Protests in Wisconsin - Scott Walker

[WildCat]

Could you have found something more non sequitur-ish?

You've obviously never been to Wisconsin.

 

[respect]

Key word.
Two sides negotiate, come to an agreement, sign a contract, and abide by the terms or face legal consequences. The state and local elected officials crying about their budgets are apparently such terrible stewards of the public funds that they should be fired or at least have their salaries and benefits cut.

Often, but many of those in office now dealing with these problems were not there when the negotiations took place. But yeah, politicians deserve a lot of blame for the fiscal messes around the country.

 

[davefoc]

Key word.
Two sides negotiate, come to an agreement, sign a contract, and abide by the terms or face legal consequences. The state and local elected officials crying about their budgets are apparently such terrible stewards of the public funds that they should be fired or at least have their salaries and benefits cut.

Well, sort of, two sides negotiate, one side bribes the other in to signing a sweet heart deal impacting not only the current citizens but citizens yet to born with the largess based on using other people's money. Then a different entity takes power that wasn't bribed by the particular special interest group in question here. What do you expect the in power party to do. Raise the wages and benefits of the people that didn't bribe them? Of course they should cut the wages and benefits of the people who were bribing their political opponents.

That's the way our system works, we have two equally corrupt political parties and when the people get tired of the particular brand of corruption of one of the parties they vote in the other group with the hope that some of the results of the corruption instituted by the party voted out will be mitigated.

 

[respect]

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?

Right, getting rid of ridiculous pension plans will force teachers into poverty. That is the goal. Only rich old white guys with monocles should be allowed to have money, and their wages should be proportional to the evilness of their cackle.

 

[respect]

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.


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.

You have obviously not seen how the unions and politicians trade favors back and forth in Illinois.

But I will let the rest of the economists know that we need to go back to the drawing boards because you have determined that it is unions and not market forces that create wealth in a capitalist society.

 

[respect]

Thank God the top 2% didn't get any more breaks. We can't afford to go on subsidizing their lazy butts.

Do you consider all income that isn't collected in taxes to be subsidized?

 

[Howie Felterbush]

You've obviously never been to Wisconsin.

Hey, now. That's unfair as all get out. You FIBs come up here, shoot our deer, catch our trout and enjoy our fish fries, then have the nerve to run your mouth about us?


That's cold. Just for that, you can keep our Democrats!

HA!

 

[fishbob]

Well, sort of, two sides negotiate, one side bribes the other in to signing a sweet heart deal impacting not only the current citizens but citizens yet to born with the largess based on using other people's money. Then a different entity takes power that wasn't bribed by the particular special interest group in question here. What do you expect the in power party to do. Raise the wages and benefits of the people that didn't bribe them? Of course they should cut the wages and benefits of the people who were bribing their political opponents.

That's the way our system works, we have two equally corrupt political parties and when the people get tired of the particular brand of corruption of one of the parties they vote in the other group with the hope that some of the results of the corruption instituted by the party voted out will be mitigated.

The answer to this problem is not arbitrarily breaking a contract.
Much more effective would be prosecution of those involved with the bribery, then going back to the negotiating table.

Demand better.

 

[WildCat]

Just for that, you can keep our Democrats!

HA!

Noooooo! I take it all back, I swear I love beer and cheese and smokey bars and even that porn store just over the border! Please take them back now?

 

[fishbob]

Do you consider all income that isn't collected in taxes to be subsidized?

The very wealthy get a good chunk of their income from capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower rate than wages. Sure looks like a subsidy.

The lower rate was intended as an incentive for job creation. Here in the US. Still looks like a subsidy.

There are incentives in place that encourage offshoring manufacturing jobs. Working stiffs do not qualify, but the very wealthy do. Yep, subsidy.

 

[Howie Felterbush]

Noooooo! I take it all back, I swear I love beer and cheese and smokey bars and even that porn store just over the boder! Please take them back now?

I don't know, you forgot fat women and brandy old fashioneds.

 

[WildCat]

I don't know, you forgot fat women and brandy old fashioneds.

I didn't want to push it...

 

[WildCat]

The very wealthy get a good chunk of their income from capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower rate than wages.

Because money spent on capital is at risk, you don't risk money when you go to work to collect a paycheck.

 

[respect]

Because money spent on capital is at risk, you don't risk money when you go to work to collect a paycheck.

Apparently investments and salaries are the same thing now.

 

[respect]

The answer to this problem is not arbitrarily breaking a contract.
Much more effective would be prosecution of those involved with the bribery, then going back to the negotiating table.

Demand better.

Not all of the favors traded are illegal.

 

[davefoc]

Not all of the favors traded are illegal.

I think most are not.

I meant the term bribe in the most general sense. Politicians who favor the special interest over the general interest are routinely persuaded to do so with incentives that might be unethical but rarely are illegal. Politicians make the rules about what is legal and illegal. So petty theft might be illegal but transferring billions of dollars in public funds to a special interest because somebody donated some money and other services to your campaign or financed your fact finding expedition to Hawaii is not illegal but it is bribery as I meant the word.

Many states are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and nobody knows quite what to do about it. If they were private corporations worker contracts and unfunded pensions might be undone in a chapter 11 bankruptcy to try to keep the company afloat. But undoing these massive unfunded public pensions given away by legislators bribed to do so presents a thorny problem. The states can't pay them without raising taxes but that may reduce even further their ability to pay giveaways as the higher taxes discourage employment and businesses. But the states can't declare bankruptcy in the normal sense because the pensions were guaranteed by the power of the state to collect future taxes.

I think there are a few legal strategies that will be pursued. The best in my mind is to look at situations where the increases in pensions were given away without any compensation to the citizens in return. This has happened in California where people who were expecting one pension woke up one day to find that the legislature had just given them more money. This seems arguably exactly equivalent to theft to me since the citizens got nothing in return for the transfer of their money to a third party.

There is also a significant ethical issue here. Just how much right do legislators of one generation have to commit the resources of a new generation? This sounds a lot like taxation without representation to me and it might be another legal strategy to move away from the looming financial disaster.

 

[fishbob]

Because money spent on capital is at risk, you don't risk money when you go to work to collect a paycheck.

I don't know - seems as if the risk increases substantially when your collective bargaining can be arbitrarily removed.

What are the workers comp rates for investors vs herders of snot-nosed little virus spreaders? That seems like a quite a risk to your earning potential.

Money spent on capital is not taxed. No gain, no pain.
I don't see the justification for a significantly lower tax rate on the capital gains.

 

[fishbob]

Not all of the favors traded are illegal.

If they are not illegal, then they are part of the negotiation. QED.

Seriously, the details of negotiations that impact the public should be publicized.
If I was in a union, I would certainly want to know the details of any wheeling and dealing being done on my behalf.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You have obviously not seen how the unions and politicians trade favors back and forth in Illinois.

But I will let the rest of the economists know that we need to go back to the drawing boards because you have determined that it is unions and not market forces that create wealth in a capitalist society.

More unsupported claims.

Care to back any of this up or are you just echoing the talking points?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There's a fantastic story about support from all over the world from Egypt to Antartica for the unions via donations to Ian's Pizza to provide pizza for the protesters.

Standoff In Wisconsin square

"It was really cool, I took a call from Cairo in Pennsylvania, put the phone down and immediately took one from Cairo, Egypt!" The words of a server at Ian's Pizza restaurant here on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. The restaurant tweeted that they'd accept donations from people who might be prepared and willing to feed the thousands of protesters camped out in and around the state's Capitol building located just up the hill.

To Ian's surprise they began receiving pledges to pay for water, soda and pizza from all over the world. The names of more than 30 countries are chalked up on the black board behind the counter, including Morocco, Turkey and even - and I love this bit - Egypt. Yes, you've got to believe that protesters from Tahrir Square are now buying deep-pan pies for people pushing back at the budget plans of Wisconsin's new Republican governor Scott Walker.

The phenomena has spread all over the world via FaceBook. Fantastic!

Pizza – the latest weapon of protest

On Sunday it all began again.Calls were coming in not just from the States (38 of the 50, at last count), but from all over the globe: Ian's Facebook page (of course) carries a picture of the chalkboard on which they are keeping track – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Australia, Germany, China, the UK, the Netherlands, Korea, Turkey – and Egypt. Take on Mubarak and win, apparently, and you can take on the world.

Warms the heart.