The New Poor

[j_b]

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.

 

BZZZTT! Blatant distortion of what I said. I said most serious economists were announcing a serious market adjustment for years and I never said "everyone in the country was on the same page".

[j_b]

Finally, I do see how a large decrease in the number of unionized employees brought about by deregulation (yes, union busting and making workers more vulnerable to the race for the bottom labor cost was also the purpose of deregulation) is connected to the creation of a permanent underclass as reflected in the distribution of unemployment today but I don't think this is the argument you were making by citing the de-unionization trend since Reagan.

[JayB]

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 ...

 

Somehow private businesses manage to fill vacancies, and recruit and retain staff at the levels they require without any of the elements of public sector employment contracts that are exploding state budgets and transferring state resources away from the actual delivery of services and the provision infrastructure and into public sector employees' pocketbooks.

 

Are you really arguing that that governments couldn't retain qualified people if they offered them health and retirement benefits on par with those extended to the typical Microsoft employee?

 

 

[JayB]

Finally, I do see how a large decrease in the number of unionized employees brought about by deregulation (yes, union busting and making workers more vulnerable to the race for the bottom labor cost was also the purpose of deregulation) is connected to the creation of a permanent underclass as reflected in the distribution of unemployment today but I don't think this is the argument you were making by citing the de-unionization trend since Reagan.

 

You create an unemployable underclass by forcing employers to pay more in wages that exceed the value of the output that the least skilled and educated people in society can generate.

 

 

[JayB]

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.

 

Here you go:

 

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf

 

"State and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked for total employee compensation in September 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries averaged $26.24 per hour worked and accounted for 65.9 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $13.60 and accounted for the remaining 34.1 percent. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour worked in September 2009. Total employer

compensation costs for civilian workers, which include private industry and state and local government workers, averaged $29.40 per hour worked in September 2009."

 

"Health benefit employer costs were $4.43 per hour worked for state and local government and $2.01 in private industry. Paid leave, including vacation, holiday, sick, and personal leave, cost $3.05 per hour worked for state and local government and $1.86 in private industry. Retirement and savings costs,

which include both defined benefit and defined contribution plans, were $3.23 per hour worked for state and local government employers and 94 cents for private employers."

 

 

[Phil K]

So, adding our gov't employees to the Wall-Martization of the economy; adding their jobs to the growing numbers of Americans with low paying jobs and minimal benefits would be a good thing? Can one of the enlightened conservative voices here 'splain to me how?

[j_b]

Somehow private businesses manage to fill vacancies, and recruit and retain staff at the levels they require without any of the elements of public sector employment contracts that are exploding state budgets and transferring state resources away from the actual delivery of services and the provision infrastructure and into public sector employees' pocketbooks.

 

There is no clear cut evidence that the private sector is better able to keep exploding costs under control without cutting on services. Just check out the cost of privatizing war for example.

[j_b]

 

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.

 

Here you go:

 

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf

 

"State and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked for total employee compensation in September 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries averaged $26.24 per hour worked and accounted for 65.9 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $13.60 and accounted for the remaining 34.1 percent. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour worked in September 2009. Total employer

compensation costs for civilian workers, which include private industry and state and local government workers, averaged $29.40 per hour worked in September 2009."

 

You are assuming that the distribution of occupations are the same in the public and private sectors, which can't be true. Your tool is too coarse and tells us little.

[j_b]

"Health benefit employer costs were $4.43 per hour worked for state and local government and $2.01 in private industry. Paid leave, including vacation, holiday, sick, and personal leave, cost $3.05 per hour worked for state and local government and $1.86 in private industry. Retirement and savings costs,

which include both defined benefit and defined contribution plans, were $3.23 per hour worked for state and local government employers and 94 cents for private employers."

 

You are assuming that health benefits, paid leaves, vacations, etc .. for the immense majority of the peons in the private sector is the golden standard of what compensations employees should get. It's obviously wrong,as everybody knows.

[j_b]

You create an unemployable underclass by forcing employers to pay more in wages than the least skilled and educated people in society that exceed the value of their output.

 

that is one assertion entirely unsupported by the huge rise in income and assets of the upper 0.01% of income distribution, over the last 30+ years (i.e. since the beginning of deregulation and the race to bottom labor cost)

[j_b]

 

Probably not comparable due to differences in make up of workforce

[j_b]

 

Right, as we all know the private sector hardly raised wages and stripped benefits over quite a few years now.

[j_b]

So, adding our gov't employees to the Wall-Martization of the economy; adding their jobs to the growing numbers of Americans with low paying jobs and minimal benefits would be a good thing? Can one of the enlightened conservative voices here 'splain to me how?

 

They want to use the budget crisis they manufactured to destroy public employees unions, like they did in the private sector. "Burn, baby, burn".

[tvashtarkatena]

 

Right, as we all know the private sector hardly raised wages and stripped benefits over quite a few years now.

 

Nationalize PepsiCo and watch the bar graphs equalize.

[tvashtarkatena]

I will say that the government is apparently way too fat and happy in the overemployment category given my experience this week sailing back from Victoria. Our threatening 27 ft C and C, powered only by sculling oar or sail, then adrift in the calm Straight of Juan de Fuca, was interdicted by two 33 foot SAFE boats from the Dept. of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection, at half a million each, crewed by six agents sucking down about a million dollars a year, with training and equipment. They took our passports, but did not check us in. They didn't know the process for how our vessel should do that, and shoved us off on a bureacratic wild goose chase that at one turn would have us return to Port Angeles, an impossibility for our vessel given the tide and wind, to calling the Coast Guard whose number had accidentally been provided instead of a customs office contact. The Coast Guard sent us the right direction: the lone border agent of Port Townsend; our call him on his day off and on the day he was to propose to his now fiancee. He was pissed.

 

A number of federal agencies are wormholes that suck budget money from our world to another dimension, but Homeland Security is the Queen Mother Hoover of them all.

 

On the state level, the criminal justice system, bloated after suckling the rich milk that spurts from the War on Drug's many swollen utters, and the educational system, which seems to have accreted a thick blubbery layer of administration, mop up whatever remaining credit continues to dissipate in the economic ether.

Edited February 24, 2010 by tvashtarkatena

[ivan]

 

On the state level, the criminal justice system, bloated after suckling the rich milk that spurts from the War on Drug's many swollen utters, and the educational system, which seems to have accreted a thick blubbery layer of administration, mop up whatever remaining credit continues to dissipate in the economic ether.

disregard my pm ole'boy - i done been briefed!

 

as to the ed thang, i can agree - i don't understand what anyone at the state level of ed admin is doing besides occasionally re-inventing the wheel

[G-spotter]

Your tool is too coarse.

 

you're sweet talking him, or you know from experience?

[JayB]

 

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.

 

Here you go:

 

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf

 

"State and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked for total employee compensation in September 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries averaged $26.24 per hour worked and accounted for 65.9 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $13.60 and accounted for the remaining 34.1 percent. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour worked in September 2009. Total employer

compensation costs for civilian workers, which include private industry and state and local government workers, averaged $29.40 per hour worked in September 2009."

 

You are assuming that the distribution of occupations are the same in the public and private sectors, which can't be true. Your tool is too coarse and tells us little.

 

That's certainly possible - if you can find a data set that provides apples-to-apples comparisons of total compensation across a broad spectrum of occupational categories - please share it.

 

 

[prole]

Why would anyone bother sharing anything with you when you'd just go hide for a month till the whole thing blew over and you'd found a hot, new (old) axe to grind (subsidies, "the mob", people who don't love Walmart, etc, etc.)

[glassgowkiss]

...and if Gregoire and the Wa State Democrats have their way with the new taxes they are proposing, at least 30% of the employees at my company will be unemployed too. Pay raises, extra time off, cha-ching retirement plans, and contracts for state employees and their fucked-up thug unions while the private sector gets fucked. Olympia Democrats need a beat down.

Let me put it in plane terms- the proposal would first of all close tax loopholes, and raise sales tax by 0.003. Do the math fuckhead- that's 30USD on a 10K sale. Your company has to be totally fucked from a getgo, since a $30 increase on a $10 000 sale brakes your bosses' bank. No, it's your stupid boss who need beatdown.

[JayB]

Why would anyone bother sharing anything with you when you'd just go hide for a month till the whole thing blew over and you'd found a hot, new (old) axe to grind (subsidies, "the mob", people who don't love Walmart, etc, etc.)

 

Yes - I'm sure that if he finds data that proves his claims he'll withhold it out of spite.

 

If I'm not posting, or responding to particular threads, it's because I don't always have the time to do so. Feel free to dredge up any threads where you feel like my lack of a response has denied you your rightful triumph, send me the links via PM - and I'll respond to them when I have the time and inclination.

[j_b]

I don't know of any such source of data, but your bls document says that employer compensation cost of the private sector and that for state and local government employees are very similar (respectively $27.40 and $29.49), which suggests that non-civilian employees and federal gov employees make up most of the difference between private and public employer compensation costs. Anyway, it seems to blow a big hole into your argument that unreasonable employee compensations schemes are the cause of state budget shortfall.

[prole]

If I'm not posting, or responding to particular threads, it's because I don't always have the time to do so. Feel free to dredge up any threads where you feel like my lack of a response has denied you your rightful triumph, send me the links via PM - and I'll respond to them when I have the time and inclination.

 

The burden of proof is on you, amigo.

 

Define middle class and post-up some unambiguous proof that folks in that arbitrary statistical category are disappearing because their total income - wages, benefits, tax-credits, transfers-in-kind, etc are actually decreasing in real terms.

 

I just gave you a 57 minute lecture to listen to that did exactly that. Pull your head out of your ass, that'll help.

 

 

classic "if I don't acknowledge the data, it goes away, and I can claim that we already discussed it" moment

 

Bump.

[Fairweather]

...and if Gregoire and the Wa State Democrats have their way with the new taxes they are proposing, at least 30% of the employees at my company will be unemployed too. Pay raises, extra time off, cha-ching retirement plans, and contracts for state employees and their fucked-up thug unions while the private sector gets fucked. Olympia Democrats need a beat down.

Let me put it in plane terms- the proposal would first of all close tax loopholes, and raise sales tax by 0.003. Do the math fuckhead- that's 30USD on a 10K sale. Your company has to be totally fucked from a getgo, since a $30 increase on a $10 000 sale brakes your bosses' bank. No, it's your stupid boss who need beatdown.

 

The tax Gregoire has proposed on bottled water and carbonated beverages is completely separate from the general sales tax increase being proposed. Might I suggest you next time know what you're talking about before you open your plaque-filled hole. Better yet; hop back on the next boat outta here. Still trying to figure out who the fuck let you in.

[prole]

 

We gotta do something about this...

 

Edited February 24, 2010 by prole