# Thank you fellow New Jersey voters **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 20, 2010, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096 "2010-03-20T02:18:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/1 "2010-03-20T02:18:53Z")
For electing a Republican governor who is about to raise my property taxes by $800 a year while lowering taxes on people who earn $400,000 a year. You’re morons and you suck. And, you Governor Christie, are a lying asshole. > [@](#): > > [http://www.thedailyjournal.com/article/20100317/NEWS01/3170336](http://www.thedailyjournal.com/article/20100317/NEWS01/3170336) > After campaigning last year on a pledge to restore recent cuts to the homestead rebate program, Christie instead is proposing to suspend them for 2010 and replace them with direct quarterly property tax credits starting in May 2011. That saves the state’s proposed budget some $2 billion. Tenant rebates would be permanently eliminated. > > Democratic lawmakers, who control the Senate and Assembly and will have to approve the budget before Christie can, said the sacrifice isn’t shared universally because an income tax increase on taxpayers with incomes over $400,000 isn’t being extended to a second year. Yeah that’s going to attract hard working families to this state: higher property taxes. Throw in cuts to school aid as well for an even bigger bonus! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![liberty3701](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@liberty3701](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liberty3701)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/2 "2010-03-20T05:05:59Z")
nevermind ---
**Author:** ![Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7993a0/32.png) [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamaika_a_jamaikaiake)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/3 "2010-03-20T05:09:18Z")
…and Gov. Christie can go fuck himself. Jon Corzine was the only politician I ever really liked. Every time I heard about a policy of his on the radio, I agreed with him. What pieces of shit voted for _this_ asshole? Here’s a story of Christie being a shitty US Attorney: > **[Hemant Lakhani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemant_Lakhani)** > > Hemant Lakhani (1935 – June 19, 2013) was an Indian-born British rice trader and sari salesman. He was convicted in 2005 of illegal arms dealing after purchasing a fake surface-to-air missile from a Russian intelligence agent posing as a disgruntled military officer, then attempting to sell that missile to an informant working for FBI and posing as a Somali terrorist. > Born in Gujarat, Lakhani moved to London in 1974. Lakhani and his wife Kusum ran a number of businesses, including an export/impo... > **[Arms Trader (2009) - This American Life](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/387/arms-trader-2009)** > > The U.S. government spent two years on a sting operation trapping an Indian man suspected of being an illegal arms dealer. Fuck you, fellow NJians, and fuck the bear hunt! ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/4 "2010-03-20T13:32:04Z")
> [@Jamaika\_a\_jamaikaiake](#): > > …and Gov. Christie can go fuck himself. > Jon Corzine was the only politician I ever really liked. Every time I heard about a policy of his on the radio, I agreed with him. What pieces of shit voted for _this_ asshole? > > Here’s a story of Christie being a shitty US Attorney: > [Hemant Lakhani - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemant_Lakhani) > [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/387/Arms-Trader-2009](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/387/Arms-Trader-2009) > > Fuck you, fellow NJians, and fuck the bear hunt! NJ is in the budget mess they are in now thanks to Corzine, McGreevey, and Whitman. They provided way-too generous benefits to public works as a way to ensure their votes ad infinitum. Your last good governor was Tom Kean, IMHO. (coincidently, he was gov the last time I actually lived in NJ) ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/5 "2010-03-20T20:34:17Z")
One more thing: for those of you who care about NJ finances, [this](http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/opinion/editorials/article_ccb1052e-70c3-5991-8639-57d8c4ea7097.html) editorial (free reg required) does a good job of an evenhanded overview of the situation. The bumper sticker: it’s bad. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/6 "2010-03-20T20:54:01Z")
KEAN…!? Keane was the Asshat who created the fiscal mess Florio got the blame for & tried to fix. Yes, I’ll be the one to say it, he raised taxes and he lowered services just to pay for Tom Keanes fiscal shenanigans. And he got crucified for it. (Didn’t the 101.5 BoneHeads have cute little ‘Joker’ posters for him too? Cause that _never_ gets old. :-/ ) Its Simple: when you listen to the bought/paid-for lies of 101.5, and say yes to the Money-Bags of Warren County to elect any Satan who’ll shave a nickle off your taxes, you deserve what you get. And we got [del][The Mayor of Tromaville](http://northshoreexponent.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/chris-christie3.jpg)[/del] [Chris Christie](http://www.houseofhorrors.com/Troma/mayor.gif)… ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2010, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/7 "2010-03-21T01:34:40Z")
First of all - this one-year tax surcharge? Seems to me that if it was sold as a one-year surcharge, it ought to be kept at a year if possible. The OP talks about lowering taxes on those making over $400,000 - that isn’t really true, is it? There is a base level for their taxes that was made artificially higher by a one-year surcharge that is set to expire. Now, it might be prudent to set surcharges in the future, but in an era where capital and people alike are mobile, this has risks. New Jersey has discovered these risks already - they are suffering a disproportionate number of job losses. Indeed, these started in New Jersey well before most of the rest of the country. [Cite.](http://www.slate.com/id/2216238/) ---
**Author:** ![Shecky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Shecky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shecky)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/8 "2010-03-22T12:28:58Z")
For the most part, I like McGreevey. At least he can say he fixed the DMV before leaving. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/9 "2010-03-22T13:43:23Z")
> [@Mr.Moto](#): > > New Jersey has discovered these risks already - they are suffering a disproportionate number of job losses. Indeed, these started in New Jersey well before most of the rest of the country. NJ has always benefited (and sometimes, suffered) from proximity to NY and its financial jobs. Once the financial meltdown hit, NJ’s jobs meltdown was inevitable. It was the old story, NY sneezes, NJ catches a cold. They rode the wave up, then back down hard. Amazing, as ridiculously high as NJ taxes are, the tax burden (and cost of living) still isn’t as bad as Manhattan (combined tax rates city and state and property). But NJ’s problem isn’t rev generation; it’s cost structure. The famous quote in the Governor’s assessment, here in the [Star Ledger](http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/02/chris_christies_speech_on_budg.html), provides an example of the insanity > [@](#): > > One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits – a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair? > > A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing, yes nothing, for full family medical, dental and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime. Is it “fair” for all of us and our children to have to pay for this excess? Obviously, public sector unions in NJ became way too powerful and were given benefits so generous that it became a ponzi scheme; a scheme that has now fallen apart and the taxpayers of NJ are paying for. Christie gets to play adult, the first NJ governor to do so in a long time. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/10 "2010-03-22T14:02:50Z")
As a former teacher you can go fuck yourself **Mr. Smashy**. I’ve never been more exhausted than I was the months I spent teaching seventh grade social studies. Never. I’ve worked dozens of private sector jobs. Nothing ever came close to coping with the demands of 150 preadolescents while attempting to get them from the American Revolution to the Civil War. My daughter’s first grade teacher works damned hard. I had twelve of my little girl’s classmates over for her birthday party. At the end of the two hours I was ready to sit on a couch and collapse because looking after them while having fun was so tiring. My daughter’s first grade teacher is a saint. A goddamned saint who has helped teach my daughter to read, write and love math. Talk to the fellow parents of her classmates. We love her. She’s taken unruly kids and turned them into well behaved kids. She’s taken kids who were struggling with reading and turned them into avid readers. All for (oh my god!) the amazing sum of about 50k a year. The federal government is damned near the only bastion of good jobs at good wages left for the average middle class person. It speaks volumes about Republican priorities that criticism of CEO Slime and his multimillion dollar salary for running a company into the ground are shrugged off as class warfare while you bitch about the first grade teacher’s earning a half way decent wage. Screw you. Oh and I reiterate: STOP RAISING MY TAXES YOU ASSHOLES. Because my taxes are about to get up eight hundred bucks this year. Thanks a lot you and your fellow Republicans! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/11 "2010-03-22T14:19:34Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > Amazing, as ridiculously high as NJ taxes are, the tax burden (and cost of living) still isn’t as bad as Manhattan (combined tax rates city and state and property). But NJ’s problem isn’t rev generation; it’s cost structure. The famous quote in the Governor’s assessment, here in the [Star Ledger](http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/02/chris_christies_speech_on_budg.html), provides an example of the insanity > > > [@](#): > > > > One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits – a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair? You realize, of course, that if you invested $124,000 in stocks tomorrow you’d end up with $3 million or so after 30 years? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/12 "2010-03-22T14:29:47Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > As a former teacher you can go fuck yourself **Mr. Smashy**. > > I’ve never been more exhausted than I was the months I spent teaching seventh grade social studies. Never. I’ve worked dozens of private sector jobs. Nothing ever came close to coping with the demands of 150 preadolescents while attempting to get them from the American Revolution to the Civil War. > > My daughter’s first grade teacher works damned hard. I had twelve of my little girl’s classmates over for her birthday party. At the end of the two hours I was ready to sit on a couch and collapse because looking after them while having fun was so tiring. > > My daughter’s first grade teacher is a saint. A goddamned saint who has helped teach my daughter to read, write and love math. Talk to the fellow parents of her classmates. We love her. She’s taken unruly kids and turned them into well behaved kids. She’s taken kids who were struggling with reading and turned them into avid readers. > > All for (oh my god!) the amazing sum of about 50k a year. > > The federal government is damned near the only bastion of good jobs at good wages left for the average middle class person. It speaks volumes about Republican priorities that criticism of CEO Slime and his multimillion dollar salary for running a company into the ground are shrugged off as class warfare while you bitch about the first grade teacher’s earning a half way decent wage. > > Screw you. > > Oh and I reiterate: STOP RAISING MY TAXES YOU ASSHOLES. > > Because my taxes are about to get up eight hundred bucks this year. Thanks a lot you and your fellow Republicans! Gee - where should I start. I worked in the public sector myself once - and similarly in a job where misguided people would make a fetish of elevating that job over others and call the people doing it heroes or saints. And yes, I was tired at the end of many workdays. That has little to add to this discussion. We can have rational discussions about how to pay our servicemembers and our teachers both. Your appeal to emotion isn’t persuasive in the least. This is especially true since my first few jobs out of the Navy paid roughly what your example teacher made - and I surely was paying toward my retirement and my healthcare. If that was true, it ought to be true for teachers in New Jersey - it is clear that taxpayers cannot afford to subsidize a level of benefits for them that is far more generous than they receive in their own jobs. I have no problem with the wage a teacher earns - but asking her to contribute to her own 401k or chip into health insurance isn’t beyond the pale. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/13 "2010-03-22T14:45:21Z")
> [@Mr.Moto](#): > > Gee - where should I start. > > I worked in the public sector myself once - and similarly in a job where misguided people would make a fetish of elevating that job over others and call the people doing it heroes or saints. And yes, I was tired at the end of many workdays. > > That has little to add to this discussion. We can have rational discussions about how to pay our servicemembers and our teachers both. Your appeal to emotion isn’t persuasive in the least. > > This is especially true since my first few jobs out of the Navy paid roughly what your example teacher made - and I surely was paying toward my retirement and my healthcare. If that was true, it ought to be true for teachers in New Jersey - it is clear that taxpayers cannot afford to subsidize a level of benefits for them that is far more generous than they receive in their own jobs. > > I have no problem with the wage a teacher earns - but asking her to contribute to her own 401k or chip into health insurance isn’t beyond the pale. We could have rational discussions. But Republicans who whine that $500,000 a year is far too little to pay a CEO aren’t in the position to make one. You want qualified people (and yes that applies to the guy who maintains your bridges and teaches your kids and delivers your mail and fights your fire and locks up the bad guys when they break into your your house) you have to pay for them. That fact doesn’t magically go away as Republicans seem to believe once we’re talking about public sector employees. You want good people? You pay for them. Believe it or not that applies to teachers as well as investment bankers. And you’ll get my daughter’s first grade teacher away from her classroom when you pry her out of my cold dead hands. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/14 "2010-03-22T15:07:05Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You realize, of course, that if you invested $124,000 in stocks tomorrow you’d end up with $3 million or so after 30 years? you realize, of course, that if you invest $124,000 in stocks over the course of a 30 year career, you won’t end up with $3 million or so? (plus, to have that kind of growth you’d have to have a consistently excellent rate of return [around 11%] which is not a reasonable assumption) (not putting an entry into the ‘overgenerous bennies’ fight, but just pointing this out) ---
**Author:** ![storyteller0910](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@storyteller0910](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/storyteller0910)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/15 "2010-03-22T15:31:50Z")
> [@Mr.Moto](#): > > This is especially true since my first few jobs out of the Navy paid roughly what your example teacher made - and I surely was paying toward my retirement and my healthcare. If that was true, it ought to be true for teachers in New Jersey - it is clear that taxpayers cannot afford to subsidize a level of benefits for them that is far more generous than they receive in their own jobs. Wait - you think $50,000 a year is a _starter_ salary, and that because you made that much in your starter jobs, it’s roughly equivalent? No, no, no, no, no. Around $50,000 annually is about the _average_ teacher salary. My wife, who has been teaching for around ten years, just crossed the $50,000 plateau in the space of the last year; her starting salary was under $30,000/year (the current starting salary is, I believe, in the vicinity of $38,000). And remember, there is an absolute (relative) cap on teacher earnings - you could take a starting job at $50,000 and use it as a stepping stone toward much higher figures - a teacher starts at $38,000 in the expectation of making it all the way to $60,000 after teaching for a decade, and way the hell up to $75,000 a year when they retire (and this is in NJ, specifically, where teacher salaries are comparatively high). _That’s_ why the benefits are good - because the salaries are mediocre and there’s no room for growth. A non-teacher starts low and aims high, hopefully socking away money as his or her income increases toward retirement. A teacher is on a set financial path, and one that doesn’t afford much opportunity for retirement savings unless the teacher marries a well-compensated non-teacher. So in lieu of giving the teacher more money straight up, we give them the stability and security of benefits and a good pension plan. You want to slash those things, then OK, fine, but you will have fewer teachers, and way fewer highly qualified teachers. I mean, I love my job, and I’m good at it. It’s in the private sector, so I’m adequately compensated and can save and invest for the future. Thus, paying into my own benefits (which I do) and being mostly responsible for my own retirement income (which I am) is acceptable. But if tomorrow they told me they were cutting my salary to $50,000 annually, and that I could never hope to make more than $75,000, AND that I’d still have to pay into my own benefits and would get no real retirement support? I’d find another job, in a field that would/could compete for my services. It’s the same for teachers. You want good teachers, you need to compensate them competitively. Paying them salaries equivalent to what equally skilled and experienced workers would get in private industry is not an option for public schools - it’d bankrupt the schools pretty quickly if top-end teachers were making $150K-$200K. So you give them extra perks, to make up for the reduced salary. It’s really not that difficult a calculus. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/16 "2010-03-22T15:37:41Z")
> [@Rumor\_Watkins](#): > > you realize, of course, that if you invest $124,000 in stocks over the course of a 30 year career, you won’t end up with $3 million or so? > > (plus, to have that kind of growth you’d have to have a consistently excellent rate of return [around 11%] which is not a reasonable assumption) Right, but the point is simply that getting $3 million back on a $100,000 investment is not as ridiculous as it seems at first blush. You’d need a 10% rate of return, which is more or less the market average ([9.4%](http://observationsandnotes.blogspot.com/2009/03/average-annual-stock-market-return.html) from 1900-2009). ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/17 "2010-03-22T16:09:23Z")
> [@storyteller0910](#): > > Wait - you think $50,000 a year is a _starter_ salary, and that because you made that much in your starter jobs, it’s roughly equivalent? No - I’ve made much less than that when I was starting out. But even when I was, I had to contribute toward my own 401k and health care. That was my point. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/18 "2010-03-22T19:17:19Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Right, but the point is simply that getting $3 million back on a $100,000 investment is not as ridiculous as it seems at first blush. You’re missing the other major point, I think, which is that this was not a $100k lump-sum contribution at the beginning of his career–this was $100k spread out over the entire thing. So you won’t earn as much interest on the hundred dollars that came out of your last paycheck as the hundred that came out of your first. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/19 "2010-03-22T19:38:44Z")
That major point is exactly what I was responding to. Bear in mind that the article’s outrage focuses solely on the employee’s contribution and the shockingly large sum of money he ended up with. I simply pointed out that that kind of money would _normally_ turn into a shockingly large sum, although obviously it wouldn’t be anything like that amount if paid over time. Still, I made no allowance for any contribution from the employer, as did the article, which is itself silly. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096/20 "2010-03-22T20:10:36Z")
Well **Lavender** , I’m shocked - shocked i tell you - that a liberal (I’m guessing, based on your constant Rich-guys-are-all-evil stuff) chose to go emotional instead of a discussion based on facts. I’m sure you’ve had some hard days. You don’t like it? Then don’t be a teacher. Seriously. Nobody puts a gun to your head to get you to take some job you think is too hard, for too little money. NJ can’t afford it. Story over. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thank-you-fellow-new-jersey-voters/533096.md?page=2)