JayB

Not Greece? California's closer.

So I'm making this up? "States may be forced to reduce benefits, raise taxes or slash government services to address a $1 trillion funding shortfall in public sector retirement benefits, according to a new study that warns of even more debilitating costs if immediate action isn't taken. The Pew Center on the States released a survey Thursday of state-administered pension plans, retiree health care and other post-employment benefits in all 50 states that blamed a decade's worth of policy decisions for leaving them shortchanged. The result for some states will be "high annual costs that come with significant unfunded liabilities, lower bond ratings, less money available for services, higher taxes and the specter of worsening problems in the future," the study said. The cost of the trillion-dollar shortfall, which will be paid over the coming decades, is about $8,800 for each American household. The study did not include many city, county and municipal pension plans, which are thought to have similar underfunding." http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/State_policy/pension_report.pdf In the end, the bond markets and/or bankruptcy courts will impose the discipline on public spending that state legislatures haven't. California is exhibit A, and other states that fail to reform won't be far behind.

My argument is twofold. One is that the government is paying far more than necessary to retain the staff necessary to provide public services. It's not about one admin assistant's paycheck. It's about the 60% of all tax revenues that fund the entire government payroll. The second is that there are many uses of the said funds that would be more beneficial for promoting the public welfare than transferring them directly to private bank accounts.

no, it wouldn't. I am not limiting my criticism to foreign unfair trade. I am also against poor remuneration of employees in the US. I believe that minimum wages, working time, time off, etc .. should be regulated, the same way that I am for cracking down on US employers who use illegal labor. We certainly would be much better off if we traded a lot more locally. You realize, of course, that every time you purchase anything that's not manufactured, shipped, wholesaled, or retailed through any enterprise that has lower unit labor costs than it's competitors you are, in fact, guilty of hastening along the "race to the bottom" as you define it. There's no escape from this. Are you seriously prepared to claim that you follow the sanction that you'd like to see the government impose on everyone else on everything you buy - from the box of cleanex to your car (BTW -GM, Ford, or Chrysler, I presume?)

Korea's spectacular economic success is also due to protectionism, so was Japan's, Taiwan's, etc .., like 99% of economic expansions throughout time (including our own). Argentina's economy cratered thanks to the neoliberal economics that you advocate. If you want to see what happens in the race to the bottom check out the textile industry, where manufacturers are now finding even cheaper labor in Africa and other destitute places. what are you talking about? Korea, Japan, etc - all mentioned as leading contestants in the "race to the bottom" on account of their formerly low wages - have manufacturing operations in the US.

maybe i worked more min wage jobs than you? i remember working w/ lots of middle-aged folks (sure, dumb as rocks, but wtf else were they going to do?) who were either min-wage like me or just a few pennies more b/c of a salary scale that at least started at 3.75 $ (virginia's poor man mandate at the time!) Possible - we could compare notes - but I'm not sure what that'd have to do with what's best for folks who are money losers for employers even at the Federal minimum wage.

The plain facts are that workers in the private sector generate all of the wealth that the government collects and redistributes, and that amount of money is finite. If you can hire and retain an administrative assistant for a particular position for $50,000 a year, and you're paying more than that - every dollar above that threshold that's going towards the said individual's compensation is money that's not going into infrastructure, isn't available for Medicare, etc, etc, etc. I can't for the life of me understand how putting those funds into private bank accounts constitutes a greater public good than putting them into roads, clinics, animal shelters, etc constitutes an intellectually or morally defensible "progressive" outlook. Does insisting that the 60% of all state tax revenues that go towards funding public employee compensation really constitute irrational government hatred?

If you'd scroll down the page a little more, you'll see that the above information is a mistake. Further down it shows that an Administrative Assistant 5 makes $53,148 base comp. An administrative Assistant 2 is in the pay range 35, which ranges from $28,440 to $36,756 base pay. Funny what a little fact checking will get you! ] Indeed. Your claim is that this individual didn't get paid what the public records state she got paid because...there's a general salary table that says otherwise?

Only because of unfair trade when Americans are supposed to compete with nations that have labor conditions reminiscent of the 19th century and environmental destruction. Spoken like a true regressive per usual. If slavery in some developing nations was what we had to compete with, libertarians would have no problem with it: "if you don't want to be unemployable, you'd better produce for less than a slave does" How do you explain what's happened to wages in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, etc, etc, etc as a consequence of the race to the bottom? Shouldn't the standard of living have continuously declined in all of the above cases? How have they fared vs countries that adopted the import substitution models that you favor, such as Argentina, etc? How does a country that's engaged in a pell-mell race to the bottom wind up outsourcing production to the US?

Only because of unfair trade when Americans are supposed to compete with nations that have labor conditions reminiscent of the 19th century and environmental destruction. Spoken like a true regressive per usual. If slavery in some developing nations was what we had to compete with, libertarians would have no problem with it: "if you don't want to be unemployable, you'd better produce for less than a slave does" Even if the rest of the world disappeared altogether the combination of technology and competition within the US would have the same effect. Speaking of which - why are you limiting your critique to workers overseas, when there are plenty of workers in the US who are willing to put forth effort greater than or equal to their unionized counterparts for much lower pay? Why aren't you proposing that Washington draft legislation protecting workers here from competition from Mississippi by making it illegal for Washingtonians to buy goods produced there? Why stop there? the same holds true for most of the state, so per your logic we'd all be better off if we were forced to buy only goods and services produced within King county, or better yet - Seattle proper. Once you buy a set of cabinets fabricated in Spanaway as opposed to Queen Anne it's a race to the bottom, baby....

i don't think it's just teens that would be making us radios, t-shirts and asssorted gizmos - how would paying a lot of workers less increase their overall quality of life? Those who are already employable at wage rates over the current minimum wouldn't be affected by eliminating the minimum wage. Ergo it wouldn't be a matter of paying a lot of workers less, but of taking people who are currently unemployable and giving them the opportunity to become workers and earn a wage, however modest. Giving employers a durable incentive - profits - to hire the least skilled and capable people in society and selectively topping up their wages with a negative income tax (already more or less in place with the EIC) is a much better policy than mandating wage rates above the value of their output and feeling sorry for them because they can't seem to find a job.

so we should eliminate the minimum wage in order to have more employment at 7-11 n' the circle K? It'd make it much easier to find T-shirts, radios, and various other assorted gizmos made in the USA. Elevating pay rates above the value of their output leads to the robots and outsourcing that the ever-declining labor movement has been lamenting for the past fifty years.

Yes - because spending their life permanently unemployable is likely to work out quite a bit better for them. At the moment, something like three-percent of the employed population or less actually works for minimum wage, and a significant fraction of that percentage are teenagers just entering the labor force, who live in a household with at least one working adult. The number of people who enter the labor-force at the current minimum wage and stay there for life is virtually zero. By entering the labor force at pay-rates that match their output, they at the very least start to acquire some of the skills, knowledge, and habits that will enable them to increase their earnings over time. Moreover - you can easily structure the tax with a negative income tax on heads of household earning wages below a certain threshold to increase their actual compensation without rendering them unemployable.

Yeah, more disaggregated bullshit lacking any historical context as to how households have changed over the last fifty years and the increased costs for those households on things like, oh you know, health care. What a laugh. If you weren't so busy cherry picking and digging up obscure "news of the weird" nonsense like "Canadian Politician Goes To America For Operation" to uphold your failed theories while shit falls apart, you might actually help clean up the mess you've been cheerleading for since you started imitating Michael J Fox's character on Family Ties when you were 8 years old. The real costs of some things have gone up. Others, like food, communications, appliances, etc have been trending downwards in real terms for ages. What social indicators validate your claims that society is collapsing? Divorce rates, property crime rates? Violent crime rates? Teen pregnancy rates? Drug use? High school graduation rates? College graduation rates? Etc, etc, etc....

someone needs to de-gibberish this sentence Forcing employers to pay someone that can only generate $5 per hour in output $5.50 per hour in wages = guaranteed unemployment. Quite a few of the least skilled, least educated people in the US fall into this category.

Here's something that would shave a fair bit off of that admin's compensation... health care reform. Benefits: $22,266 Agreed - she could easily get a high-deductible plan in the private market for less than a third of that..

Ever worked at a company that cut pay/laidoff? Everyone who can leaves, and leaves quick, leaving more unmotivated shit than you had before. The public sector is no different. So this is back to you expect government to run competently and expect the people who do it to be paid nothing. Yet more entitlement. Yes. IMO it depends on who gets cut and a combination of everyone's sense of the company's/industry's long term prospects, and their own prospects. An "administrative assistant II" with a $100k + total comp package isn't going anywhere. Hack 20% off of her pay, convert to a defined contribution plan, and make her pay as much for her health benefits as the rest of us and...she's not going anywhere. Ditto for the dudes filling cracks and potholes, etc, etc, etc. Somehow private businesses manage to recruit and retain employees despite the fact that the folks they hire having to finance their own retirements, may be subject to layoffs if the business climate changes, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. If you're still concerned about the threat that undercompensation poses for the public sector, take a look at what happens when average fireman or ferry worker position opens up...

The only problem is that essential services are being cut instead of cutting fat. Did you notice the Op-ed piece in today's Times about the coverage for medical translators under Medicaid?

Well, sure, but what they don't tell you is that none of those hospitals in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa or Toronto perform the procedure in Florida. It's February, for crissakes. Who wants to go to Montreal or Ottawa in bloody February? The only thing that confuses me about this scenario is that this guy is presumably as well positioned as anyone to asses the treatment options available to him in Canada, and better positioned than anyone to understand the extent to which he'll be exposing himself to charges of hypocrisy if news of his surgery goes public - so why on earth does he take the flight to Florida instead of getting treated with the exact same procedure just as promptly in Canada?

I just gave you a 57 minute lecture to listen to that did exactly that. Pull your head out of your ass, that'll help. classic "if I don't acknowledge the data, it goes away, and I can claim that we already discussed it" moment Bump. So this is the thread where I posted the data which demonstrate that inflation-adjusted income had increased on both a per-capita, and per-household member basis and your counterpart linked to the above lecture. I don't have the time to watch the video. Evidently you have already done so and found the data she presented compelling. Summarize the specific factual claims that Warren uses to construct her argument I'll be happy to address them.

Yes - I'm sure that if he finds data that proves his claims he'll withhold it out of spite. If I'm not posting, or responding to particular threads, it's because I don't always have the time to do so. Feel free to dredge up any threads where you feel like my lack of a response has denied you your rightful triumph, send me the links via PM - and I'll respond to them when I have the time and inclination.

Since you asked, Carl, I have to wonder about a state of affairs where public money is so tight that without a tax increase we'll evidently have to start curtailing the delivery of essential services to the most vulnerable segments of the population...while there are scores of $100K plus "administrative assistant II's" on the state payroll, and talk of curtailing the pay and benefits that constitute 60% of all spending is evidently off the table.* If she was in the private sector, I could care less - but when we're talking about public money that could be put to any number of different uses in this state, that's a different story. BTW - Should be fun searching under "corrections." Have a look for yourself. *http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011003705_stateworkers07m.html "Public employee compensation accounts for 60% of total spending OLYMPIA — It's the state's single biggest expense, but the last thing many lawmakers want to take on. Wages and benefits for teachers and state workers make up 60 percent of the budget. Yet, even in the face of a $2.6 billion shortfall, it's unlikely that the Legislature will fire a big chunk of the state work force, or whack their salaries...."

http://www.biaw.com/WAStateEmployeeWages.aspx Enjoy. The new poor abound. All it takes is plugging terms like "administrative" into the search function to find them... "Dept of Social and Health Services B*******, J***** M. Title: ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT 2 Base Comp: $74,220 Benefits: $22,266 Paid Time Off: $17,367 Total Comp: $113,853"

Note all of the Regressionists chiming in in the feedback section. "Fire chief of tiny district to lose job but get $300,000 severance To lower costs, the North Highline Fire District is eliminating its fire chief, whose salary is higher than the governor's, but he is set to receive more than $300,000 under a severance package. As North Highline fire chief, Scott LaVielle oversees two stations and 35 employees and last year earned more than Gov. Chris Gregoire. LaVielle's pay of $186,370 even outpaced the salary of Seattle Fire Chief Gregory Dean, who made $173,709 for managing 32 stations and 1,155 employees. Now, as LaVielle prepares to leave the job, he is set to receive more than $300,000 under a severance package that includes one year's pay plus about $115,880 for unused sick leave, vacation and compensatory time. David Lawson, a former North Highline fire commissioner and now chief financial officer of Federal Way-based South King Fire & Rescue, calls the chief's pay "outrageously high." This small district, serving White Center, Boulevard Park and other communities between Seattle and Burien, has a history of paying its fire chiefs extraordinary salaries. But as the economy tanked and the size of the district shrank, officials have been scrambling to cut back... His pay was set under policies adopted in 2006 when commissioners gave his predecessor, Russ Pritchard, a raise of $72,336 three months before he retired. Pritchard earned a $198,000 annual salary in his final months on the job. Two of the three commissioners who voted for Pritchard's raise said it reflected the chief's broad duties — he has no assistant chief or public-information officer — and was intended to lift his pay above what battalion chiefs earned with overtime. The state Department of Retirement Systems at the time questioned whether Pritchard's raise constituted severance pay that shouldn't be used to calculate his pension. The Fire Department's lawyer responded that the raise was based on a new formula that would apply to future chiefs: pegging pay to years of experience and assuring the chief would make more than his subordinates. The retirement agency was satisfied with the lawyer's explanation, an agency spokeswoman said. Wayne Alishokis, a retired North Highline firefighter and current board chairman, said the board wanted to replace Pritchard with LaVielle, who had taken more classes in firefighting and administration. Of letting Pritchard go, Alishokis said, "He had a long career with the Fire Department. I didn't want to be one to screw him over for anything. I wanted to see him taken care of fairly." Was Pritchard's raise intended to increase his pension payments? "If I told you that was not taken into consideration, I'd be lying to you," Alishokis said. "It was a little bit of this and a little bit of that." Alishokis said he was speaking for himself, not the board." Read the whole thing: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011157863_pay23m.html

Here you go: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf "State and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked for total employee compensation in September 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries averaged $26.24 per hour worked and accounted for 65.9 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $13.60 and accounted for the remaining 34.1 percent. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour worked in September 2009. Total employer compensation costs for civilian workers, which include private industry and state and local government workers, averaged $29.40 per hour worked in September 2009." You are assuming that the distribution of occupations are the same in the public and private sectors, which can't be true. Your tool is too coarse and tells us little. That's certainly possible - if you can find a data set that provides apples-to-apples comparisons of total compensation across a broad spectrum of occupational categories - please share it.