prole

That you consider paying living wages, providing decent benefits, and some modicum of security in old age as a "private windfall" with no discernible value to society or to the public interest is a testament to your sociopathic ideology.

I'll just keep repeating as necessary. I'm for using tax revenues as efficiently as possible to provide the highest output of services in those domains where only the public sector can deliver them. That includes law enforcement, which includes environmental laws, zoning laws, workplace safety laws. etc. Tending the flowers next to the capitol building, not so much. Under my "fantasy." there'd be more money to pay for them, and more people doing them, since the state would offer only the compensation necessary to insure that the positions were staffed with qualified individuals, and those that proved themselves incapable of doing so would be fired immediately. I'm also for "using tax revenues as efficiently as possible to provide the highest output of services..." but the fetishization for "efficiency" should be balanced against the need for living wages, decent benefits, and some semblance of security in old age for public and private sector workers. If capitalism in its current form can't even provide for these meager needs, maybe it's time to find a more humane way of going about things. At any rate, there's no shortage of low-hanging fruit within our current system in the form of giant corporate subsidies, tax loopholes and holidays, military largesse, etc. that never make it into this "non-debatable" topic. Why not start there? What there's also no shortage of are, you know, real-life examples, from water privatization to military contracting, that prove that "private sector efficiencies" are often nothing more than opportunities for windfall profits though the kind of labor abuses Mattp is experiencing and gouging citizens turned "customers". Trotting out familiar tropes to free-market magic, "maximizing efficient output through private sector initiatives", and levelling down through outsourcing or union-busting isn't going to cut it in an environment where we've seen enough data already that suggests the outcomes of these endeavors are mixed at best. They've certainly not lived up to the breathless hype manufactured at business-friendly think-tanks. I don't typically deal with Jay's airless, zero-sum parlour games, not because there's no answer or because he's always right, but because I'm unwilling to accept the absurd assumptions and abstractions on which his games are based. Nor am I much interested in validating rhetorical flourishes (capitol flower tending fat-cats) passed off as meaningful analysis. His "questions" are as rigged as State Fair Skeeball and we've already seen enough of the patent medicine he's peddling to know his cures are worse than the disease.

Wait, so you're for the poor now? You're for food stamps? Jay's for environmental regulation and public health care? Breathtaking. You guys should get your own Fox segment.

Yes of course you're concerned with all these things, always have been. They always seem to be just out of reach in your narratives. Interesting that time after time it is crucial that you appeal to the idea these things in order to sell an argument that you're well aware is entirely incompatible with them in practice. Weird place you dwell in. Get help.

Slam dunk. Given your personal batting average of .000 on every issue you've ever posted on here, "slam dunk" sounds just about right.

Funny, there was never any room for debate when implementing the policies that brought the crisis about either. [video:youtube]

= "private sector efficiencies"

Awwww, are you gonna be okay? Maybe your hero, Scott Baio, will give you a pity-fuck.

Love how you tools spin this to further your ongoing pet-projects instead of recognizing it as an inevitable result of the failure of neoliberal model to "deliver the goods" i.e. the security and standard of living our parents enjoyed. We, "private-sector workers" should be considering what it's going to take to roll back thirty years of Reaganite attacks on the working and middle classes, not scheming how to bring "public-sector workers" down to our increasingly precarious, marginalized level.

YEAH YOU! JUST DO IT, ASSHOLE!!!

This is an incomplete sentence.

The historical record is clear... [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdcySIs2CQ8

"Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them." --Edward Albert Filene (1869-1937)

Well, it only make sense given that they're the one who are benefiting the most from the kind of society we live in.

This works really good if you say it in the Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy voice.

"Yeeah, it's like, electro- I mean equilibrium, 'n shit..." [video:youtube]

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4jiqYcUoOk&feature=player_embedded

Electricity for the masses was always just a commie pipe dream anyway...

Sorry, what's your argument again?

Well, not exactly screaming...

Anarcho-primitivists rejoice!

Is Zurdturd going with you guys?

It was an Obama/Putin tag-team. I want my country back.