Tigerhawk has a chart which summarizes the deficit problem at a glance. One the left hand side is where the government gets its money. On the right is how much it spends and how it spends it. The two things to notice are the relatives sizes of income and expenditure. Expenditure dwarfs income. The second is the distribution of where the money is spent. It is entitlements. Unless something changes, government will have become a mechanism whereby money is transferred from one set of people to the other.
The key issue in Wisconsin is whether the very people who work in government have the “right” to insist that taxpayers deal with them and only them. Maybe the word isn’t “collective bargaining” but manos arriba.
The CSM reports that Walker is not backing down and neither are the unions.
Two weeks into the political fight of his life, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) shows no signs of backing down. Neither do the protesters camped out at the state Capitol in Madison….
Walker says he’s trying to close a $3.6 billion budget gap for the next two years. That includes cutting $1 billion in payments to local governments as well as cutting the state contribution to workers’ health care benefits and pensions.
Union officials have agreed to that, but Walker doubts their sincerity.
“Over the past two weeks, even after they’ve made those promises, we’ve seen local union after local union rush to their school boards, their city councils … and rush through contracts that had no contribution to the pensions and no contribution to health care,” he said on Meet the Press. “In one case, in Janesville, they were actually pushing through a pay increase.”
That’s why this fight is so interesting. For a long time the liberals have acted as if losing were not an option. And for the same amount of time conservatives have acted as if it were always an option. That was the asymmetry. The marvel is not that the unions are working all the angles, but that they are actually being resisted in manner suggesting something fundamental was at stake.
Well maybe something is.
Pay though your heart is breaking, pay though your wallet's aching
Let me tell you how it will be;
There’s one for you, nineteen for me.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.(if you drive a car, car;) – I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) – I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) – I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) – I’ll tax your feet.Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.And you’re working for no one but me.
“No Way In” print edition at Amazon
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Socialists don’t consider it “other peoples money”. It all belonga them. I blame Karl Marx. Cheeko, Harpo and Groucho were OK but that Karl was a modder pooker.
Yeah, Karl was the red sheep of the family.
KRB
But what are you going to do? Entitlement is now a way of life. People have gotten used to it. Some of them may not be bad in a moral sense, like people who thought those were the rules and signed up for the system as they saw it. When their pension checks stop or get cut seriously cut, they’ll fight, not for principle, but because they are so invested in the system.
There may be three generations of people since the Great Society for whom the check in the mail was how things functioned. That was their world.
To go and tell them they have to work at something requiring a skill would be like telling someone in 1865 that a certain peculiar institution was over and he was on his own.
People will fight to keep a way of life alive; no matter if doesn’t make sense. But entitlements, like that peculiar institution, are economically doomed. Their time has passed, but they will not go gently into the good night. Yet things will go on. “After all… tomorrow is another day.”
Richard Epstein has an econtalk podcast page on rule of law here, worth listening to several times.
The part about labor law uncovers the original mistake, if you want to go about refuting it theoretically, namely that A and B cannot join to claim rights against C that they do not already have against C individually.
In this case, the right to force C to negotiate with them towards a contract.
You can join, but you can’t get more rights because of it; lest associations start telling all sorts of other people what they have to do.
The key to all of these problems is lengthening life spans.
By not adjusting retirement ages to reality Congress has self-inflicted a hyper-Madoff upon the land.
SS should have long ago been lifted up into the 70s.
The other monster is permitting a rogue state, Red China, to gut the economic engine of the rest of the world.
And finally, and of least significance, the Democrat oil follies.
One aspect of ramping Gulf imports is to cause a super bloom of muslims. The ummah does not believe in birth control. Malthus is their prophet.
Out my way the Money Trust ™ has so cratered the economy — in conjunction with the government unions — that all others are faced with unemployment or wage roll backs of Greatest Depression scale: 30 to 50 percent!
The Golf Warrior is pulling a Nero. He’s had his fill of executive inaction — it’s time to campaign, again.
Whereas Carter campaigned from the Rose Garden…
Obama intends to administer from the campaign trail !
Obama: the Runaway Gonnabee!
5. blert :”The key to all of these problems is lengthening life spans.”
Only partly; Raising the age of entitlement only kicks the can farther down the road. As long as population grows exponentially there will always come a day when we can not afford it. As many here have noted before, it is a Ponzi scheme. No, this experiment has gone on far too long. I could save them a bunch personally by taking a one-time cash, non-taxable payment of all contributions to date and none after. I could invest that myself for a better and more secure return and they could wash their hands of me. Win-win?
No. They want control, not independence.
SS should have long ago been lifted up into the 70s. – blert
Perhaps, but that’s not all of the problem. Many who are “entitled” to the SS piggy bank never paid into that bank in the first place. My 90 year old mother in law arrived from the Philippines about 20 years ago, and has been drawing social security and other government support ever since. (She lives with my wife’s socialist side of the family, who know how to make government work for them.) My cousin was labeled “disabled” at age 45 yrs, and has been working part time at his craft as a carpenter while living on SS and California disability (something his Union worked out for him) – he has homes in California and Hawaii – it’s a wonderful life.
The problem just isn’t social security as it was originally configured. It’s the generous additions the politicians have granted since it’s inception. I will have had 15.3% of my income forcibly taken from me since I started working at age 14, and in 10 to 15 years, I’m going to be told that there’s nothing there for me, that my contribution was entirely for the welfare of others.
That pisses me off big-time. Guess what: I don’t think that the next generation will buy off on the same deal, particularly since they’ll likely be paying a lot more than 15.3% of their income for the privilege of “helping” those more deserving then them.
There are 1000 ways in which the government, constituted as it is today, robs “working people” to pay people who do not work. In regards to Wretchard’s comment to the effect of “what else will they do..”, I frankly don’t give a damn. Let ‘em all starve. I’d be glad to fight for their right not to work, and to starve too.
Old Salt
Sorry for the sideline, but the small circle’s area is clearly much less than the ratio between 2.2 and 3.5 would dictate.
The immediate problem is in the states, that can’t print money. As mentioned in the previous thread, the unfunded mandates that the states provide medicaid is immediately breaking the state banks.
That, and supporting a third of the population of Mexico.
So, quite obviously, the immediate solution is for the feds to start funding the medicaid mandate all the way, because the feds can print money.
And raise the age limits for social security and medicare.
And, yes, raise taxes.
The only way we don’t raise taxes, is if the fed inflates by printing a trillion a year for the next ten.
The reason neither of the available solutions works, is that all the jobs are in China.
But even in the best scenarios, it will take ten years to bring them back.
Also, we need to become energy independent. Have to get that deadwood out of the white house first, apparently.
Jobs from China, and energy independence, should be the #1 and #2 campaign issues for 2012.
Then, maybe some of that foreign stuff.
Oh yes, and the retirement benefits of public workers, even those already retired, must be cut. And, the current pay rates as well. And outlawing all public employee unions would be a great idea, but maybe that can wait. Dems won’t like it of course.
Let’s start small, anyone who can not provide a US birth certificate or Nationalization papers get ZERO entitlements. That should buy us a little time.
Maybe the taxpayers of Wisconsin should vote on what services they actually need and how much they are willing to pay for them. With all the unemployment, there must be bargains to be had.
Come on down to Basement Bob’s civil service liquidation sale! Nearly everything must go!
As long as population grows exponentially there will always come a day when we can not afford it. As many here have noted before, it is a Ponzi scheme.
It’s not population growth but population bust that upsets the apple cart of Social Security & Medicare. Too few workers paying in, too many retirees collecting. Like the Ponzi scheme, it requires the pay-ins to always outnumber the pay-outs. The problem with the baby boom was the baby bust that followed … a predicament not unrelated to the 50 million aborted since 1973.
I could save them a bunch personally by taking a one-time cash, non-taxable payment of all contributions to date and none after.
You *could*, but you won’t. Because what you paid in has been spent already. The system is broke. In 2010 SS paid out more than it took in. From the strict standpoint of a ledger, all payouts from this point are losses, not “savings.” You, my friend, are a liability to the government the minute you cease to be a cash cow to them. As am I, as is every taxpayer. Wahoo.
But what are you going to do? Entitlement is now a way of life. People have gotten used to it. Some of them may not be bad in a moral sense, like people who thought those were the rules and signed up for the system as they saw it. When their pension checks stop or get cut seriously cut, they’ll fight, not for principle, but because they are so invested in the system.
Its time for the Entitled Folks to realize that they are in the same boat as the victims of Bernie Maddof. The essential moral problem of eternal government benefits is the notion that people who aren’t old enough to vote or who haven’t even been born can be held in debt/tax slavery for the promises of their parents, or rather, the politicians that held the day at that time.
The idea that the sins of the parents should descend upon their children is an idea that was supposedly discarded long ago, but it isn’t true. It just comes back with different names such as “Affirmative Action,” or “social contracts between the generations.” Ah–but slavery really isn’t slavery unless its a full time affair. So long as you give them a few days, hours, or minutes a year to do as they will, they’re just taxpayers, and the label is so, so much more important than the reality.
“They are the first governmental organization to do so.”
“Agenda 21 Part III: Maryland County Abolishes Agenda 21 – Now it’s Your Turn”
“The November elections marked a sea change in the political landscape at every level of government nationwide. Right now, all eyes are focused on the Wisconsin standoff between Governor Scott Walker and the public employee unions. But under the radar, completely overlooked by the mass media, is the unprecedented move recently taken by newly-elected Carroll County, Maryland Commissioners Richard Rothschild, Robin Frazier, Haven Shoemaker, Dave Roush and Doug Howard, who abolished the County’s Office of Sustainability. They then voted unanimously to drop out of the UN’s International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). They are the first governmental organization to do so.”
http://biggovernment.com/jmsimpson/2011/02/26/agenda-21-part-iii-maryland-county-abolishes-agenda-21-now-its-your-turn/
speakeasy…
We’ve stopped growing exponentially. In fact there are major areas of the globe with negative population trends.
What growth America is now having is HUGELY due to unlimited immigration. Such flows always destroy a welfare state.
That the average IQ globally is a standard deviation below America (ish) means that our economic efficiency is being drawn ever lower. While I can’t predict what one individual will do… The law of large numbers kicks in when millions of souls are involved. 20,000,000 Mexicans shifted into the US are going to be very close to the same habits and patterns they had when they were down south.
Particularly traits like literacy, criminal violence, work habits and cultural norms.
An example: six cousins illegally immigrate to Norther California to undercut construction wages — hanging sheetrock. On paper they have a killer price. However, they still break for siesta — that’s 150 minutes from noon on — frustrating all of the other trades. The Superintendent discovers that he has to work 150 minutes of overtime each and every day. Further that six immigrants = two native born Americans in terms of output! The upshot is that the whole job was delayed a week — 25% of the calendar. So they ended up costing far, far more to provide a lousy install.
Yet by their standards their work was flawless — and they were proud of it.
As IQs drop the amount of time required to execute a given task grows — exponentially — until it proves an impossibility. The individual is simply no able to do the work at all. ( Waste time and destroy materials, yes, that can be accomplished. )
The world has too many dummies and not enough Smart Fraction ™ talent to go around. That’s why Libya had all of those foreign workers. They were all Smart Fraction ™ individuals. Libya does not need to import IQs of 90 to 100 that can’t speak Arabic. She has no end of fellows that fit that profile.
It is notable where the guest workers were deployed: road and rail construction, the oil patch, the water project, etc. These are tasks not for geniuses but for hard working talents just slightly high on the (North Asian) distribution.
Given more time I’d expect China to flood the major construction projects of the world with talent. It’s the best way to keep unemployment at home under come control. With luck some will marry and settle down.
This would leave America and China with the two largest expatriate communities.
——
Back to SS.
Expanding life spans have created a hyper-exponential boom of seniors. Punching the age out causes the reverse: a counter hyper-exponential slide down. This then triggers vast reductions in triggered expenditures: medicare being at the top of the stack.
If you saw what the actuarials indicate if retirement were at 72 right now — your jaw would hit the floor. Expenditures would simply collapse and hope would bloom.
Each day we delay pushes us towards Marc Faber’s ‘Crack-Up-Boom.’
[ It's like speedballing the national economy. The end state is the morgue. ]
Rollback is called for. Rollback to when? Pick a date. My choice is July 29, 1965. The next day Lyndon Johnson signed “The Social Security Act of 1965″ which established Medicare. If we signed onto a 40 year plan to dismantle that machine by honoring all benefits for anyone over 55 today and then adding one year steps, so that those now 45 would be covered when they reach 75 etc., we’d emerge from this forest.
Leftists to whom no promise is sacred cling to the sanctity of contracts regarding their benefits. A contract needs two independent parties. A contract between an elected Democrat and a government employees union lacks that. It is a bargain made with themselves at others expense and is a fraud. They then try to make these benefits perpetual.
They remind me of the Scientologists, who have been know to sign people to contracts that have a term of billions of years. They have troops of lawyers, think of Disney without the mouse, and threaten people who disclose their secrets. The God of the Bible and Hollywood studio heads were both right. No contract should last for more than seven years.
The CBO just released a report that says that spending on entitlements will exceed all Federal revenue by 2025, just fourteen years away! Entitlement spending is like a runaway train that once was far,far away in the distance but is now in view and is bearing down on the economy at breakneck speed. It will smash this economy to bits before too long, and us along with it.
The public sector unions and the other entitled parasites feeding at the public trough refuse to acknowledge there is a problem. I don’t believe they have any coherent strategy as to how to soften the blow of the coming drastic spending cuts because to formulate a strategy would be to admit there is a problem in the first place. To hear them tell it, we the producers of society are the bad guys. We created the problem because we somehow have an enormous secret stash of cash hidden criminally somewhere beyond the guvmint’s prying eyes that they are entitled to take from us. It’s really their money in their eyes that we are hiding from them and they are entitled to have it all. The Constitution by damned.
While imperfect as part of the solution, I agree that the eligibility age for both SS and Medicare should be raised.
Both programs should also be means-tested, and should have been so from their inception. While seniors with retirement incomes higher than the national salaried income average are a minority, they are not a tiny one. Many seniors have pension and/or 401K/403B incomes above the national average for working folks. We’re going to have to reduce the SS payments and increase the premium shares for Medicare for those seniors who have significant means.
I see these as stopgap solutions to take care of existing seniors and those approaching that category. A long-term solution for younger workers should involve a dramatically different approach to preparing for old age and retirement.
blert, already people are given the option of delaying drawing from SSN and getting a higher amount when they do, max age 70 1/2, I think. We could fiddle those numbers a bit more.
When I’ve tried the math, it looks to me like just fiddling all the SSN parameters a little bit, “saves” it for another thirty years. But I haven’t tried it since the 2008 crash, it might not work that way anymore.
The disability payments are a whole other kettle of fish, assume 50% or more of that is fraud. And the unemployment payments are another big ugly, likely to stay ugly for the forseeable future.
–
I’m not even gonna get into the IQ business you outline, though you could make most of that argument on culture rather than IQ.
Tigerhawk’s chart makes its point about current US Federal government revenues compared with current expenditures. OK, the revenue and expenditure ratios are closer to the diameter of his circles than to the area, so the chart exaggerates the current budget deficit. But it is still a scary fiscal imbalance.
Scarier still would be a chart showing the fiscal imbalance and its expected growth over time as a proportion of GDP. Dollars to donuts the projected interest costs on the fiscal imbalance will increase at a faster rate than GDP increases.
A 2009 paper by The National Center for Policy Analysis showed there is no reason (unless deception is your game) for government to include just this year’s accruing fiscal imbalance while excluding the accruing interest costs of future imbalances under current policies. Calculating the accruing cost of projected fiscal imbalances will show that the cost of making immediate policy changes to eliminate the total fiscal imbalance (current and future) is much larger than the current year deficit. You need to cut much more from expenditures to eliminate current and future imbalances than you do to simply balance the budget. Hello future entitlements – cutting should start now. The longer cuts are delayed, the bigger they must be in future.
Before the Obama debt deluge, the paper referred to above calculated that the U.S. would have to save and invest (real investments that is) 8% of its GDP starting in 2009, forever, in order to pay expected future benefits without future tax increases. God knows what amount of GDP would need to be invested now that Obumble-land is here.
W@3: But what are you going to do? Entitlement is now a way of life.
Only one answer that I can see – gradually but significantly reduce dependency by promoting private saving specifically for retirement, health care and other social welfare services – while government gradually and significantly reduces the social services it provides. That way people would pay only for the services they wanted (assuming their savings were sufficient). If government announced ahead of time the schedule for reducing their services and also provided incentives for saving, then it might work.
Has anyone done similar graphs for Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Brazil ? The progressives protesting in Wisconsin and most of the MSM will not even address or acknowledge the deficit issue. This issue of not addressing the core problem or even acknowledging that there is a problem is similar to not naming your enemy in the war on terrorism. Words have meaning. Elections have consequences. Scott Walker was elected.
Unsk 16:
My observation is that government bureaucrats are so difficult to deal with because they know that so much of what they do is pure B.S. They know that because they either thought up the BS themselves or had it imposed on them by other bureaucrats. And they know that much of what other bureaucrats do in other departments is B.S. So they consider almost everything to be B.S. and regard the real work and the B.S. in the same manner.
The same is true about their pay. They see the government wasting money in all manner of ways, not simply through the usual ineffciencies, and not through just graft and corruption, but also in programs that should never have been created in the first place. And, for example, it is common in government agencies to have to explain 6 months into the fiscal year why you have spent half of your travel budget. “Normal” is to hoard the travel budget, not send people on trips where it is needed and then in the last month send them places where they do not need to go. So they figure “As long as they are wasting money, then why can’t I get mine?”
Their attitude toward government money reflects a much larger attitude and larger problem.
At one base where I was staioned there was a framed quote from Thomas Paine that I will try to render as accurately as possible:
“Public money ought to be managed with the greatest of care. There is not a beggar that passes in the streets whose mite is not in that mass.”
We need to get back to that attitude.
joe buzz@20: see Measuring the Unfunded Obligations of European Countries
@Don Rodrigo 17
“A long-term solution for younger workers should involve a dramatically different approach to preparing for old age and retirement.”
Exactly. The problem is that neither SS nor Medicare/Medicaid fit the society we now have. They are antiquated, Rube-GoldBerg bureaucracies that are on the verge of crashing apart. We need to start over. Even many of the beneficiaries of the entitlement bureaucracies see this. But as for those who see these bureaucracies as a means for the state to control society … they must be deprived of political power at every opportunity.
SS should have long ago been lifted up into the 70s. – blert
A retiree in 1957 had a life expectancy of 13 more years. He also received 3 times his total SSI contributions every year.
A retiree in 2009 has a life expectancy of 16 years. He will not get his total contributions back for at least 15 years.
Most retirees from now on will die before they get back their own contributions. This, after having 15% of their income confiscated for their retirement, which left very little for other investments.
You’re right,though, more people are making it to retirement age; but the system is not going broke for that reason as all of these retirees have paid in more than they’ll ever get back.
Medicare is an entirely different kettle of fish…
22. westerncanadian
Thanks for the quick link. Perhaps some true Conservatives with means should arrange for Jagadeesh Gokhale to go on a national speaking tour. Even bastions of liberalism should allow speakers with names as that onto their campuses with minimal protest….
For those commenting on the size of the circles.
On my computer screen the smaller circles radius is 2.2 cm Area= 15.21
The larger circle is 2.8 cm.= 24.63 cm
Ratio 3.5/2.2 = 1.59
Ratio 24.63/15.21 = 1.62
The areas appear correct to measurement error or I’ve messed up the arithmetic!!
20, 22, 25
Basically Mr. Gokhale argues that:
So not only has the US caught up with Europe, it is now on track to pass it in the fast lane. To return to main topic of the post, the public sector unions are literally creating a disaster for themselves. As Western Canadian pointed out “the longer cuts are delayed, the bigger they must be in future.”
Let’s repeat that: “the longer cuts are delayed, the bigger they must be in future.” Act now and the retiring generation may get by. Put it off for too long and they’re finished. Even the union retirees. They too, live on the planet earth, and not all of Peter Yarrow’s singing can change that.
I think that means if the public sector unions don’t stop treating this like a joke now the very “muscle” they are exercising today will, by the magnification of interest on debt and the compounding of their their fatal addiction to entitlements, return upon them with a vengeance. Like the retired fire chief in bankrupt Pritchard, Alabama who was found in his home sans power, sans water, sans retirment pay and doubtless sans anything at all, they will discover that arithmetic may be mocked, but it cannot be ignored.
You can’t fight city hall, but not even city hall can fight reality.
W: “Unless something changes, government will have become a mechanism whereby money [property] is transferred from one set of people [middle class] to the other [proletariat class].”
“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend… The proletariat [lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled under-achievers] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital [property] from the bourgeoisie [laboring, tax-paying middle class], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state [Marxist Government]… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois [middle class], abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the [non] working class is to raise the proletariat [lazy class] to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/adamss.html
“The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management… To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association–the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it… The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” Thomas Jefferson
W: “But what are you going to do? Entitlement is now a way of life. People have gotten used to it.”
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. So it was that a revolution took place within the form. Like the hagfish, the New Deal entered the old form and devoured its meaning from within. The revolutionaries were inside; the defenders were outside. A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them.” Garet Garrett
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/garrett1.html
Hiya old friends. I’ve been too busy to get engrossed here lately. But I have a new post that fits in with this one. As I’m sure there are club members who might find the holes in the idea, and offer improvements, I’m alerting you all to it. Here’s an excerpt
See more at Cutting the Chains: Time for a “Voidance Movement”
“government will have become a mechanism whereby money is transferred from one set of people to the other.”
When was government ever about anything else? We the people suffer the depredations of one gang of crooks so we will not have to suffer the depredations of many. However at some point the sovereign can get too greedy and if that happens there will always be a Vito Corleone waiting in the wings to protect us from all other crooks. We may be stuck living out our lives as prison bitches but we do have some say in whose bitch we will be.
Right now we appear to be entering one of those stages where the current sovereign is having more and more difficulty maintaining stasis as those charts suggest. Whether the result will be generational change – a new godfather like Michael Corleone that can deal with the SEIU, teachers, and other assorted thugs in the various families that make up the Democratic Party while moving to a new and evolved business model as it were or whether the entire current thugocracy including the RINO Republican Establishment will have to be replaced as well. What is not sustainable will not be sustained as so many regimes in the Middle East are finding out, and those charts clearly indicate unsustainability.
PF,
Busy is good. Glad to hear it.
Good point in your article. Kicking a problem up to Central only infects Central with the problem. A similar thing happened with the XVIIth Amendment. Both the Civil Service and the XVIIth were designed to prevent petty local corruption that channeled money from appointments, especially at Customs posts or from infrastructure improvements, to urban political bosses. In effect both moved the problem into DC and eliminated the hope that competition between States or between a State and DC would provide checks and balances that cut down on graft.
Like the retired fire chief in bankrupt Pritchard, Alabama who was found in his home sans power, sans water, sans retirment pay and doubtless sans anything at all,
BTW, I never quite understood why he did not go out and get a job. I recall the newspaper accounts saying he was too young to collect Social Security. Which puts him most likely somewhere around 55 – 62 yrs old. So he would rather die broke, sans power and sans water, when Pritchard stopped mailing out the pension checks, than be a greeter at Wal-Mart?
BTW-2, I do not trust newspaper accounts to give us the full story or an unspun one. Check out this article in my local paper from December:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10348/1110540-28.stm
It features a guy who can’t get his mortgage refi’d. That would be the mortgage on his 2BR townhouse in Hampton. For those of you unacquainted with the Pgh area, Hampton is a very affluent area north of the city.
Turns out this guy has been on Social Security disability for eight years. Crippled? Deaf? ALS? Mais non. He is listed as permanently disabled with “anxiety related to the high stress of working 25 years selling vitamins.” He collects a Social Security disability check of $1,723 each month.
Note how the article spends multiple paragraphs in the very beginning in the tone of a sob story about how Mr. Cornelius has turned down his thermostat, has very little food in the fridge, etc. The only thing missing is the music from the pity violin.
Meanwhile the elephant in the room — how “anxiety” from being a vitamin salesman renders one permanently disabled for eight years and somehow “entitled” to live on taxes confiscated from others, many of whom, no doubt, also suffer from “anxiety” and other myriad, more painful and disruptive ailments and yet still manage to get off their butts every day and haul themselves to their jobs — goes completely past the reporter & editors at the newspaper.
The article was supposed to be about the newer more difficult lending rules. And yet this (expletive deleted) slacker is somehow the ONLY example the article comes up with re: someone who has it tough with the new lending rules.
To top off the BS sundae, when a reader *did* write in to the Post-Gazette to call the BS on the sob story of Mr. Cornelius and suggest that getting a job would tremendously improve his situation, guess what the newspaper titled the reader’s letter? “NO PITY FOR JOBLESS.” And they published the letter at the very top of the letters to the editor section …. on Christmas Day.
So the dead retired fire chief in Pritchard may or may not be a lazy leech like Mr. Cornelius, but I will not trust the media to tell me honestly or accurately.
I am always amused when people blithely say we should raise the retirement age to 72. For many people, in many jobs, seniors just couldn’t do the work. Sure, you probably could if you’ve been in the same job for 20 years and can effortlessly get through the day, but for many today there is no such thing as a career. It is an endless progression of a year or two here then a year or two somewhere else, and it gets harder all the time to get another job if you are over 40. I am a programmer who has endured this. We are nowadays called consultahts or contractors which are nice terms meaning you have no benefits, usually work for a job shop, and can be terminated quickly if the employer no longer needs you. The strain of trying to keep up with the young guys from India who were willing to work for 10 hours a day eventually caused my health to break down at age 67 with a bad problem of pulmonary embolisms. I wanted and planned to work until 70 or so, but sometimes the body just gives out, or the mind. I suspect you would see a run on the disability system if you tried to make everyone work until 72. Some just wouldn’t be able to do it, they would try, but would ultimately end up on disability. There are a bunch of problems lurking for workers in their 60′s that are not generally appreciated. Don’t get me started on what insurance companies want to charge for health insurance before you can get on Medicare – it’s in the neighborhood in NY of $8000 a year per person (GHI Insurance) and it doesn’t even pay for doctor’s visits, just for lab tests and stuff in a hospital. Of course last year it was 5100 a year for the same coverage, but Obama care gave us a nice bump with no additional services.
“SS should have long ago been lifted up into the 70s” blert
One problem there blert. You assume anyone will want to actually pay a 70 year old to do something other than to get out of the way of some younger, more vigorous and up to date worker. Here is the thing. Simply by virtue of hanging around the older worker tends to be more highly payed and more costly. Hence the employer all things else being equal would rather replace him with a younger worker. The younger worker if there are no jobs in the economy also tends to become more of a social problem, especially if he cannot start a family or worse feed a family.
SpeakEasy – Our under lying problem is not Malthusian growth but the lack of it. As birth rates drops the old become a bigger proportion of the population and hence a bigger problem in so many ways I can’t even begin to get into them all. But suffice it to say it is the young and new families that buy houses and all the junk that goes into them which are the current basis of our consumer economy. Geezers just fill their medicine cabinets and bitch about the world going to hell – well in my day….
PF,
Busy is good. Glad to hear it.
Good point in your article. Kicking a problem up to Central only infects Central with the problem. A similar thing happened with the XVIIth Amendment. Both the Civil Service and the XVIIth were designed to prevent petty local corruption that channeled money from appointments, especially at Customs posts or from infrastructure improvements, to urban political bosses. In effect both moved the problem into DC and eliminated the hope that competition between States or between a State and DC would provide checks and balances that cut down on graft.
Tape found:
The Union Reps rehearse talking to Governor Walker.
Lost in moderation or limbo.
Attempting to resubmit will probably get me blocked for a month.
Various parts crossed.
PF,
Busy is good. Glad to hear it.
Good point in your article. Kicking a problem up to Central only infects Central with the problem. A similar thing happened with the XVIIth Amendment. Both the Civil Service and the XVIIth were designed to prevent petty local corruption that channeled money from appointments, especially at Customs posts or from infrastructure improvements, to urban political bosses. In effect both moved the problem into DC and eliminated the hope that competition between States or between a State and DC would provide checks and balances that cut down on graft.
Tape found:
The Union Reps rehearse talking to Governor Walker.
Great now I’m on the Spam-Kill_file-List.
PF,
Busy is good. Glad to hear it.
Good point in your article. Kicking a problem up to Central only infects Central with the problem. A similar thing happened with the XVIIth Amendment. Both the Civil Service and the XVIIth were designed to prevent petty local corruption that channeled money from appointments, especially at Customs posts or from infrastructure improvements, to urban political bosses. In effect both moved the problem into DC and eliminated the hope that competition between States or between a State and DC would provide checks and balances that cut down on graft.
Tape found:
The Union Reps rehearse talking to Governor Walker.
Actually, if we want a workable solution as to how to pay for the retirement funds of our so-called public servants, we should make it law that all the funds for this will be deducted from the paychecks of our public servants who aren’t yet retired. That will focus their attention in a way that may shock them into reality.
Its always easy to order expensive drinks when somebody else is picking up the tab.
Wretchard,
I am trapped in moderation, please find and release.
Also please remove me from any Spam list it tossed me into, thank you.
27. Wretchard
While this isn’t related to Wisconsin, AFL-CIO Chief Richard Trumka has the answer.
The money is out there, somewhere; it has to be. Somebody has it, it’s just a matter of finding out who it is and taking it from them. And if it comes to it, they’ll burn down a bank or two like they did in Greece.
The problem, Wretchard, is while just about everybody else can see the coming train wreck, the public sector unions (and their leadership, specifically) simply refuse to see it. After all, the money is out there; it has to be.
KRB
blert-
“….six cousins illegally immigrate to….”
Texas or other places. Then one of the cousins of my lawn guy comes to my house saying he does patios because the lawn guy knows we want to do some work. I design the thing on the back of the napkin for him, tell him to come back and let me know how much. Have I ever heard from him again? No. Because, I suspect, I would not hand him a blank check or he is too dense to understand what I wanted or he is too lazy or……
Just because I wanted him to move some dirt and do it right. “But I do sprinklers, too.” I also asked him for that bid for the front yard. He could have done pretty well in this down economy but …….
Most of the illegal immigrants are none too smart one-trick-ponies. They know one thing and cannot even fathom reaching out to do better or more. Pathetic.
I see it all the time.
And then those here think that having to get a job and work just constitutes “lyin’ to the man”.
Ahhhh, now that makes sense.
I have always wondered why so many politicians on both sides support unrestricted illegal immigrants. Of course, some of them think they will get a guaranteed source of Democrat voters, but clearly there are others who have some smarts …
They cannot have all been stupid enough to think that all those illegals will contribute to SS. So, their other hope must have been that they will re-inflate the economy, and surely the demographic trends have been obvious for some time.
While there are certainly going to be many individuals that have health issues — that’s exactly what the disability part of SS is expected to address. As a policy issue it’s solved.
But what of all of the girls and boys who are lucky enough to be hale and hearty at 65 and have undemanding jobs like sales?
As it stands SS Disability is exploding because many boomers have discovered that their entire field of expertise has collapsed in the labor market.
As for programers and the like — H1bs should have been curtailed ages ago. They are a pure sop to Microsoft and a strategic threat to the nation. They ruin the market for technical talent. We’re de-braining America.
As for ‘over the hill’ programmers: specialize in legacy software/ languages. It’s the only port in the storm.
Lastly, the idea that ones wages ramp ever upward until retirement is now dead. The unions are going to have to face that. Their core model is broken and Red China did it. No union can survive the Leftist policy swirl that the Democrats have set loose.
More and more I see Marc Faber’s Crack Up Boom hurtling straight at us.
——-
The Duck of Death is hanging by a thread.
Next at bat appears to be Yemen.
When the weather warms then we’ll see food riots in Islamabad and Tehran. At least Afghanistan feeds itself.
BTW, Newsweak is reporting ever falling morale — for the Taliban. The American way of war is too much for them. Now they’re being seen at night, while inside buildings, while under foliage, while dreaming. The exchange ratios with the USMC are so terrible and the fighting so relentless that to survive the Taliban must flee. And now hundreds are flipping sides and ratting out their former jihadis.
The change of heart has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with fatalities. These fellows have typically seen most of their buddies blown away right before their eyes. Enough of that trauma breaks any formation.
What’s wrong with the spoils system? It directly puts pressure on the bureaucrats to do their jobs well, or their politician masters would lose the election and be replaced by another more capable bunch.
The creation of a professional civil service has resulted in a severe disconnect between the bureaucrats’ work and the consequences if they mess up.
Joe, As one in the past like Blert who suggested a retirement age of 72, most plans to raise the retirement age are phased in over time- like 15 to 20 years – so the average health of someone 72 twenty years from now would likely be materially different than than it is today. A phased in plan would still make a huge difference. Of course, an immediate raise to 72 would dramatically cut entitlement costs right away, but it would also probably be political suicide for those who voted for it.
However, as Blert has pointed out many times, raising the retirement age is the fairest and most effective way to solve the Social Security and Medicare funding problem. Sure there may need to be special adjustments and it won’t be perfect, but it will a hell of lot better than the entitlement road to ruin we are on now. You may still get your Social Security and Medicare in a few years if nothing is done, but if the economy collapses, everything else in your life will probably be a complete disaster. Remember, back in 1935 when Social Security was proposed, life expectancy was only 61.7 years average together for men and women in the US. An equivalent plan today would push the retirement age to over 80.
Off topic, but of interest to folks on this site, Frank Buckles has passed away. Frank was the last known WWI US veteran still alive.
He had to finagle things to get into the US Army when the war broke out, not meeting the physical standards. Yet he went on to serve as an ambulance driver in England and France during the war, and after the war he served escorting former German POW’s back to Germany.
He happened to be in Manila when WWII broke out, and was captured by the Japanese there in 1942. He spent the entire war in the Los Banos prison camp until liberation in 1945. During this period he led his fellow prisoners in a physical exercise regimen he concoted to keep them alive.
He spent his last days on his Gap View Farm in Charles Town, West Virginia. He’s left us now, the last of a dear group of heroes.
Wobbly…
The old system had political hacks with no competence being given jobs based upon blood and connections.
A cute vingette was the twins scene in Millers Crossing. The top mobster wants twins fresh-off-the-boat and unable to speak any English what-so-ever given a highly compensated technically challenging post in the City’s government. The Mayor gets no pity at all.
But the appointees were completely beholden to the elected officialdom. In fact, they usually were members of the campaign staff/ block workers.
The new system has technically qualified ( nominally ) people who are only beholden to the Union man. He operates as an all-powerful intermediary. He practices money politics 100% of the time and really never stops campaigning. He sleeps with the politicians and loves them the way they need to be loved: with money.
This incestuous cabal negotiates all contracts while sitting on the same side of the table. The key to all of their joint extractions is the doling out of injuries to the taxpayer. Like blood worms on a Martin the procedure is to re-tap the corpus endlessly with a cc here and a cc there. No annual increase is ever to cloy the eyeball with repugnancy.
Ordinarily such leechments would be worthy of a muckraker. But these are the decades of advocacy. When a lot of people of the Left persuasion are to benefit — especially ones providing chronically sweet emotional porn for the press to publish — then it’s all best left swept under the sofa. [ Which is getting pretty high in the sky by now. ]
Remember, these are press beats of a lifetime: a journalist can build a career by coddling these parasites. And be a co-dependent, too. So much for muckraking.
“The areas appear correct to measurement error or I’ve messed up the arithmetic!!”
Define correct! I must have missed the part where the circles are supposed to be proportional. Maybe they were chosen to fit the screen size? Engineers think proportional to each other. Artists think proportional to the format. When your only tool is a hammer, everything is a nail. Think outside the box.
I think it’s time for another beer.
Wobbly — the old spoils system was better than the new for the reason you state, as the apparatchiks of the new are far more entrenched and insulated from dismissal. And that’s the ones who are not appointed, but apply through the examination authority. But then look at the number of hacks who’ve been made millionaires by being put on the boards of directors of some pseudo govt institutions like Fanny and Freddie, and it is far worse now.
Blert — I’m glad you added that little modifier “( nominally )” because that also adds to our burdens. AAP was first stipulated for civil service before it was foisted on contractors and then grant recipients. So the civil service exams became less meaningful when the “social justice” referees cried foul because the worst exam takers wound up being from underrepresented minorities. Every “fix” brought the “best and the brightest” concept for civil service into ant-meritocratic territory. And so now, those who got jobs doing nothing useful are the loudest mouths at the protest rallies.
“political hacks with no competence being given jobs based upon blood and connections”
LOL! How different is this from your current class of bureaucrats?
At the very least, you can be reasonably sure they’d be swept out if their patron gets the boot, so there is some level of motivation to do their jobs well. And the very fact that house-cleaning would occur whenever there’s a major electoral shakeup means that entrenched interests are harder to sustain.
When we throw in the more intense media and IT scrutiny possible now, the spoils system doesn’t look too bad now.
BTW, would appreciate it very much if anybody can confirm this: does each US taxpayer dole out an average of 300 USD to subsidize agriculture?
b @ 40: As for ‘over the hill’ programmers: specialize in legacy software/ languages. It’s the only port in the storm.
Very few legacy jobs, way too few to help. It’s like telling a transportation engineer to specialize in buggywhips.
In STEM, not only does age make one’s skills suspect, whatever the reality, but ALL STEM wages are sinking year by year, the jobs becoming more and more commoditized, expected performance levels lower and lower, … don’t even get me started.
–the collective bargainers at the bargaining table with the pols the unions jhave elected, are elected, too. The competitive elections inside union hall will have turned at least in part on which candidate has promised to grow and prosper the organization in the marketplace, which is presumably the general electorate, the taxpayer citizen at large, you.
So these educators drumming on the bottoms of 5 gal buckets in the WI statehouse lobby, employed, making a hundred grand for two thirds of a year’s work, who can’t be fired, who can retire in their 50s at near full pay, who have virtually all their healthcare free, and who are able to prosper while turning out a product with a failure or slippage rate about ten times what a free market would allow (.03 vs .3), are refusing to allow the runaway senators to come home and get back to work unless a list of demands are met, one of which is to gut, defund, scuttle, and smear the small, brave, young, fresh charter school program that has already been approved.
And somehow, they’re takin’ on da MAN, on behalf of the little guy, the poor and downtrodden huddled masses? Fantastic.
Unsk – the real problem with entitlements is not SS but Medicare. Per SS I would prefer to see benefits frozen (cost of living escalator) and some means testing to raising the retirement age further. Health is a relative thing. While I might be healthy enough and even alert and possibly even interested enough to sit in my cubicle and program for another couple of decades the salient point is I sit in a cubicle. For several decades I worked on a print shop floor as a pressman/foreman and the physical demands of a job like that are much greater. A 73 year old in a lot of jobs is a threat not only to himself but to those he works with.
Yeah we are living longer than we used to but that doesn’t mean our eyes and ears and legs and reflexes still work particularly well. I just do not think there is much of a job market out there for the average 60 year old let alone a 70 year old and with globalization keeping us geezers in our jobs is probably going to mean keeping our youth out of the job market.
Part of the problem with this Wisconsin thing is we kind of quit caring if the kids learn anything in HS because it is just assumed they will be spending a bare minimum of another four years in college and likely another 2 – 7 in graduate or professional school after that. Part of the reason we have the entitlement problem is that a kid is a kid these days until he is 25 maybe 30 years old – that long before he starts to actually support himself let alone the retired generation. Everything has been pushed back literally a decade since my parents generation came of age. So now not only is the pyramid top heavy because of the slightly longer life spans and the drop in the birth rate but the start of actual productive work has been delayed as well.
In regard to raising the SS age to 70, that might not affect those in a less physical line of work. I retired at age 66 from a job as a telephone installer/repairman. At age 69 I realize I am not able to do some of the work I did three ago. The warranty has expired.
As a side note, I worked the last eleven years for a school district in California. We paid into our retirement (CalPers) and a portion of our medical insurance. The district I worked at, and the district I live in raised the medical payments and added non-paid furlough days to avoid layoffs this past year. So I don’t have much sympathy for school employees in WI.
To go and tell them they have to work at something requiring a skill would be like telling someone in 1865 that a certain peculiar institution was over and he was on his own.
Yep, but them Rebs was clearly beat. Sherman ran their nobility out of their stately homes and into the woods. Women too, high-society women most especially. Sherman made a point of that. So if we want to the message to get through the way Abolition did, we’re going to have to do our own March to the Sea through the institutions of the Left and turn their own High Society very visibly and publically out into the wood.
Difference is though, most of those Southern boys were good for something. You could tell them their old way of life was done and they had to go find a new life, but most of them had the wherewithall to do it. Today’s parasite class? Don’t know what they’d possibly be good for.
I came up with a theory after the last bout of “customer service” I went through over a billing mistake. Some percentage of people are just incompetent. They’re not necessarily bad people, they’re just bunglers. Anything beyond the simplist tasks they will screw up. 100 years ago, they were ditchdiggers and homemakers. A foreman told the men where to dig and all they had to do was say “Yes Sir” and work the shovel – not much damage they could do. The homemakers might burn dinner and botch the occasional load of laundry, but the inconvenience was limited to her immediate family.
Today, we still have the same percentage of incompetents, but we don’t have ditchdiggers and homemakers any more. We have customer service reps and government employees. We’ve created a civilization with no place for the natural bunglers, no role for them that limits the damage of their ineptitude to the point where their good nature might overcome it.
Well, no point worrying about it now, the time’s long past when we could’ve done something reasonable. All we can do now is smash it and try to build something better on the other side. Lotta suffering that’s going to happen, most of which could have been avoided if people had been more responsible. The bunglers were among the most irresponsible, turns out “voting” isn’t something their good at either. So, cry havoc and let lose the dogs of reform. For my part, I’ll feel pity, but it won’t stay my hand.
Very few legacy jobs, way too few to help. It’s like telling a transportation engineer to specialize in buggywhips.
In STEM, not only does age make one’s skills suspect, whatever the reality, but ALL STEM wages are sinking year by year, the jobs becoming more and more commoditized, expected performance levels lower and lower, … don’t even get me started.
If you’re STEM and over 30, start your own company now. Yeah, I know, not easy. But unless you’re the boss, your days are numbered at your current employer and you will be “transitioning” sooner or later anyway. Best to get a head start if you can.
Companies are going to try and outsource, downsize, hire inexperience but cheap talent. In the recent past, it’s been a financial windfall for them, but a productivity disaster. I suspect that that productivity disaster is going to catch up to them as part of the overall realignment of society we’re entering into. Companies that outsource everything are going to get their asses handed to them over the next few years.
If anything resembling a functional economy comes out the other side, STEM folks with good skills will be in high demand, but it’s not going to go through the existing channels. You’ll need new contacts, new skills, and comfort navigating the freelance world.
Engineer the rest of your career. You know the calculations say the current situation won’t work for you – don’t be like your pointy-haired boss and ignore the numbers just because the answer they give isn’t what you wanted to hear.
Yes, I know, it sucks. Believe me I know. STEM aged 45 – I’m living it and have a family to pull through.
Off topic but interesting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12588621
Apparently there’s been a major cock-up with the Russian designed, Iranian built nuclear power reactor. They’re having to unload the core. Whitehall or one of our other resident nuclear engineers will have to chime in and explain what would cause someone to unload a nuclear reactor core (crack in the pressure vessel?). No doubt the Iranians will have a cover story to save face but my guess is the Israelis played a trick on them.
Wretchard notes: “the longer cuts are delayed, the bigger they must be in future.”
Wretchard hit the nail on the head. SSI and like programs are just a scam. They are a mechanism to transfer wealth from one group of people to another – for political gain.
You can down load the full 266 page pdf report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers via Scribd and see the bloody details yourself.
http://www.kpcb.com/usainc/
Interestingly, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is a relatively liberal venture capital firm – yet they go on to show the negative net worth of USA Inc. and its ghastly income statement. They show the trend leading to financial devastation.
I would argue that putting Social Security (Federal Old-Age Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for the Needy Families, Unemployment benefits program, Health Insurance for aged and Disabled, Grants to States for Medical Assistance Programs and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) in Bankruptcy court until truly Independent Auditors OUTSIDE of the government can sort the mess out. The Social Security Complex is too big and too out of control to fix.
I think Chapter 7 bankruptcy would be best. Wipe it clean start with a clean slate. But chapter 9, 11, 12 and 13 could be done if things prove to be better than expected. Any type of fiduciary supervision is better than none.
The core problem is political manipulation and diversions of funds of said programs – corruption. This can only be stopped by truly independent auditors. Given the corrupt liberal politicians like Barack 0bama and Barney Frank I am doubtful independent auditors can be put in place without being tainted.
I recommend that Barack 0bama be legally dislodged from office as soon as possible. He is the King of Corruption. BO breeds more corruption. Next, clean out Barney Frank and the other corrupt politicians. Then the huge train wreck can be cleared and the tracks repaired.
The threats and intimidation, and actual violence by the Left is narrowing the remaining margin for any possibility of peaceful resolution of their impossible demands with the reality of empty treasure rooms.
The traitorous Mainstream News daily smear conservatives as Racist, know-nothing, violent and selfish. But it’s Leftists who for over a full decade have been documented attacking and pummeling young parents with toddlers for carrying placards with messages the Leftist thugs despise. They’re the ones who have been arrested and convicted of slashing the tires of Republican passenger vans in order to disrupt GOP courtesy transport for elderly shut-ins and nursing home patients without cars to get’em to their polling places. Democrat party operatives have been convicted of vandalizing their own party offices in attempts to frame REPUBLICANS and Tea Party members. Leftists are who have stood at a polling place with weapons, shouting racist insults and threats at people coming to vote, And it’s the Democrat President and his DOJ political appointees who have refused to prosecute the most blatant instance of voter intimidation of the last five decades.
Eight decades of goodies and privileges distributed as bribes to purchase the votes of unproductive, uneducated, and arrogant idlers have bled the nation white. The depleted treasuries of the States cannot be replenished by Federal CHECK KITING. And the Federal Government can’t any longer distribute goodies to their cronies for votes by confiscating income from citizens who used to have jobs. Too many jobs have been strangled by the Central Government’s own corruption. The lie of the “Stimulus Package” has been like poison to the economy, rewarding the Public Sector Unions by increasing the burden on the Private sector.
Businesses can’t get loans, even though we were told the stimulus money was precisely to ease credit to get the economy moving. Instead the money has been funneled to Public Sector Union Pension funds and to selected States to keep their bureaucracies from having to lay off anyone, while the rest of us are losing our 401-k retirement funds and our jobs by the millions.
This administration has deliberately hobbled entrepreneurs, destroyed farms by withholding irrigation water, prolonged and intensified our dependence on petroleum from Jihadists by outlawing domestic exploration and development, destroyed the alternative green development when it was attempted by anyone other than the friends and political contributors to the administration… the list of sickening corruption and stubborn and ignorant dismantling of this nation continues to accelerate.
We’re being governed by MONSTERS.
The more the Union fat bastards show up with their bull horns, the pissed-offer I get. They’re drawing a salary while they skip work to spit on the rest of us. For fifty years, since I was a teenager, I’ve been told that having a government job was more or less a guarantee of job security.
PISS ON THAT.
Nobody deserves job security just for lucking into a government job. If tomorrow 70 percent of Government workers could be fired for their incompetence, insults and rudeness to the public, for taking their phones off the hook, for moonlighting on other jobs while on the clock for their government job, etc. we’d see clearly that the work has been done all along by the OTHER 30 percent.
Sad, but things will probably get a lot worse before the real crisis hits.
Look at a wildebeest on the African savannah. It can carry a hell of a lot of parasites. But eventually, the parasites suck so many nutrients from the animal that it falls to its knees, and then it’s killed by a pack of dogs and becomes lunch.
@38. RagnarD
Are you upset that the illegal forgot to return the patio napkin plans or that you may be forced to hire licensed contractors?
Yeah, entitlements are a mess and the big ones – SS and Medicare are the most of what we need to attack. Where did this raise the retirement age to 72 thing come from? Raise it just a year or two from where it is now and then reevaluate.
Other things – we need some moderate amount of protectionism because factory work is the only thing some folks can do. If all their jobs go to China, they and we are screwed. This is very odd because we all learned in college economics the facile arguments about comparative advantage meaning it is always better to trade than to close your markets and try to do everything at home. However, we have huge chunks of the populace with nothing useful to do, so the preceeding argument can’t be right.
As for Medicare, yes, a big problem. I would attempt to solve it by doubling the number of doctors in the country – aggressively open more medical schools and recruit doctors from the rest of the world. Competition should bring down prices. The cost of drugs will still be prohibitive. The solution to that is to drastically cut back on the activities of the FDA. They admit they can’t get their job done. It now costs on the average 10 years and one half billion dollars to bring a new drug to market. There ought to be programs of informed consent where a potential user of a new drug could demonstrate that he had thought through all the risks and rewards and then, as an adult, had decided to take a chance on a new medicine. I am presuming that before this the FDA would just do some initial safety testing and nothing more – something like the current FDA phase 1 testing done on animals and a small human population. Then as the drug begins to be used, monitor the patients – let the statistics that develop arbitrate what should then be done.
In general, I feel the tea party has most of the right answers. There is a Tea Party National Recovery Plan on one of the web sites that were up for the last election. The site hasn’t been updated, but the plan is still there (look for national recovery plan) and it is quite good. The site is martea.net.
JJ Redfan #56
“Nobody deserves job security just for lucking into a government job. If tomorrow 70 percent of Government workers could be fired for their incompetence, insults and rudeness to the public, for taking their phones off the hook, for moonlighting on other jobs while on the clock for their government job, etc. we’d see clearly that the work has been done all along by the OTHER 30 percent.”
You nailed it, sir.
These people’s unnaturally strong desire to worship at the altar of the false god of perfect income security will be their undoing.
It can never be stated enough or too strongly that the overwhelming bulk of public employees, teachers especially, are there to get thirty years of guaranteed paychecks and a guaranteed pension and healthcare, period. Not to do a good job, not to help children, not even to get out of the house. They are there to avoid any stress whatsoever that their income stream could be interrupted for any reason, and will do whatever is necessary to prevent that possibility from existing.
It’s the reason why no public employee is comfortable with another public employee losing their job for any reason, up to and in some cases including committing felonies. The unions always oppose anyone losing their job and pension no matter the offense because the rank and file are terrified of the very concept of losing their own perfect job security. If one person can lose their income stream for some reason – any reason – then the possibility exists that they could lose their own. Given that the main (or in many cases, only) reason public employees took their jobs was because they believed they had perfect job security no matter what, this is not to be abided. Just thinking about it is a stressor they cannot handle.
As a consequence of that, any threat to this perceived prefect world is treated as an existential threat.
The truth of the matter is this. If you took a hundred public school teachers and told them, “We’re going to continue to give you your guaranteed pay and benefits and schedule, but instead of teaching, we’re going to drop off two jars at your house, one filled with a thousand beans, and the other empty, and we want you to move the beans from one jar to the other one at a time and then back for seven hours a day for nine months a year”, only something like ten or twenty percent of them would quit and try to get another job. The other eighty or ninety percent would do the bean thing – some few would grumble, most would be indifferent, and no small percentage would be ecstatic. Once you understand the truth of this, and its implications, it enables you to deal with these folks the way they ought to be dealt with.
And before someone else says “Oh, don’t you think that private sector people might do the same?”, the answer is of course, there are private sector workers with the same disgusting motivations, but at least in that venue there exist market forces which tend to discourage these notions.
Beyond this aspect of the current struggle, I would also say that in terms of contract law the public sector employees in WI are not bargaining in good faith. A good contract is one where benefits and risks are assigned fairly between the parties. The teachers want ALL of the cost risks associated with increased health care costs and underfunded retirement benefits to accrue to the other party (the taxpayer). Who would willingly sign a contract with another party who took this attitude? If the teachers won’t accept at least half the risk for these things they shouldn’t expect the taxpayers to sign such a contract. Anyone with any business experience wouldn’t.
dfmt@58: I would attempt to solve it by doubling the number of doctors in the country – aggressively open more medical schools and recruit doctors from the rest of the world.
I wonder if the AMA considers itself a union?
#58 Dannyfrom middletown
“As for Medicare, yes, a big problem. I would attempt to solve it by doubling the number of doctors in the country – aggressively open more medical schools …. Competition should bring down prices.”
This has been discussed at length here at BC before and I’ve taken a lot of flack for my ideas. For the record I’ll state that I am not a physician nor am I related to one, although I sometimes do business with them.
Since applicants to medical school now represent the very top of each year’s college classes, and ten percent of even this elite group can’t hack the work or material of med school, opening more schools isn’t the answer unless you want to see a great diminution of quality of health care.
You’d have to lower graduation standards just to graduate more docs out of the ones getting into med school now. You’d have to lower both entrance AND graduation standards to graduate docs in the numbers you’re imagining. Turning out lots of much less qualified doctors. Who will willingly go to see these docs who are less qualified?
Me? No.
You? Will you take your child who is on death’s doorstep to one of these docs who is playing for what amounts to an expansion team medical facility? I doubt you’d volunteer for that.
Danny, I get the supply and demand thing, but in this area I just don’t see how it can work unless the public at large voluntarily GREATLY diminishes their expectations of the qualifications of their doctors. I think this is an area which is the exception that proves the rule as far as supply and demand go.
The decrease you seek in drug/device regulations and development costs I think is a good idea. However in that area as well we have to be willing to admit that some drugs may come to market which should have been tested more for safety/efficacy. I think that we can scale back some of the regs reasonably in this case, but that’s my personal take (and yours, apparently), and I recognize that the majority might not agree.
60. YBR
“I wonder if the AMA considers itself a union?”
Lots of misconceptions out there about the AMA, YBR.
For one thing, they represent only about thirty five percent of physicians. By contrast, other health groups like nurses and dentists and optometrists have nearly twice that level of membership.
Secondly, they aren’t a government agency and do not set the standards or class sizes for schools. This is largely done by state boards which in most cases are populated not only by doctors but by other individuals (in some cases this is by state law) and by the universities themselves, who are more interested in having medical schools to aggrandize themselves with research grants and could give a rat’s ass about the AMA.
Thirdly, as far as I know, no health organization like the AMA engages in collective bargaining.
I’m not always happy with the AMA’s actions or proclamations, either. Large organizations do tend towards self preservation. But I don’t think comparing them to a union is apt.
nmu@62: But I don’t think comparing them to a union is apt.
The AMA might not be considered a union in the formal sense, but their political clout exceeds that of the AFL-CIO.
I really hate to give even my screen name to this—it’s embarassing.
Unhappily I must side with dannyfrommiddletown, on the issue of working and age,.
I worked full-time at a well-known motel chain as I attended a local university, After many long hours in accounting and increasing levels of responsibility I became the manager and from there I moved into the traveling accounting team of the managing holding corporation. I finished my degree and I thought I was pretty hot stuff. At that point the only anxiety I had felt was the momentary variety after a night of cramming as one sloshes with a belly full of coffee and soda pop into class with the cold-fear certainty that you haven’t a prayer of passing the exam. I’ve even had that nightmare years after graduation. But I never had experienced that on the job.
A few of my friends and I (employees working in the various other motels in our chain) combined our skills in 1981 and we organized a property management company specializing in motel operations. Among us we had nearly 27 years hands-on, over-lapping experience in the industry. However we had a mistake In our business model as we thought our natural customer should be the individual operations of about 150 rooms, including restaurant facilities, etc. whose owners were not members of a chain. This was based on our previous, individual experiences that there were many local operations that were using crude accounting methods that left many gaps and holes down which the money disappeared.
It has been brought home to me in letters of granite that weigh heavily on my chest that I am very much prone to error myself, so those of you who think you detect no humility, please forgive this next…
In the course of the years I had plenty of time to rethink the assumptions of our business model, but, more’s the pity, that rethink came too late…
• I discovered that the people that owned these smaller hotels had several characteristics in common: a) whether for pride, ineptitude, or a true maverick personality, they were determined on a course of individual self employment, b) they prided themselves in their ability to endure hard work and long hours, c) they had an good appreciation of the physical needs of their operation. okay good things.
• I discovered that other shared characteristics that were less obvious: d) as a group, they had a poorly concealed contempt for anyone that did not have a comparable level of income and were unwilling to take the risk of starting their own business — read just about everyone else. kinda negative here, but true.
• I discovered that banks were surprisingly less critical of business plans than the university texts had suggested. As we wrote contracts through the community I came to realize that another shared characteristic among these owners was that the they all had access to financing, yet — and this was a very big yet, not one of these owners understood ANYTHING serious about front desk operations, they didn’t understand the cash register and it’s relations to asset security, bookkeeping, and accounting was a complete mystery that was only appreciated when it could be used to save taxes. This was true across the board with every owner without exception — the only mystery to me is that we did not expect or aim or companies services at that customer profile. I can’t yet figure if that was a bug or a feature, but it was unbelievably consistent.
For instance, I found one owner who ignored the tapes and cash register reports; he lumped the aggregate money together, and simply counted the cash and credit cards collected from his bars and restaurant nightly, his assistant recounted his tabulations, and the next day, if the secretary’s count matched theirs, the money was deposited. These people had no understanding of matching the count to the cash registers; the bar tenders had open season on the cash, and could have pocketed all the money they dared every night in the summer. It’s hard to be diplomatic at that level of stupidity when trying to explain the need to understand the cash register operations. I found my head spinning as I tried to understand why a bank would finance his operation.
One of the jobs that kept me busy in the early years was that I had to write two manuals of operations for cash registers explaining cash and credit card management ; and I also did most of the teaching to the employees of our clients, but that was the easy part, but understand this next point – that was the easy part. The first manual explained department keys and procedures for shift-end checkout; the second manual included management information explaining those department keys, operating procedures, and corrections.
• I discovered that even with operations manual, “the hardest sell” was any effort to educate the owner, this was true in every case. They wanted any advantage we could provide, just as long as their supreme understanding of all things business was not challenged in any way. My interest in their education was not pride; it sprang from several reasons: 1) I had to answer money questions to the owners from daily cash register operations — I needed them to get to a level where that was not a daily problem. These people could not distinguish or trust that there is a difference between a cash refund and an accounting correction – a refund for instance on the cash key to correct an over charge. They could not seem to grasp that it was an accepted procedure nationwide that a mistake on the cash key had to be corrected on that same key to maintain system integrity. 2) as the company/person in charge of the cash systems between the owner and local and federal governments, I had no intention of leaving myself and our company in a position where the owner could disavow any knowledge or responsibility for my handling of the money. I began to work much longer hours and I was feeling the tension of the responsibility – especially the aggravation of endlessly explaining these details; I was finding myself sweating in air-conditioned rooms.
• I discovered that I had really grown-up. I had bills, motorcycles, girlfriends – I mean I was no longer impressed, as I had been in my youth, by the scowling authority figure that strutted about their dominion, shouting orders and sarcastic abuse at his hapless employees. They were trying to cover their own shortcomings with a mask of unapproachable god-hood. Within the community many of these people were held in high regard, but I had come to see their serious incompetency in running their businesses, and was less impressed.
I was on the verge of the realization that everyone can make a profit in flush times.
I had been under pressure for years, but the worst hit in the late eighties. The tourist business had been booming for years, but a widely publicized riot in our city crippled tourism for the next 4 or 5 years. The riot involved only about 100,00 people and a fraction of the area of the LA riot, but the press played it up like it was comparable. Our mayor chose the cowardly path most likely to leave herself politically viable in the political future and did not call in the state militia or police, that was left to the Governor. The rioters took full advantage of their anonymity and destroyed many local businesses. Any business left standing was screwed by the national coverage of the event that only lasted three days.
This changed the everything. I had clients that were fully invested and couldn’t change loan commitments, and I had contracts – like Ahab I was lashed to the whale. We we cornered and there was only one way left — like Slim Pickins, we had to ride the bomb down… One of my clients had just added twenty rooms, rebuilt his swimming pool, added additional banquet facilities, and a parking garage. He had re-mortgaged everything, and was in for a cool 7 million on top of his previous loans. No money in — at night you could almost hear the crickets in the empty motels — that’s always funny in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. You couldn’t stop an owner from making a bad decision, and as they got desperate they made some.
• I discovered that everyday – half way through the day I had to change clothes. My suit, shirt, everything – but the knot of my tie was soaked with my sweat, and I couldn’t remember a time before indigestion. A dental specialist helped with my teeth; I had constant pain in my jaw caused by grinding my teeth in my sleep. I never liked prescription pain pills, but an old motorcycle injury to my lower back was making my life miserable. I could barely walk from the parking garage to my office – I realized I was holding my breath because of the pain, and I was taking 20 or more asprin daily. The only relief was when I could lie down and take the weight off – the pain was almost instantly relieved. I could only lie on my right side.
We struggled on as we tried cutting expenses, and renegotiating with the banks, and even looking for investors–I know, those meetings were devastating. Try to convince new investment money that this was unlikely to ever happen again. I wanted to avoid my clients, but couldn’t, if Sales can’t generate customers, no amount of acounting skills will save a company.
We were talking about anxiety on the job. I’ve never been on the battlefield, but in my own small way I think I have glimmer of understanding. The fight-or-flight arousal and the flow of chemicals that support it was designed/evolved to cope with a survival condition that could be relieved; it is a condition that should be temporary.
But when you are trapped in that environment every day, you can’t fight it or fix it, you just have to take it indefinitely for years at a time. People demanding that which you cannot give, every day sweating, your shoulders tensed against the coming blow, new and increasingly desperate plans, disappointment, angry yelling matches that never settle anything, trembling before the next court hearing, vomiting in the toilet after a particularly bad meeting… Days stretching into years, sleepless nights spent desperately trying to figure any solution, but with everything leading inevitably to failure.
On the day it finally came, for a few minutes I was surprised that it had finally happened. I sat making an inventory of possessions bankruptcy law would let me claim, and wondering when I might expect a court injunction. I thought at the time I felt relief and I remember thinking that I was surprisingly calm. But then right after lunch I felt the most overwhelming impulse to vomit, as this passed I realized I was sweating and I tingling in my left hand spread to my left leg and my voice dropped about two octaves as the condition spread to my throat. I thought at the time that I was maintaining pretty good control, until I finally had to get someone else to dial. I didn’t think I was confused, but I couldn’t manage 9-1-1.
To this point some parts of my recovery went fairly well. But now, 15 years later, I inhabit a world where: • English might as well have been French. • Most of the four and five letter words were gone, and I had trouble telling a 3 from a 5. • I slowly and painfully conversed with my brother on the internet, so he was the first to spot these problems. Spell check only goes so far- for instance, it doesn’t draw my attention to the fact I may have used the wrong word or repeated. It still is a problem that the word “does” as in “He does a good job” does not look right to me. It looks like “plural female deer” where I happily spell it “dose” • While I was incapacitated my parents died, and my health insurance disappeared because the person who had power of attorney missed that expense so I pay for my own.
bogie wheel (I really think this should be capitalized as I respect your opinions) I have been happy to agree with you on many of your postings, but anxiety on the job is a real problem. Those of you who have seen previous posts will remember that I am very much against obama care. I’d like to say it was a matter of principle, but the unvarnished truth is I hate having to explain myself to doctors, I hate having the sordid details out in front for everyone to judge, I hate having to beg “Please, sir, fill this prescription for me.” Every month they dole out these heart medicines like there is some hot black market just waiting. And God forbid they should give you a medication that actually relieves pain…. A couple of years ago, I had a procedure where the shoved a camera through a vein in my thigh to investigate my heart — the pain medicine they used let me walk completely upright rather than bent over for the first time in years. Let me have that. I’ll risk getting hooked.
Unfortunately I see no other solution than to shoot all the bosses until they learn to understand computers and accounting. Then we need to shoot the fat b@#%*% freeloaders that are grabbing the last pies.
I really hate to give even my screen name to this—this is embarassing
Unhappily I must side with dannyfrommiddletown, on the issue of working and age,.
I worked full-time at a well-known motel chain as I attended a local university, After many long hours in accounting and increasing levels of responsibility I became the manager and from there I moved into the traveling accounting team of the managing holding corporation. I finished my degree and I thought I was pretty hot stuff. At that point the only anxiety I had felt was the momentary variety after a night of cramming as one sloshes with a belly full of coffee and soda pop into class with the cold-fear certainty that you haven’t a prayer of passing the exam. I’ve even had that nightmare years after graduation. But I never had experienced that on the job.
A few of my friends and I (employees working in the various other motels in our chain) combined our skills in 1981 and we organized a property management company specializing in motel operations. Among us we had nearly 27 years hands-on, over-lapping experience in the industry. However we had a mistake In our business model as we thought our natural customer should be the individual operations of about 150 rooms, including restaurant facilities, etc. whose owners were not members of a chain. This was based on our previous, individual experiences that there were many local operations that were using crude accounting methods that left many gaps and holes down which the money disappeared.
It has been brought home to me in letters of granite that weigh heavily on my chest that I am very much prone to error myself, so those of you who think you detect no humility, please forgive this next…
In the course of the years I had plenty of time to rethink the assumptions of our business model, but, more’s the pity, that rethink came too late…
• I discovered that the people that owned these smaller hotels had several characteristics in common: a) whether for pride, ineptitude, or a true maverick personality, they were determined on a course of individual self employment, b) they prided themselves in their ability to endure hard work and long hours, c) they had an good appreciation of the physical needs of their operation. okay good things.
• I discovered that other shared characteristics that were less obvious: d) as a group, they had a poorly concealed contempt for anyone that did not have a comparable level of income and were unwilling to take the risk of starting their own business — read just about everyone else. kinda negative here, but true.
• I discovered that banks were surprisingly less critical of business plans than the university texts had suggested. As we wrote contracts through the community
I came to realize that another shared characteristic among these owners was that the they all had access to financing, yet — and this was a very big yet, not one of these owners understood ANYTHING serious about front desk operations, they didn’t understand the cash register and it’s relations to asset security, bookkeeping, and accounting was a complete mystery that was only appreciated when it could be used to save taxes. This was true across the board with every owner without exception — the only mystery to me is that we did not expect or aim or companies services at that customer profile. I can’t yet figure if that was a bug or a feature, but it was unbelievably consistent.
For instance, I found one owner who ignored the tapes and cash register reports; he lumped the aggregate money together, and simply counted the cash and credit cards collected from his bars and restaurant nightly, his assistant recounted his tabulations, and the next day, if the secretary’s count matched theirs, the money was deposited. These people had no understanding of matching the count to the cash registers; the bar tenders had open season on the cash, and could have pocketed all the money they dared every night in the summer. It’s hard to be diplomatic at that level of stupidity when trying to explain the need to understand the cash register operations. I found my head spinning as I tried to understand why a bank would finance his operation.
One of the jobs that kept me busy in the early years was that I had to write two manuals of operations for cash registers explaining cash and credit card
management ; and I also did most of the teaching to the employees of our clients, but that was the easy part, but understand this next point – that was the easy part.
The first manual explained department keys and procedures for shift-end checkout; the second manual included management information explaining those department keys, operating procedures, and corrections.
• I discovered that even with operations manual, “the hardest sell” was any effort to educate the owner, this was true in every case. They wanted any advantage we could provide, just as long as their supreme understanding of all things business was not challenged in any way. My interest in their education was not pride; it sprang from several reasons: 1) I had to answer money questions to the owners from daily cash register operations — I needed them to get to a level where that was not a daily problem. These people could not distinguish or trust that there is a difference between a cash refund and an accounting correction – a refund for instance on the cash key to correct an over charge. They could not seem to grasp that it was an accepted procedure nationwide that a mistake on the cash key had to be corrected on that same key to maintain system integrity. 2) as the company/person in charge of the cash systems between the owner and local and federal governments, I had no intention of leaving myself and our company in a position where the owner could disavow any knowledge or responsibility for my handling of the money. I began to work much longer hours and I was feeling the tension of the responsibility – especially the aggravation of endlessly explaining these details; I was finding myself sweating in air-conditioned rooms.
• I discovered that I had really grown-up. I had bills, motorcycles, girlfriends – I mean I was no longer impressed, as I had been in my youth, by the scowling authority figure that strutted about their dominion, shouting orders and sarcastic abuse at his hapless employees. They were trying to cover their own shortcomings with a mask of unapproachable god-hood. Within the community many of these people were held in high regard, but I had come to see their serious incompetency in running their businesses, and was less impressed.
I was on the verge of the realization that everyone can make a profit in flush times.
I had been under pressure for years, but the worst hit in the late eighties.
The tourist business had been booming for years, but a widely publicized riot in our city crippled tourism for the next 4 or 5 years. The riot involved only about 100,00 people and a fraction of the area of the LA riot, but the press played it up like it was comparable. Our mayor chose the cowardly path most likely to leave herself politically viable in the political future and did not call in the state militia or police, that was left to the Governor. The rioters took full advantage of their anonymity and destroyed many local businesses. Any business left standing was screwed by the national coverage of the event that only lasted three days.
This changed the everything. I had clients that were fully invested and couldn’t change loan commitments, and I had contracts – like Ahab I was lashed to the whale. We we cornered and there was only one way left — like Slim Pickins, we had to ride the bomb down… One of my clients had just added twenty rooms, rebuilt his swimming pool, added additional banquet facilities, and a parking garage. He had re-mortgaged everything, and was in for a cool 7 million on top of his previous loans. No money in — at night you could almost hear the crickets in the empty motels — that’s always funny in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. You couldn’t stop an owner from making a bad decision, and as they got desperate they made some.
• I discovered that everyday – half way through the day I had to change clothes. My suit, shirt, everything – but the knot of my tie was soaked with my sweat, and I couldn’t remember a time before indigestion. A dental specialist helped with my teeth
I had constant pain in my jaw caused by grinding my teeth in my sleep. I never liked prescription pain pills, but an old motorcycle injury to my lower back was making my life miserable. I could barely walk from the parking garage to my office – I realized I was holding my breath because of the pain, and I was taking 20 or more asprin. The only relief was when I could lie down and take the weight off – the pain was almost instantly relieved. I could only lie on my right side.
We struggled on as we tried cutting expenses, and renegotiating with the banks, and even looking for investors–I know, those meetings were devastating. Try to convince new investment money that this was unlikely to ever happen again.
I wanted to avoid my clients, but couldn’t, if Sales can’t generate customers, no amount of acounting skills will save a company.
We were talking about anxiety on the job. I’ve never been on the battlefield, but in my own small way I think I have glimmer of understanding. The fight-or-flight arousal and the flow of chemicals that support it was designed/evolved to cope with a survival condition that could be relieved; it is a condition that should be temporary.
But when you are trapped in that environment every day, you can’t fight it or fix it, you just have to take it indefinitely for years at a time. People demanding that which you cannot give, every day sweating, your shoulders tensed against the coming blow, new and increasingly desperate plans, disappointment, angry yelling matches that never settle anything, trembling before the next court hearing, vomiting in the toilet after a particularly bad meeting… Days stretching into years, sleepless nights spent desperately trying to figure any solution, but with everything leading inevitably to failure.
On the day it finally came, for a few minutes I was surprised that it had finally happened. I sat making an inventory of possessions bankruptcy law would let me claim, and wondering when I might expect a court injunction. I thought at the time I felt relief and I remember thinking that I was surprisingly calm. But then right after lunch I felt the most overwhelming impulse to vomit, as this passed I realized I was sweating and I tingling in my left hand spread to my left leg and my voice dropped about two octaves as the condition spread to my throat. I thought at the time that I was maintaining pretty good control, until I finally had to get someone else to dial. I didn’t think I was confused, but I couldn’t manage 9-1-1.
To this point some parts of my recovery went fairly well. But now, 15 years later, I inhabit a world where: • English might as well have been French. • Most of the four and five letter words were gone, and I had trouble telling a 3 from a 5. • I slowly and painfully conversed with my brother on the internet, so he was the first to spot these problems. Spell check only goes so far- for instance, it doesn’t draw my attention to the fact I may have used the wrong word or repeated. It still is a problem that the word “does” as in “He does a good job” does not look right to me. It looks like “plural female deer” where I happily spell it “dose” • While I was incapacitated my parents died, and my health insurance disappeared because the person who had power of attorney missed that expense so I pay for my own.
bogie wheel (I really think this should be capitalized as I respect your opinions) I have been happy to agree with you on many of your postings, but anxiety on the job is a real problem. Those of you who have seen previous posts will remember that I am very much against obama care. I’d like to say it was a matter of principle, but the unvarnished truth is I hate having to explain myself to doctors, I hate having the sordid details out in front for everyone to judge, I hate having to beg “Please, sir, fill this prescription for me.” Every month they dole out these heart medicines like there is some hot black market just waiting. And God forbid they should give ou a medication that actually relieves pain…. A couple of years ago, I had a procedure where the shoved a camera through a vein in my thigh to investigate my heart — the pain medicine they used let me walk completely upright rather than bent over for the first time in years. Let me have that. I’ll risk getting hooked.
Unfortunately I see no other solution than to shoot all the bosses until they learn to understand computers and accounting. We need to shoot the idiot bosses in over their heads who do not understand the processes they command – they really believe that shouting is a valid business method. We’ve gotten them to give up whips, now we need them to dial back their attitudes. Then we need to shoot the fat bast@^$ freeloaders that are grabbing the last pies.
blert – more data for your spreadsheet?
http://www.stanford.edu/group/polisci/downloads/moe-Political%20Control%20and%20the%20Power%20of%20the%20Agent-%20JLEO%20V22%20N1.pdf
Conclusions:
“When a candidate is supported by the unions, her probability of winning increases dramatically, so much so that the impact of union support appears to be roughly the same as the impact of incumbency. In terms of total impact, union influence may be even greater than this suggests, because union victories literally produce incumbents—and the power of incumbency then works for union candidates to boost their probability of victory still further in future elections.”
And:
“[P]ublic bureaucrats’ turnout advantage over other citizens is much greater than the existing literature would lead us to expect. It also offers persuasive new grounds for believing that their high turnout is indeed motivated by occupational self-interest—and more generally, that they are actively and purposely engaged in an electoral effort to control their own superiors.”
The functional difference between a public union and a political lobby is what?
Not much, YBR, other than unions are much more unfettered by law and regulation than typical political lobbies are.
In Texas, where unlike Wisconsin collective bargaining by public unions is not allowed, the teachers’ union has nonetheless succeeded in getting the state to deduct union PAC contributions from teachers’ paychecks for them. Not union dues, PAC (Political Action Committee) contributions. Despite the fact that, under state law, this is expressly forbidden.
Like in the UAW vs. the GM and Chrysler bondholders, or in union special treatment in Obamacare, when unions are up against the law, the unions win.
overtherainbow:
“anxiety on the job is a real problem”
First, my condolences for your stroke and condition. I hope that despite everything you get to recover.
The stress you put yourself through was an extreme thing. Certain individuals do this, perhaps it is genetic, perhaps it is environment, perhaps it is both. Circumstances put a lot of stress on you and, for whatever reason, you rode that wave into bad health. I wish you had a friend or spouse or other relative who could have talked you down from this. We shouldn’t live to work, we should work to live (this is coming from someone who is a business owner himself with all the attending stressors). Someone who cared about you should have been there to tell you it’s all just stuff and a smart, hard working guy like you would be alright even if you stumbled along the way. Nobody did. That’s awful.
You couldn’t fight or flee, so you were trying to kill yourself, and you didn’t even realize it. Attempted suicide by stress is an awful thing, made worse because the person doing it usually assumes he’s doing the only thing and a noble thing. (I get the noble part, but the “only” part just isn’t so.) And the first time it happened to someone I knew, I didn’t recognize the signs well enough to intervene. Unfortunately, he was successful in his attempt. I’ve been able to help prevent other guys I know from making the same mistake subsequently.
But to the comment that I quoted form your post – anxiety on the job being a problem is true in a myriad of ways. It’s expression in your case is probably the least common way it is expressed (thank God!), and as I said above, you at least had the nobility to be doing the right thing, albeit to an extreme which made your actions potentially deadly.
Other ways of dealing (or not) with job anxiety are just as awful or worse on a personal AND society-wide scale and do not even have the veneer of decency or any positive attribute at all. In 2011 America dysfunctional dealings with job stress are far more likely to manifest themselves the way public sector employees do than what happened with you – that is to say, an absolute terror of having their income stream in jeopardy for any reason, coupled with an absolute refusal to work harder or make any sacrifices. And as a taxpayer I am under NO obligation to succor THEIR anxiety – an anxiety as completely unfounded as yours was justified – under those sorts of demands and circumstances.
I can’t remember the author, but the saying is true: No public employee can ever be made to understand an argument against his income, no matter how logical or ethical it might be. As a taxpayer and a citizen, I am obliged to protect myself against the consequences of such an attitude. I do have sympathy for what happened to you, OTRB. However, if the unions can’t handle the far simpler stress of what’s happening in WI, I have literally no sympathy for them. Your situation is completely different from theirs, in every meaningful way.
something USEFUL from the government and census data:
An interactive map that lets you see the US filtered by race, income, education, unemployment rate, % employed by gov, etc.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/ruralatlas/atlas.htm#map
the “natural change rate” is interesting – most counties in WV are shrinking into oblivion. Also, “economic dependence”.
Have fun!
One problem there blert. You assume anyone will want to actually pay a 70 year old to do something other than to get out of the way of some younger, more vigorous and up to date worker. Here is the thing. Simply by virtue of hanging around the older worker tends to be more highly payed and more costly. Hence the employer all things else being equal would rather replace him with a younger worker. The younger worker if there are no jobs in the economy also tends to become more of a social problem, especially if he cannot start a family or worse feed a family.
In #17 I seconded blert on raising the SS and Medicare ages. I also suggested means testing for both.
Doing some very crude, arbitrary math, I’ll assume that 20% of seniors have sufficient retirement income to be means tested. If those seniors received 2/3 on average of what they would under the current system from SS, it would result in a savings of about $46 billion/year. That’s not huge against a backdrop of $707 billion/year, but it is substantial. Do something similar with Medicare, and you’re looking at some $80 billion in yearly savings.
Eliminating the ridiculously high age limts for SCHIP and health insurance child dependency (somewhere between 26 and 28 yrs old) and returning it to at least 21, or even 18, should also result in significant savings.
C@68: when unions are up against the law, the unions win.
If one were given to cynicism, one might rewrite that sentence replacing “unions” with “money.”
Some of the recent legal decisions in my home state (in wonderful fly-over country) give one pause.
The legal system is as corrupt as the finance houses on Wall St.
The Big Picture take-away, for me, is the depth of corruption within our own country. Anyone who pays attention can see it in things big and small.
It seems that we’re at Peak Corruption.
Which may be slightly overwrought, but I doubt by much.
Issues of fairness and justice remaining elusive.
YBR #72:
“It seems that we’re at Peak Corruption. Which may be slightly overwrought, but I doubt by much.”
From your lips to God’s ears, sir. I certainly hope that this is the peak, because if it is it means the bad stuff is going down, going forward.
rhardin (#4): Exactly. I’m as much of a free-association absolutist as I am a free-speech one. Join up with your like-minded fellows all you want–have at it, advocate, educate, pool your resources, whatever. Just don’t think that your association entitles you to get the privilege of collective bargaining, or closed shop, or union shop, or agency shop, or anything like that.
I hear ya, YBR, on corruption and on monied interests. The stick in the graw in the article I linked is a statistical finding that, when it comes to local and state elections, union support is _AS_ powerful as incumbency. Perhaps even more powerful, as union support can generate incumbency and then use it as a force multiplier.
Ever wonder why all urban centers everwhere are blue on the red/blue map? Without exception? Why do big city American politics always come out blue, from Des Moines to Miami? Wasn’t always this way. What are the contributing factors in this phenomenon?
In the battle against corruption, one must start somewhere. There’s a real good place to start.
Wisconsin State Assemblyman Gordon Hintz (D) on losing a vote, “You are F’ing Dead.” Is he in jail?
no mo…
Still stuck on ….. ?
Generations ago the medical schools were virtually exclusive male. The graduates, almost to a man, then dedicated their lives to long hours for incomes that were nice — but not a guarantee to opulence.
The per capita tempo of med school graduates has dropped over time. The attendees are now pretty much a 50:50 mix. Yet the females, virtually to a woman, NEVER practice at the tempo of the prior age. Further, they shun all of the high pressure domains like trauma care.
This refutes utterly “no mo’s” thesis: the female half of the student body represents a politically inspired displacement of qualified male candidates by women. What ever standards are required to do so they are normed down/up for women. Half of the slots are held for them. So there are two gates/ selection hurdles, one for the guys and one for the gals. This truth is obscured — because of the optics — and the public is always told there is only one unified standard of excellence. It’s a mathematically absurd position, of course. But for those who emote their way to conclusions it goes down like mother’s milk.
The selection of students simply does not follow intelligence, IQ, or any other ‘arbitrary’ ranking system. Instead the ‘politically ideal’ student body mix drives everything. If the first pass does not generate the requisite blend then the bar is raised for the ‘too many’ and lowered for the ‘too few.’
Eventually the system morphs until there are separate hurdles for each politically defined group. The highest hurdle is demanded of those pesky bright White guys. Jews always tuck in behind the White guy category — because if they were normed as Ashkenazi their chances would collapse. Thusly, they are the only political category that doesn’t exist.
[ Back in the 40's Ashkenazi Jews were normed out of the Ivies. This meant that only genius Jews at the extreme end of social connection could get in. Those lucky few were doubly blessed as political events unfolded.
The Ivies represent such a small slice of the education space. If they really permitted a purely meritocratic ranking for selecting their students the mathematics would drive them towards massive concentrations of Ashkenazi -- like 50 to 60 percent! ]
So the whole notion of todays selection process being purely meritocratic is a total joke. Yet such is at the heart of “no mo’s” argument.
In fact there are many perfectly qualified student candidates that are booted out based on todays political bias.
No mo also doesn’t acknowledge the staggering percentage of foreign born, foreign educated doctors admitted to practice in the US with medical educations seriously weaker than American norms.
No mo also doesn’t dwell on the staggering numbers of White guys educated in places like Ganada and Mexico by White American medical experts that then come back and practice medicine here.
ONLY medicine imports talent at this scale: 2/3 of practicing doctors did not come through American medical schools.
Again, this completely impeaches “no mo’s” argument.
When prices for goods or labor are rocketing up it is a signal that more output is essential.
No mo mentioned the fraction of doctors graduating that are duds. Thank political selection. The losers are going to mate up with the lowered standards required to get the ‘right kind’ of diversity for the school.
Medicine has been entirely turned into a political football. Obamacare is a scrum. It will surely pop the ball.
——
Medicine in America today is a cost plus enterprise. So is it any wonder that we see the same crazy abuses that typify a wartime economy?
Hey, no mo uro,
It’s not that bad now. I just couldn’t see another way — besides there were relatives buried deeper in the same fix with me. I thought of escaping the ship down the cables, but I knew I’d never be welcome at the Sunday family dinner again. Well, that and I broke a knuckle on a rat guard on my first attempt…
Anyway I wasn’t alone, the experience of the aftermath and the long fall hurt a lot people’s health. I don’t mean all the people I referenced were bad guys. But when you have years, and big bucks invested there just doesn’t seem to be any other way. I mean look at today’s situation, millions of people with big mortgages and no money; and the media only cover this once in a great while — it’s no longer hot and sexy news; but what about the poor people stuck in the situation? It’s like reading the Grapes of Wrath. a casual reader might not notice that family members fell by the wayside and slipped away to strike out on their own.
A family without income and a home has lost it’s best main chance to maintain itself. My parents families were broken by losing their farms in Texas during the Great Depression, and it took years for the family to reunite in Los Angeles.
I figure someday they will gain a perspective that will allow them to cope, but I think that perspective comes with that the cost that they will lose the heart and determination, the guts, to fight, to work with the dedication it takes to hang on for thirty years to pay a mortgage. I think that a realization that has escaped the psychologists is that you cannot talk or logic a person into a sense of confidence –not if he already knows he can lose everything no matter how hard he tries.
I appreciate the kind words, but the truth is it was 15 years ago. I’m grateful. For the most part, I mean, like if we were just sitting at a table talking and drinking some some soda pop I don’t have any big “tells”. I figure most people would recover if they had a stroke early in life. The main problem is mobility – I hate having to use a cane.
Remember how agitated we were over the possibility of civil war – not that these fears are completely assuaged. I thought all things considered, my brother and I have been deeply agitated and concerned, but we are surviving… All of the websites we’d read seemed to have arrived at a the consensus that just a little bit more of obama and our wretched congress and we are headed for civil war. Great. Timing couldn’t be better… Just the time for all local services to be disrupted or even ended with destruction and battles in the county and suburbia. I’m totally dependent on at least 11 different medications, and I drag around on a cane. And don’t even think of how cranky I get without a steady supply of icy cold Coka Cola.
There’s also that thing about the cane; I really don’t cut a heroic figure with this stupid cane! Around the house I’m okay, but uneven ground is impossible. I can hardly maintain balance when I step out into the backyard to call the dogs. I wobble all over. If there is a civil war, I’ll be just great trying to keep up with the other soldiers. I see myself as the last guy, hundreds of feet from the edge of the woods, out in the open, while the enemy government Acorn troops fire all around me to make me dance. This is reminding me a lot of those early Mel Gibson post apocalyptic movies; If there is civil war, I won’t be the heroic figure like Paul Revere, a soldier, or a general; I will get the starring role of “toothless old man huddling” in the shelter of some toppled building under blanket clutching his cane. S^!t!
I’ve seen enough of these movies to know that those guys never get sex…
But please, nobody that knows me, even close friends, uses words like “noble” about anything I do. good grief. They all know that I’m a snake aspiring to greater things. Truth was I rode my bike wherever and whenever, and grabbed every good time I could. I made a good show of being a grind for work, but women could always see right through my BS – if not always in time. good grief.
The main thing is this condition has damaged my self image. Until a few years back i always thought of myself as tough. Back in 2003 we weathered Hurricane Isabel, and like our neighbors we we cleaning up our yard, by the fourth day I knew I could kill for an icy Coke. That was disheartening to know that if I really could grow up be a cowboy like I wanted , I’d never gallop my hoss past the horizon ’cause I’d have to get back to the last 7-Eleven by dark.
Winston ‘Bulldog’ Churchill used a cane, while FDR tooled around in a wheelchair. You don’t have to be a bronzed Adonis to influence things, build morale, shape efforts. Many able-bodied young men run from a fight, anyway, or choke in paralysis.
Wretchard’s told a fascinating story a couple of times about a time he was in a building when a big earthquake hit. Most folks stood around wondering what to do, some panicked, and only a very few calmly took over and led. Maybe you’ll be one of those guys, because the thing is: you never know until it happens.
And it took you four days of Isabel aftermath to get to that point regarding Coke? Took me 45 minutes after the power went out!
overtherainbo:
Thanks for your story. It is compelling. In fact I was a little confused in reading it since you described some pretty severe cognitive/linguistic problems as a result of your stroke. In any case, I guess you got over them because you are now a really muscular writer.
overtherainbo:
Let’s see now; you put your heart and soul into a business and did your absolute best for years on end. When the wind and snow came, you kept on logging no matter what and never quit until you were knocked flat by the butt end of a log. Then you spent 15 years working on a recovery. I’d say that’s a gold medal performance by a tough man.
Oh Blert, bless your heart.
I’m only stuck on the truth.
Reliable source, please, for your emotionally inspired “2/3″ statistic? You didn’t post one last time this came up, either.
Blert, I really enjoy your posts. I think you and I could probably have a beer and agree on just about anything discussed here at BC. Except this issue.
I suppose in the end I should overlook this log in your eye. For whatever reason(s), it exists, and if this is our only dispute, I suppose that rather than get into a flame war with you I’d rather count you as an ally.
OK, how’s about this. I’ll acknowledge that medical school isn’t as completely meritocratic as the schools say they are as a result of AA matriculants (most of whom flunk out), and you’ll ackowledge that in spite of this, medical school isn’t even remotely close to being filled with politically chosen numbskulls but rather is overwhelming populated by bright, highly intelligent and capable young folks. Then we’ll walk away agreeing to disagree, courteously.
Sound good? I’d rather have you on my side than against me.
hey, guys,
Thanks for the kind words, but let’s rein it in before the press picks this up, somebody takes up a collection, and I get nominated for something. Lots of people survive a stroke. I mean if it had been truly bad I wouldn’t have gotten through it. As it is my biggest problem is in the spelling/reading department. i can’t talk as fast, but I don’t run like a deer anymore either.
And please cut the “brave” and “noble” stuff. If you live long enough you can recover, but honestly my initial recovery was fairly quick; so my totally lay-person assumption is that the stroke couldn’t have been the big deal it sounds like. The remaining spelling and reading problems have improved to the point that my friends just laugh when they read my stuff. It just keeps me humble, every time I think maybe I could write anything like Churchill mie spleeing retips meee pup,
As to the other stuff no mo uro is talking way over my head. Some people have suffered massive disappointment, and learned to give up their dreams, they drink to cover the loss, and they never again can rise to the level of strength to sustain a dream again. They learn to give up. I’ve seen that. I’m not sure where I am there. It’s really not someting that can honestly be described as such a big deal as courage, it’s not all high and nobel. It just is – I know my family before me parents faced much bigger challenges and they survived. They saw their dreams dashed in the dust storms and the Depression.
I still dream of riding my cycle again. Interestingly enough, I can ride the motorcycle, it’s walking and spelling that’s difficult. I’m sure those big wheels. – tire, rim, and hub – the wheels must weigh about 75 lbs. and the gyroscopic they generate is what makes it possible.
That’s one of the ideas that keeps me going – I never sold my bikes, and I long to get on my babes again. I’ve got two: a big, black, axle drive cruiser, and a chrome and custom painted chopper with 16″ extended front end. man.
But , hey, so I’m a guy with little drab, dreams now.
And I’m trying not to reveal what a flinty-eyed SOB I am about my Coke. Health care makes me mad, but if local Democrats manage to cut off my coke there just might be a rash of shootings. They’ll never suspect the geezer with a cane
overtherainbo, your writing is very interesting and entertaining. Your life is fascinating. It really took my breath away-your openness and descriptions of the obstacles with those personality types. Thanks. I was headed to bed because I could not listen to the One pretend like he cares about the Libyan people or the strikers in Wisconsin. My stomach is becoming weaker every time I see his Eminence. (no seriously) Sometimes I want to cry when I see him knowing his desire (either intentional or not-I think intentional) to turn this great country into a banana republic.Many thanks.
rainbo, if i may say what you already know, strokes and disability and chronic pain and extreme burnout trying to stay solvent in a busted enterprise, are life’s BIG shipwrecks, and you’ve survived ‘em already –and still you still care enough about other people to reach out as you did here and offer a cautionary tale as a good samaritan. Nobody’s youth beauty and optimism survives old man time anyway, even without the tempests and the shipwrecks. But you can balance your book with assets i’d bet dollar to donut you are undervaluing: endurance, experience, and a graceful altruism –all things the world needs and will always want.
Re Eggplant @ 58 (and shout out to Buddy):
Like I’ve been saying, who do you think gave the Israelis the plans to Bushehr and some roster of Iranian scientists ID’d there? Or why do some Americans gripe more about the ‘Russians helping Iran get the Bomb’ than the Israelis? Could it be our Israeli and Russian friends cut a deal? The Israelis pulled out of Georgia pre-Ossetia War when they knew Misha the Tie Eater was itching for a fight he would lose (but thought would get his country into NATO anyway)… but perhaps not before letting the Russians know which Georgian units they trained.
But who cares? Every good American right winger knows Russia created Islamist terrorism (eyes rolling) and is hellbent on reconstituting and avenging the collapse of the USSR. J.R. Nyquist told me so.
In other news, Glenn Beckistan still isn’t touching the subject of Soros former Soviet Union investments and connections with his Orange Revolution backing. Dudn’t wanna get fired from Faux News, which plays back boos of Cheney and Rummy as boos of Paul.