JayB

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.

Hasn't he read the WHO rankings? "'My heart, my choice,' Williams says, defending decision for U.S. heart surgery By Tara Brautigam (CP) An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a "minimally invasive" surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago, based on the advice of his doctors. "This was my heart, my choice and my health," Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla. "I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics." The 60-year-old Williams said doctors detected a heart murmur last spring and told him that one of his heart valves wasn't closing properly, creating a leakage. He said he was told at the time that the problem was "moderate" and that he should come back for a checkup in six months. Eight months later, in December, his doctors told him the problem had become severe and urged him to get his valve repaired immediately or risk heart failure, he said. His doctors in Canada presented him with two options - a full or partial sternotomy, both of which would've required breaking bones, he said. He said he spoke with and provided his medical information to a leading cardiac surgeon in New Jersey who is also from Newfoundland and Labrador. He advised him to seek treatment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. That's where he was treated by Dr. Joseph Lamelas, a cardiac surgeon who has performed more than 8,000 open-heart surgeries. Williams said Lamelas made an incision under his arm that didn't require any bone breakage. "I wanted to get in, get out fast, get back to work in a short period of time," the premier said. Williams said he didn't announce his departure south of the border because he didn't want to create "a media gong show," but added that criticism would've followed him had he chose to have surgery in Canada. "I would've been criticized if I had stayed in Canada and had been perceived as jumping a line or a wait list. ... I accept that. That's public life," he said. "(But) this is not a unique phenomenon to me. This is something that happens with lots of families throughout this country, so I make no apologies for that." Williams said his decision to go to the U.S. did not reflect any lack of faith in his own province's health care system. "I have the utmost confidence in our own health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, but we are just over half a million people," he said. "We do whatever we can to provide the best possible health care that we can in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian health care system has a great reputation, but this is a very specialized piece of surgery that had to be done and I went to somebody who's doing this three or four times a day, five, six days a week." He quipped that he had "a heart of a 40-year-old, so that gives me 20 years new life," and said he intends to run in the next provincial election in 2011. "I'm probably going to be around for a long time, hopefully, if God willing," he said. "God forbid for the Canadian public I won't be around longer than ever." Williams also said he paid for the treatment, but added he would seek any refunds he would be eligible for in Canada. "If I'm entitled to any reimbursement from any Canadian health care system or any provincial health care system, then obviously I will apply for that as anybody else would," he said. "But I wrote out the cheque myself and paid for it myself and to this point, I haven't even looked into the possibility of any reimbursement. I don't know what I'm entitled to, if anything, and if it's nothing, then so be it." He is expected back at work in early March."

Spin and lies. You have yet to provide one piece of evidence showing that public employees are paid more than they should, and I mean as a whole not some cherry picked example. 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." "Health benefit employer costs were $4.43 per hour worked for state and local government and $2.01 in private industry. Paid leave, including vacation, holiday, sick, and personal leave, cost $3.05 per hour worked for state and local government and $1.86 in private industry. Retirement and savings costs, which include both defined benefit and defined contribution plans, were $3.23 per hour worked for state and local government employers and 94 cents for private employers."

You create an unemployable underclass by forcing employers to pay more in wages that exceed the value of the output that the least skilled and educated people in society can generate.

insufficient pay and benefits result in employees with lower qualification not in "maximizing the delivery of services", non-living wages and low appreciation result in high staff turn-over ratio not in "maximizing the delivery of services", insufficient number of employees result in completely inefficient service delivery not in "maximizing the delivery of services", etc ... Somehow private businesses manage to fill vacancies, and recruit and retain staff at the levels they require without any of the elements of public sector employment contracts that are exploding state budgets and transferring state resources away from the actual delivery of services and the provision infrastructure and into public sector employees' pocketbooks. Are you really arguing that that governments couldn't retain qualified people if they offered them health and retirement benefits on par with those extended to the typical Microsoft employee?

Seemed to be more than a little anti-corporate vitriol mixed into Tonto's suicide note. I can see how passages like the following: " Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in." ...might have seemed like craven pro-corporate apologetics to you, though.

Frankly I don't understand your logic. What's JayB selling his house supposed to show about his nasty politics? btw, most serious economists have predicted a housing bubble burst for many years, as the article I posted above showed. There were articles in the press about people selling their houses and moving into rentals. So, JayB acted on it, good for him. In the meantime, he has been wrong about every single political issue I can think of (from Iraq to the trickle down nightmare and finacial deregulation) I don't think you understood what I was saying. What I am saying is that he has been right on many things and has concrete examples over many years and years of being so. I have not seen, nor have you linked, anything you have posted of similar concrete substance yourself. That you can jump on here and shit on anything and everything is not being disputed at all. That you "think" you are right is interesting, but has no substance other than inside of your own mind. As far as all the economists predicting the housing bubble, in fact the reverse was true. Few saw it. Again, perhaps you have a similar link of a call you made, but I am suspecting that you are thinking your brilliance should not be called into question and are ignoring the question:-) You are a sharp guy jb, no doubt, but I think we are discussing different things at the same time. PS, jayb isn't always right either, didn't say he was. FWIW it was all pretty much all fantasy baseball for me, since I couldn't have bought a home even if I'd wanted to for most of the period under discussion. FWIW home prices stopped making sense to me around circa 2002, when I saw people with 80K household incomes getting into $400K houses and couldn't figure out how that was possible in a world where banks were only supposed to loan 3X gross income after receiving a 20% down-payment. I wish I'd been smart enough to figure out how to make money off of the whole thing, but the best I could do was try to avoid getting into a predicament where I'd be stuck with a loss. The only thing that I'd take exception with is El Homonym's notion that because folks like Shiller, Thornburg, and a handful of other folks sounding the alarm bells were calling the bubble, it follows that *everyone* in the country was on the same page. 2005 was pretty late in the game, but it was still mighty easy to make yourself a mini-pariah at your average social gathering by suggesting that the whole thing was likely to end in tears for most people.

Again - what's "progressive" about funneling public money away from the public services and infrastructure and directly into the pockets of public employees? Let alone those that are no longer employed by the public? Who - exactly - are public sector unions organizing against?

How do Greece and Michigan score on each of the three axes?

" 7-28-05, 11:43 am "Although high ongoing unemployment in a number of industries has depleted union membership and pushed the unionization rate down to record lows, job losses in heavily unionized sectors do not account for the decline in union membership since the 2001 recession. Rapid deunionization is occurring among the existing jobs in manufacturing and other industries. Card check recognition is essential to reverse the declines in union sectors. The decline in union membership in the manufacturing sector shows that the overall deunionization of the U.S. workforce cannot be explained purely by the decline in manufacturing jobs and the rise of service sector occupations since the recession. Within manufacturing, union jobs are vanishing at a faster pace than nonunion jobs. The decline in manufacturing employment began well before the last recession, with the number of workers sinking from 19,961,200 in 1997 to 18,147,100 when the recession hit in 2001. Manufacturing employment then plummeted to 15,753,500 in 2004, a loss of 2,393,600 jobs. The number of union members in manufacturing, however, declined by 623,900, and the unionization rate fell from 14.6 percent in 2001 to 12.9 percent in 2004. The key point is that while the number of manufacturing jobs fell by 13.2 percent between 2001 and 2004, the number of union members in manufacturing fell at a faster rate, dropping by 23.5 percent over the same period. More than one out of every four jobs lost in manufacturing since the recession was a union job, indicating that a disproportionate amount of the job loss was in union jobs. Construction gained 870,400 jobs between 2002 and 2004, but the number of union construction workers fell by 41,900 and the unionization rate dropped from 17.4 percent to 14.7 percent. Almost 40 percent of the industry was organized 30 years ago. Even in the public sector, where employment grew by 572,400 jobs from 2002 to 2004, union membership declined and the unionization rate fell from 37.8 percent to 35.4 percent. Public sector unionization peaked at 38.7 percent in 1994."

AND FAILING MISERABLY AT!!! WAKE UP!!! IT'S NOT WORKING!!! By "not working" you must mean "financing every last penny of public employee wages, benefits, and pensions." But I agree that there are virtually no circumstances in which the growth of tax revenues under any reasonable forecast and any tax regime likely to endure for more than a single election cycle can come anywhere near covering the tab for the said pay and benefits. Right now future liabilities for public retiree health benefits are roughly 5% funded. The model under which government unions promote maninfestly un-fundable compensation schemes that drive both business and citizens out of their states is failing miserably, is not working, and it's time for the public employee unions to wake up before a taxpayer revolt tosses them out of the bed they've spent the last few decades feathering. No, what's not working is pretending that this austerity proposal isn't the same "drown the government in the bathtub", "corporate tax cuts or else" set of policy prescriptions that you folks have been pushing for years and that's left Americans poorer, dumber, and angrier as a result. It's tired and using the crisis you've created as an excuse to force down more of the same medicine is simply gross. That this "common sense" is coming from the two usual suspects should clue anyone in that it's a nightmare of an idea. Can you explain - exactly - how maximizing the delivery of services to the public with a given amount of money is harmful to the public?

AND FAILING MISERABLY AT!!! WAKE UP!!! IT'S NOT WORKING!!! By "not working" you must mean "financing every last penny of public employee wages, benefits, and pensions." But I agree that there are virtually no circumstances in which the growth of tax revenues under any reasonable forecast and any tax regime likely to endure for more than a single election cycle can come anywhere near covering the tab for the said pay and benefits. Right now future liabilities for public retiree health benefits are roughly 5% funded. The model under which government unions promote maninfestly un-fundable compensation schemes that drive both business and citizens out of their states is failing miserably, is not working, and it's time for the public employee unions to wake up before a taxpayer revolt tosses them out of the bed they've spent the last few decades feathering.

Maybe you should consider the possibility that your interests and your employers' interests are not always one and the same. Which ones? How is adding to the rolls of unemployed likely to effect the economy right now? Cutting some of the only living wages in the State? More uninsured? Fewer teachers, classes? Cops? Oh yeah, you like cops fine, and by golly we're going to need all them we can get! Roads, bridges, inspectors, biologists, librarians, regulators? Who, exactly? All of 'em? How about pensioners? Cutting them off? What are they going to do? Where are the dynamic sectors in the private sector where these people are going to find work? Where do you think all this is headed? Do you wonder? Do you think your business leaders or political leaders or your talk radio friends have the answers? If they did, I'd have thought they'd have been putting some of their policies into action during the last 30 years. Please enlighten us! What's next? With friends like you... The reality is that the only way to *preserve* employment at current levels in the public sector at the state and local level is via reductions in pay and benefits. Financing your own retirement, paying a greater share of health care costs, etc, etc, etc - the stuff that virtually everyone in the private sector is doing already. The choice is between significant concessions that reduce the cost per-employee, or reducing the number of employees. That's true no matter how far to the state decides to push tax thresholds beyond the point of diminishing returns.

Even the unions* are smart enough to realize that a "pollution tax" levied on total sales, not just sales in Washington state, is going to put the refineries that they rely upon for their employment at a competitive disadvantage and will lead to the steady erosion of production and employment at the said factories. Still more amusing is this embrace of a bill that targets refinery production when the actual problem that it purports to address is non-point pollution, and it doesn't appear that there's any guarantee that the revenues won't be sucked into the general fund instead of actually being put to use keeping polluted run-off from washing directly into the rivers and the sound. Nothing says "sopisticated parser of the news" like embracing taxes that don't target the actual sources of pollution, kills off jobs amongst one's erstwhile political allies, and may not actually be put to use correcting the problem that they were imposed to address. My predictions: -We'll buy an increasing amount of fuel from refineries located in other states wherever possible. -Increased costs on the production will lead to diminishing sales, production at said refineries will decline, and employment and tax revenue will follow. *The ever-dwindling minority of union workers employed in the private sector.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=32368

Regence Blue Shield - think they have plans with deductibles ranging from 2.5-7.5K with an annual out of pocket max of 10K.

Social Security is solvent for at least another 30 years and doesn't need to be cut. People who pay SS taxes shouldn't pay for gambling by the plutocracy that is richer than ever. As for healthcare, single payer is by far the most "efficient" system out there just by virtue of "cutting out the middlemen" so I am not so sure what's the hang up. What about the 5 millions unemployed who'll stop getting unemployment benefits between now and June? I guess you don't care since your rhetoric amounts to "burn, baby, burn" My magic eight-ball says "voucherization" is in the future for medicare, perhaps along with some means-testing for Social Security. Savvy politicians will be able to blame the bond market - with ample justification - for tipping their hands when the cost of financing the debt necessary to fund the said entitlements begins to look like it may well and truly exceed our capacity to pay it under all but the most fantastic scenarios.

Australia? As resource provider of choice to the Chinese consumers dreams they aren't so bad off. The resource banana republic to the north isn't that screwed either. Unlike America which produces nothign When the average mortgage to income ratios for Bundaberg eclipse NY and SF it's time to start looking over your shoulder. The Rudd government has unleashed massive tax-payer financed incentives in order to lure the final round of first-time-buyers/knife-catchers into the game in order to keep things inflated for the time being, but they don't have enough firepower to keep the party going indefinitely. 35 year amortizations with little or nothing down and next to zero interest rates north of the border will have to be rolled over at some point since AFAIK most loans have the rates fixed for increments that are five years long at most. Even if rates stay flat out to infinity an average ratio mortgage debt to household income of 9:1 means that a shocking percentage of households with fresh mortgages are coughing up something north 50% of their gross income to cover the house note. That much cash going out the door every month before you make the first trip to the grocery store is double-plus ungood. Good time for anyone in that market with more debt than equity to sell. "You never go broke by taking profits."

How to understand the housing bubble* in one line: -Debts that can't be repaid, won't. How to understand the Social Security/Medicare funding crisis in one line: Obligations that can't be met, won't. *Major metro areas in Canada, Australia, and NZ are next in line for the staggering cornholing.

"GM was displaced mostly because they didn't account for oil depletion and rising energy prices. When oil prices more than tripled in a couple of years GM had no capacity to push fuel efficient cars because they were still pushing gas guzzlers." But we both know that consumers only respond to marketing messages, not complex evaluations of what's in their own self interest as they see it. Clearly all GM needed to do to stem the bleeding was distribute messages saying "BUY A SUBURBAN" and consumers would have blissfully forked over the $120 it took to fill the tank with nary a thought of the less expensive alternatives available to them....

Worth reading if you want to have a serious discussion about medical bankruptcies in the us.... http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/25/2/w74

84%- where the fuck did you get this number? fox news? and how many out of your 84 have only so-called catastrophic coverage, which btw don't really cover anything. and since you are such a fucking duche-nozzle expert on healthcare when did you have to pay any medical bills. by the way you spew your bullshit not in the last decade. Bob: That figure comes from the US Census Bureau. Specifically, page 27 of this publication: http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-236.pdf You'll find the text below on the top left of the said page: "The percentage of people without health insurance in 2008 was not statistically different from 2007 at 15.4 percent." This figure includes people who are only uninsured for part of the year, those who make enough to purchase coverage but decline to do so, non-citizens, etc, etc, etc, etc and as such dramatically *overstates* the number of people who cannot get coverage because they're too poor or too sick. It's strange for someone who's concerned about the price of coverage complain about high-deductible plans, when they're one of the few good mechanisms available to limit wasteful spending, keep premiums affordable, limit the capacity of insurance companies to meddle in routine medical decisions, while simultaneously protecting against getting wiped out in a medical catastrophe. If you're upset about anything, it should be the first dollar plans that encourage waste and state mandates that foist the cost of fertility treatments, massages, Retin-A scripts, etc, etc, etc, etc, on people who just want something to cover them when they get a serious injury or illness. Now how is medical massage a wasteful treatment- maybe elaborate? Even internal GH study in 2006 showed massage as the single best method in chronic low back pain (86% effective), while other modalities like PT, chiropractic or drug treatment (which was the lowest with only 28%) were far below that. Again- over 80% of patients have reoccurring thoraco-lumbar back pain within 5 years of a surgery, which costs on average insurance companies 28bln dollars a year. Same goes for conditions like CT, TOS and such. The problems with catastrophic insurance policies are: 1. doesn't promote preventive medicine- usually patients only use it in emergency- hence the conditions go undetected. 2. don't cover medications. this is a big one- if you don't know majority of medications for serious type illness like auto-immune disorders or cancer might run you about 100K a month. with catastrophic coverage there is no clinic or hospital which will treat you without pre-payment. ER will not manage chronic conditions, so people are getting royally screwed. -I'm sure massage is effective - but I'd like to have the right to decide for myself if it's something I want coverage for. Ditto for infertility treatment and a host of other things that work for folks that need them but which I'd nevertheless prefer to pay for out of pocket in exchange for lower premiums. -Preventive care is great. It saves lives, but the evidence that it saves money in the aggregate is mixed and marginal at best. Great idea - but not the money saver it's been billed as. -Would you say someone who has a hard time paying for health insurance would be better off with a catastrophic plan that they can afford or no coverage at all? IMO we're better off giving folks the choice of forking over a few extra hundred a month for comprehensive, low-deductible policies if they want to pay for protection against the risk that they'll develop a condition that requires a lifetime of expensive medications to cope with. The only folks who win that bet with the insurance companies are the people for whom the cost of their drugs exceeds the aggregate monthly cost differential between catastrophic and comprehensive insurance. Not sure how many people have that happen on a percentage basis, but I'd personally rather have the right to take my chances and pocket the money myself, use the accrued savings to finance the drugs to the best of my ability when and if I need them instead of handing the insurance company hundreds of additional dollars every month.