Merry Christmish

[prole]

It's okay because, like all other responsible Americans, Kojak has never contracted, nor will he ever contract, any debt whatsoever.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

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

 

Bullshit. People live beyond their means all the time - houses that are too expensive, cars they don't need, expensive vacations, etc.

[j_b]

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.

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

housing (more expensive huge homes with high utilities all of which are beyond their means), a 2nd car + gas (because they are too fucking lazy or arrogant to take a bus, bike-commute, or car/van pool) for the 2nd wage earner, all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker (paying for a gardener, nanny, housecleaner because they can't bring themselves to do that work themselves), etc ...

 

fixed that for ya

[prole]

housing (more expensive huge homes with high utilities all of which are beyond their means), a 2nd car + gas (because they are too fucking lazy or arrogant to take a bus, bike-commute, or car/van pool) for the 2nd wage earner, all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker (paying for a gardener, nanny, housecleaner because they can't bring themselves to do that work themselves), etc ...

 

fixed that for ya

 

What neighborhood do you live in?

[j_b]

fixed that for ya

 

Listen and weep jackass:

 

[video:youtube]akVL7QY0S8A

[KaskadskyjKozak]

housing (more expensive huge homes with high utilities all of which are beyond their means), a 2nd car + gas (because they are too fucking lazy or arrogant to take a bus, bike-commute, or car/van pool) for the 2nd wage earner, all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker (paying for a gardener, nanny, housecleaner because they can't bring themselves to do that work themselves), etc ...

 

fixed that for ya

 

What neighborhood do you live in?

 

AD HOMINEM!!

[prole]

housing (more expensive huge homes with high utilities all of which are beyond their means), a 2nd car + gas (because they are too fucking lazy or arrogant to take a bus, bike-commute, or car/van pool) for the 2nd wage earner, all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker (paying for a gardener, nanny, housecleaner because they can't bring themselves to do that work themselves), etc ...

 

fixed that for ya

 

What neighborhood do you live in?

 

AD HOMINEM!!

 

No. I'm just wondering what you're seeing on a daily basis that would lead you to the conclusions you've drawn. It certainly doesn't look like anything I'm seeing, but I guess you could just be full of shit.

[j_b]

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

[prole]

Bellevue morons are the worst.

[Kimmo]

housing (more expensive huge homes with high utilities all of which are beyond their means), a 2nd car + gas (because they are too fucking lazy or arrogant to take a bus, bike-commute, or car/van pool) for the 2nd wage earner, all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker (paying for a gardener, nanny, housecleaner because they can't bring themselves to do that work themselves), etc ...

 

fixed that for ya

 

i kinda wonder about the neighborhood you live in, with the nannies and the gardeners and the housekeepers etc.

 

i'm kinda thinking this ain't the set most affected by the downturn, doncha think?

[Kimmo]

i'm sure we could get to the bottom of this over a bottle of lagavulin sometime. your treat, from the sound of things.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

housing (more expensive huge homes with high utilities all of which are beyond their means), a 2nd car + gas (because they are too fucking lazy or arrogant to take a bus, bike-commute, or car/van pool) for the 2nd wage earner, all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker (paying for a gardener, nanny, housecleaner because they can't bring themselves to do that work themselves), etc ...

 

fixed that for ya

 

i kinda wonder about the neighborhood you live in, with the nannies and the gardeners and the housekeepers etc.

 

i'm kinda thinking this ain't the set most affected by the downturn, doncha think?

 

Well, how did *you* interpret this original quote from j_b:

 

"all the expenses incurred because there isn't a homemaker"

 

What fucking expenses? I assumed he is talking about childcare (a nanny), house cleaning, etc.

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

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

 

Let's meet and you can find out

[KaskadskyjKozak]

i'm sure we could get to the bottom of this over a bottle of lagavulin sometime. your treat, from the sound of things.

 

How about on your yacht? Your treat.

 

 

[j_b]

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

 

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.

[ivan]

this thread is a hate-crime against christmas and i have already reported it to the good folks at fox

[KaskadskyjKozak]

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

 

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.

 

Much safer to talk shit behind your monitor, eh? Although it's not much stretch of the imagination to guess how fucking boring you would be in real life.

[j_b]

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

[KaskadskyjKozak]

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

 

Hey, why don't you post some more political diatribes, complemented with a stream of your trademark, hackneyed "insults"...

[j_b]

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

[j_b]

Robert Reich

Fmr. Secretary of Labor; Professor at Berkeley;

 

 

The Shameful Attack on Public Employees

 

the right's argument is shot-through with bad data, twisted evidence, and unsupported assertions.

 

They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That's untrue when you take account of level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.

 

The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges -- the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be -- all need at least four years of college.

 

Compare apples to apples and and you'd see that over the last fifteen years the pay of public sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education. Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12 percent less. (Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.)

 

Here's another whopper. Republicans say public-sector pensions are crippling the nation. They say politicians have given in to the demands of public unions who want only to fatten their members' retirement benefits without the public noticing. They charge that public-employee pensions obligations are out of control.

 

Some reforms do need to be made. Loopholes that allow public sector workers to "spike" their final salaries in order to get higher annuities must be closed. And no retired public employee should be allowed to "double dip," collecting more than one public pension.

 

But these are the exceptions. Most public employees don't have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year. Few would call that overly generous.

 

And most of that $19,000 isn't even on taxpayers' shoulders. While they're working, most public employees contribute a portion of their salaries into their pension plans. Taxpayers are directly responsible for only about 14 percent of public retirement benefits. Remember also that many public workers aren't covered by Social Security, so the government isn't contributing 6.25 of their pay into the Social Security fund as private employers would.

 

Yes, there's cause for concern about unfunded pension liabilities in future years. They're way too big. But it's much the same in the private sector. The main reason for underfunded pensions in both public and private sectors is investment losses that occurred during the Great Recession. Before then, public pension funds had an average of 86 percent of all the assets they needed to pay future benefits -- better than many private pension plans.

 

The solution is no less to slash public pensions than it is to slash private ones. It's for all employers to fully fund their pension plans.

 

The final Republican canard is that bargaining rights for public employees have caused state deficits to explode. In fact there's no relationship between states whose employees have bargaining rights and states with big deficits. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights -- Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, for example, are running giant deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many that give employees bargaining rights -- Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana -- have small deficits of less than 10 percent.

 

Public employees should have the right to bargain for better wages and working conditions, just like all employees do. They shouldn't have the right to strike if striking would imperil the public, but they should at least have a voice. They often know more about whether public programs are working, or how to make them work better, than political appointees who hold their offices for only a few years.

 

Don't get me wrong. When times are tough, public employees should have to make the same sacrifices as everyone else. And they are right now. Pay has been frozen for federal workers, and for many state workers across the country as well.

 

But isn't it curious that when it comes to sacrifice, Republicans don't include the richest people in America? To the contrary, they insist the rich should sacrifice even less, enjoying even larger tax cuts that expand public-sector deficits. That means fewer public services, and even more pressure on the wages and benefits of public employees.

 

It's only average workers -- both in the public and the private sectors -- who are being called upon to sacrifice.

 

This is what the current Republican attack on public-sector workers is really all about. Their version of class warfare is to pit private-sector workers against public servants. They'd rather set average working people against one another -- comparing one group's modest incomes and benefits with another group's modest incomes and benefits -- than have Americans see that the top 1 percent is now raking in a bigger share of national income than at any time since 1928, and paying at a lower tax rate. And Republicans would rather you didn't know they want to cut taxes on the rich even more.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-shameful-attack-on-pu_b_805050.html