j_b

Brother...I am as left wing as they come but, it is also the responsibility of the person who "agrees" to the job being offered to say yes or no to it for whatever $$$$ is agreed upon. That is capitalism. On the other hand run-away capitalism is a bad thing. It's the role of collective bargaining to arrive at an agreed upon compensation. Asking employees to negotiate on their own isn't serious. Even 19th-early 20th century workers understood that, which is the reason why we have vacations, the 8-hour day, no child labor, etc ... or at least what's left of it after 30+ years of regressive policies.

War on Public Workers Amy Traub [..] decades-old assault on government employees has acquired new potency at a time of widespread economic suffering and populist rage. But the attacks have little basis in reality. A recent study by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence and the National Institute on Retirement Security finds that when such factors as education and work experience are accounted for, state and local employees earn 11 to 12 percent less than comparable private sector workers. Even when public employees' relatively decent pensions and health coverage are included, their total compensation still lags behind workers in private industry. A separate analysis by the Center for Housing Policy finds that despite recent declines in home prices, police officers and elementary school teachers still don't earn enough to buy a typical house in two out of five metro areas. Firefighters and librarians are unable to afford the median home in the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metro areas. Nationwide, a school bus driver's wage isn't enough to pay rent on a standard two-bedroom apartment. [..] The lavish lifestyle of public workers is a myth, but the right-wing mythmakers know it's a powerful talking point. By attacking public workers, they can demonize "big labor" and "big government" at the same time, while deflecting attention from the more logical target of Middle America's rage: the irresponsible Wall Street traders, whose risky, high-profit business practices brought down the economy, and the lax regulators who let them get away with it. At its heart, the scapegoating of public employees is an insidious way to divide public and private sector workers who share many of the same interests. The Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas, for example, cynically argues that cutting pensions for transit employees is an act of "pure social justice" because it might spare minimum-wage workers higher subway fares. Absent is any disussion of raising the minimum wage or of more progressive means of funding the transit system. Low-wage workers aren't Gelinas's real concern; they're just a rhetorical device in her assault on public employees. The desired result is clear: there will be less pressure to address the decades-long erosion of pay and benefits for most working people in the private sector if public anger can be focused on the bus mechanic who still has health coverage. With a slim majority of all union workers employed in the public sector, the conservative class war amounts to dragging unionized public employees down to the level of contingent no-benefits workers before they can leverage their power to help private sector workers raise their own workplace standards. Then there's the "big government" angle. To the right, the budget crises engulfing American cities and states stem from one cause: as Nick Gillespie of Reason repeats ad nauseam, "They spend too much!"—especially on the supposedly lavish compensation of public workers. This simplistic narrative ignores how the nation's deep recession has shrunk city and state tax revenue and omits the fact that plummeting stock markets have decimated government pension funds. To the extent that conservatives succeed in reducing fiscal woes to a case of runaway spending, politicians find it easier to address budget shortfalls with public sector furlough days, wage freezes, layoffs and benefit cuts than with progressive tax increases that, many economists conclude, would cause the least harm to the recovery. http://www.thenation.com/article/war-public-workers

Paying employees as little as you can (i.e. not paying them a living wage) is indeed a bad thing. I never thought that would have to be said but little surprises me in these parts anymore.

What JayB is trying to say is they go to places where they can pay their employees as little as they can to generate the highest profit possible for themselves.

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else David Cay Johnston "David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, here reveals how fairness and equity have eroded from the American tax system. Johnston describes in shocking detail the loopholes our government provides the "super rich"--from private individuals to profitable corporations—-to hide their wealth, to defer or evade tax payments, and to pass the bill to law-abiding middle-class Americans. The loss in revenue "imposes a severe cost on honest taxpayers" through reduced services, increased federal debt, and a weight on the middle class that threatens to impede its ability to achieve upward social mobility. Admitting the extreme complexity of our economy and by extension our tax code, Johnston points out that the very wealthy do, of course, pay taxes. However, because of shelters that allow them to understate most of their income, they pay little more on average than most Americans on the dollar. This is regressive, and unquestionably favors the superrich. Johnston includes examples of outrageous corporate malfeasance (such as companies that establish off-shore tax addresses) and exposes the tax benefits of the particularly loathsome practice made famous by Jack Welch, in which thousands of wage earners are laid off while a handful of executives are granted hundreds of millions of dollars through deferred compensation, company stock options, and lucrative retirement packages, all at stock holders' expense. In addition to these offenses, he describes the tax evasion methods of those who simply defy the law and are emboldened by a beleaguered IRS that is too underfunded to serve as an effective deterrent to tax cheats. Johnston calls for a complete overhaul of the system. But because those who most benefit from these laws comprise the "donor class" that supports the government power structure, our prospects for reform remain very bleak." http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Benefit-Everybody/dp/1591840198

You are projecting dude. I am not angry, but I do like to let racist fucks know their race baiting isn't going to fly around here.

it looks as if I said something that upset the racist fucks since they are all coming out of the woodwork.

Corporations relocate places where wages are low and workers aren't unionized of course and it's all the union's fault. Gotta love the Heritage Foundation propaganda and those who take that crapola seriously.

BUMP

For 30+ years, JayB and his regressive friends have robbed private sector employees of their jobs, living wages and benefits. Now that private sector employees have hit bottom and they have nothing left to give up, he thinks it's good logic to say "why should public sector employees get any better, they too aren't entitled to a living wage".

Despite all the diversions and non-sequitur, let's not forget that "public employees" had very little to do with the fiscal crisis engineered by the "let's drown government in a bathtub" crowd. The Laissez faire/"libertarian" ideology of "market is god" has led us where we are.

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.

Nobody is going to contest that some high level banana republic bureaucrat, like his counterpart in the private sector, has run up the tab in what was the greatest free for all (to date) before the great reckoning of 'limits to growth'. It still doesn't mean that the average public employee is anything more than the victim of your return to the Robber Barron stage of Western civilization.

Here comes the goon squad. Per usual, no argument whatsoever regarding the discussion.

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.

"Income Tax Burden Shifted Towards the Wealthy" ROTFL how could it not be since they get an even more disproportionate share of the pie and there are more people living in poverty?

One more argument for legalizing all drugs as soon as possible. [...] Right, but no comments from you about the systemic failure to regulate corporations, the result of 30+ years of drowning government in a bathtub by market zealots.

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.

Most of the money has been borrowed and spent because of your wars, your healthcare policy that results in skyrocketing costs, your corporate welfare policies, and your casino economy tanking, so spare us the pablum about borrow and spend, mkay?

I believe you. Problem is.....it is also the Democratic agenda as well. If you do nothing to stop it when you have power...then you are part of the problem. The Democratic party is very heterogeneous (from right wing to moderate left), but it is true that Democratic presidents from Carter to Clinton have implemented deregulation as well as many other neo-liberal policies (neo-liberal as in unfettered capitalism). It'll be interesting to see which Democrats argue to continue tax cuts for those with income greater than 250k because it'll tell us which Dems should be targeted by progressives.

Absolutely not. In theory, the private sector could create jobs but as a matter of fact, it doesn't because a few individuals are too busy shoveling the dough in their pockets.

I am not sure what you are trying to say but there is a direct connection between race baiting by the right wing media during this election year and race baiting by racists on this board as I pointed out in a couple different threads (GOP's new racist Southern Strategy). If you doubt it how do you explain that Fairweather is pushing on us the exact same race baiting material that FOX has been pushing on its viewers.

The wealthy and corporations are taking a disproportionate share of the pie but they also aren't reinvesting to create jobs: "Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, the richest 1% have TRIPLED their cut of America's income pie in one generation. In 1980 the richest 1% of America took one of every fifteen income dollars. Now they take THREE of every fifteen income dollars. That's a TRILLION extra dollars a year. Some ultra-rich individuals, like hedge fund managers David Tepper and John Paulson, made $4 billion in a year (on most of which they paid only a 15% capital gains tax rate). This is enough to pay the salaries of every public school teacher in New York City. But we blame the immigrants instead of the people taking unimaginable amounts of money from society. Howard Zinn wrote about the petty thieves who go to jail for crimes averaging $1000 per offense, while sophisticated financial insiders get probation for swindling millions from the system. The only difference now is that it's "legal" to use financial trickery to divert funds from education and infrastructure to a few well-positioned money managers. The way it's supposed to work, say the free-market tax-me-not supply-side trickle-down tea-party advocates, is that the rich will create jobs and stimulate the economy by investing in new production. But the richest 1%, who used to take $7 of every $100 of America's income, have increased that to $20 of every $100 in just one generation. To put it another way, if the bottom 90% had shared in America's prosperity at a level consistent with 1980 incomes, the average middle-class family would be making $45,000 a year instead of $35,000. And it's not just the rich individuals, but also the corporations that are taking money meant for jobs and public needs. Fareed Zakaria noted in Newsweek that the 500 largest non-financial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in uninvested cash." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/22

It is oddly similar because destroying the regulatory powers of government over business has been the central theme of the Republican agenda for 30 + years. We can now see the catastrophic upshot of unfettered capitalism in many different sectors of the economy. It clearly implies that we need more regulatory government over corporations. As for "big government", the growth of government under the disguise of privatization since the beginning of the "war on terror" has been so large that nobody can say how low large it is: "I can't get a number on how many contractors work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense."

Climbers shared stories of their speed ascents way before the internet. It was a hardman badass sport before today even without bull fighting.