JayB

It must be wonderful supporting politicians who's ideology you don't back then being able to fall back on the ivory tower of asininity when shit don't work out. If you think that the mortgage interest deduction is good policy - just say so! You've got lots of company - probably roughly the same percentage that thought that the cash for clunkers plan made the country better off...

Can you spell out precisely what you mean by "overwhelmingly dependent upon consumption"? Here's a couple of questions to help get you started: -What sorts of things do people do to generate the resources necessary pay for the things that they consume? Do those activities constitute consumption or production (per your understanding of each term)? -What (per your understanding) happens to money that isn't used to fund present consumption?

Jayb – I think that blaming a "shortage" of PCPs alomost entirely on the implementation of the RBRVS payment system is biting off a bit too much. Check this out: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08472t.pdf The RBRVS payment system took effect in 1991. By the way - what's your opinion of the RVBRS in general? Seems like a ludicrous Soviet-Style price-control apparatus that has it's intellectual roots in the labor theory of value, can't possibly coordinate supply and demand or keep pace with technology and other factors that change how care is delivered much more rapidly than their prices can adjust, is subject to public-choice distortions like you'd get if you had a commission of farmers setting grain prices, etc, etc - but what's your opinion?

Jayb – I think that blaming a "shortage" of PCPs alomost entirely on the implementation of the RBRVS payment system is biting off a bit too much. Check this out: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08472t.pdf The RBRVS payment system took effect in 1991. Which part? Scanned and saw an acknowledgment of the RVBRS's effect on compensation for specialists vs generalists, but didn't see anything suggesting that it wasn't having a negative effect on the number of primary care physicians. There are other factors at play, such as the work isn't seen as terribly rewarding/challenging/etc by lots of folks in the doctoring business, isn't well respected, etc - but the fact that dermatology is one of the hardest, if not the hardest specialty to get into shows that pay and working conditions trump just about everything else in determining how many people want to work in a given specialty.

Affirmation of the day! I've taken to humming the strains of this song in my head and smiling when I run into someone who has literally no idea what an antigen is, much less an adjuvant, chimes in with news that they'll be spacing out their vaccinations because - based on what they heard at their Mommy-Yoga class in Fremont - they don't want to have their infant exposed to too many "antigens" all at once. Oh, I didn't say he probably isn't right. I'm saying he's a humorless, ideologically fixated twat. "Edgy"... Open-minded is one thing, gullible is another, no? Another affront to open-mindedness below! [video:youtube]

Actually - the primary factor driving public sector layoffs will be the refusal of public-sector unions to modify existing pay and benefit structures. Exhibit A: King Country Sheriff's Union. Keep the 5% pay-hikes or cut 39 of your members from the payroll. Guess what happened?

Whatever you do - don't touch the mortgage interest deduction!!!!

This calls for a full-length TR...

How much of the King County budget is currently dedicated to war-funding and what's the magnitude of the fiscal windfall that the county can expect to realize once the Kingco War Machine is dismantled? How about the state of Washington's? Someone should lay the numbers out there for Gregoire and Chopp, poste-haste....

[video:youtube] If this is what passes for a sense of humor in your book then your social pariah status is well-earned. Christopher Hitchens meets Gallagher... Affirmation of the day! I've taken to humming the strains of this song in my head and smiling when I run into someone who has literally no idea what an antigen is, much less an adjuvant, chimes in with news that they'll be spacing out their vaccinations because - based on what they heard at their Mommy-Yoga class in Fremont - they don't want to have their infant exposed to too many "antigens" all at once.

sweet cut n' paste nothing says seattle like dogmatic book learned opinions and pedantic style None of the above were giving personal interviews at the time.

Matt: Given fiscal realities - government will be reduced. The only question is how. When push comes to shove I'd personally prefer to see the government using the limited resources as its disposal to focus on things that only it can do as efficiently as possible. Consequently, when it comes down to a choice between a 5X5% compounded pay increase for cops, subsizing the Seattle port to the tune of ~3/4 billion per decade, COLA's for all irrespective of the budget, pension and benefit reform, etc - or providing state services for schizophrenic drug addicts, people who require a public defender, Medicaid funding, Fish and Wildlife enforcement budgets, etc I'll take the latter. I still have no idea how asking public employees to pay as much out of pocket for their retirement and health benefits constitutes a war on public sector employees. Is this because you don't understand how pension finance works, or some other reason? For starters, plug in an inflation-adjusted pension payout of $50K per year for ages 55-65 using immediate annuity calculators and see what kind of lump-sum it would require to fund the said payout. Then add medical care. The value will never be below seven figures. How many people do you know that put enough aside out of their earnings to have a seven-figure balance when they retire? If a public sector employee has a retirement package that requires seven figures in the bank, and the combined value of their contributions and returns is in the high-five to low-six figure range where, exactly - do you think the money required to cover he difference is going to come from? There are a few erstwhile progressives out there who can do math who know the answer to that question. Jeff Adachi is one of them: http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-02-01/opinion/17841791_1_pension-fund-pension-debt-retirement-fund While I don't agree with all of this (the port thing) this is the conversation that needs to occur or else local governments are going to default. At some point. And then social services will really get the ax. I'm not encouraged either locally or on the national level that this will happen anytime soon. On the national level big ticket items such as the Medicade Drug benefit bill and Pharma giveaway is going to swamp the Stimulus and Bailout (at least there's some revenue recovery here) in terms of debt blowout and should be repealed. The military budget needs to be cut in half, at least. Raise corporate taxes to a reasonable level, discontinue the limit on upper income Social Security tax, and end the disasterous Bush tax cuts on the upper income brackets - now. The cuts are coming. The only question is whether the bulk of the cutting will be in essential services that only the state can provide, or in the pay and benefits of those who deliver them. My bet is on cuts to essential services via layoffs that do nothing to address the structural factors driving the cost of everything from putting police on the streets to operating the buses ever higher. I'm astonished that state and muni bond-yields aren't already spiking. All I can think is that people that are buying them are pricing in a Federal bailout. The ghost of Christmas future is already arriving in Euroland, and he wants his money. "Trichet Is Buyer of Only Resort as Debt Woes Worsen European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet is the buyer of only resort as the euro area’s bond market melts down. Just six months after he threw out his rule book to prevent Greece’s debt crisis from splintering the euro area, the 67-year old Frenchman may again be the only policy maker able to prevent the collapse in Irish and Portuguese bonds from spreading...." http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/newreply/Board/21/Number/987732/what/showflat/fpart/5/q/1

You'll probably like the rest of his (Tim Minchin's) stuff then. Lots more available on Youtube, but his stuff is usually done piano-ballad style. [video:youtube]

Matt: Given fiscal realities - government will be reduced. The only question is how. When push comes to shove I'd personally prefer to see the government using the limited resources as its disposal to focus on things that only it can do as efficiently as possible. Consequently, when it comes down to a choice between a 5X5% compounded pay increase for cops, subsizing the Seattle port to the tune of ~3/4 billion per decade, COLA's for all irrespective of the budget, pension and benefit reform, etc - or providing state services for schizophrenic drug addicts, people who require a public defender, Medicaid funding, Fish and Wildlife enforcement budgets, etc I'll take the latter. I still have no idea how asking public employees to pay as much out of pocket for their retirement and health benefits constitutes a war on public sector employees. Is this because you don't understand how pension finance works, or some other reason? For starters, plug in an inflation-adjusted pension payout of $50K per year for ages 55-65 using immediate annuity calculators and see what kind of lump-sum it would require to fund the said payout. Then add medical care. The value will never be below seven figures. How many people do you know that put enough aside out of their earnings to have a seven-figure balance when they retire? If a public sector employee has a retirement package that requires seven figures in the bank, and the combined value of their contributions and returns is in the high-five to low-six figure range where, exactly - do you think the money required to cover he difference is going to come from? There are a few erstwhile progressives out there who can do math who know the answer to that question. Jeff Adachi is one of them: http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-02-01/opinion/17841791_1_pension-fund-pension-debt-retirement-fund

I suspect actual earnings is dependent upon the type of physician. (Anesthesiologists make over $200k) I am sure you are also aware of the chronic shortage of Drs. in Australia. Don’t have time to find a more current article but check this out. https://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/179_04_180803/letters_180803_fm-3.html There is also a shortage of physicians in Canada and amazingly enough I bet if you check out Mass, problems are starting to develop there as well. Better to have a shortage of doctors you can afford than an over abundance of doctors you can't. You realize that the resource-based relative value scale has done more to distort compensation towards specialists and procedures and away from GP's and prevention than any other set of incentives in the history of American medicine? But I suspect that you have not idea what the RBRVS is, what its origins are, or how it distorts the practice of medicine. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/blame-doctors-americas-primary-care-doctor-shortage http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/lessons-from-the-abyss/Content?oid=999924

i wish it were so simple - didn't i meet you at smith once jay? recall you being plenty funny and friendly - at any rate, he's a far more civil bloke and likely as not smarter than me (a simple feat, i know) and no less informed - its damned impossible for me to understand how folks so similiar to myself can have such different views on important subjects...ah, but this misses the pt of being funny... Yes - we've met more than once although my three year sentence on the EC and my subsequent diversion into WW kayaking has unfortunately precluded any further social engagements. For the record - I think you are a cool dude, obviously very smart, and would be glad to have the opportunity to have any hypothetical future children taught in your classroom. Unfortunately for me, Diderot, D'Alembert, Turgot, Rousseau, D'Holbach, etc lead directly to Burke, Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Smith, etc - and once I veered off into Menger, Mises, and Hayek I was pretty much doomed to pariah status in progressive enclaves. This after alienating a good many social conservatives with the whole agnostic evolutionist schtick. I'm also good for alienating your average naturopath/homeopath/vaccine-denier so I'm pretty much a hit at every social function in Seattle. Typical evening on the town for me re-created in beat-poem form below: [video:youtube]

I don't know what you are intending to say here but I, for one, often pay more than "low bid" when faced with an offer for someone to provide work that I think will be sub-quality, workers who I don't like or, in fact, work that for some tangential and maybe even political reason or another is something I cannot support. Maybe you have no such concerns for quality or values. I do. If your point is that we should run our government like McDonalds, I disagree. I personally shop on the basis of value, not price. I'm not in the habit of paying more than the asking price for the things that I do buy, though. When was the last time when you made a purchase and actually paid more than the asking price, and what percentage of your total spending does that constitute? I'm of the opinion that the public sector exists to deliver services that no other entity in society can as efficiently as possible. That is, the public sector exists to promote the well being of the citizenry, rather than the opposite. In practice, that means spending what it necessary to staff positions in the public sector with people who are qualified to do the job, and nothing more. When push comes to shove, what's more important? The interests of the people who rely on transportation services that are paid for by the public, or the private interests of those who are paid to deliver those services with public funds? In reality, where tax dollars are finite, it's one or the other? Which is it? Ditto for police, fire, etc, etc, etc, etc. How about public sector comp vs medicaid? Et.....cetera. It's quite clear that public sector employees as a whole prefer cutting services to cutting costs, or improving efficiencies - how about you? Its' worth adding that under a regime where public sector positions were staffed on the basis of what was required to fill the positions, there'd be absolutely nothing preventing self-styled progressives from making voluntary donations to close the gap between what public sector employees were paid and what they deemed the said employees to be worth. Think every bus driver should clear over $100K? Knock yourselves out!

WTF does that have to do with using public money to pay more than necessary to staff positions with qualified people? Much less the fact that you are, like it or not, much less inclined to do so when you are spending your own money. Ever head to the back of the restaurant and hand the dishwasher $100 to compensate for his less than living wage on top of what you paid for the meal? Why not?

As always Jay, thanks for the reminder that your insights are always value-free. So – when you are spending your own money, how often do you pay more than the asking price when you go to the grocery store, gas station, etcm or pay your heating/water/trash/etc bill because you feel that the asking price isn’t commensurate with the true social value of the good or service that you are getting in exchange for your money? Other than transactions where tips are customary – I can answer for you, and the answer is never.

If the public sector exists to serve the public, and not vice versa, then the only relevant question when determining compensation is "how much will it cost to staff the position with a qualified person?" The larger metaphysical question of what job X is really "worth" relative to Y in some equally arbitrary perspective is completely irrelevant.

Public sector unions could prevent virtually all layoffs by accepting a combination of temporary pay cuts, and financing their own retirements and medical benefits to the same extent as people in the private sector do. Should be an interesting game of chicken to see who blinks first, but neither simple mathematics nor the public mood would incline me to bet on the side of the status quo in the public sector. " The threat posed by the state fiscal crisis in the U.S. is vastly underestimated and under-appreciated—because even today too few people understand how states have been managing their finances. A clear example of this took place in Manhattan last week at the Economist magazine's Buttonwood Conference, where a panel role-played the federal government's response to a near default of the hypothetical state of New Jefferson. After various deliberations and simulated threats from the Chinese government, the panel reluctantly voted to grant New Jefferson an emergency bailout of $1.5 billion to cover the state's debt payment. What this panel and so many other investors fail to appreciate is that state bailouts have already begun. Over 20% of California's debt issuance during 2009 and over 30% of its debt issuance in 2010 to date has been subsidized by the federal government in a program known as Build America Bonds. Under the program, the U.S. Treasury covers 35% of the interest paid by the bonds. Arguably, without this program the interest cost of bonds for some states would have reached prohibitive levels. California is not alone: Over 30% of Illinois's debt and over 40% of Nevada's debt issued since 2009 has also been subsidized with these bonds. These states might have already reached some type of tipping point had the federal program not been in place." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578203887408076.html

I think the single most effective means of getting the public to accept higher taxes would be a sustained demonstration that the additional tax revenues will be used effectively. In practice that means insuring that the the principal beneficiaries of the additional revenue in the hands of the public sector are those who receive public services, rather than those who deliver them. The ongoing spectacle of ever-increasing pay and benefit costs for public sector employees, that neither abates when time are tough, nor result in increased services is not helping the "progressive" agenda gain any traction, to say the least. It'll be interesting to see how long public sector unions can hold the line on the "cut services first" approach to balancing budgets. It's clear that avoiding structural reforms to unsustainable and archaic pay, benefit, and retirement costs is priority number one, and they've managed to avoid making any structural concessions thus far, but it's not clear how long that can continue. The next budget cycle should be interesting.

Take a look at the balance sheet and primary cost-drivers for most state and local government entities and it's far from clear that increasing tax revenues would mean increasing services. Given the archaic and completely unreformed mechanisms that drive the unit cost of each public sector employee ever higher every year, its nearly impossible to vote for higher taxes in ways that will be guaranteed to result in more services, since the odds are quite high that the money will be siphoned off into higher pay and benefits for those delivering the services instead of the services themselves. "Metro drivers' wages threaten bus service King County Metro officials have raised bus driver pay dramatically while neglecting some promised service increases. Now, the wages threaten to cut into existing service..." http://crosscut.com/2010/09/29/metro-transit/20199/Metro-drivers--wages-threaten-bus-service/ Here's some helpful info from an insider - sounds like a low-ranking Metro operator - who is responding the union head's talk of finding "every conceivable efficiency": Bachtel IS a liar. That is hardly a matter of interpretation. He lies in this article, and he's lied elsewhere about other things. The man is flat-out dishonest. In this particular instance - the one I cited - he claims that he in contract negotiations is looking for "every conceivable efficiency". This is flat out false. A lie. Union leadership specifically is fighting against allowing part-time Operators to work beyond certain limitations that create an artificial demand for overtime. The audit has called for such efficiencies, and the union (past and present) continues to fight for artificial demand for overtime, primarly for more senior full-time bus drivers. To claim that he has assigned people to find "every conceivable inefficiency" is a bald-faced lie. He is interested in keeping at least some aspects of work assignments INEFFICIENT, in order to pad the wages of senior full-time operators even when part-time Operators are willing, available, and capable of filling hours at straight time. This isn't something that's a matter of opinion or open to interpretation - it's established fact. I'd be happy to cite the specific contract language and audit recommendations (and in fact have done so on my own blog) to back that up if you like. Regrettably, Bachtel's ineptitude - and dishonesty - cloud the legitimate points that he makes, and harm the entire membership while aiding our opponents in helping turn public opinion against Operators during this vital contract negotiation period." http://crosscut.com/2010/10/05/metro-transit/20229/Metro-drivers--wages-have-barely-kept-up-with-inflation/

"Pierce County government workers’ pay rose by nearly one-quarter from 2005 to 2009, far faster than inflation or private wages during the same period. County workers’ average annual pay grew by more than 23 percent – from $51,038 to $62,866 – during that time, according to a News Tribune analysis of county reports to the state Employment Security Department. Even as the economy tanked and the county faced a budget crisis, the raises continued. And the raises will come even as the County Council prepares to adopt a budget this week likely to cut services and positions while raising fees. All county workers got at least a 2.5 percent cost-of-living pay hike this year, and they’re scheduled to get another 2.5 percent raise Jan. 1. Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy and County Council members are set to get a 3 percent boost. The raises come even as the local Consumer Price Index dropped 0.5 percent between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010." http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/11/06/1413647/county-pay-raises-theyre-complicated.html#ixzz14eVbHXS7 More taxes doesn't necessarily translate into more services. Given the incentives at play - it's far more likely to translate into a higher cost structure for the same level of services. At best.

How about sole proprietorships, limited partnerships, unions, fraternal organizations, co-ops, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc?