The New Poor

[G-spotter]

 

that's called pay reflecting skillz. if all you know how to do is flip burger you aren't in demand.

[prole]

Looks like we needz to start turnin' a buncha folks into hamburger 'cause they gettin' expensive!

[billcoe]

I don't think you really care a fig what I really think. I can answer the question if you are serious. However, to better understand what your sentence is about, let me ask what you mean: other than perhaps an attempt at a put down so as to make yourself feel superior, what is a "regressive"? Is that someone who believes that the constitution is a well thought out document and one which should be followed? If you answer yes, I think both of those gentlemen would think themselves in that camp. Then where does that leave you as a "progressive" vis-a-vis the constitution? Progressives want to move beyond the constitution perhaps? To.....say like the superior Political situation which is in China or the Soviet Union perhaps? If you mean like progressive like Teddy Roosevelt, then is a regressive some one who dislikes anything other than big business control? I don't truly know what a "regressive" is.

 

So, what do you think of my statement concerning regressives like JayB and FW playing the young against the old to privatize social security and medicare, and playing public sector workers against private sector workers to bust public unions and renege on wage, benefits and pension agreements?

[j_b]

 

A regressive is someone who attempts to reverse or block progress. Progress is moving toward a sustainable society: environmentally, socially, and economically.

 

But, I note that you haven't answered my question about regressives pitting people against one another to pass their unpopular policies.

[j_b]

that's called pay reflecting skillz. if all you know how to do is flip burger you aren't in demand.

 

Skills are always better than no skills. I saw another study about unemployment versus education and it showed a similar picture although with a rapid drop off in employment between 4-year college graduates and those with a couple years of post high-school education.

 

BUT there is no telling how long that will last because according to on-going logic many skilled jobs are susceptible to being shipped to the land of cheaper labor and absolutely no benefits.

[Fairweather]

It's ok, j_b. The world needs ditch-diggers too!

 

[G-spotter]

if your job can be outsourced you are better employed doing something where you can justify what you want to earn

[Fairweather]

Specialization is a curse. Of course, j_b and Prole specialize in nothing more than whining...

[G-spotter]

Specialization is a curse. Of course, j_b and Prole specialize in nothing more than whining...

 

On the contrary, there are a couple billion generalists in the world already.

[j_b]

more ad-hominem from the service neo-neanderthal

[Fairweather]

Specialization is a curse. Of course, j_b and Prole specialize in nothing more than whining...

 

On the contrary, there are a couple billion generalists in the world already.

 

Just be willing to wash dishes when your gig dries up.

[prole]

On the contrary, there are a couple billion generalists in the world already.

 

Maybe we should think of them more as General's Burgers, you know, like a Colonel Sanders KFC spinoff...

[Fairweather]

On the contrary, there are a couple billion generalists in the world already.

 

Maybe we should think of them more as General's Burgers, you know, like a Colonel Sanders KFC spinoff...

 

Not sure why you're dissin' potential SEIU members, comrade.

[prole]

[video:youtube]

[prole]

On the contrary, there are a couple billion generalists in the world already.

 

Maybe we should think of them more as General's Burgers, you know, like a Colonel Sanders KFC spinoff...

 

Not sure why you're dissin' potential SEIU members, comrade.

 

What the fuck are you talking about dissing them?! I'm gonna make a bundle feeding them to each other!

[JayB]

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.

 

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?

 

 

[JayB]

 

" 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."

 

 

[JayB]

A regressive is someone who attempts to reverse or block progress. Progress is moving toward a sustainable society: environmentally, socially, and economically.

 

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

 

 

[Fairweather]

I wonder how Republican Spain would have rated?

[JayB]

The Chinese also love seeing us involved in unpaid wars all over the globe. It's rather odd to see us do to ourselves what we claim we did to the soviets.

 

So, what do you think of my statement concerning regressives like JayB and FW playing the young against the old to privatize social security and medicare, and playing public sector workers against private sector workers to bust public unions and renege on wage, benefits and pension agreements?

 

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?

 

 

[JayB]

See Jayb's post as an indication of what I was talking about. He put his money where his mouth was, sold his house and suggested others do the same. It was quite the broohaha at the time, because most folks here thought real estate was gold forever.

 

Turns out, Jayb hit it, on the money. Why you would ignore that kind of thing and then try and belittle someone who doesn't, indicates what, exactly?

 

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.

[JosephH]

I knew of loads of folks in LA who were into $1mil+ interest-only loans for houses that would go for $275k-325k max in PDX - ouch!

[j_b]

Can you explain - exactly - how maximizing the delivery of services to the public with a given amount of money is harmful to the public?

 

 

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 ...

[j_b]

A regressive is someone who attempts to reverse or block progress. Progress is moving toward a sustainable society: environmentally, socially, and economically.

 

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

 

 

I am not sure where you are going with this but if you are insinuating that the situation in Michigan and Greece were brought about by progressive policies you are sadly deluded.

[j_b]

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?

 

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.