First, create a crisis...and then attack. Machiavelli, meet Governor Walker
The Talking Points Memo from Josh Marshall's place has the lowdown. While I'm willing to believe this perspective can't be fully accurate, it sure sounds like Governor Walker has some explaining to do...
The cynicism involved with Walker does require notice. First, he puts through budget busting tax cuts and then wants to undermine the public employees' union?
Well, gotta run. But this was just too ridiculous not to comment in the middle of the day...
posted by Mitchell J. Freedman @ 2:50 PM
12 comments
12 Comments:
Mitch,
What is wrong with requiring public employees to fund half of their pension costs and 12% of the health insurance costs? Especially when the State is running out of money?
Heck, my employer maintains a 401(k) plan, but does not make any contributions to my account. (And I am limited by federal law from contributing any more than $16,500 per year because the government wants to make me dependent upon Social Security, a Madoff Ponzi scheme, when I retire -- but that's a different story).
There is a widening gap the past few years between public sector and private sector pay, and taxpayers are tired of it. Heck, my employer maintains a 401(k) plan, but does not make any contributions to my account. These public employees should be paying for their own pensions.
But the state is not running out of money. That's the point of the articles. What the new governor did was give money to people who truly did not need it--rich people--and then declared a crisis as revenue is going to drop due to those tax cuts.
Read your last paragraph again, and you will see you are advocating a form of class warfare that pits the middle vs. middle. Why you are outraged at public servants who make less than you on an annual wage basis, but have better health benefits plus a pension is rather striking to me. Where is your outrage at financiers making millions and demanding and getting bailout money from taxpayers? It really does not get your juices going the way it does when jerk politicians like Walker want to stick it to public servants.
Oh, and let's be honest. I bet if you check, your employer does match a little of your contribution...
And, please, Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme nor a Madoff situation. The person who is the administrator for Social Security does not make millions off people. He simply administers a plan that keeps at least a third or more of seniors from being homeless or starving to death, and allows many other seniors to live with some dignity in their lives. And that plan costs a fraction of the administrative costs of most private pension plans. It is also not going to stop making payments to people unless we want to first destroy the country.
Please read the Trustees' report and find that they now admit if the next several decades have the same average yearly growth of the previous several decades, there is no shortfall whatsoever. Yet, our corporate media does not ever quote that part of the report of the Trustees. They only quote the worse case scenario that says it will pay 75% of benefits starting in 2037, as if that is some great crisis, too.
A lot of teachers make more than I do, Mitch. And they have a lot of free time on their hands, including lengthy summer vacations, which is a form of compensation in itself. And I have not seen figures on the state level, but federal employees on average earn salaries that dwarf that of the private sector.
Whether or not public employees are bankrupting Wisconsin, they certainly are bankrupting other states, including California, which is completely dysfunctional - liberalism run amok.
Here is a thought: Public employees should be barred from unionzinng. If not, they should be barred from contributing to political campaigns. The current system essentially allows the employees to buy off the managers (politicians) in order to rip off the owners (the public). It's a system that is corrupt by it's very existence.
Interestingly, your hero, FDR, was no fan of public employee unions. He was against them being allowed to have collective bargaining rights:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/worth-recalling-fdr-was-no-fan-public-employee-unions
Re: Social Security, I will get back to you. For me, its a damn rip off. The investment returns suck. If I were allowed to invest my contributions on my own, I would be far wealthier. I know how to invest; the problem is that I wish I had more capital to invest.
Oh come on. I can bet dollars to donuts you make more than most teachers.
Truth be told, back in the 1980s and 1990s, I was not really crazy about the public employee unions because they were the least interested in what was happening in the private sector. But I guess it's like the bit, "first they came for..." and so on.
The public employee unions are not even killing California. The pensions are currently costing 2% of the budget, but by next year, as the money from the stock market kicks in, next year it will be less than 1%. The thing that costs lots in CA is the 10% we spend on prisons. It used to be 1/3 of the percentage it is now 20 years ago. And the loss of revenue from the top 1-5% due to Gray Davis' income tax cuts is costing this State needed revenue. And we're the only oil producing state without an oil extraction tax. We need to show some responsibility in how we operate our government, and this income tax cut cult is a main obstacle to better and more responsive government.
I'll wait till you get back to me on Social Security. :-) All I know is I will do better with Social Security than my 401k if the right wing and Obama don't kill it along with the rest of the nation's structure.
"All I know is I will do better with Social Security than my 401k"
Nonsense.
True, 401k plans have a limited menu of options, mostly stock mutual funds, bond funds, and money market funds. No alternative investments or ETFs, where you can invest in gold, silver, and commodities as a hedge against this country's monetary policy.
It is also true that most mutual funds are lousy. There are notable exceptions, i.e., funds that have decisively beaten the market over extended periods of time while withstanding the 2008 market turndown: FAIRX, YACKX, YAFFX, FPACX, and OAKBX are among the best.
One simple strategy to beat the stock market is to be in the market when the S&P is above its 200-exponential day moving average, and out of the market when it is trading below. A good vehicle for this is a simple index fund. Using this strategy, you would have avoided the 2000-02 market dip, and would have been out of the market for all of 2008:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=%5EGSPC&t=my&l=on&z=l&q=l&p=e200&a=&c=
In any event, at the very least, free people should be allowed to "opt out" of Social Security.
Ron Paul made an interesting proposal last week. People should be allowed to "opt out" of the system if they agree to a flat 10% income tax. In return, they will not be entitled to any benefits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsfqZA6b6JQ&feature=player_embedded
That idea is too revolutionary for the power elites to handle.
Wow, there's some serious BS. I became a million or billionaire through no help of the government (insert laugh here) but I will sacrifice Social Security in order to reduce my obligation as a citizen, and more importantly, as a profiteer, to support the country that allowed me to accumulate such riches. Remember, I'm self-made - I could have gotten just as rich in Guinea or North Korea - because I am so talented! It's just not fair to contribute back in the proportion that I have benefited.
I will always express my admiration for the folks who are willing to stand up for the rights of the rich & powerful - it's a tough job but someone has to do it.
Paul has joined the fray and thank you Paul! Paul's point is well-taken that really, what is so horrible about taking some of your tax dollars to provide for those who otherwise don't have enough for a retirement annuity? The market is a tough place, and depending upon when I retire or enter into that market can have devastating effects, which are a function of my age and job situation at various points that are beyond my control. The rich who have contributed their first monies as a percentage of their first $120K are not suffering because they do this.
And as for "nonsense," all I have to do is compare my 401k to my Social Security income and know it is not nonsense to say Social Security will take better care of me in my situation at least.
paulr: your missive is full of red herrings. Ron Paul's proposal was directed toward young people, not billionaires. Actually, it's the billionaires who tend to support the current system. After all, it was the billionaires who were cheering when Bush, Hank Paulson, Pelosi, Barney Frank, etc. looted the taxpayers to bail out the bankers to the tune of $700 billion.
I also agree with your authoritarian premise re: "the country that allowed me to accumulate such riches." You have a warped view of government. Properly understood, our government does not "allow" us to exercise our freedoms. Under the theory of government advanced by our Founders, the ONLY purpose of government is to secure the rights that we were born with. These rights pre-exist government. You, on the other hand, seem to believe that our rights are granted to us by the government.
Mitch: the point is that people should be permitted to plan their own retirement. Why not make Social Security voluntary? After all, if it's such a great deal, as you claim, then most people would want to participate, right? But people like me, who see through it for the generational rip-off and Madoff Ponzi scheme that it is, should be permitted to opt out.
And my point is that opt-ing out is uncivilized. A civilized society provides a public pension. You disagree. I think most people agree with me, no matter what corporate media tries to bamboozle us with...
Why would opting out of social security be "uncivilized"? I do not even know what the hell you mean by that. In any event, why not leave it to the people themselves to decide? What are you afraid of? At the very least, give people the option to invest their contributions, or a portion thereof, on their own.
Your politics is extremely paternalistic, and is rooted in the idea that Government Knows Best. I think most people would rather run their own lives.
I think most people would rather have corporations run their lives.
There fixed it.
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