j_b

tweaks like decreasing compensation for already under-compensated employees only further the race to the bottom. Nothing else.

I already told you that this crisis doesn't have a local solution unless you are with the looters and other anti-government types.

I am all for pension reforms where needed but not with the pretense that is going to fix our fiscal problem. In fact, pretending so is outright dangerous. If they were really serious about solving the fiscal crisis, tax increases for the wealthy and cutting subsidies to the MIC would be on the table. Making employees pay more of their retirmnent will make the economic crisis we are facing RIGHT NOW worse. ANy discourse that amounts to saying that employees have to take cuts while not demanding at least an equivalent step for the upper 1% amounts to caving in to plutocrats.

I love how GOPers are ready to change the law to get what they want (state bankruptcy) but Democrat enablers still argue to enforce balancing state budgets when states have no handle over the crisis (beside cutting their own throat) while GOPers cut federal aid.

more Democrats caving in to the plutocrats.

Your acknowledging that healthcare is not working (up to half of cost going to profits/middlemen) while continuing to advocate cutting worker benefits is just not good enough.

It depends how you define "being in a war" (financial, covert military, overt, etc ..), but if one looks at it strictly from the point of view of resource commitment to on-going conflicts: Israel-Palestine, Columbia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Phillipines, Georgia, Pakistan, Korea, Somalia, more?

No need for euphemism. People take repretitive, boring jobs because they don't have the choice. People are no more motivated to repeat the same boring mindless task year after year in the private sector than in the public sector. Pretending otherwise is propaganda. Teachers, nurses, academics, .. are way more motivated on average than skilled workers in the private sector. Many of these occupations aren't just jobs, they are professions, which often demand huge personal commitment to be successful.

You are prejudiced against public employees and it stinks. You should be ashamed of yourself for furthering the demonizing of public employees. The arguments in that article are exactly the CATO arguments that JayB has been regurgitating here. Right wingers have nothing to counter the various studies showing that when accounting for many variables, public employees are underpaid. Your carrying water for them isn't going to change any of it.

What drivel. Why don't you go say this to the face of nurses and teachers who make up the majority of public sector workers. Outrageous. And no, Reason magazine isn't "middle of the road". It's a Libertarian outfit spewing CATO (i.e. KOCh's brother) propaganda, as the article you cited makes abundantly clear.

Debunking the Myth of the Over-compensated Public Employee The data analysis in this paper [..] indicate that public employees, both state and local government, are not overpaid. Comparisons controlling for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity and disability, reveal no significant overpayment but a slight undercompensation of public employees when compared to private employee compensation costs on a per hour basis. On average, full-time state and local employees are undercompensated by 3.7%, in comparison to otherwise similar private-sector workers. The public employee compensation penalty is smaller for local government employees (1.8%) than state government workers (7.6%). debunking_the_myth_of_the_overcompensated_public_employee

Muy rico! you certainly didn't provide us with a regression analysis when you cherry picked one public employee to illustrate your claim that public employees were paid too much. weasel! Not everybody is solely motivated by how much money they get at the end of the month. Many people are willing to trade some of their earning potential for a better work environment, etc .. I am not entirely sure what you expect to understand from 'quit levels' in this economic climate.

it doesn't follow. The quality of the study you chose has nothing to do with the existence of other studies.

I fail to see an argument to cut public employee benefits in there. In fact, they did the exact opposite to help retain employees.

What data have you got to support the claim that the absence of collective bargaining leads to a general decline in public sector performance? why does your question have no relation to the points made in my post?

The vast majority of employers in this country manage to attract and retain employees who are sufficiently qualified to do their jobs without imposing massive, potentially bankrupting future pension obligations on themselves. Non sequitur! Private sector employees receive higher total compensation than public sector employee for equivalent schooling, experience, seniority, etc ...

Since when is offering less and less for a position going to attract and allow to retain quality applicants? since it doesn't involve banksters, and financial analysts perhaps? Would you please try to ease up on the opportunism and be a little consistent in your argumentation. I am very dubious of the methodology used in a report that gives a higher grade for infrastructure to states without significant mass transit. Little to no infrastructure is easy to maintain but it doesn't mean that it is adequate. Giving a B for money management to Texas and its $23 billion shortfall, also raises significant question on the value of that report.

You also need to be given a dictionary or you think you can handle that part?

pensions are part of employee compensations. Public employees usually trade part of their earning for a better benefit package. In other word, nobody is subsidizing public employee pensions. Improving the condition of low wage taxpayers isn't going to occur through decreasing the attractiveness of public jobs and furthering the race to the bottom. In fact, the exact opposite is likely to result from cutting public employee earnings.

There are no reasonable answers to fallacious questions. Cutting your hand off will stop your finger from bleeding, but you won't have stopped the bleeding. As matter of fact, you'll have made matters worse: permanently decreasing public employee compensation will further degrade public services and reinforce the race to the bottom.

Jim keeps wanting to look at this issue as it were controlled on the local level but local governments have essentially no control over exploding health care costs, imploding real estate markets, outsourcing, tax avoidance, etc ..

Official inflation accounts for grossly half of the increase in employee cost. We can speculate about the rest but it might also be very misleading. Healthcare benefits should have gone through the roof over that period. There may also be some aping of the private sector regarding outlandish wages for upper management.

You don't know what's the specific issue(s), so take you own advice about arm waving.

Just show me anyone who doesn't expect their compensation to at least keep pace with cost of living increases.

We get what we collectively pay for. If you don't want the wealthy to pay taxes, public services will reflect that fact. Pretending that paying skilled professionals minimum wage or whatever is possible in the public sector is sheer lunacy.