Protests in Wisconsin - Scott Walker

[respect]

What does the present tell us? 92% of private employees have no unions at all, and 50% of states restrict some/all public employee unions from collective bargaining. What terrible work conditions are all those people suffering under as a result that Wisconsin should be quaking in its boots over?

The biggest lie of the pro-union crowd is the notion that unions gave them their standard of living. Poor subsistence farmers can unionize all they want, they will still be poor subsistence farmers and work just as many hours. Capitalism, free markets, comparative advantage etc gave them their standard of living. Those created the wealth to give them a comfortable living despite only working 40 hours a week. Unions played a role, labor as a supplier of labor of course can negotiate its own supply. But let's not forget that labor only negotiated getting some of the spoils of production for itself, but unions did not create those spoils, market activity did. Professional level private sector employees get good wages and benefits without unions for a reason, they create wealth. Non-professionals struggle to get good wages for a reason, they do a job anyone can do and contribute little to wealth creation. Non-union doctors do fine, union cashiers still can't make a good living. It is no secret why. And unions that join with politicians to set wages above market levels destroy jobs. If the price sank to optimal levels there would be more demand.

 

[Travis]

Oh? Do you hold such a great mind that your thoughts alone can recreate supply and demand curves?

Supply and demand is why in the private sector executive pay is skyrocketing while lower level workers are being paid less and getting fewer benefits. And now public service employees are supposed to join in on this orgy of fat cats gorging at the trough while decreasing the pay of their workers?

 

[Neally]

And you know what kinda concerns me? When people start talking about comparing public vs private wages and compensation there always seems to be the general feeling that the public employees make too much instead of what I feel which is that the private sector makes too little.

I guess there oughta be a law that sets everyones pay. How do we figure out what the salary should be for the guy that opens up his own coffee shop, and who pays it if the business doesn't bring in enough revenue? Wait, I know, tax the evil rich more, oh and the greedy corporations.

 

[AlBell]

Wow... and it isn't just him. There are people on this very Forum advocating the same thing.

I call it the "Muammar Gaddafi option". Perhaps they'd call it a "Second Amendment solution"

How about 'the sane solution when (union) police officers decide not to do their job'?

 

[eeyore1954]

Do you pay income tax in states you travel to while on the job? I've never seen such a law. I've been paid to attend conferences in other states, for example.

I am sure he was joking but on a serious note if you are earning the money because of what you are doing in the other state yes but not attending conferences. But if you were a paid speaker at the conference it would be taxable in that state.

 

[eeyore1954]

I have to ask: How is that sorted out? A simple pro rata share of the annual income? It's not as if the players are paid daily from the receipts of that game.


Another question comes to mind, though one not directly related to the above: Has anyone checked out the salaries and benefits the state senators and representatives get? Have they discussed giving up any of their own salaries and benefits yet?

Usually they would be taxed upon a percentage of their salary based upon the number of days they (worked) in that state compared to total days worked.

The senators should eventually be willing to forfeit a portion of their pay. If they are taking a stand based upon ethics they should be willing to pay the price.
For now they are probably using the abundance of personal days that public employees have (Just kidding).

 

[Newtons Bit]

Could you please summarize just what you think I've said that wasn't supported? I can't tell anything from this gibberish post.

Please point out what you think is gibberish.

 

[Newtons Bit]

It's quite common. When the White Sox play the Yankees in New York the players have to pay NY state income tax for the money they make in that game.

I have to do something more ridiculous. I have to pay Gross Receipt Tax on the payment for my engineering services. However, since I'm a consultant working for an AE firm I can claim that I'm exempt on those payments since the AE firm is paying the GRT. But there's a caveat, I can only claim that when I'm working on a project that's in New Mexico.

So I have to pay GRT on all non New Mexico projects while working in New Mexico.

 

[davefoc]

I did tell you my position, it was ridiculously simple so perhaps you were expecting something more earthshaking.

"In short, the confused budget shortfall numbers has been discussed and clarified. The current 24 month fiscal budget has $137 million shortfall and the predicted shortfall for the subsequent 24 month fiscal budget is 2+ billion. Anyone reading the thread should be aware this has been clarified."


That's it.

Early on the budget was confusing and misstated by people on both sides. NB took an early misstatement that wasn't even mine. It was in a citation I posted. Certain people in the thread had already claimed, "gotcha" only to find out I had hunted down the correct figures many posts earlier.

Could I have just said so? I did. I said he was taking stuff out of context that had been discussed and to go read the discussion.

This was the umteenth thing I and others had provided BB evidence supporting. And in my case, after showing him where something had been addressed, he wanted me to do it again. How many old posts am I obligated to find for someone who we all know is not interested in a discussion, but only interested in repeating unsupported Repub talking points?

Thanks SG (may I call u SG?),
This post went to exactly what I was asking about. I apologize for my laziness in not sorting through the various posts to determine exactly what your claim was.

I happen to strongly disagree with your views on this issue but I have always found your specific claims of facts to be credible and honestly researched and it struck me as strange that you would make a claim that seemed to be false and stick to it. It seems clear that you didn't do that here either.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here is one interesting study of public school teachers in general:

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_50.htm

Your source is a right wing Libertarian opinion manipulator. That suggests we should check the claims.

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

In its publication Buying a Movement, People for the American Way describes the Manhattan Institute's agenda as "The Institute '...advocates privitization of sanitation services and infrastructure maintenance, deregulation in the area of environmental and consumer protection, school vouchers and cuts in governmental spending on social welfare programs; it is a preferred source of information'" for New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani..
..Charles Murray was one author who was based at the Manhattan Institute while writing the book Losing Ground. Murray is "a far right ideologue who wrote The Bell Curve in 1984, a book that essentially argues black people are genetically and intellectually inferior to white people."
...A 1997 R.J. Reynolds memo reveals RJR's intent to use the Manhattan Institute as a third party to help the company reduce the public's perception of danger from exposure to secondhand smoke: "Devise ways to educate the public about epidemiology and put risk in perspective. For example, work with Steven J. Milloy, Michael Fumento, CEI Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute and others to put together a 1/2-hour or 1-hour TV show explaining epi[demiology] and risk. Create an epi/risk website to educate the general public, maybe working with the Harvard School of Public Health. Do the same for journalists."

That's pretty damning stuff.


Back to your link:
Link to the paper's data

In June 2005, workers in the United States earned an average of $18.62 per hour. White-collar occupations earned an average of $22.96 per hour, blue-collar occupations earned $15.87, and service occupations earned $10.89. Average hourly earnings in private industry were $17.82, compared with $23.31 in State and local government. Part of this disparity can be explained by differences in the occupational and industrial composition of the two sectors. For example, professional and technical occupations are more common in State and local government than in private industry

(emphasis mine)

But the issue is teacher pay:

Among white-collar major occupational groups, workers in professional specialty and technical occupations earned $31.25 an hour in State and local government, while their private industry counterparts earned $29.80. This earnings differential may be explained by the prevalence of teachers in State and local government, many of whom tend to have higher hourly earnings than professional specialty and technical workers in the private sector.

So teachers have higher average earnings than 2/3 of other professional, specialty and technical workers.

Your paper describes more hours worked in all the white collar jobs than teacher jobs, making the denominator smaller for teachers and the income higher. The average white collar hours worked in the BLS data suggests it is the lower number. (See table 1.1) I'm not sure if that holds for the data in the paper, but one wonders how the average is 36 hours week for all white collar workers while your link cites 39 hours for the non-teacher occupations. No matter, because there's more.

The BLS information goes on to say administrative jobs pay more in the private sector than in the public sector. And they note that the difference in public vs private service workers is due to the kind of workers, like food service vs fire fighter. So is that an issue in the paper you cite?

It appears so. Specialty teachers are included in the figures:

Some of the most highly paid individual occupations were in the professional specialty and technical group. For example, airplane pilots and navigators had average hourly earnings of $95.50, economics teachers averaged $66.18 an hour, and physicians had average hourly earnings of $62.52. On the other hand, substitute teachers averaged $12.71 an hour.

(emphasis mine) That reminds us that public university professors are averaged into the teacher pay statistics. And there are a fair number of public university professors that would move the average wage figure for teachers upward. For the white collar professions used to compare to teacher wages, who knows which jobs and in which proportions are in each mix.


We can see that by including or excluding different data, one can find the result one is looking to find. Your paper goes on to claim higher pay doesn't improve outcome measured by dropout rates and they suggest privatizing public schools would. I can tear that conclusions apart as well but it is off topic.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Thanks SG (may I call u SG?),

Of course.

....I happen to strongly disagree with your views on this issue but I have always found your specific claims of facts to be credible and honestly researched and it struck me as strange that you would make a claim that seemed to be false and stick to it. It seems clear that you didn't do that here either.

Thanks for the compliment. If we all agreed, this forum would be boring. If people just spout opinion, no one learns anything new. Perhaps someday I might change your opinion of a few things.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The biggest lie of the pro-union crowd is the notion that unions gave them their standard of living. Poor subsistence farmers can unionize all they want, they will still be poor subsistence farmers and work just as many hours.

This is a false analogy. "Subsistence" means they don't produce enough to sell. Farmers, OTOH, can and have unionized to get fair prices for their goods. While the goods should be subject to supply and demand, huge corporate middlemen easily exert unfair influence against individual farmers, but united, the farmers can fight back.

Capitalism, free markets, comparative advantage etc gave them their standard of living. Those created the wealth to give them a comfortable living despite only working 40 hours a week. Unions played a role, labor as a supplier of labor of course can negotiate its own supply. But let's not forget that labor only negotiated getting some of the spoils of production for itself, but unions did not create those spoils, market activity did. Professional level private sector employees get good wages and benefits without unions for a reason, they create wealth. Non-professionals struggle to get good wages for a reason, they do a job anyone can do and contribute little to wealth creation. Non-union doctors do fine, union cashiers still can't make a good living. It is no secret why. And unions that join with politicians to set wages above market levels destroy jobs. If the price sank to optimal levels there would be more demand.

This is an unsupportable view of the role of unions in a capitalist economy as I've shown above.

It also hasn't been demonstrated in this thread that the myth is true of public union workers contributing to get favored politicians into office results in collusion at the bargaining table. Those same politicians have to contend with the public which puts the brakes on unlimited taxes and all the state and local governments have to balance their budgets.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I am sure he was joking but on a serious note if you are earning the money because of what you are doing in the other state yes but not attending conferences. But if you were a paid speaker at the conference it would be taxable in that state.

Not in every state, but it would be in some. Just as with the sports example, it depends on who pays you. If my employer paid me to represent them speaking at a conference in another state, I would not be earning money in the state as defined by most states. If I were an independent contractor being paid by someone running the conference that hired me as a speaker, that would be income earned in the respective state.

But getting back to the absent state lawmakers, can you imagine if you went on vacation and took some work with you that you were later paid for, having to declare that as income in the state you were on vacation in?

I have my own business and a home office. I do work for employers across 3 counties. My business and occupation taxes are all based on where my home office is with the exception a couple cities require a city business license for work I do within their city limits. None of them require I pay B&O taxes because of the work.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Please point out what you think is gibberish.

The entire post.

Could you please summarize just what you think I've said that wasn't supported?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Usually they would be taxed upon a percentage of their salary based upon the number of days they (worked) in that state compared to total days worked. ....

Find me one single state that would claim I earned income in their state if I made phone calls and did paperwork at a hotel while visiting.

There is a serious problem in how you are defining where one is working for the purposes of defining where your earnings are recorded. Physical location is only one factor, but not the entire definition by itself.

 

[Teemu]

It appears so. Specialty teachers are included in the figuresemphasis mine) That reminds us that public university professors are averaged into the teacher pay statistics. And there are a fair number of public university professors that would move the average wage figure for teachers upward. For the white collar professions used to compare to teacher wages, who knows which jobs and in which proportions are in each mix.

If the specialist teachers were significant factor, shouldn't the private sector teacher wage in those statistics be much higher, considering that the proportion of private sector for 4 year college education is much higher than the proportion of private sector for K-12?

 

[WildCat]

, OTOH, can and have unionized to get fair prices for their goods.

That's not a union, it's a cartel.

 

[Newtons Bit]

The entire post.

Could you please summarize just what you think I've said that wasn't supported?

You might think that's cute, but it's not. Here's the summary: the only link you provided that was remotely on-topic shows that union workers make significantly more than non-union workers of similar education when one looks at the numbers with an honest eye.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If the specialist teachers were significant factor, shouldn't the private sector teacher wage in those statistics be much higher, considering that the proportion of private sector for 4 year college education is much higher than the proportion of private sector for K-12?

By their own admission they drew their conclusion based on inadequate data:

Information on the pay of private school teachers by metro area has a fair amount of missing data since there may have been insufficient samples in many areas. For those metro areas for which we have data, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Minneapolis paid their public school teachers more than twice as much as private school teachers. In the Phoenix, Houston, and Raleigh metro areas, private school teachers earned more than public school teachers.

The point I made is that these numbers don't control for numerous variables.

Look at the BLS data yourself. It is broken down by numerous categories (experience, skill and other factors). The data is broken down by grade level and university specialty. And the margin of error for each line of data differs from <1 to >15.

Do the authors describe how they controlled for all these variables? Do they mention what weight they gave to data where the data differed in certain categories? Do they explain what accounts for these differences?

Private and public university teachers make about the same on average. Then you look at public teachers vs private for non-university positions and the difference is abnormally large, ($33.70 vs $20.74). Something is accounting for this difference besides just unions or public school positions.

If you look closer there are curious patterns. Public university teachers earn more at lower skill/tenure levels and less at higher levels. It averages out to similar pay overall. The range is narrower for public and wider for private teachers at the university level. But we don't know if a few specialty programs skew the private university results or many universities average out the public university teacher results.

Non-university pay for public school teachers is markedly higher for prekindergarten/kindergarten teachers ($30.35) and lower for private prekindergarten/kindergarten teachers ($12.71). What's going on there? It affects the averages. Was it given equal weight in the average as a category or a proportional weight based on the number of workers in that category? It looks like it is the weight by category, not number of workers in the category. That could skew the average.

Private school teachers other than university is the same at level 5 as public then public teachers jump ahead at level 6. Both are equal again at level 11. This irregularity suggests missing data might be at work. At level 4 the public school data is missing and at level 12 the private school data is missing. Adding in a level 12, the highest, and subtracting out a level 4 from the public school wages shifts the whole average up.

The data used to make these analyses sounds good but only presents a tentative conclusion which the authors themselves admit. This is not some clear proof that public teachers are overpaid, and there is nothing in this data that suggests what a fair wage is, which was the premise of claiming teachers were 2/3 up the scale of white collar workers.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That's not a union, it's a cartel.

There are also organized farm workers that don't own their own land. The point is the same: little guys organizing to gain some equality with the big guys.