j_b

they have all the immigrants they need to make up for low birth rates, and yes the NYT is a right wing rag. Satisfied?

as if the UK, Ireland, the baltic states (the flagships of neoliberalism in Europe) were any better than Portugal. You are cherry picking again!

believing the gov was involved in 911 isn't really any more unreasonable than believing WMD's were the reason for attacking Iraq.

well said! it's not debunkable, like your childish personal attacks.

How can a moron know whether somebody else is a moron?

more divisive bullshit from clueless neoliberals who broke the economy. Outsourcing, deregulation, financialisation of the economy, speculative bubbles and austerity are responsible for lack of jobs for youth in the western world, not pensions.

There may be better ice later on in the season, which is important for the pitch below the rock rib, but there will definitely be more snow to bury some of the low angle mixed (like the 'hidden traverse').

are you channeling Fairweather? what gives?

Aren't most hand guns more likely to be used against someone in your household than against a bad guy?

did you ever notice how I use insults only with abusive pricks like yourself? No, of course, you didn't.

right, because your macho posturing isn't boring at all. Grow the fuck up, retard.

Let's meet and you can find out nan, that was a rhetorical question and your posturing just confirmed it, as if it were necessary.

are you really a fucking moron or do you just play one on the internet?

Listen and weep jackass: [video:youtube]akVL7QY0S8A

Elisabeth Warren has conclusively shown all of this very nicely that people actually spent less on consumerist items now than they did over 30 years ago (appliances, clothes, food, ..), whereas they spend most on health care that keeps going through the roof, housing (more expensive homes next to good schools), a 2nd car + gas for the 2nd wage earner, all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker, etc ... But, just let Kojak regurgitate all the conservative myth-making.

except that most debt is contracted over necessary expenses not HDTVs or other consumer items.

so you'll be going after the bloated wages of the private sector that got bailed out on the public dime? btw, since you acknowledge that pension shortfall hasn't occurred yet, why haven't you been trying to solve the cause of the current budget shortfall?

State and local public employees undercompensated, EPI study finds State and local public employees are undercompensated, according to a new Economic Policy Institute analysis. The report, 'Debunking the Myth of the Overcompensated Public Employee: The Evidence' by Labor and Employment Relations Professor Jeffrey Keefe of Rutgers University, finds that, on average, state and local government workers are compensated 3.75% less than workers in the private sector. The study analyzes workers with similar human capital. It controls for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity and disability and finds that, compared to workers in the private sector, state government employees are undercompensated by 7.55% and local government employees are undercompensated by 1.84%. The study also finds that the benefits that state and local government workers receive do not offset the lower wages they are paid. The public/private earnings differential is greatest for doctors, lawyers and professional employees, the study finds. High school-educated public workers, on the other hand, are more highly compensated than private sector employees, because the public sector sets a floor on compensation. The earnings floor has collapsed in the private sector. The Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the DC-based Center for Economic Policy Research are also releasing a study today, which echoes the national findings of Debunking the Myth of the Overcompensated Public Employee at a regional level. PERI’s report, The Wage Penalty for State and Local Government Employees in New England finds a “wage penalty” for state and local government workers in New England of almost 3%. http://epi.3cdn.net/5ac7364828b94bd6f3_8km6bxwby.pdf

Ask these guys: "We calculate the present value of local government employee pension liabilities as of June 2009 for approximately 2/3rds of the universe of local government employees. Using local government accounting methods, the total unfunded liability in these areas is $190 billion or over $7,000 per municipal household. When government accounting is corrected by discounting already‐promised benefits at zerocoupon Treasury yields, the total unfunded obligation is $383 billion or over $14,000 per local household. If on a per‐member basis the unfunded liability is the same for the 1/3rd of workers covered by municipal plans not in our sample, the total unfunded liability for all municipal plans in the U.S. is $574 billion. This unfunded promise is above and beyond the roughly $3 trillion (or almost $27,000 per household) unfunded liability of all state‐sponsored pension plans in the U.S. Many U.S. cities are therefore carrying substantial off‐balance‐sheet debt in the form of unfunded pension obligations. We also identify 6 major municipalities whose current pension assets would only be sufficient to pay already‐promised benefits through 2020, and 20 whose current pension assets would only be sufficient to pay already‐promised benefits through 2025." In other words, you didn't cite the part where they'd substantiate your claim that public employee pensions and wages are the cause of state budget shortfall. Right, they didn't say that. More bait and switch from you.

I think everyone has had enough of your right-wing goon tactics.... how is that darn arithmetics coming?

are pensions the cause of our having to cut public services? No, so there is no need to echo the drumbeat of the demagogues. what solutions do we have: 1) raise revenue 2) cut spending 3) increase public spending to fuel the economy, 4) a combination of 1 and 2 and 3. I am not willing to take responsibility for cutting public services. I'll let the people responsible, i.e. the starve the beast regressives, assume the political cost of cutting services for those who need it most. the pension funding issue can wait when it doesn't amount to disaster capitalism to destroy the public good.

Yea, that's what I'm saying. I am not making up that you want us to plan for cyclical speculative bubble burst. wtf? until you resolve your differences with Baker's and Johnson's arithmetic and identify correctly the cause of state budget shortfall, I am afraid you won't be able to address our problem, whether or not reforms are needed in the long term.

so basically, you are telling us we should resign ourselves to the idea of the looters running the economy as if it were their private casino and of course plan on boom and bust cycles, including the kind we only have once or twice a century (every single time Laissez Faire zealots run the show btw) and especially don't forget to give them the opportunity to starve the beast and destroy employee unions under the pretense of fixing their mess.

especially when sociopath are trying to have us believe that austerity is going to fix anything beside making the peons pay for the crisis engineered by financial elites.

you can't really make plans without identifying the problem and what caused it.