Apparently the Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate have ordered the arrest of the AWOL Democratic Seantors.
The fact of the matter is this, Walker has painted himself into a corner by hinging the budget reapir on this collective bargaining issue, when, as most Governors do, he could have easily created a workable budget with the union concessions. Then the issue of Collective Bargaining could be debated in good faith as a separate issue.
Robot Arm:
It depends on what you consider relevant. The long message I posted detailing the various income shares of the population was based on federal data, and the information I’ve been using about public union wages and benefits is based on national data, not Wisconsin’s data. I consider it relevant because Wisconsin is only the first of many states to have to fight this battle, so looking at the larger picture is entirely valid.
I suspect the ‘Liar’ charge comes from my claim that it’s impossible to balance the budget on the backs of the rich. This resulted in the use of very big fonts by a couple of posters, which suggests to me they got rather riled up by this.
One claim by Try2B Comprehensive was that only $137 million needs to be raised, and that can be done with a tax surcharge on the rich - implying that my statement was false. In fact, this $137 million number has been flying all over the liberal blogosphere from what I can tell, but it’s a total non-sequitur - it looks to be a specious talking point injected somewhere along the way to make the problem look much smaller than it is.
So what is that number? The $137 million is simply the current budget shortfall that needs to be raised to pay the existing bills. It is NOT the projected budget deficit. Putting a temporary surtax on the rich might raise that money, but then Wisconsin will have an even bigger shortfall next year and the year after. So it’s highly misleading to use this number as if it’s the only problem that needs to be solved.
Also, the esteemed Rachel Maddow made outright false claims about this, according to Politifact.
Or put another way - what that $137 million budget ‘deficit’ is is just the deficit between now and June 30 of this year when the current fiscal year ends.
The projected two-year deficit for Wisconsin is still 3.6 billion dollars ( a number mentioned at the bottom of Try2B Comprehensive’s own cite). That’s the gap that has to be closed, because the states can’t print money like the federal government can. Using that $137 million number as the problem to be solved is highly disingenuous.
So using the numbers in that cite, it says that a 1.5% income surcharge on the ultra rich would raise 168 million dollars. That would mean the ultra-rich have an annual income of about 10.6 billion dollars. Of course, they also pay 6.75% in Wisconsin state tax, and have an effective federal tax rate of about 23%. One of the misleading things about a ‘surtax’ is that it’s applied to pre-tax income, so the rate can be made to look low.
But if you’re looking at a long-term solution, you have to consider how much money the rich still have after taxes. In this case, they’re paying around 30% of their income in state and federal taxes. That leaves them with about 6.4 billion dollars a year in after-tax income. If you want to close the budget deficit on the backs of these people, you’ll have to take an additional 25% of their after tax income. That’s quite the hike in state taxes.
If my off-the-cuff math is correct, that would be a marginal tax rate increase from 6.75% to about 21%. That number could be slightly off because of the details of the Wisconsin tax system I don’t know about, but the general scale is right - you’d have to more than triple their state income tax. And if you want to increase federal taxes on the rich as well, suddenly you’re talking about a massive increase in taxes on the rich. Not just an increase back to ‘Clintonian’ levels.
This budget document shows that Wisconsin in total raises about 6.1 billion dollars per year in personal income taxes. The budget shortfall is 1.8 billion dollars per year for the next two years. If you want to raise taxes to pay for that, it’s a hell of a tax hike. If you wan to limit that raise to just the rich, it’s a draconian tax hike.
It’s important to remember that states are very constrained in how much they can raise in income taxes - especially among the most mobile members of the population. The transfer of wealth between states is very easy, and there is significant capital flight taking place between states with high taxes and those with low taxes. If Wisconsin tried to extract 3.6 billion dollars from its richest citizens, I think it would find that a lot harder to do than you’d think. If the new 21% state tax causes some people to leave and others to engage in more tax-avoidance activity, then you still won’t close the gap, and the marginal rate would have be even higher. But you’ll rapidly run into diminishing returns long before then.
So yes, I stand by the statements I made in this thread.
Doesn’t that assume that eliminating collective bargaining has a good faith argument behind it to begin with?
Because someone else might be paying attention to this thread who’d take him seriously. Plus, it’s fun to point out exactly how absurd his positions are.
I directly refuted several broad claims that you made that were *flat-out wrong *when applied to the situation in Wisconsin. You were either lying or willfully ignorant when you claimed things like public sector employees were making more than private-sector ones, in the context of this discussion. So, which is it: dishonest or stupid? I’ll let you pick.
That’s what we generally call refusing to compensate someone for the work they do for you, yes.
Just like other people in government are in a situation where they drive a good chunk of their financing from the people they’re supposed to be regulating, objectively evaluating for government contracts, etc. What’s your point? That allowing groups instead of individual citizens to contribute to political campaigns is a nightmare where there’s no way to ensure that it’s not just legitimated bribery? I agree. However, to undercut unions (specifically, only those unions that support Democratic candidates) while leaving in place corporations (specifically, corporations that almost exclusively support Republican candidates) is unpatriotic and disingenuous.
So, I assume you have an example of a U.S. state government that “went under” because of the total compensation of its union employees?
This sounds like an interesting idea. Do you think that a company that wants to contribute money to a politician should also be forced to poll its employees and contribute its donations in the appropriate proportions? After all, the “company’s” money was created by its employees. The money the company wishes to donate only exists because of their efforts on its behalf.
Honestly, I have no clue how the moron is going to get himself out of this. Polls are showing a solid majority of Wisconsinites as being against his union-busting. If he goes through with it, he loses a lot of support; if he backs down, he loses a lot of face, and for a power-hungry shitstain like him, face is everything.
You could say the same thing about anything the government does; every law, regulation, purchase, or employee. The legislators are not spending their own money. It has to be assumed that they’re working in the public interest or all government is suspect, not just contracts with teachers.
And while you argue that public employees can use their position unfairly, there’s no evidence that they have. As has been pointed out, they make less than comparable private-sector employees. Let’s end the real abuses of government before going after those things that someday, maybe, could be abused.
Your argument applies to public companies, as well. The CEO has no real reason to keep costs in check. At least, not until the size of the losses causes blowback from the stockholders.
That’s an interesting point to raise, considering that it’s Walker who brought partisanship into this in the first place. He is only going after those public-sector unions that contributed to Democrats. Those that contributed to his campaign are being left to go about business as usual. Which is why people say that the whole fiscal issue is a smokescreen; that it has nothing to do with fiscal discipline and everything to do with strengthening his party’s hold on power.
Actually, there’s a cite upthread that is IS the case for at least one public-sector worker’s union (AFSCME). Workers pay “fair share” dues that are strictly tailored to cover only union administrative expenses (and in return, get access to union grievance-resolution tools and the benefits of the collective bargain), and may voluntarily pay “full member” union dues on top of that to support the unions non-bargaining and political activities and get a voting right in union administration. See post 914.
Great. Please quote them. Be specific.
Uh, no it isn’t. That’s an insult to slaves. Failing to pay me for my work is a civil matter if you violated a contract. Failing to meet my demands in contract negotiations is a free choice. And I’m free not to work for you.
Slavery involves the ownership of human beings and the elimination of their civil rights.
My point was obvious if you’d read my post. My point was that there IS plenty of this, and it’s unavoidable when power is concentrated. The answer isn’t to regulate speech - it’s to eliminate the concentration of government power. Take away government’s ability to provide you with goodies, and you take away the incentive to manipulate government.
But corporations don’t have a similar ability to force their employees to give political donations on behalf of the company’s interests. That seems rather one-sided.
Try reading for comprehension instead of phrases you can pull out and attack. My whole point was that states don’t face the same competitive pressures as business because they have the ability to continually go to the well for more taxpayer money.
What a ridiculous argument. If you think a company’s money is ‘created by its employees’, then I’m not sure what to tell you. Your view of how the world works is seriously distorted. And in any event, labor forcibly extracts campaign donations from its workforce. Businesses do nothing of the sort.
Initial nitpick: I think you’re talking about a cite from me, not from Try2B. And now, the actual refutation…
1.) $137 million is Governor Scott Walker’s number. It’s the shortfall in this cycle’s budget and his reason for why this issue a “crisis,” why it’s a pressing issue that has to be decided this second by slashing public employee compensation and stripping them of their rights. A $137 million shortfall in a two-year budget for a state of 5.7 million residents, after the worst recession (depression) that most of us have lived through? *That’s *a crisis? Uh huh.
2.) The “deficit” for the next biennial budget is allegedly $3.6 billion. Here’s an interesting discussion of that:
Assume your teenage child asked you for a Bugatti Veyron for their 16th birthday. Would you announce that your household budget had a $1,700,000 deficit? And that all of your children immediately needed to drop out of school and start working at least 40 hours a week to help make up the gap?
Oh, including the one where you’re lying and saying that public employees in Wisconsin make more than private-sector ones, including an analogy that has them making twice as much? I ask you again: are you dishonest or just stupid?
You don’t?
The statement was
[ul][li]Public employees pay union dues out of their salaries.[/li][li]Their salaries are paid out of taxes.[/li][li]Taxpayers pay taxes. [/li][li]Ergo, public union dues come from the taxpayer.[/ul]So, maybe not “straight” from the taxpayer, but ultimately. [/li]
It will now be necessary for the Usual Suspects to insist that I was talking about something else, which is why they are the Usual Suspects and are better mocked than debated, especially in the Pit.
Regards,
Shodan
All of which is irrelevant because the unions have already agreed to all the financial concessions that Walker has asked for. The point at issue is whether they will continue to collectively negotiate future contracts.
And it’s only certain unions that Walker propses abolishing. The other relevant question is why Walker wants to get rid of some public-employee unions and not others.
I did already, in a post you couldn’t possibly have missed, because it included size-seven font.
Failing to pay someone what they’re owed is a civil matter if you violated a contract. Arguing that someone hasn’t earned the compensation they’re legally entitled to, on the other hand, is arguing for slavery. It was your stupid position–don’t blame me.
Rights like the ability to collectively bargain with their employer, you mean?
You can’t run a company with no employees (including being self-employed: that’s a company with at least one employee). Everything the company sells, whether goods or services, is value created by the people who work there, from the CEO down to the person sorting packages in the mailroom. With no employees, there is no profit: in fact, with no employees, there is no company.
That you think that somehow a company magically creates profits from nothing is, sadly, not surprising to me.
The irony, it burns.
So, given the cite upthread that public-sector union members aren’t (in all cases, anyway) obligated to contribute money to their unions for political purposes…are you advocating then that we enjoin private citizens from spending their money voluntarily on political causes they prefer? That doesn’t sound very Conservative to me, trying to control what citizens do with their money.
Sorry Shodan, but your line of reasoning is not that useful, as it can be applied to just about everything:
Eg. Political contributions from large corporations are straight from the taxpayer:
Maybe not straight from the taxpayer, but ultimately.
This argument is just as lame as yours.
Wow, you really are fucking retarded. Here’s one for you.
[ul][li]Companies support politicians out of their profits.[/li][li]Their profits come from U.S. residents.[/li][li]U.S. residents are taxpayers.[/li][li]Taxpayers pay taxes. [/li][li]Ergo, company political contributions come from the taxpayer.[/ul][/li]
Unions’ political contributions come no more “directly” from taxpayers than do corporate ones. The money ceases to belong to the taxpayers once it is a tax: it then belongs to the government. The money ceases to belong to the government once it is a salary or wage: it then belongs to the employees. The money ceases to belong to the employees once it’s union dues. And so on.
You might as well try to argue that Republican campaign finances come “directly” from drug dealers, because almost all USD cash has trace amounts of cocaine in it.
And this of course implies that public workers don’t earn their salaries. It’s somehow the taxpayers’ money still.
Yes you can, and that’s a major flaw with government and one of the reasons why government costs everywhere tend to be inflated. It’s also why lobbyists exist in the first place. If government was operating on thin margins in a competitive regime, there’d be nothing to skim.
Nonetheless, there are some unique aspects to public unions. For one, as they get bigger they have increasing political clout just because of the votes they can raise, which puts them in a position of voting for their own bread and circuses. For another, they are allowed to withhold campaign contributions from members and kick it back to the Democrats.
And yes, this is just like a company getting a big government contract, then using some of the money from that contract to contribute to the campaigns of politicians who promise to get them more contracts. Do you approve of that kind of behavior? My solution to that is to stop giving handouts to businesses entirely so they have no incentive to corrupt the political process in the first place. Likewise, the answer to the union problem is to shrink the size of the public sector and privatize as much of it as possible to eliminate the conflicts of interest. As long as you have big government, you will have this kind of corruption. So let’s not have big government.
One of the most annoying things about the tactics the left use on this board is to assume that every cite from someone on the right is a lie unless proven otherwise, and that every cite that someone from the left posts automatically trumps the cites from the right, and therefore the person on the right is ‘shown’ the truth and is a liar.
The cite in question comes from the Economic Policy Institute, which is a ‘progressive’ think tank equivalent to the Heritage Foundation or CATO on the right. The paper cited lists no source material, does not describe their methodology other than in vague generalities, and there is no way of judging whether their assumptions are reasonable or not. This is important because the answer they get differs substantially from other estimates done by credible people, and that it ‘corrects’ for a host of factors that are pretty hard to pin down. For example, they correct for size of the private sector companies. Is that fair? Why should you do that? It also corrects for things like gender and ethnicity. But it doesn’t correct for factors like job security.
Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re not. But they’re just one side of the debate, and they’re biased.
Here’s a conflicting viewpoint if you’d like to read both sides: Public Sector Workers - Yes, they ARE overpaid.
The author of that piece was the deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration, a former director of the Congressional Research Service, associate director of the National Economics Counsel, and holds a Ph.D from the London School of Economics.
Now granted he’s talking federally, and the EPI is talking about Wisconsin. But they clearly differ in methodology as well as in conclusions, so I don’t think it’s fair to say that just quoting EPI ‘has shown’ any of my claims to be a lie.
That’s true in some small degree, but that’s why effective large companies break their organizations down into smaller business units and provide cost-control incentives to leaders and managers all the way down the line. And ultimately, companies that behave like government in this manner, such as GM, eventually pay the price in the marketplace and die off to be replaced by companies with better incentive structures. Unless they get bailed out by government, of course.
No, I didn’t miss it, but I didn’t think that could possibly be what you were talking about. I said that public union employees in general make more than their private sector counterparts. You responded by claiming that they actually make 5% less in Wisconsin, and posted a cite by a progressive institute as proof.
The problems with this are:
Again… So long as an employee has the right to walk away if they don’t like the terms, it’s not slavery. It may be unjust, it may be unfair, but it’s not slavery. Your use of that term in this context belittles your argument.
So long as your employer has the right to tell your collective bargaining unit to take a hike if it doesn’t want to meet your terms, sure. But if it’s a closed shop and the employer has no choice, then it’s a different matter.
This sounds suspiciously like Marx’s labor theory of value. I’ve got news for you - labor does not provide value. Value is determined in the marketplace. You can have lots of people laboring on projects that produce zero value if no one wants the things they are laboring over.
In addition, the same amount of labor can produce differing amounts of value depending on how efficiently it is used and how well it can be marketed. Companies create value not just through the actions of individuals, but from the overall organizational structure, intellectual property they hold, brand recognition which increases market size and magnifies the value of labor, etc. You tried to go for a simple analogy to make a point, and not only was your analogy stupid on its face, but even on its own terms it doesn’t make sense.
Of course I never said that. But your putting words in my mouth and attacking straw men is, sadly, not surprising to me.
God, this makes me mad. It implies that even after she gets paid, its not my wife’s money to do with as she wishes. Isn’t that the opposite of what conservatives think?
I mean, look at this:
[ul][li]Public employees pay for ice cream out of their salaries.[/li][li]Their salaries are paid out of taxes.[/li][li]Taxpayers pay taxes. [/li][li]Ergo, ice cream bought by public employess come from the taxpayer.[/ul][/li]
Does this mean the taxpayers, collectively, have the right to decide how much ice cream public employess can buy?
And you posted a blog from the American Enterprise Institute. As proof.
Nope, never said anything of the sort.
The taxpayer is the customer, and has much less choice to take his “business” elsewhere than with private industry. I can decide whether to buy Ford or GM. I have no choice but to pay my taxes. Therefore, I am entitled to a certain amount of say on how my tax money gets spent - not what you do after you get paid, how much and what form your pay (or your wife’s) takes. Because if a private business tries to take advantage of me, or slack off, or charge too much, I can walk away from it and take my business elsewhere. I can’t do that with the DMV.
With teachers, it is much the same. I want to support education. However, if the teachers unions are charging too much, or wasting my money, or otherwise short-changing me, I still have to pay my taxes. And therefore I have the right to put other kinds of pressure on the teachers unions, because I am forced to subsidize them.
And no, I do not have to sit still and take it. Sure, the teacher’s unions are going to hate it when I limit their raises, or otherwise pull their noses out of the trough before they have had their fill. Tough toenails.
Regards,
Shodan