fact that Bill Gates or the president is likely to get medical care that's better than a disabled coal miner - but it's hard to imagine how you could ever rectify that reality with the ideal of equal care for all without granting the government a great deal of discretion over how people spend their own money. As things stand now - it's not clear to me that we're doing the poor any favors by putting them in a single payer system that pays so little that there's an ever smaller number of providers who will even see them, or how they'd be worse of with income indexed vouchers plus a government funded, income indexed HSA, for example. I think that for whatever reason, you are someone for whom the mere mention of George W Bush is sufficient to induce the intellectual equivalent of anaphylactic shock (much like a former co-worker who *literally* became beet red and had to excuse himself from the room whenever the subject of GW came up) - but other than that you're a good guy who wants the best for people. There's probably a lot we agree on - but even if we want the same ends we'll probably never agree on the best means to achieve them....

http://www.williams.edu/Economics/wp/BakijaColeHeimJobsIncomeGrowthTopEarners.pdf "...we find that a one percent increase in the net of tax share is associated with an 0.7 percent reduction in incomes earned by people in the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution, which would imply that if we were to raise top marginal tax rates further on these taxpayers, the increase in deadweight loss would be substantially larger than the increase in revenue raised [emphasis added]. However, we find essentially no evidence at all of any responsiveness of people below the top 0.1 percent..."

I agree that the set of incentives built into current system leads patients to consume more health care, and doctors to provide/sell more of it than would occur under either your preferred scenario or mine. Doctors are humans and they respond to incentives just like anyone else - so on that basis alone I'd agree that being paid per procedure will generate more procedures than you'd have otherwise. There's more to the spending story with that, most of which has to do with handing over payment for virtually all medical care to third parties. If single payor involved the government issuing checks or credits on an income-adjusted basis to individuals who are free to use the funds to pay for medical care however they wish then I'd have no problem with it - but making the government the sole administrator isn't something that I could ever support for a number of reasons.

I already gave you examples but you want them to have a "basis in our legal system" as if the purpose of corporate personhood was anything other than to legally prevent us from holding corporations accountable for denying people's right to a clean environment, stable communities, etc .. In other words, corporate lawyers fix the law to suit your purpose, then you claim that the right to grow up without 24-7 commercial propaganda on public airwaves "has no basis in our legal system". And, to boot, you have the gall to pretend that legal fiction denying us the possibility to control our lives is to protect us from "big government". If something has no formal basis in our legal system - is it really a civil right? Generally when there are thousands of people having a particular right that has some basis in law violated you'd expect it to generate at least one court case. If you can't point to either law or legislation that recognizes a broadly defined right to a "childhood free of commercial propaganda, etc" then you are basically equating your pet-peeves/obsessions with real rights with a basis in law - no?

Also - not sure how familiar you are with English Common Law - but the notion of natural rights has more to it than just serving as a handy rhetorical device for keeping power of the state in check. My understanding (dim and perhaps not entirely correct) is that in the early days - probably contemporaneous with your favorite epic poem - judges were sent hither and yon to adjudicate disputes. More often than not there was no written body of rules to refer to - so part of the judge's job was to determine what the local norms (that both parties would have understood before going into the deal) were. That ruling and a gajillion others were recorded, used as references when dealing with similar cases - and over time all of the rulings amalgamated into "The Law." Part of what the folks going on about natural rights were referring to was this body of law that hadn't been created from scratch via some decree, or designed by any single intelligence and imposed on everyone - but that had evolved on their own directly out of the manner in which people lived. They then went on to argue that since "The Law" hadn't been created by the will of any particular man or discrete body of men - there was no legal basis by which any man or group of men could revoke them at will either. Lots of theological stuff, etc bundled into the natural rights doctrines - but there's the above basis that shaped the concept as well. I think most of them were also of the mind that the folks in government could pass legislation that stipulated that you had to dye every third child green and there would indeed be a law that said so - but that anything so contrary to the way people actually lived, understood their rights, etc would never become the law of the land in any real sense.

I think that they realized that they couldn't predict the future, but one of the central purposes, if not the central purpose, of the document was to enumerate what the Federal government had the power to do and what it didn't. If I'm not mistaken, when the champions of the individual mandate were looking for the constitutional basis for the power to force people to buy health insurance have concluded that they'd found it in the commerce clause. I'm not convinced that it does, and I think that's the basis on which the constitutionality of the law is being challenged. Just to flesh out your argument a bit more - what about the case of the guy who has enough money to self insure? no doubt you've read locke, steeped in the classics as your are - i for one disagree w/ the notion of "natural rights" - there is no creator, we are all savages in the end, and we have no rights beyond our ability to kill the monkeys around us w/ sharp sticks - so there is, in the grand sense, no right to healthcare anymore than a right to life in general of course my grand philosophy is irrelvant - out of necessity socities must have rules in order to survive, and writing them down and sticking to the spirit, if not the letter, of them is important - i don't get real excited about what exactly the founders intended - they were a starting pt to generally stick to, but i have no slavish devotion to them at any rate, the commerce clause was clearly used by proponents of the PPACt b/c historically that clause has been useful in expanding the role of the government - philosophically i have no problem w/ a big government, as this conservative argument taht it should be just small enough to fit into our bedrooms seems uber-stupid to me - the consitutional basis for the law is important, but in the end its usually just a goddamn lawyers wank-fest game in that regard - i have no problem w/ the man being heavily involved in the healthcare arena so long as the end result isn't unpleasant for me personally don't understand your question re: the "guy cuts his finger off" scenario "Big government" is usually composed of two elements - size and scope. You could conceivably employ millions of people weaving the cloth that the currency is printed on by hand, replace printing with hand-painting, etc without increasing the scope of government beyond the limits proscribed by the Constitution. If you are open to the government expanding the scope of it's powers solely on the basis of some practical expediency there's little or no basis upon which you can draw any firm limits to what the government can or cannot do. The founders couldn't see into the future but they could see well into the past and find virtually limitless examples of governments using any pretext that they could muster to expand the scope of their rule - which is precisely the reason why they saw fit to make the Constitution difficult to amend. Difficult - but not impossible. The folks who wanted a national income tax were able to secure that power via a Constitutional amendment. Why not go that route if you're convinced that forcing people to buy health insurance is a legitimate function of government, rather than distorting an existing power in such a way as to render it virtually limitless? Your argument for the mandate via the "finger-guy" was that he'd be forcing everyone else to pay for his care if he never bought insurance - no? Clearly not true of anyone who can pay for all of the care they need out of pocket. It'd be an expensive waste of money that'd piss the people paying for it off - but not an example of the government overstepping it's constitutionally defined bounds. Seems like the imposing costs on others argument would also supply a pretext for the state imposing sanctions on fat people who impact everyone else with their elevated medical costs, etc, etc, etc.