JayB

I'll just keep repeating as necessary. I'm for using tax revenues as efficiently as possible to provide the highest output of services in those domains where only the public sector can deliver them. That includes law enforcement, which includes environmental laws, zoning laws, workplace safety laws. etc. Tending the flowers next to the capitol building, not so much. Under my "fantasy." there'd be more money to pay for them, and more people doing them, since the state would offer only the compensation necessary to insure that the positions were staffed with qualified individuals, and those that proved themselves incapable of doing so would be fired immediately.

Maybe I missed something, Jay, but I think you may be making this stuff up. Maybe you relish in class welfare and all, but seriously: did some State worker take away your binky when you were little? I wish I was making it all up, Matt. I'm also not sure how arguing that the state should use tax revenues as efficiently as possible and focus its efforts on delivering the services that only the public sector can provide constitutes an uncritical hostility towards public sector workers in particular or the government in general. Even if you believe that providing, say, ferry service across the Sound is an essential service that only the public sector can provide - it's still not clear to me how it would be contrary to the public interest to reduce the amount of money that it costs to deliver it. If its possible to reduce the amount of money that the state spends to deliver this service to the public, how would it harm the public to do so? Is it really controversial to argue that a suite of wages, benefits, and working conditions that attracts hundreds of applicants for every opening is higher than necessary to staff the positions with qualified personnel? How does paying more than necessary to staff these positions benefit the public? I'd be quite happy to have that discussion, and extend it to whether or not operating a ferry system, running liquor stores, janitorial services, landscaping services, running a print shop, etc, etc, etc constitute services that only the public sector can provide, and should have a claim on tax revenues that is as high as funding the public defender's office, et, etc.

Yes of course you're concerned with all these things, always have been. They always seem to be just out of reach in your narratives. Interesting that time after time it is crucial that you appeal to the idea these things in order to sell an argument that you're well aware is entirely incompatible with them in practice. Weird place you dwell in. Get help. See above.

Slam dunk. Check out the regressive demagogues trying to blame the financial crisis on public sector employees, while they ignore their catastrophic policies that led us where we are today. In modern conservative propaganda, public employees are the equivalent of Reagan's mythical welfare queens that were then blamed for government deficits. Nothing ever changes with the looters of public coffers. Just for the sake of argument - let's pretend that all of your claims are true. I am a regressive cheerleader for the looters of the public coffers, etc, etc, etc. Having done that - let's discuss why you believe that a government that delivers services that only the public sector can provide, and does so as efficiently as possible is contrary to the public interest.

Your dream is coming true, Jay. There have been hiring freezes and budget cuts imposed on agencies across the board for the last year and a half or so, maybe longer. The demands on these agencies haven't gone down, though, so salaried workers are working uncompensated overtime and temporary employees that are not entitled to benefits are doing work that used to be performed by career employees. You wouldn't be "aware" of it, though, because the State agencies are largely run by dedicated people who are struggling to do their jobs, and they are not busy spewing a bunch of political hoo hah such as what you have apparently been reading. My dream is a public sector that delivers services that only the government can provide as efficiently as possible. We're a long way from that point, and if I had to place a bet, I'd wager that what we'll see at the tail end of this crisis is zero change to the current cost structure and annual cost-growth trajectory, higher taxes, and fewer services delivered to those who need them because public sector unions resist any changes to the existing system of pay and benefits that they enjoy. That sounds way more like your fantasy than mine. When and if we reach a point where public sector employees have all converted to defined contribution plans, their health benefits are no better than the private sector average and they shoulder the same percentage of the cost, and the government is focused on doing the jobs that only it can do then we'll be much closer my fantasy than yours. The ironic thing about my fantasy is that there'd be more resources available to pay for things like public defenders, public health, the enforcement of environmental regulations, Medicaid, etc and yet I'm the "regressive" here - while folks who think that we should cut things like welfare and Medicaid before even considering things like getting rid of the unionized state printing shop or taking the "draconian" step of converting state employees to 401(K) type retirement plans that the rest of us make do with pat themselves on the back as selfless champions of the public interest.

There is no economic system in which the rate of government spending can exceed the rate at which the underlying economy grows indefinitely. No matter what the system, at some point the economic output is no longer sufficient to support the cost structure of the said government. We are at that point. There is no longer any room for debate. The only issue associated with government spending that matters now is how to best spend the money that is available for government. If the purpose of government spending is to maximize the private well-being of those who deliver government services, then we shouldn't change a thing - other than to cut services to people who need them, and cut less-senior staff per union rules - so that the remaining public sector employees can continue to be exempt from financing the same share of their health care and pension benefits that private sector workers do, etc. If the purpose is to maximize the delivery of services that only the government can provide, at the minimum cost to the public, then we'll have to change some things. Is selling alcohol a vital function of government that only the public sector can provide? How about printing documents? Etc, etc, etc.

Yeah, I read what you wrote the other day, you called this one.....as if on cue.... I actually have close to zero knowledge of state budgets. This is something which state legislators apportion. I've seen some of the huge mandatory overcommitments to PERS retirement funds some states carry, but truthfully, do not know where it falls in the budget percentagewise etc. I see these kinds of story's all the time: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Public-sector-employees-are-the-new-fat-cats-93125624.html 5500 people ....Wow! That's a huge impact. Plenty more where that came from here: http://www.pensiontsunami.com/ The bottom line is that there's a finite pool of resources available to finance government. Those funds can be used to maximize the delivery of services that only the government can provide as efficiently as possible, they can be used as patronage schemes to maximize the private interests of the public employees who deliver them, or something in between. We're way closer to the latter than the former, and the pension-tsunami is only going to move the needle further away from a cost structure that delivers maximum benefits to the public at the minimum cost. In Washington, at the state level, employee comp accounts for 60% of spending. That figure doesn't include the value of unfunded retiree healthcare and pension benefits that will eventually have to be paid for, so the real figure is certainly higher. I imagine the story is the same or worse at the city or county level. The only cuts that I'm aware of amounted to a handful of furlough days that will apparently be at least partially paid back later via some bureaucratic maneuver like extra paid vacation or something like that. If someone wants to dredge up the details we can have a look. I actually hope that they dig their heels in and resist all reforms. This will have two benefits. The first is that the public will be have a chance to see what the true aims and priorities of public sector unions are. The second is that it will hasten the inevitable collapse and restructuring of public finances. There's no guarantee that the public will prevail in a prolonged political contest over how public funds are spent, but I'm glad the public sector unions are taking off the mask before things get started.

Right on schedule. "Before the inevitable pay and benefit cuts happen, they'll try to inflict as much pain on the public as possible with service cuts, then the lowest ranking members of the union will get laid off. Then, after these tactics have failed, pay and benefits will be cut to a level that the economy can actually finance." Expect quite a bit more where that came from before the public sector unions move even a fraction of in inch towards shouldering the same burden of paying health-care and retirement costs that those in the private sector do. Per Gregoire we'll be seeing across the board cuts in spending rather than targeting expensive anachronisms like the state's unionized print shop.

First of all, there's no way someone making $60K is paying 30% on all of their income. I know that because our gross income was more than that, our dividend income totaled about $300, and our effective federal tax rate was roughly ~12.5%. That's for a household composed of two adults taking the standard deduction. Here's the tax schedule for 2008: You have to assume that Buffet knows a few things about numbers. Nebraska has a 6% income tax, that puts her up to 30%. Maybe she should hire your accountant to score such a low rate? Since we don't know anything about what she's writing off, we can simply say " if you make 60k in Nebraska, 30% of your income is going to the government." I suppose Buffet could just make up a bunch of numbers, but again I'll go out on a limb again and say he knows more about the US tax code than most of us. -They base their tax assessments on Federal AGI -The actual tax rate isn’t the same as the top marginal rate unless it’s a flat tax, which it isn’t. -There’s a Federal deduction for state income taxes paid. There’s no way anyone in Nebraska with an income of $60K per year has an effective tax rate of 30% on that income. We had a higher income than $60 when we were in Mass, they had a flat-rate of 5.3% on earned income, and our effective tax rate was still under 13%. Buffet was wrong. The main point I believe that you’re trying to make here is that you think it’s wrong for income generated from investments to be taxed at a lower rate than income derived from wages or salaries, since the wealthiest Americans derive a far greater percentage of their income from investments. I think you can still make that argument without recourse to the quip from Buffet, but that doesn’t settle the argument about which tax structure is best for society – which is what most people care about. I think that the general consensus amongst folks that study these things is that it makes more sense to tax consumption than savings, investment, or earned-income. If you think that’s incorrect – let’s hear why. Is it because you think that society will be worse off, because you don’t think such a system satisfies your notions of fairness, or both?

First of all, there's no way someone making $60K is paying 30% on all of their income. I know that because our gross income was more than that, our dividend income totaled about $300, and our effective federal tax rate was roughly ~12.5%. That's for a household composed of two adults taking the standard deduction. Here's the tax schedule for 2008: # 10% on income between $0 and $8,025 # 15% on the income between $8,025 and $32,550; plus $802.50 # 25% on the income between $32,550 and $78,850; plus $4,481.25 # 28% on the income between $78,850 and $164,550; plus $16,056.25 # 33% on the income between $164,550 and $357,700; plus $40,052.25 # 35% on the income over $357,700; plus $103,791.75 Even before all of the deductions and adjustments that reduce gross income to AGI, there's no way she's paying 30%, and there's no way she's paying taxes at a higher rate either. We have more taxable income, and we're paying less, and we have no special deductions or exemptions. I'm not a fan of the current tax system - but as I'm sure you're aware, the reason that Buffet pays so little in taxes is that his income is composed primarily of interest and capital gains. The reason they've structured our tax code in this way is to promote savings, investment, and production. Will the people at the bottom of the economic ladder be better off if it costs the company that employs them more to raise the capital necessary to finance the construction? If the potential returns associated with making an investment in a venture-stage company are lower, will people with the money be more or less likely to do so? What's kind of amusing about this debate is that the rabid regressive nut-cases in Canada have reduced their corporate tax rate from 28% to 18%, and they plan to reduce it to 15% in 2012. They've also reduced their capital gains rate to 14.5%. Their treatment of interest income appears to be a bit more complicated, but it looks like they've tried to structure their tax incentives to promote investment in interest bearing assets across all income thresholds in general, and in Canadian assets in particular, by taxing them at lower rates. It looks like there's even a negative income tax on interest income for people in the lowest tax brackets. http://www.taxtips.ca/dtc/enhanceddtc.htm Is society better off with a tax system that maximizes savings, investment, and production - or one that discourages all three but satisfies subjective notions of fairness? That's really the question at play here.

The can got kicked down the road another year, but since the output at national, state, county, and city levels is not sufficient to pay for the wage and benefit structure built into the public employee contracts - they won't get paid for. Before the inevitable pay and benefit cuts happen, they'll try to inflict as much pain on the public as possible with service cuts, then the lowest ranking members of the union will get laid off. Then, after these tactics have failed, pay and benefits will be cut to a level that the economy can actually finance. Just like the housing bubble imploding - the timing may be variable, but the outcome is certain. Should be some interesting theatrics on the way there...

[video:youtube]

Allan Ginsberg: Islamophobe. "I got to know the poet Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life. Not very well, just a nodding acquaintance, but after he died I attended a memorial in his honor at the City University Graduate School. At that service, his personal assistant related a story about Ginsberg’s reaction to the death sentence pronounced on the novelist Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Rushdie’s “crime,” you’ll recall, was writing a provocative, perhaps even blasphemous novel inspired by the life of Muhammad called The Satanic Verses. Though I might be screwing up a few details, the gist of the story was as follows: Soon after news of the fatwa broke, Ginsberg and his assistant climbed into the back seat of a taxi in Manhattan. After a glance at the cab driver’s name, Ginsberg politely inquired if he was a Muslim. When the cabbie replied that he was, Ginsberg asked him what he thought about the death sentence on Rushdie. The cabbie answered that he thought that Rushdie’s book was disrespectful of Islam, and that the Ayatollah had every right to do what he had done. At this point, according to his assistant, Ginsberg, one of the gentlest men ever to walk the planet, flew into a rage, screaming at the cabbie as he continued to drive, “Then I shit on your religion! Do you hear me? I shit on Islam! I shit on Muhammad! Do you hear? I shit on Muhammad!” Ginsberg demanded that the cabbie pull over. The cabbie complied, and, without paying the fare, Ginsberg and his assistant climbed out. He was still screaming at the cabbie as the car drove off." http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/14/the-poet-versus-the-prophet

You really are a fucking retard. Fairweather is a racist for his race-baiting about minorities and "reverse racism" (a la FOX news), AND he is an islamophobe for a number of reasons but in particular for his remark about that Chechen women. Whether you can see it or understand what is being said to you is irrelevant but your protests likely points to some closeted bigotry. If it's possible to flatly condemn abortion-clinic bombings and cornholing altar-boys without being a "Christianophobe" then it's certainly possible to condemn religiously inspired stonings, beheadings, the deliberate slaughter of civilians, violence against women who seek employment or schooling, brainwashing in madrassas, familial honor-killings, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, without being an "Islamophobe."

Yeah, I suppose one would just be a bigot, not much of a step up the social evolutionary ladder though. How does that work with Jews? I mean, it can be an ethnicity, but it can also merely be a religious choice. So disparaging Judaism is not racist, right? It isn't even anti-Semitic since one could feel quite differently about their secular friends of Jewish extraction. I recall a friend telling me that his Mom wouldn't let them tell "Pollack" jokes back when those were making the rounds, because ethnicity wasn't something that anyone had any control over. However, as a UT grad, the jokes were perfectly fine with her if they changed "Pollack," to "Aggie," since people made a conscious choice to be Aggies. Religions are systems of ideas that result in patterns of behavior. At some point, people choose to adopt religious ideas and patterns of behavior and become accountable for both. You don't really believe that religious beliefs or the behaviors that they inspire in some of their adherents renders them exempt from criticism or scrutiny, you?

Are private school teachers paid slave wages, and if so - why do they accept them in the first place, much less stay on for an extra helping each year. If X dollars is enough to get private school teachers in the door, why should the public pay any more than that if the purpose of public spending on education is to benefit children, and not to provide a private windfall for a particular vocation? The general argument here seems to be that the purpose of government *is* to provide a private windfall to those on the public payroll, but that's a tough one to square with the typical rhetoric from your typical self-styled progressive. The funny thing is that a large part of the impetus for the original Progressive movement was widespread anger and revulsion at waste, graft, and patronage amongst those trafficking in public funds.

the public benefits when teachers are paid well and work in a good environment - what well qualified teacher would want to work in a place that treats him like a slave? do you want your kids' teachers to be indistinguisable from wal-mart employees? teacher unions organized precisely b/c that's how they were being treated, as slaves - how do you propose public employees exert influence to insure they're treated fairly? i suppose they could use the election process, but that's much more unwieldy and requires getting a lot of people who have no direct connection to the problem to get involved. If we're going to focus on teachers alone here for the moment.... -There are plenty of places with incredibly strong unions and abyssmal performance in every metric. Whatever alchemy makes for good schools, it's clear that unionized teachers aren't a necessary component. - Private schools seem to be able to attract enough teachers to educate their students without whatever pay and security enhancements teachers offer. Whatever keeps teachers walking in the door every day, it doesn't seem to be something that only a unionized environment can provide. -Things were rough all over back in the day. It's not clear that teachers had it any worse than a gazillion other lines of work. It's also no more clear that you need union control of public schools to ensure satisfactory working conditions for teachers than it is that you need to keep the Union Army staffed and on alert to prevent a reversion to slavery. -I propose that teachers exert their influence by either leaving the profession if the working conditions and compensation aren't adequate for them, or declining to enter it in the first place. Whatever private schools offer seems sufficient to secure teachers of equal or higher caliber. If that's less than someone feels they're entitled to, too bad. There are plenty of other options out there. It's also an open question whether or not the teacher's unions actually makes for a better environment for the best teachers. It's clearly beneficial for the worst. When it came time for staffing cuts at my high school, the most gifted, inspirational teacher there got the chop. Pretty much a travesty for all concerned, except for the undermotivated sack with more seniority and lots of union-pull who got her spot.

So how would you feel if your employees held a meeting, pointed out the fact that you live in a nicer house than do they, demanded more money and paid time off, and then physically (violently even!) blocked access to your jobsites until you relented? I'm working in a small startup (again). Biggest reported challenge to startup managers (and most common reason why they fail): inability to retain and motivate valuable employees. The split between the 'squeeze them until they bleed' philosophy of labor management presented here and those who actually run businesses and know the real deal about what your employees are worth is stark. Funny how none of the right wingers here actually run businesses that have employees. Hmmmmm...... Uh - who is trafficking in caricatures here, exactly? There are well defined costs associated with high turnover, short-staffing, workplace injuries, etc, etc, etc, etc that check the impulses of even employers who have no concern whatsoever for their employees. What percentage of managers, foremen, shift-leads, etc, etc, etc, are actually sociopaths that have no sympathy or empathy, don't care about how others see them in the workplace or in the community they live in, etc, etc, etc, etc? I've lost count of the number of jobs I had between the ages of 13 and 30, but it's probably somewhere in the low 20's, and ranged from graveyard-shift busboy, dog-kennel pressure-washer, temporary nigh-janitor, bucking hay-bales, production work in factories, restaurants, etc, etc, etc. I ran into a couple of bad bosses, but they were mostly bad because they just didn't have the expertise or temperament to be good managers - but most were decent people doing the best that they could. Most of the time the people that I ran into at those jobs were the best part of the experience, and made even the roughest jobs more tolerable. How any of this relates to the question of whether or not the HR specialist IV in Olympia needs union representation to shield her from the dreadful lash wielded by Pam the office manager, or whether or not the state would be able to staff the position with someone of equal quality despite horrific prospect of them having to bear the burden of financing their own healthcare and retirement costs like the schmucks in the private sector is beyond me. It's also worth rephrasing Jeff Adachi's question - which is how you can be a good progressive when you support a health and retirement cost structure that crowds out funding for libraries, parks, services for the indigent, etc, etc, etc.

-What is a living wage and what's your solution for people with a marginal productivity that places them below that threshold? The higher you crank the "living wage" the fewer and fewer people there are that can pass over that bar. The only options are warehousing people who cost more to employ than their output is worth on welfare, instituting a negative income tax, or abolishing the minimum wage. Or some combination of the three.

What happens when the collective bargaining (or leveraged bargaining) of a union creates a wage that makes the end product uncompetitive in the market place? What happens when a public workers union gets a public official elected and then it comes time to bargain for said union's wages? If you think large corporations have exploited the workforce then I could easily build a case that large unions have not only exploited the worker but also the large corporations. Large unions have milked corporations dry and then left the works unemployed when the company couldn't (or wouldn't) afford them any more. Public employees unions fit in this bill as well, coffers filled to the brim but refuse to cover the union members they forced to go on strike. Coffers so full they could donate enough to swing an election. Coffers so full but won't cover the pay raise they scream for in a budgetary deficit. j_b isn't espousing fair wages though, he's got his eyes set on wage control and socialized industry. He just won't admit it because then he loses the support of normal left leaning people. Why do you think he has hinted at "reasonable restrictions" on free speech? Its all just part in parcel. of course unions aren't panaceas - they've become large organizations like the companies too, and require intelligble participation by their members to balance out the power they've acquired - i'm not smart enough to percieve the path to the perfect world, economically speaking - ya'll can feel free to scream yerselves silly over that - i just figure unions are the lesser evil though, and am active in my own local in an attempt to understand it and use it to my benefit. read "nickle and dimed" last month - interesting short book by a journalist who spent a couple months "undercover" trying to live the life of a minimum/low-wage earner and the obvious conclusion of course is that it's essentially impossible to live w/n any decent standard, no matter how good a worker you are. my gut tells me that, if a guy puts in a full week, works hard, no matter if he's doing heart-transplants or just cleaning the floor after the operation's done,that he ought to be able to have stable housing, food ont he table, healthcare and the abilty to spend the last decade or two of his life in comfortable retirment. i'm not dedicated to any particuliar approach to getting to that result. I've never heard a defensible case for public employees unionizing, which is probably why FDR, Fiorello LaGuardia, and George Meany were all strongly opposed to it. I can see how public sector unions serve the private interests of public sector employees, but it's never been clear how the public benefits from them. What's your argument?

They migrate to places where they don't have to pay workers wages that exceed the value of their marginal output. If you want to build a high end Mercedes, Germany is probably the cheapest place in the world to do that.

Thanks for all of the hard-work and dedication, Lowell. Hopefully the NWMJ will land in equally capable hands in the future.

Thankfully regressives have private sector unions to do the heavy lifting for us: The empirical record is quite clear. If you want to destroy jobs, the best way to do so is to demand wages that exceed marginal productivity. Couple that with rigid work rules, etc and the fuse is lit - it's only a matter of time until the enterprise goes under, re-locates, or uses machines to supplant workers that cost more than they produce. Want to destroy jobs in the private sector? Unionize them.

because you are a deficit "chicken hawk" who didn't have any issue with running up debt for wars of aggression, until main street needed to be bailed out because of your "free market" free for all. The average public employee has nothing to do with the crisis and deficit your 'no regulation of business' ideology created. The average private sector employee is no more likely to have had any more significant role in catalyzing the economic contraction either. They're losing their jobs, paying more for their health care and benefits, absorbing portfolio losses, etc, etc, etc irrespective of their personal virtues. That's the reality. I have never argued that public sector employees should have it worse than their private sector counterparts, nor should they have to endure sacrifices any greater than those in the private sector. I have argued that they shouldn't have it better, much less be insulated from the real costs of financing their own health benefits and retirement. Unionized public sector employees have had a good ride. It's over. Their compensation demands can no longer be fully funded, because they have outstripped the private sector's capacity to finance them. The pain has already been present in the private sector for quite some time. Now it's coming to the public sector. The unions could ameliorate the impact by opting for pay and benefit cuts instead of layoffs and service reductions, but they have demonstrated that they are primarily concerned with optimizing the private benefits that they derive from public employment, rather than delivering the greatest quantity of services to the public as efficiently as possible. “I’ll never forget what one union rep said to me through this process—we went to them and asked them if they could help us out with costs, and he said, ‘The last employee standing will have every benefit we’ve ever worked so hard to get.’” She declined to name the union or the representative. http://www.publicola.net/2010/07/14/king-county-council-shifting-gears-with-labor-policy-to-deal-with-the-deficit/