JayB

You and your type are so busy talking that you don't read at all - do ya. Your false attacks are just that. It may make you feel intelligent, but for everyone reading- it has the opposite effect. On this point, Bill, I think he is right. There was no cry about deficit spending when the Bush administration started two wars, both of which were a bad idea, and simultaneously initiated massive tax cuts. As to the topic of this thread: I don't want do get heavily involved in the discussion because it will only become a mud festival but I can tell you that I work in a State agency and there is a higher level of dedication in my office than any private entity I have worked at in the past and, at the same time, salaries and wages are lower than in the private sector and the work demands are not less. I hope that you don't take this as "mud," Matt - but it's not clear what public employee compensation at the city, county, and state level - and the impossibility of financing them at current levels - have to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Bush Tax Cuts. If neither the wars nor the tax cuts would have happened, they'd still be impossible to finance via revenue generated by state and local taxes.

Clearly you are a regressive and don't appreciate the magnitude of the Keynesian stimulus effects that paying the manager of a city of 37K $800,000 a year has on the local economy/population. well, hopefully olyclimber is joking because there is a big difference between the manager of a city and “public employees”. As fas as you are concerned you do not get the benefit of the doubt because you have been told many times that cherry picking data won’t do. Nobody ever said that some excesses weren’t taking place (like everywhere) but a fraction of public employees getting too much has never meant that “public employees” as a whole earn too much and shouldn’t get their pensions. from the article above: “even if employee pensions didn't cost the state a cent — an impossibility — the savings would fill only 11% of the general fund deficit hole.” Your cherry picking of data woin’t do. Stop cheating. -All the more reason to cut employee compensation to whatever is necessary to bring revenues and expenditures into line and fill the "general fund deficit hole." Unemployment in California is over 12%. The U6 is probably at least 1.5 times as high, if not higher. If they can get better total comp in the private sector - they are welcome to leave. The vast majority won't, because they can't. -Plenty of cherries to pick in the database of public employee compensation in California. Bumper crop. Fire up a database of your choosing and let's have a look.

I see your ROTFL and raise you a LOL... You especially went from dishonestly implying the wealthy returned more of their take than in the past to merely saying the wealthy now pay a greater proportion of taxes than those who have little to nothing. DUH! The truth is over the last 30+ years, tax rates have fallen most for the wealthy as they took an even greater share of the pie (the wealthiest had the largest decrease in tax rates). Moreover, a) your charts do not account for sales taxes, fees and payroll taxes that have almost all increased for people who work to earn a living, and b) tax evasion thanks to undeclared income. Paging the ROFL-Copter... "A new CBO report gives the effective federal tax rate by income group. These numbers include all federal taxes, not just income taxes, and are expressed as a percentage of household income." Here's a chart that includes all taxes - state, local, federal, etc. "As the first chart shows, if income is measured as market income — income from employment, investments, and a few other sources, but not including government transfers — the tax system is essentially flat. The effective tax rate is approximately 30% for households throughout the income distribution." Total Tax Rate Before Transfers REGRESSIVE! But wait.. "Adding government transfers (as the Congressional Budget Office does in its calculations of federal tax progressivity) increases the average income in each quintile, but much more for the bottom than for the middle or top. This reduces the effective tax rate more in the lower part of the distribution than the upper, resulting in a progressive structure." Total Tax Rates After Transfers "What should we conclude? I think the first chart here better reflects the impact of the U.S. tax system. It does very little to alter the market distribution of income. Redistribution is achieved mainly by government transfers rather than by taxes." REGRESSIVE! LOL.

I see your ROTFL and raise you a LOL...

Clearly you are a regressive and don't appreciate the magnitude of the Keynesian stimulus effects that paying the manager of a city of 37K $800,000 a year has on the local economy/population. The funniest bit is that it sounds as though that final salary could entitle the guy to ~$600K/year worth of inflation-indexed pension money.

Pretty much agree on all points. California's three-strikes law is retarded, and only makes it harder to deal with rapists, murderers, etc by diverting money and resources into locking up people who harm themselves. I was visiting friends in San Clemente last weekend and heard about a meth-addict/surfer who's "third strike" was possesion. Not sure how much, etc - but sounds like the local consensus was that he wasn't a direct threat to anyone but himself. Locking a guy like that up for life is obscene, and paying $50G a year, plus inflation, to do it is an obscenely stupid misallocation or resources - even for a state like California, which is probably second only to Greece in that category. Given that prohibition only compounds social problems, diverts resources away from other social priorities, and gives the government a pretext for violating civil liberties, etc you'd think that progressives would be all over it. Given that it expands the size and power of government, gives them a pretext to trample all over property rights you'd think conservatives would be all over it. That makes it all the more surprising that the only people who have consistently argued against all prohibitionist policies since their inception have been libertarians, who have never constituted enough of the population to move the policy needle.

One more argument for legalizing all drugs as soon as possible. People have conjured up the notion of RJR or Seagrams cooking up new varieties of drugs as some kind of nightmare. It's certainly true that people would continue to destroy themselves and their families with drugs, and perhaps more people would do so if they were legal - but the empirical evidence for this claim just isn't there. Even if it is, people have the right to do whatever they wish to their own bodies so long as they don't directly harm anyone else in the process. Base-jumping is orders of magnitude more likely to produce lethal outcomes than crack, herion, etc, etc, etc, but banning it in order to protect base-jumpers from themselves would be equally silly. With capital, expertise, and safety regulations in place at least they'd know what they were taking, and drugs that are formulated to produce whatever high they're after that are formulated to be less hazardous and potentially less addictive sounds like a much better deal for society than the current status quo where people seeking out new highs use themselves as guinea pigs. I was just reading preliminary reports about the effects about a few new synthetic drugs that are making the rounds and it's not pretty. Not nearly as bad as the prohibition fueled violence around the world, but far worse than things would be if people who want to use drugs had safe, legal channels to go through.

Please expand. I'm hoping that this is a reference to the record amounts of "cash" held on corporate balance sheets at the moment, and you'll make the argument that bank deposits, money-market securities, short-term bonds, repo-agreements, treasuries, etc, etc, etc, etc, are the economic equivalent of the same amount of physical currency sitting in vaults.

I was actually hoping that you would persist with the "as you transfer private sector income into unionized public sector income private sector income will increase proportionally" argument. Bummer. In other news, it looks like the regressive virus is spreading. Witness a first, the "lefty" regressive! Introducing, Jeff Adachi.... "San Francisco is the most progressive, pro-union, you know, lefty, and I'm probably the poster boy for that in many ways. But the reality is, if we don't do something, all of the important programs, not only public defense but we're talking about children's programs, after-school programs, education, senior programs, everything that we care about as progressives is going to be lost because it's being sucked up by the cost of pensions."

How - per your understanding - will transferring less private income to the government in the form of taxes lead to a reduction in total private income and spending. If the taxes on your income and consumption were reduced by 10%, would you have more or less money to spend or invest? Also - per your understanding of economics, is there any difference between the economic impacts associated with accruing savings in the form of physical cash, versus bank deposits, CDs, money market accounts, bonds, and other forms of investment?

The government could easily deliver the same level of services to the public without a single furlow or layoff by imposing across the cuts in pay and benefits, particularly pensions. Public employee unions clearly prefer furlows and layoffs to reductions in pay, benefits, and pensions. Makes sense - sense their primary concern is maximizing the private advantage that they can derive from the expenditure of public funds. What doesn't make sense is a self-styled progressive adopting a platform that maximizes the cost and minimizes the delivery of public services. Why renovate 5 bridges when you can pay the same amount under Davis-Bacon rules and get three? Ditto for police, fire, teachers, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Spare us the drivel. Nobody needs to be reminded of the justification behind the voodoo economics that led to the present economic fiasco. Every single measure proposed by the Chamber of Commerce has been fully implemented for the last 30+ years. You guys are the true DEAD-ENDERS. I hope you built those walls high enough. Their compensation demands have now exceeded the private economy's capacity to fund them. The only choices are layoffs, a reduction in compensation to a level that the private economy can fund, or some combination of the two. The solution you prefer depends on whether you think the purpose of government is to maximize the well-being of unionized public employees, or the public that they ostensibly serve. See below: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=public%20employee%20layoffs&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=nws:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wn&fp=2192b3580183e448

Is it limited to wanting influence over how the state spends the money it collects for you Rob? Or are you also a fan of things like tarriffs, subsidies, sin-taxes, etc that distort private spending in service of a political agenda that's rigged to benefit private interests. Were - say - the tariffs placed on Japanese autos *really* put in place to benefit the consumer? How about agricultural tariffs like the one that's currently in place against cane ethanol? Prevailing wage laws for public projects - does the public really benefit from getting 4 schools, bridges, highways, etc for the price of 5?

Fixed it for ya, JayB. Much better.

Does the argument go something like this? "Employers offer a salary as a means of attracting and retaining a sufficient number of workers to complete a given set of tasks. Employers don't base their compensation on whatever subjective notion of fairness that they happen to abide by. They base it on their determinations of what will be necessary to fill the position. The only question that matters here is the level of compensation necessary to attract and retain a sufficient number of policemen in Oakland. If they can't staff their positions, then the compensation that they are offering is too low. If the number of qualified applicants for each opening is many times the number required to fill each vacancy, then the compensation that they are offering is excessive. Similarly - the point of having a police force is to maximize the safety and security of the citizenry. The best way to do that is to provide the greatest amount of policing by qualified officers at the lowest possible cost. You do that by paying the minimum necessary to attract and retain a sufficient number qualified officers. If your primary concern is optimizing the private welfare of policemen and their unions, rather than the public welfare, then you pay each officer the maximum that you believe that you can extract from the private sector at any given time. This is what the policeman, firemen, and every other cadre of unionized public sector employees has done since it became legal for them to organize. Minimum delivery of services to the public at the maximum cost. Their compensation demands have now exceeded the private economy's capacity to fund them. The only choices are layoffs, a reduction in compensation to a level that the private economy can fund, or some combination of the two. The solution you prefer depends on whether you think the purpose of government is to maximize the well-being of unionized public employees, or the public that they ostensibly serve. Given tenor of your post, your preference is clear. Unfortunately this preference is at odds with reality. Compensation demands that can't be funded - won't. Public employee compensation will be cut by reducing numbers, compensation, or both."

Yes. Pretty much anything consenting adults do to themselves or to each other as long as it's not directly harming anyone else or infringing on their constitutional rights. Unfortunately, one one side there are religious conservatives who want the state to have a significant influence what people do with their bodies, and there are an equal number of progressives who want the state to have a significant influence over what people do with their money.

Seems like he's arguing for getting the state out of the business of annointing "marriages" all together. Man and woman, two chicks, two dudes - everybody gets the same piece of paper. If you want your marriage blessed by whatever cult/deity/collective that's your business, not the state's. You've apparently contracted Nitrox's disorder. 'Marriage' IS a civil contract. Hence, you know, the term 'marriage license'. Religiosity is optional...and the state already doesn't give a shit about that component, other than to authorize church members (as it does secular folks) to perform the ceremony. Religion is irrelevant to both the court cases posted and this discussion in general. I would guess TrailerMan brought it up due to confusion and/or the undeniable urge to counter with something, anything, whenever I post. Yes. Marriage is a civil contract. The state doesn't care what religious or secular blessing you seek out after the fact, but there's clearly a set of religious imperatives that have informed the limitations that the state currently places on who can join in such a contract. I'd much prefer it if we made the distinction between the civil contract part and the religious part clear by granting only civil unions to whatever pairing of consenting adults happened to walk into their office and apply for one. Seems like that's what he was arguing for, but maybe I was mistaken.

Seems like he's arguing for getting the state out of the business of annointing "marriages" all together. Man and woman, two chicks, two dudes - everybody gets the same piece of paper. If you want your marriage blessed by whatever cult/deity/collective that's your business, not the state's.

Mad Rad. "My Product". Seattle Band. Heard this on KUOW today. Weak vid, good song. [video:youtube]

More free-market mythmaking and obfuscation with regard to both the social dynamics that brought the Pinochet regime down as well as the numerous contemporary authoritarian states where "free markets" have been imposed that are still waiting for that heavenly manna that's "sure to follow" from privatization, deregulation, tax cuts, union busting, cuts to social budgets, and the penetration of American corporations. The kind of "no pain, no gain" moral relativism at the core of your statement also lays bare the false libertarianism and violence at work in the heart of market utopianism: it's our way or the highway, there is no alternative and we have the guns to prove it. Gross. I think that the argument was that economic freedom was necessary, but not sufficient for political freedom. Market processes undermine an authoritarian regime's capacity to enforce obedience. Concentrating all economic power in the state's hands guarantees it. Cuba. Chile. Compare and contrast. No one here is talking about "concentrating all economic power in the State's hands" except you and Hayek, which of course always makes your arguments look better, but doesn't go very far in explaining how many industrialized nations have done better in providing their citizens with a high quality standard of living, protecting their environments, and greater participation in decision-making than those countries and deterritorialized zones that have gone furthest toward "economic freedom". Furthermore, the real blind spot (if you can call implicit and explicit acceptance, if not glorification, a blind spot) in these ideas are their acceptance of class rule and the stark inequalities of access to public goods and political power inevitably generated by the functioning of the capitalist free markets. This is really what "the proper role of government" is all about for you folks: how to maintain control and stability in a system that, by its nature, thrives on inequality and to what extent the State steps in to wipe the ass of the ruling class when its projects inevitably generate crises. Neither of these formulae require or operate very well in the context of political democracy, hence we're back to their authoritarian and antidemocratic underpinnings. Clearly the shortest path to utopia involves allowing the state to outlaw a sufficient number of activities that adults engage in with one another or on their own without directly harming anyone else. What freedoms are people in the US currently exercising that you would like to see eliminated in order to achieve aggregated social and environmental metrics that have standard deviations with a smaller magnitude, and what areas of discretion do they have over their own lives that should be supplanted by state supervision in order to achieve the same?

like you guys are for the "proper scope of government" and we get to enjoy the mess you created every day. What part of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would you like to eliminate in order to realize your vision of "social justice" and why?

More free-market mythmaking and obfuscation with regard to both the social dynamics that brought the Pinochet regime down as well as the numerous contemporary authoritarian states where "free markets" have been imposed that are still waiting for that heavenly manna that's "sure to follow" from privatization, deregulation, tax cuts, union busting, cuts to social budgets, and the penetration of American corporations. The kind of "no pain, no gain" moral relativism at the core of your statement also lays bare the false libertarianism and violence at work in the heart of market utopianism: it's our way or the highway, there is no alternative and we have the guns to prove it. Gross. I think that the argument was that economic freedom was necessary, but not sufficient for political freedom. Market processes undermine an authoritarian regime's capacity to enforce obedience. Concentrating all economic power in the state's hands guarantees it. Cuba. Chile. Compare and contrast.

More of a social scientist/philosopher than what passes for an economist these days. Reads much more like DeTocqueville than DeBreu.

Probably a wise choice while the run is on, but keep it on the list.

One bonus of actually reading his work is that you'd at least be able to coble together an accurate caricature. He was a liberal, not an anarchist, so he didn't spend his time debating whether or not government was necessary, but rather the proper scope of government. His argument vis-a-vis Pinochet was that the the operation of market forces would generate a political dynamic that would be far more likely to undermine authoritarianism than to reinforce it.