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Khan Academy: the Future of Taxpayer Reeducation?
theodp writes "Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has launched a website and gone social on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to educate taxpayers on why they must make good on pension promises to state workers. And, in addition to Squeezy the Pension Python, Gov. Quinn is enlisting the help of Khan Academy, the tax-exempt, future-of-education organization funded by tax-free millions from Google, Bill Gates, and others, to help convince taxpayers that a state-pension-promise is a promise. In the Khan Academy video commissioned by the Governor, Illinois Pension Obligations, Sal Khan concedes that the annual annuity payouts for IL state employee retirees do look 'pretty reasonable' — e.g., $43,591 for the average teacher, $117,558 for a judge — but goes on to argue that 'in all fairness, this was promised to these people,' who he speculates 'probably took lower compensation while they were working,' 'probably stayed in the jobs longer,' and 'probably sacrificed other things' to get these 'great benefits.' 'We're delighted to have his [Khan's] help in enlightening Illinois citizens about how the pension problem came to be,' said the Governor. Of course, not everything can be explained in one video — perhaps other contributing factors like 'pension spiking', lobbyists' maneuvers, sweetheart deals, creative job reclassification, golden parachutes, bruising investment losses, and other wacky pension games will be taught in Illinois Pension Obligations II!"
Jesus H. Christ, not even Wikipedia has a link-to-word ratio this high.
if you think that everyone will believe everything they see on the internet i have a bridge in brooklyn to sell you
Is it really a good thing for Khan to be involved in politics?
From the description, it sounds more like civics than politics.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So now that Khan Academy has gone political (I guess it always somewhat was but is now overtly political) I can scratch it off my list for good.
Seriously, I would like one fucking place to go that doesn't involve fucking politicians telling me what to fucking do. Just ONE place.
If Khan would like to go over these issues, do it in a political science course, do it in a history course but do it in the past tense as a learning resource. Don't sell the fuck out to political parties and destroy your credibility.
Enlist an educational facility (regardless of what type it is) to run your re-education campaign.
Listen, whether you are for the public education or against it or have no opinion on it one way or another, you have to admit that this type of action by the Governor is questionable at the least.
Personally I advice everybody to take a step back and ask themselves this question: did I promise anything to anybody? Did I promise to be a tax slave in a system that was set up without any of my participation? Did I vote back then when Teddy Roosevelt and FDR and Hoover and Nixon and Carter and everybody in between, all the rest of the socialists were pushing for their agenda?
OK, so if YOU voted for it, you may feel some form of obligation to pay for it. However tens to hundreds of millions of unsuspected individuals were born and died and were born again in a system that fleeced them dry, prevented the economy from working with these exact types of policies.
You should be opposed to any of this on the general principle alone, never mind the fact that you have no money to do any of it.
The unfunded liabilities to all the pensioners in the system, the SS and Medicare and then State liabilities, they are running around 222 Trillion dollars in USA (that's not the 16 Trillion public debt, it's something else, and it's not the contingency liabilities, most or all of which will hit once the real fiscal grand canyon takes place).
No no no, do not let yourself to be re-educated this way. You can think whatever you want, but you didn't sign for it unless of-course you were the one voting for any politician who promised it.
The people who voted for Barry Goldwater DID NOT SIGN UP FOR IT. The people who voted for Ron Paul and Gary Johnson DID NOT SIGN UP FOR IT.
In fact even the people who voted for Reagan didn't sign up for any of it, though he still ended up fleecing them.
Don't fall for it, in fact consider your options of moving OUT OF ILLINOIS very very carefully, because the taxes will be going up and the economy of that state will be collapsing all on its own, never mind the union.
You can't handle the truth.
Even though I agree with Khan and the Illinois governor that state pension plans are promises that shouldn't be broken (unless the state goes bankrupt and gets bailed out), I don't like the idea of paying someone to give an opinion or educational video. In such a case it will always be doubtful what the real opinion of the paid presenter is.
I'm not sure about Illinois, but in California, the problem isn't current pension payouts. The problem is the payouts we've promised to future retirees are sorely underfunded. In the late 90s the state legislature made the calculation that the stock market would keep going up and up, and expected that the DOW would be around 30,000 right now. Add to the problem that CALPERS hasn't made the best investments, and California has a $500billion unfunded liability.
Note that if any CEO of a company managed retirement funds like the state legislature does, he/she would be in jail. I don't know if Illinois has a similar problem, but I do know enough about politicians to think Governor Quinn is not telling the whole truth.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Taxpayers that are struggling to feed their families and find jobs for themselves and maintain their workforces shouldn't have to pay for cushy retirements.
Then they should have voted for politicians better at negotiating contracts, and got what they deserved. The taxpayers are only paying for what was promised by their elected representatives. If there's a problem, the taxpayers need to reexamine their choices for representation.
Learn to love Alaska
he speculates 'probably took lower compensation while they were working,'
A long time ago this was true. Public employees accepted lower salaries in exchange for job security, great benefits, and more holidays. But here in the wonderful 21st century, they kept all their bonuses AND get paid more.
When the economy is good, both public and private salaries rise. But when it's bad, the private sector has layoffs and wage freezes. But the government is working with your money, not their own, and has no problem voting themselves raises.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm
This is a severe case of political editing, Note that the video is cut off to the "relevant" part.
Khan doesn't make suggestions, he just presents facts. The closest he comes to being "political" is claiming that the good benefits for retirees is due to them taking smaller pay, etc. That is notably without statistics, but he does say that the people agreed to such benefits when they were hired and thus why they are liabilities, both in the fiscal sense and now, since they worked expecting it, in the sense of the word.
In any case, he doesn't champion certain new cuts or taxes; the majority of the video is informative, not argumentative--actually, none of it is.
Captcha:defraud.
Perhaps if politicians hadn't made promises they should have known the public wouldn't support in the name of self-same public while pocketing campaign contributions from those who benefited the most from those promise, the public would not be desiring to repudiate those promises now that they are finding out exactly what the politicians promised.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
When Illinois goes completely broke and the taxpayers refuse to pay the burden, we'll see if all this crap in their system doesn't get cleaned out. But we don't have to worry about that today, that is somebody else's problem.
There is a simple and minimaly painful solution to underfunded and overpromised pensions in an environment of state budgets that are negative and not looking good soon. We just went through a period of deflation as evidenced by dropping home values. Public pensions and wages did not have that, but rather pay increases over that period. Despite the known fact they are by far the largest factor in ALL local, county, and state government insolvency. ALL. Nationwide.
The solution is a one time -10% COLA on public employee salaries and pensions, yes pensions, kicking in 1/3 a year for 3 years. That will lower the "base" on which future salaries and pensions are calculated and will make a HUGE tail wags the dog impact on governmental solvency.
I would further suggest FUNDING public and private pensions with special FED bonds at 1% for 50 years. The proceeds can be managed by the pension funds themselves to achieve the typical 5% returns they see now.
Real people and businesses with cash money can also do that right now. irvineeconometrics.com
If you care enough, you will type it in not merely click on it. $100k+.
The solution has been posted to an obscure internet site, thread and post.
JJ
The problem with Illinois pensions isn't the level of benefits. It's that the legislature has been underfunding the pensions for more than 20 years. Legislators and governors have kept tax rates low and spent most of the tax revenues on the general budget, always promising to catch up on pension contributions "next year." As a result, the state's retirement system is now only 36 percent funded. Decent pension fund management would keep it around 80 percent funded. In addition, the legislature gave the state all the responsibility for making pension payments for all local school districts in Illinois except the city of Chicago, letting those places keep property taxes lower rather than taking some responsibility for the pensions they negotiate.
Taxpayers that are struggling to feed their families and find jobs for themselves and maintain their workforces shouldn't have to pay for cushy retirements.
Then they should have voted for politicians better at negotiating contracts, and got what they deserved. The taxpayers are only paying for what was promised by their elected representatives. If there's a problem, the taxpayers need to reexamine their choices for representation.
Also expect to pay me a shitload more money if you take away my pensions. As a teacher I gave up jobs that would pay $60,000 a year for a job that pays $40,000 a year. Besides a change the only other reason why I would voluntarily do so is because of retirement being taken care of. If you bitch and whine how it is so unfair that I get that and you don't keep in mind your IT jobs pay A LOT MORE so you can afford to save more.
I will quit and go back into IT as well as many other teachers if you take our pensions away. That was the deal you made upon we agreed to work for less. Who in their right mind would sign up for $70,000 to $100,000 of debt to train for a job that pays $35,000 a year with no pension otherwise? You simply wont find any qualified teachers or any other public servants otherwise.
http://saveie6.com/
And if unions convince a corrupt or incompetent legislature to make impossible promises? A corporation that did that would just go bankrupt and start over and the promise would have to be adjusted. This does happen. I think states have to have a similar option.
These state workers paid into their pension accounts over the course of their careers; they have reduced their lifetime earnings by dozens of thousands of dollars to fund their pensions. The state is responsible for providing matching funds for their pensions, but only rarely has actually paid up fully. Teachers and social workers are funding their own "cushy" retirements. Or at least they're trying to, but their funds keep getting stolen by lawmakers.
These exact same things happen in the private sector and you know what we do? We either put up with it or we move on to another job.
I'm so fucking tired of the public sector employees whining about their benefits dwindling while ALL sectors face the same problem.
Just so you know, I have THE WORST possible insurance provided by Blue Cross Blue Shield of MN. I was already paying $500/month for the pleasure. Next year it goes up to $845/month. Am I whining? No, I'm looking for a new job.
Except that a big part of this retirement INCLUDES payments and contracts made instead of social security. These employees don't get SS, these ARE their retirement payments.
These pensions were part of their *compensation package* by contract when they were hired, and just because the state of IL didn't set the money aside like they were supposed to, it doesn't mean they aren't obligated to honor the contracts. It would be no different from the Federal government saying "ok, we don't have enough money for social security even though you paid into it for 40 years, so too bad".
'in all fairness, this was promised to these people,'
It's easy to promise money, especially when it's not your own money.
That is the nature of Government; it confiscates resources under threat of violence and then squanders them. Government is a bad company that won't go out of business because it can force you to pay for goods and services even if you don't want them or even if you know they won't be fulfilled.
"Commissioned Study" is politician-speak for "Take my opinion, find some numbers that agree with it, omit ones that don't, and release it as a third party so it looks like other people agree with me."
Why should politician's promises about pensions be any different than any of their other promises?
No, legislators promised them. Legislators elected with the help, support, and money of the government employee unions. What you call a "promise", I call a "crime".
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I immediately suggest that everybody takes you up on that offer. The public school teachers know what they and their education is truly are worth, that's why they send their kids to private schools disproportionately (of-course given their public salaries, looks like they are in a much better position to be able to afford it.)
sig
These pensions, like Social Security, were supposed to be funded by the employees themselves and their employer. The employees paid their part of the pension "payroll tax", but the state didn't (and probably spent a lot of the employee contributions).
It's no different from you expecting SS payments when you retire, since you *paid* for them over your working career.
That said the government clearly screwed up, they should have raised taxes and cut spending earlier, so it wasn't such a disaster by now. It's a shitty situation for the taxpayer, but not unexpected if you were paying attention for the last 20 years...
Commissioned Studies do not always take the side of the politicians that created them. Those politicians down play or bury studies they don't like; the ones that go their way are promoted. There are bad and good studies and you can find bad scientists to back creationism or smoking too. If their data is openly published one could investigate it... or if they have projections if those come out accurate (thinking of the recent election, where most the mainstream was dead wrong and none lost their jobs.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You'd have a point if only taxpayers were allowed to vote.
In practice, those that collect tax money from tax payers vote for their own representatives that promise to make taxpayers give them more money.
Taxpayers can vote for better politicians and lose. And they can "reexamine their choices" every two years and still lose. The other side isn't interested in giving taxpayers a better deal. They're interested in maximizing how much money they can take from taxpayers.
The civics of, say, giving teachers in Portland a pension at 105% of the income they retired at, per year, with "PERS" that essentially bankrupted the education system?
There's a (not necessarily too) fine line between education and indoctrination.
I can think of all kinds of people with some silly opinion that want to call it educational but at some point it is propaganda. I could create a mathematically correct lesson on linear algebra that also disparages some group purely sticking to factual data.
At the same time there is factual data that some may want to hide because of embarrassment that has educational value. So the hard question is the motivation of the offense not the offended. People living in Quebec were offended when a magazine recently pointed out how corrupt their province is; yet the recent huge corruption scandal shows that it is really really corrupt relative to Canadian standards. So if I create an offensive math lesson it probably means that offensive propaganda was the goal and thus the lesson should be eliminated. If I create a lesson on topical Quebec politics which if done correctly will be embarrassing to Quebeckers it should stay.
So the intent of this union "Lesson" appears to be propaganda so regardless of any factual content it should be eliminated.
I think we should honor existing contracts, but public pensions should be abolished going forward. They are immoral:
1. You are putting future generations on the hook for current spending. Not fair to the taxpayers.
2. History shows that, if they can get away with it, politicians will underfund the pensions. Not fair to the employees.
Regarding #1, I can actually buy the justification that future generations benefit from the spending as well... but mostly for things like infrastructure. Most government employees are involved with the here and now, so I don't think this logic applies to most public pensions. Education seems like an obvious gray area, though I presume that future generations are also going to be educating their kids so I'm not sure that we should be asking them to pay for their own as well. I am very strongly against taking on debt to meet payroll, and that is what we are doing.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
*shrug*
I probably won't get my SS, either. It'll end up being a nice little extra $350k (not counting interest and investment over the years) to the government and, then, to someone else. Only difference is I actually had to pay into it.
State and union negotiators based pension contributions on contemporaneously typical assumptions about investments, calculated to provide retirees an optimum income while not hurting paychecks too bad. There was no conspiracy regarding 'too big too fail', a recent invention of private banking. They self-funded their retirement in the same way as someone who pays $10,000 into SS taxes while working then collects $13,600 over the rest of their lifetime. Are you just pulling number out of your ass?
Inflation vs. CPI spread is the long term plan. 'Fixes' SS and most pensions.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You're quire obviously trolling, but I'll explain anyways. He didn't say he took a shitty job. He said he took a job whose compensation package traded immediate income for a stellar retirement package. It's no different than taking a slightly lower paying job anywhere else for alternate benefits (like free gym memberships, free snacks at work, extra vacation, flex time, etc.).
If the state doesn't want to foot the bill for the extra benefits, they will be stuck paying the increased income required to attract anyone decent. It's on the state that they chose not to bank the income difference to pay for the pensions. Quit making this out like the teachers are to blame.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Please go take one of these other mythical jobs. You and your contribution to society is worthless.
Because you're retroactively making it shittier. The fact that there's a pension of a certain size was part of their pay--they received some of their pay in salary and some in pension benefits. Retroactively deciding that they don't get it the pension is no better than retroactively taking $25 out of their salary every month, except that since the salary is already in their pocket and the pension isn't it's a heck of a lot easier to take away the pension.
If your in Alaska you should know that the state government rolls over when it comes to contract negotiations. I know when I was working in the Alaska Dept. of Corrections, every time we asked for something we got it almost no questions asked.
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
There are a few teachers in my family and I can't help but get upset about this kind of thing. These plans were agreed on, done, and signed. And for many teachers the time has already been served. A teacher can't go back 30 years to choose a different job, but politicians can effectively go back in time and screw you over. That's just wrong.
This is all made worse by the fact that Cook County (mainly Chicago) has always been horribly corrupt and has terrible financial problems.
It is even better when you consider the first thing cut at EVERY company in times of trouble is the pension funds.
What I don't understand is why we keep letting the people we work for control our medical and retirements.
If you are under 40 chances are your going to work for 6-10 different major companies in your life. You don't go down the street and work at the local factory for 50 years anymore.
We really need to pull the companies we work for out of those equations. it will be a nice break for them and it will be better for the rest of us.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Uhhhh - I'm over fifty, and that working at a single factory for fifty years didn't happen. That was my FATHER's generation, not mine! Need I remind you that the steel industry was pretty much dismantled, and outsourced way back in the 1980's? Automotive industries followed suit soon after.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
health care should not be tied to jobs that is a big part of costs of employing people.
If things keep going that's exactly what is going to happen at the federal level. We're going to to wake up one day and congress is probably going to say, "Well no more money, too bad. You all are SOL. We sold you a bill of goods all those years ago. I mean it sounded so good back in the 1930's when most people were dead by age 65."
I mean when the government fails to honor it's contracts whom do you turn to? What recourse do you really have?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If I were a member of a union I would want a new union with a new pension plan. Many of these pensions made massive promises in the past and now a bunch of boomers are, at least in theory, looking at pretty good pensions. Yet now that the time has come to pay out these pensions the real costs are coming due and they are looking both to the taxpayer and to the existing members to pay these old pensions while negotiating far lesser pensions with the new members. The new members pension fees are typically far higher while their eventual payouts are far lower.
The next problem comes from the baby boom itself. There is a huge bulge of retirees requesting their pensions but they are requesting pensions at the same time that there is a huge bulge of taxpayers retiring as well. Again typically these were higher paying jobs while the new typical taxpayer is getting crap with no pensions. These are not anti union rants, these are cold hard facts. More cold hard facts are that these same boomers are requiring more medical care and on top of all that are more likely to vote and there are a lot of them. So you are seeing more voting along the lines of free this or low cost that for the elderly such as free buses, or even seemingly innocuous things like lower speed limits (which hinder commerce). What you don't see are things like property taxes going up to pay for these services.
This union demanding that they get what they were promised does not need some anti union statement to attack it. The union even having to demand what they were promised is a sure sign of a much larger issue. A boomer cadre are going to relentlessly retire in droves every year for the next 20 years. They are going to both need more in the form of medical and geriatric care and demand more simply because they can. Yet the numbers of workers that they are demanding this from are growing smaller and smaller and through crappy minimum wage laws, higher costs of living, the difficulty of getting a mortgage on a first home, etc these fewer people have even less to give. At some point this is going to crack. It is no problem for a government assembly to vote on something impossible but regardless of how hard they wish they cannot make it possible. What they can do is wreck themselves trying to make the impossible possible. It quickly becomes the story of the Dutch boy and the dyke and soon the dutch boy runs out of fingers.
Another symptom that will be interesting to watch will be those locations with more young people and few boomers having past promises will certainly thrive while those places with the highest liabilities will either stagnate or take the bull by the horns and do something drastic such as let pensions go bankrupt. In Canada this would be Alberta. I don't know the official number but looking around I would say the average age is 40 or less. Plus Alberta does not go for the nanny type laws. Lots of families with kids. Looking around Nova Scotia I would say the average age is 70, few kids but lots of Nanny type laws such as skiing now requires a helmet. One part of Nova Scotia known as Cape Breton is particularly union friendly, is particularly aged, and is particularly poor. Taxes are high in NS and low in Alberta and this is a trend I don't see changing. What I do see coming is a point when the older parts of Canada start making impossible demands on Alberta and one day it says "NO". That is going to be an interesting day in Canadian history.
I think we should honor existing contracts, but public pensions should be abolished going forward. They are immoral:
1. You are putting future generations on the hook for current spending. Not fair to the taxpayers.
2. History shows that, if they can get away with it, politicians will underfund the pensions. Not fair to the employees.
Pensions themselves are not immoral. Those who abuse them may be, though.
But I agree that *most people* (not just politicians) just want to kick the important issues (not just pensions/social security) down the road. But it's not that hard to fix (in theory) - just *require* by law that pensions be fully funded. But if they can't make that happen, I suppose replacing them with a joint employee/employer funded IRA would at least guarantee the money is available...
I mean it sounded so good back in the 1930's when most people were dead by age 65.
Not saying this won't happen some day, but the above wasn't really true when you look at the real statistics. The ~60 year life expectancy in the 30's was largely due to infant mortality. If you only look at those who lived past age 21 (ie. started paying *into* SS) it's a *lot* higher.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html
Why is that such a bad thing? I work for the state of oregon and I'm under pers. The idea is we pay into that pension fund - they re-invest it (making more money) and pay it out.
I already take a 20k a year pay cut for working for the state - 105% seems reasonable for doing that.
The problem is that the same body of government that can make the funding mandatory can, 10 years down the line, undo the law. This has happened repeatedly in NJ, for instance. Now they are in the hole something like $50 billion. So, yeah, technically I agree that the pension itself isn't immoral - but I think you have to be either lying or stupid to expect future politicians to keep it funded.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I have no illusions about my retirement as a teacher. Like most teachers, I'll work until I drop dead or get shot by some drug-addled shave-head over some girl with tattoos, enough shrapnel in her face to imitate a 50's Dodge, and holes in her earlobes big enough to drive an SUV through who probably won't grace me with her charming presence that particular day. Neither of these two could possibly benefit from an education, because they will have so ruined themselves that Walmart will consider them an iffy employee.
Barring that, I expect that I will get screwed in some manner like raising the retirement age to the point of fossilization, or reduction of benefits below the levels that have already been lowered. Of the teachers that I know have retired, many die within a year of retirement. Others are still working as subs, because the Social Security minus the Pension is too low to survive on.
True, if a simple majority can change the law retroactively it's useless. Suppose it would take a constitutional amendment for it to happen. But given the last bonehead attempt to amend the IL constitution over pension benefits (CA 49) good luck with that, IL...
The taxpayers are often represented by people who are otherwise owned by someone else and certainly won't be there in 20 years, let alone foot the bills.
Sounds more like you are wanting to blame the teachers for your shortcomings. You don't hold your politicians accountable, so you grumble at anyone receiving any benefit from their actions. It's your fault you don't hold your politicians accountable.
Learn to love Alaska
"your side"? Then you blame Obama. You do realize it was Bush who signed the GM bailout, right? Whose side is he on? What laws did Obama break? He followed the bailout law passed. I think your insanity is showing.
Learn to love Alaska
If you don't hold it, you don't own it. If its denominated in dollars, your wealth is tied to the strength of the US economy. Social security is a ponzi scheme, it relies on a flawed idea of perpetual population growth.
This isn't your father/grandfather's economy anymore and the idea of working at the same factory for 50 years isn't realized anymore. Whether that is a good/bad thing is irrelevant. Because of this, we need to go away from social security, pensions, 401(k)s and insurance tied to work. Instead, we should focus on paying employees a larger paycheck and allow them to save for retirement in their own way. By having company-based pension funds it leads to stress when 10 years before you are supposed to retire the company goes bankrupt, the pension fund loses money, or the pension gets altered/cut in some way. Instead, with a retirement plan that you create, you know how it is doing, you know what you have for the future, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You'd have a point if only taxpayers were allowed to vote.
The number of non-taxpayers is tiny. You are at most, once removed from the costs of education. You are either directly taxed for education (it's a separate line item on my tax bill, for education explicitly), or you pay about as directly as any indirect tax there is (you are a renter, and you pay the tax to your landlord in the form of increased rent, which he then explicitly pays).
Learn to love Alaska
When government screws you over, there's nothing you can do about it, because they are the law. At least when a company screws you over, you can sue them or something.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You worked for the Alaska Sept. of Corrections? Where is that, Arizona? It seems strange to me that with cost being so important in sending prisoners out of state to private prisons, that there are no constraints on the department.
Learn to love Alaska
And, somehow....they have to be honored, I mean, people worked their whole lives and are dependent on that as their means of retirement.
That being said, it is ludicrous to not IMMEDIATELY stop offering this to new-hires. I mean, we obviously can't afford for this to carry on.
I can't understand why starting say, today, that this type of deal that states and the feds can no longer afford be stopped, halted immediately for new hires. Sure, you honor your contracts with those till now, but WTF are we not stopping said practice immediately going forward?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Exactly. I'm in my mid 50s and I've had the honor of working at a couple companies for 5 years, but most jobs I've had since moving up to the Silicon Valley lasted on average from a year and a half to two years. At one level I get your point. Business today won't keep anyone on long enough to get a pension. This is however leading to a real problem. I and a significant number of my friends went to great length to prepare for our retirement only to see the greedy banking industry obliterate our savings by hijacking the economy. On the other end, what threatens to be runaway inflation caused by printing dollars in an effort to fake the world into eating our debt, threatens to turn whatever little is left into rolls of something squeezably soft (ask Mr. Whipple.)
I'm a boomer on the back end of the boom, but I have no illusions that there are a lot of converging forces that threaten social security and I don't want to have to depend on Social Security or Medicare to survive. What I see is a growingly hostile environment for the graying and gray, and I could imagine a society that marginalizes its aging members, even perhaps helping them leave the world in large numbers to accommodate those who are younger. I also see another possible trend that is equally frightening. Breakthroughs in technology and medicine dramatically increase lifespan and more important vital lifespan. With fewer and fewer young people taking science and technology as professional directions, Those of us with these skills may be pressured (using a number of means) to remain part of the workforce into what might have otherwise been our dotage. This would actually be just fine with me, if the gray didn't somehow become part of a marginalized class. Keeping us around as a slave class to stoke the machine keeping the young'uns in Big Macs and Mood Enhancers, isn't my idea of a utopian society.
We live in such uncertain and disruptive times, that its difficult to see ahead and make sane plans for the future. Even for those of us who have "made it", there are real concerns about what the future will bring. Our economy and the government manipulating it are utterly unsustainable. Our society will change, either in a planned and intelligent fashion or a catastrophic failure. In any case, There's no guarantee that current wealth will survive an economic reboot. Its time for all of us to begin looking at the obvious trend in technology, society and the environment and begin working to build a workable present and optimal future. Part of this includes giving up on the "I'm gonna cut me a slice" mentality. Managing for personal freedom and civil rights is profoundly American, that should continue, but now its time for us to also be responsible citizens of the world and work towards a world we can all live in together with the maximum happiness and opportunity for personal success and fulfillment.
Then they should have voted for politicians better at negotiating contracts, and got what they deserved.
You seem to miss the obvious. The pensions being paid out right now today were negotiated 40 years ago, several decades prior to the birth of some of the people now paying for them.
This is why the pensions are out of control. Its really easy for the government to kick the can down the road and make promises for unborn people.
If your pension was not funded all these years, then you are responsible. You had the chance to vote to make sure that it was funded. You had the chance to influence your union to make funding it a priority in the contract. You did neither, and now are trying to claim that people that werent even born yet should have voted for better politicians, but since the unborn people didnt then they are on the hook for your pension?
You should not have the right to make promises for people that arent born yet. The fact that you did it anyways make you the shameless guilty party.
"His name was James Damore."
Unfortunately, the elected politicians have very little power and leeway to do this, because of the powerful state and federal workers' UNIONS.
It is one reason we should probably not allow unions for public workers. It is ok for them to exist for private workers....(I don't like them but hey its a free country).
The problem is, they take out exactly what you are looking for with regard to being able to regulate what our tax dollars are paying for, and the economy has to take that into account. Politicians are not free to negotiate these things. The contracts should be shorter, maybe year to year, and if the govt can't pay, well, the pay and retirement should reflect that to a much greater extent than it does now.
For instance, in another post, I said sure, we have to honor what we've promised to past and current workers. But for God's sake, why have we not IMMEDIATELY stopped offering these benefits to new-hires? We know we can't afford it going forward, so why can our elected officials not halt this immediately?
Govt unions....that's why.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The problem isn't you. its a private sector that continues to squeeze the average worker until he and his family bleed. When they look over at you and see you not bleeding their response is what makes you so special. Worse when the economy is broken and state economies are on or over the verge of collapse, private sector worker begin to see it as y'all being greedy (and your unions) rather than pinning the responsibility for the problem where it belongs with powerful and wealthy men who have used the American Economy as their own piggy bank. All they have to do to succeed, is pit us against one another so we don't notice their hand in our pockets and purses. Honestly, you aren't the problem.
Sorry, but between pensions, social security, and a giant medicare squeeze under way it will not be possibly to meet all of the empty promises that have been made over decades.
Someone is going to HAVE to lose out, to not get all of what they promised. The coming fight is who is going to be left holding the bag.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They self-funded their retirement in the same way as someone who pays $10,000 into SS taxes while working then collects $13,600 over the rest of their lifetime.
OK smart guy, then why are the unfunded pension liabilities so enormous?
The fact is that government actuarial standards are different than private sector actuarial standards. What the government calls "fully funded" would be illegal in the private sector. When the government says "fully funded" they mean "future taxes."
"His name was James Damore."
So its not the teachers or even their unions who are the problem... they simply use a corrupt and broken system the same way as any of the other organized bodies especially including corporations to manipulate the government. You want that to go away, remove the channel for buying legislation from your state constitution and pass laws that criminalize making and taking bribes (actual or implied.)
For the most part, teaching is a noble profession (and yes wherever you have enough people you have idiots, crooks and criminals, it true any significant population of human beings.) If public schools are a disaster, I would be far more likely to blame the administration rather than the teachers. I say that with special acknowledgement to the fact that a huge amount of the money we pay to public education lands in the hands of administration vs doing the actual job of teaching.
The one who got fired by late Chicago mayor Harold "Mirth & Girth" Washington for nothing less than "incompetence".
The one who orchestrated increased state dipping into taxpayer pockets by 60% this year and managed to literally blow it all away on kickbacks to his SEIU buddies.
Tell me about what he think is right - it's rock-solid endorsement for exactly opposite course of action.
p.s Google "Mirth & Girth" - prime time entertainment.
Hhhmmmm... By the way, I'm not applauding Obama's actions, far from it. I could birth a bovine over continued atrocities against our Constitution. I voted for change... What-The-F!!!. However, how much do you think the share holder of GM would have gotten once they parted GM out. Five cents on the dollar? Ten cents? That would surprise me, in fact in the midst of the economy in full China Sydrome (or do you forget what was going on at that moment in history?) I'd be surprised if you'd gotten Three cents on the dollar. So twenty seven cents sounds like a pretty sweet deal. More important, once the share holders had sucked the corpse dry, every other debtor down the road would have been holding the bag and tens of thousands of employees would have been spaced. "THE PRESIDENT" has to look out for EVERYBODY, not just share holders. Sorry if your OX got gored, a bunch of us got our asses handed to us, but in the end, you might cut the poor bastard trying to keep the ship floating a little slack. Those guys over there on WallStreet, snorting blow and burning a couple grand a night on high priced hookers, betting against their own investors and setting the world to explode because it was good for their bottom line, those guys I would have a little enmity for. The President in this one and specific case was just one more poor bastard holding the bag, and I feel sympathy and compassion for all the poor bastards.
Hey, as long as it's not a camp, it's better than what some people expect.
...And, somehow....they have to be honored, I mean, people worked their whole lives and are dependent on that as their means of retirement.....Sure, you honor your contracts with those till now, but WTF are we not stopping said practice immediately going forward?
The Preckwinkle gentleman from this article
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-10-22/news/ct-met-pensions-teacher-perk-20111023_1_state-teachers-pension-fund-teachers-union-public-pension
worked only one day for the state and will wind up with a pension of $108,000 a year. I'm sorry, there are some games that were played that are simply not defensible.
The schoolteachers know more than most that the education system is not about teaching kids. The budget for education has been removed. It's daycare only. NCLB was education sabotage in a wrapper to make it seem like it wasn't direct sabotage, and it wasn't the first, or last.
The teachers want it to be about teaching, but there are violent felons in their classes, and they are constrained from taking any reasonable actions to control unruly students.
There are studies that show what "causes" good outcomes in education, and the public schools are not well aligned to those. They are often expensive and emphasize excellence, when the schools are aimed at mediocrity at best.
I have a nephew in public school. He was diagnosed as "learning disabled". That would have required expensive accommodations, so the tests were discarded. My sister paid for tutoring out of her own pocket to try to address the disability. When the school say his work improve sufficiently, he was tested and that test showed he wasn't sufficiently troubled to warrant extra effort, so that report was saved and made permanent. So my sister stopped the tutoring she could not afford. His performance dropped enough that he was tested (by a non-district person) be be below the threshold again. The district doesn't recognize independent testers, and refused to retest because there was a "pass" on file so the "expensive" re-test wasn't warranted. The district would not re-test because it would likely find that the district was responsible for accommodating his abilities. The solution was for my sister to pull her children out of public school and put them in private. It wasn't the teacher's fault, but the district itself, the bureaucracy and funding around it is designed to *not* help children. When you look at in-room spending per child, public education is almost always cheaper than private schools. Private schools are just so often associated with churches and such that they have free buildings and volunteer administrators. But the schools have been saddled with a government bureaucracy imposed by the government and condemned by the people.
I blame the voters. I wouldn't put my children in the public schools in the US, unless I had no other choice.
Learn to love Alaska
If your pension was not funded all these years, then you are responsible. You had the chance to vote to make sure that it was funded.
So if they did show they voted for fully funding it, then they deserve what they were promised?
You should not have the right to make promises for people that arent born yet. The fact that you did it anyways make you the shameless guilty party.
It was the voters and politicians at the time that are responsible. If I ask Mom for a raise in my allowance, and she says yes, it's not my fault if she loses the house 5 years later because she couldn't meet the payments because she gave me too much allowance. Mom's error doesn't become mine because she opted to manage her money poorly and I was a beneficiary of that mismanagement.
Learn to love Alaska
Unfortunately, the elected politicians have very little power and leeway to do this, because of the powerful state and federal workers' UNIONS.
No, in almost all cases, the elected politicians had complete power and authority to do this, but chose not to because they were afraid the voters wouldn't support them. Like I said, the blame is with the politicians and the voters that put them there.
We know we can't afford it going forward, so why can our elected officials not halt this immediately?
They can. They choose not to. It's the voter's fault. You got the representation you deserved, and you hate it.
Learn to love Alaska
The schoolteachers know more than most that the education system is not about teaching kids. The budget for education has been removed. It's daycare only. NCLB was education sabotage in a wrapper to make it seem like it wasn't direct sabotage, and it wasn't the first, or last.
The teachers want it to be about teaching, but there are violent felons in their classes, and they are constrained from taking any reasonable actions to control unruly students.
There are studies that show what "causes" good outcomes in education, and the public schools are not well aligned to those. They are often expensive and emphasize excellence, when the schools are aimed at mediocrity at best.
I have a nephew in public school. He was diagnosed as "learning disabled". That would have required expensive accommodations, so the tests were discarded. My sister paid for tutoring out of her own pocket to try to address the disability. When the school say his work improve sufficiently, he was tested and that test showed he wasn't sufficiently troubled to warrant extra effort, so that report was saved and made permanent. So my sister stopped the tutoring she could not afford. His performance dropped enough that he was tested (by a non-district person) be be below the threshold again. The district doesn't recognize independent testers, and refused to retest because there was a "pass" on file so the "expensive" re-test wasn't warranted. The district would not re-test because it would likely find that the district was responsible for accommodating his abilities. The solution was for my sister to pull her children out of public school and put them in private. It wasn't the teacher's fault, but the district itself, the bureaucracy and funding around it is designed to *not* help children. When you look at in-room spending per child, public education is almost always cheaper than private schools. Private schools are just so often associated with churches and such that they have free buildings and volunteer administrators. But the schools have been saddled with a government bureaucracy imposed by the government and condemned by the people.
I blame the voters. I wouldn't put my children in the public schools in the US, unless I had no other choice.
I can verify this 1000% it is the administrators who can help teachers or cause them to quit or work in a better school district. Take 1 school I was just shadoing with another teacher with. Inner city and scary with a cop on site. The principal wont allow students to go to the office!! WTF! Her numbers/Metric of showing less office visits give her a payraise at the expense of everyone else. So a student called this teacher A FUCKING BITCH and there is nothing she can do back but yell back! How is she supposed to teach in that environment.
Thankfully after the teachings had a riot she put in a seperate classroom (costing tax payers anotehr $80k a year for salary + benefits) another teacher to send disruptive ones. So the student knows he can get away with anything but at least we can teach and not have that a**hat interfering from doing our job.
Some public schools say screw the metrics and will allow student suspensions and back teachers up. As a parent you need to find such schools as superintendents like having low office visits thinking it means no discipline problems. ... see folks metrics fuck up more than the private sector.
I am in favor of NCLB as I have seen it work wonders. Kids today are 2 grade levers higher in every subject area before NCLB. There are lazy teachers too and they piss me off. Just like anyone lazy would make you angry if you work hard and love your profession and work harder just to earn the same pay as someone who is late and grades things once a month. Today in inner city Tampa there are students who are not easy to work with but in 6th grade know that 4x=4200 means you divide both sides by 4. These kids are only 11 or 12. Before NCLB they would not know this until highscho
http://saveie6.com/
Except the young'uns historically are not an exceedingly key voting demographic. The elderly ARE a very cohesive voting block. AARP has approximately 40 million folks. Not something politicians take lightly. Social Security and Medicare will be the last programs to ever be cut. FY 2013 has Social Security at $820 billion, Medicare at $523 billion, Medicaid at $283 billion.
I don't doubt the elderly will be squeezed on benefits. If you told me that the average person lost money on Social Security, I wouldn't be surprised either. I do know this. I'm 30. I believe folks my age will be lucky to see pennies on the dollar for Social Security and Medicare. Whether it is true or not, this is virtually a universally held belief for folks under 40.
I don't believe anyone wants to hold the elderly as a slave class, nor do I believe that will happen due to demographics. The young are statistically more likely the ones to become the economic slave class unless they basically refuse to pay for other folks' promises. Therein lays the interesting issue.
I always had an issue with philosophical and extremely popular notion of passing debt onto the next generation. Thankfully under most circumstances, for individuals, debts are null and void when an estate is settled. But not for governments. Tax revenue shortfalls have been solved by inflating the money supply and borrowing. We have a huge debt that will eventually come due. The last handful of generations have known this and done very little to do with it. I wouldn't be screaming "the young are trying to screw over my generation" when the young are looking at bleak economics, overpriced education, poor job market and several trillion dollars of debt.
Benefits come out from the salary
Again, it's easy to make promises when you are playing with other people's money; a would-be pensioner should have taken that money when he had the chance, eh?
I do not use the fire dept. I gladly pay for it because I MAY need them.
They are providing you the service of peace of mind, so you are indeed using them. Also, your willingness to pay for that peace of mind means that you'd be willing to pay for the same service from a "private" organization (i.e., one that doesn't take your resources by threat of violence). There are probably a million better ways to organize fire-extinguishing services, but the Government inhibits the evolutionary process that would find some of those solutions, because the Government—by the very nature of centralized power—quashes variation and inhibits selection.
This is why we continually elect morons who make things worse
This is why successful endeavors are not run by organizations whose members are voted into office by the general public. If morons run a "private" organization, then it ceases to exist in that incarnation; its resources are transferred into more competent hands—a "private" organization cannot use violence to temporarily pretend that the laws of reality don't exist.
Yes, this means the voters get proper representation... that represents them, the moronic public.
Proper representation is the ability to stop paying for a poorly organized fire department right now, not in 2-to-6 years or so when the powers-that-be deign to allow an individual to fill in a little bubble for 1 of 2 pre-selected "morons" (as you put it). If I don't want to eat mushrooms, I just stop buying them; I don't [yet] have to convince thousands of morons to vote for one moron to vote for a piece of paper that says I don't have to eat mushrooms.
Just leave me alone; get your gun out of my face. I'll represent myself.
It only appears that way.
There is very little practical difference between paying zero taxes and paying taxes that are then returned to you in the form of a subsidy or as part of your paycheck.
My father-in-law tried to play that game with me. "But I pay taxes, too", he would say. Since he was employed by the state, my response was, "you're paying yourself!"
Also it is funny to mention but Obama didn't bankrupt GM. He decided to let them go through bankruptacy court FIRST. Keep in mind if GM could pay back 100 cents for every dollar then it would not be insolvent would it?
That is the whole point of a bankruptacy. So the bankers can sell what little assets that is left with a judge as a mediator. So the judge looked for a seller and Uncle Barack was the buyer. The terms were .26 for every 1.00 or he walked. But but but .. that is wrong!?
Well then show me who is dumb enough on Earth to purchase the company at that price? That was the higher bidder and if Obama didn't do it and paid 1.00 for every 1.00 the republicans would be screaming IMPEACHMENT ... THEFT and would be accused of overpaying. It is hypocritical and you can't win either way in such a scenario. Private companies do this all the time. Look at AMD? The reason AMD can't find a buyer? They are waiting for bankruptacy court first so they do not have to pay the debt.
http://saveie6.com/
"We really need to pull the companies we work for out of those equations. it will be a nice break for them and it will be better for the rest of us." The only viable option would be government ran healthcare and retirement plans. Sure you could have private industry -- but the overhead (paying executive salaries and whatnot) tends to be far greater then a well-structured government option.
The politician can't win if *only* the union voted for them, and the union doesn't eat it, the retired teachers with the government abandoning its debts are the ones that are eating it.
Learn to love Alaska
It was the voters and politicians at the time that are responsible.
You did in fact say "Then they should have voted for politicians better at negotiating contracts, and got what they deserved. The taxpayers are only paying for what was promised by their elected representatives."
I guess what you meant to say was "The taxpayers are only paying for what was promised by someone elses elected representatives."
The fact is that this years representatives represent those eligible to vote this year. They should not be considered to represent a child born 2 years from now, a child yet to be conceived, born of people that may not even have met yet.
If breaking the pension promise is immoral, and passing it on to the generation after mine is immoral, and getting it passed on to my generation is immoral... then either I am immoral simply because of the choices of a generations previous to mine, or the people of a generation that didnt fund its promises are immoral.
Clearly you agree that I cannot be immoral through no fault of my own, so in fact the baby boomers are the immoral ones. Now explain to me why they should benefit from their selfish and immoral policies that gave them lower taxes all this time while simultaneously putting my generation completely on the hook for their retirement?
George Carlin had it right, who said that we should "kill all the baby boomers and loot their pensions and estates."
At the very least we should turn our backs on them by not honoring their unfunded public pension liabilities. I'm not saying that we should take what they funded from them. We should give them exactly what they funded, and not a penny more, at least not under the guise of "keeping the promise." If old people end up on the streets then we can look at solving that problem in a way that doesnt reinforce empty promises. Erect cheap shelters for them, give them food stamps, and so on. They will not get the luxury of freely deciding how to spend the additional burden of the tax payers.
"His name was James Damore."
My theory, in part, is that having medical insurance covered by benefits from your employer is a great advantage to those who are very sick and those who have a family. Essentially their health care is subsidized by a large number of single healthy coworkers. The family people still outnumber the single people though, in general, so the model stays alive by popular demand.
If medical insurance was exclusively an open market thing, then plans would come into existence that are geared towards single people, and it would be advantageous for them to band together in their health pool. They would win out over the current situation. Families and the very sickly would then have to pool with each other, and they would lose relative to their current situation.
Now you're talking about fair... I get it, I really do. However, the mess we're in on every front was 100 years in coming with the exception of the triggering events caused by the idiots in the Whitehouse from 2000-2008 and the greedy buggers on WallStreet who precipitated a disaster constructed purely out of greed and self serving. There's nothing strange about the government spending the money of future generations. We have only recent paid off the VietNam war and we'll certainly be paying off the two Bush wars from colonies on Mars. Double digit inflation in the 70s put folks on fixed retirement incomes in the real danger of starving to death (it became a cliche' of the times, folks were reduced to eating dog and cat food.)
So if you're going to tie retirement payout to economic conditions, then by all means make the public sector pay wages comparable to the private sector so we can assure that good teachers are made available to our children While you're at it, put a tight rein on administrators wages and compensation, cut back on that waste see how much difference it makes in about 10 minutes.
In the end this is all moot. The problem isn't teachers are greedy. The problem is that the wealth has been sucked out of the middle class and its sitting in banks in Caribbean and Netherlands to avoid state and federal taxes so its not supporting the government and its not moving the economy, its just being hoarded and we are all feeling the shocking vacuum of American wealth. If that money were plowed back into the economy, there would be tremendous new wealth and nobody would be complaining about teachers or firemen. They only stand out in relief because the workers of the private sector have been bled, and we want those guys over there getting benefits to suffer the way we are. That's not however a sane conversation, that's an indignant five year old screaming because they aren't getting any. The problem is with the people holding the purse. The greedy bastards who've taken the wealth and then stashed it in banks in the Caribbean and Netherlands to avoid taxes. So that money sits, not supporting the government or feeding the economy. It just contributes to the growing economic vacuum in the United States and we all get just a little bit hungrier. So anyone who doesn't support taxing the rich needs to consider that there will soon be insufficient wealth left here to sustain a viable economy... The printing of money is just slight of hand to hide the fact that the wealth has already been pumped out. It would behoove us all to turn this around.. supply side has had this effect before. Perhaps now would be a good time to reinstate Glass-Steagall, implement a progressive flat tax (no dodges or loopholes) and end the Corporate entity as we know it.
Its time for a more free market, separation of business and state and making representation/public service a normal part of everyone's life experience. Take away the professional politicians. Oh... and we need to have IBM train Watson to handle business and financial law in this country to take the element of personal greed, self serving and idiocy out of the equation. As we get closer and closer to a working AI, place more and more government functions under its control, with the purpose to optimize and enhance human success, happiness, abundance and growth. We need to begin removing the darker aspects of primate behavior from our systems of governance and economy.
I am bleeding though - the cost of living is sky-rocketing, and my pay is pretty much the same - they keep chipping away at my health care - increasing my share of what I pay year by year etc etc. If it wasn't for the SEIU last year we wouldn't have got raise even.
I am in favor of NCLB as I have seen it work wonders. Kids today are 2 grade levers higher in every subject area before NCLB. There are lazy teachers too and they piss me off. Just like anyone lazy would make you angry if you work hard and love your profession and work harder just to earn the same pay as someone who is late and grades things once a month. Today in inner city Tampa there are students who are not easy to work with but in 6th grade know that 4x=4200 means you divide both sides by 4. These kids are only 11 or 12. Before NCLB they would not know this until highschool. I want to make sure I give the tax payers and the students a good return and help these kids out so they can make it in life.
While NCLB is not perfect and does overly pennalize teachers through no fault of their own I am in favor of reforming it as it is was not implementing ideally. For examples kids in Kindergarten now have to read and fully write and do arthimetic to graduate to 1st grade. They just recently added this and the only way to reach inner city gang bangers is to do this early on. Not pump the standards after they are 3 grade levels behind everyone and can't possible catch up.
NCLB punishes children as well. In Alaska, there are places where a "failed" school would be required to allow children to attend other schools, but the next nearest school is a 2-day walk with no roads, or a $200 flight that runs once a week. NCLB never considered anything that interesting.
NCLB may have led to better national consistency, but I know in my schools, we were covering basic algebra before high school, and NCLB was a step back. But then, I went through the honors/gifted programs, which are penalized in NCLB, with funding stripped to cover the middle 70%, hurting the top 15% and bottom 15%.
Learn to love Alaska
Ah, so I'm right, but you don't like my tone.
Learn to love Alaska
You and the rest of us, I've watched my income literally shrivel from a high in 2001 of over $100,000 to under $20,000 last year. Between the gutting of personal wealth at the hands of Corporate America on the one side and the desperate attempt by Government to keep itself alive by printing money on the other, the middle class is being completely squeezed out of existence. This is a profound shift in the nature of what America is. It was a bastion of personal freedom, open markets, and governance postulated on a Constitution ensuring the rights and freedom for all. Over the last 30 years we've morphed into something different and deeply darker. We've become a nation of Corporations owning and operating a subsidiary Government whose purpose is to tighten the grip on human rights and freedom to make absolutely certain that those same corporations can and do squeeze every last penny of value from the American Public, and ultimately set them to labor endlessly for the benefit of a shocking few. These are neither men of wisdom or dignity. For the most part I see despots, sociopaths and men crazed by wealth and power living in some coke and hooker daze of hubris and self worship. This thing is broken and I pray that we can fix it without burning the whole thing down to the ground. I'll be honest and say I have deep concerns.
Clearly you agree that I cannot be immoral through no fault of my own, so in fact the baby boomers are the immoral ones. Now explain to me why they should benefit from their selfish and immoral policies that gave them lower taxes all this time while simultaneously putting my generation completely on the hook for their retirement?
Because that boomer is you mother. If you can't raise your parents right, don't rely on me to bail you out. Even if you weren't born yet, they were your elected representative. That your mother cold-heartedly screwed you over doesn't mean I have to drop everything to come help you.
The fact is that this years representatives represent those eligible to vote this year. They should not be considered to represent a child born 2 years from now, a child yet to be conceived, born of people that may not even have met yet.
Politicians may be elected by only adults, but they represent the area, everyone in the area (even illegal aliens and unborn future children). That your elders elected baby-raping politicians reflects on those elders, but doesn't change the area represented by the politician.
Learn to love Alaska
You must be a Foreigner.
When the government goes full retard, Preferably, you vote someone into office who will jail the previous government (and in America, they get a jury of all the people they screwed over). Forgoing that, you evade taxes and refuse to participate in the system (Lets work our employee's 40hrs a week but pay them under the table) by whatever means you deem appropriate whilst letting them know the reason why, hoping once the numbers show up on the bean-counters desk, they will reconsider (e.g. Fiscal Cliff).
If and when they decide to come after you, these days pretty much once that happens your life is over, so you have two options You shoot them or you become a martyr.
Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Ammo Box, Never mix up the order, in that order .
The only reason people haven't begun to riot is because they still have the Soap Box; The ballot box and Jury box are full of rotten fish, and the Ammo box is in most households, fully stocked.
Believe you me, every single old person knows there's something horribly wrong with this State and Federal government, their opinions differ but the consensus is the same. Once their pensions, Houses, Health insurance, and Savings are gone, they don't have much left to lose, and the youngin's don't have much to lose either at this point.
The Chicago Police have already refused to evict people from their homes for long period of time (years even!) due to MERS and other scandals; don't think for a second they are not fully aware of what grandma and a .38 revolver can do. They are also fully aware that, on the flip side, if taxes stop coming into the government, becoming a security guard will become a very lucrative profession in short order without all those nasty laws to follow.
So please, before you become a complete defeatist and give up your sphincter to repeated unlubricated penetration by the state, please reconsider that, on a personal level, you can make a difference for everyone just by adding 1 number to the FOID owner cards statistic (I'd like to see them confiscate firearms from 60 million people!!!) or by writing a letter.
Exact OPPOSITE of my experience. I had a child diagnosed as learning disabled and the school bent over backwards to accommodate him. It seems the schools are allocated funds based on headcount, and anyone classified as "special" gets them extra money.
Teachers were fighting over who would get him, as he really wasn't "disabled" just mildly dyslexic and smart as a whip.
Extra cash.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
That was my FATHER's generation, not mine!
NO IT WASN'T. Median job tenure in the 1950's was LOWER than it is today. "Lifetime employment" never applied to more than a small minority. Yet even today, most people spend a median of 21.4 years as their longest job tenure. In 1969 the figure was 21.9 years, nearly the same. This "lifetime employment" myth is an example of the "golden age meme" but things really weren't any better back in the "good old days".
"Both lobbyists must make payments to the pension plan to purchase credit for their past union years, and they are required to pay compounded interest. Over the last five years, after the lobbyists joined the plan, the two men and their union have made standard payments into the fund."
Basically they have to pay for every year they're claiming plus the interest that it would have netted.
It is not perfect and if Alaska had balls they would join Utah and refuse government dollars to implement. I wondered why there were so many natives in Anchorage that were broke poor but came back and forth to the villages?
Alaska pays teachers not that well except in Fairbanks and Anchorage too. This attracts the best students there. I understand how you might not like it but the voters have been whinning for years that the US education is 3rd world. Reagan started the war with teachers and he is right in this regard. We spend more money than most nations and have consistently poor performance. That is not right. NCLB was based off of Europe.
When I went back to school to finish my degree I needed remedial classes as did most university students. They knew Algebra !,but not algebra II like factoring polynomials. They didn't know proper grammar, such as when to use commas. Same with science. How can you teach university science to Americans when they do not even know how to convert gallons to liters or know the difference between an Ionic bond and a chemical bond? University Chemistry 101 gets heavy duty fast and the schools had to offer non credited chemistry first just to cover the material. That is still 2 classes away from organic chemistry!
So yes teachers and schools need to be held accountable even if I hate it for my job. I care about the students and if Americans are going to be taken serious at universities and employers they need to be as smart as the Asians and Europeans. I think it needs to be implemented and reformed differently but I sure as heck do not want to go back to the old ways where anyone can just come into a classroom and yack.
The two Bush Presidents dug holes in the wealth of children unborn, and the damage to the future by the later Bush won't even be fully appreciated in my lifetime, other than I know what's left of society is threadbare and broken all over. So the bloody horror that is the Bush debt is something you and I will suffer as long as we live.
By the way, you overestimate the power of your generations ability to shape social policy in the current paradigm. More and more corporations are at the center of massive social re-engineering. Consider for a moment. Going to a MacDonalds today. How many of the employees are now white and in their 50s? 60s? 70s? That's new. You're looking at someone whose pension imploded and lost everything they had. That person was retired and had to go back to work to keep from ending up on the street. That or they simply couldn't find work, like tens of millions of others and simply had to take what they could. Worse, you can't make a living wage working at MickyDees (or 90% of the other service jobs now available), so that poor bastard is staring straight down the barrel of working 2 jobs to make their Social Security make ends meet for the rest of their life. I would call that a working slave class myself. One last sad thing, these used to be the starter jobs for young people to get work experience and develop a strong work ethic. So now people are being buggered at top and bottom of the age stack
We've already begun to criminalize poverty. You can't pay a bill, I promise it will snowball so fast that you will think you're on a rocket ride to hell. The minute you start to fail, there are a thousand cuts loss of credit rating, tax debts, fines and penalties, and the banks have gotten the laws passed that will ensure you can't get ahead again, huge interest fees, laws that prevent you from escaping debt. I'm clear that it would only take a few more laws along these lines to force entire classes into a slave labor state. Though it would start out economic, Look at the growing age discrimination going on across the board in business today. You think it would be hard to imagine that people over 60 being assigned mandatory work? I don't. We've gotten to a pretty dark place and I'm not at all certain how we'll avoid the worst if we don't change our course immediately.
Certainly no many of the general citizenry would scream or complain if the public worker took a hit?
Where do you get the idea that the general public supports govt workers getting all this?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Where do you get the idea that the general public supports govt workers getting all this?
Because they bitch and moan about it, but make no changes to their votes, so that's proof they don't mind workers getting all this. If they didn't like it, they could change it. They don't.
Learn to love Alaska
Because that boomer is you mother. If you can't raise your parents right, don't rely on me to bail you out. Even if you weren't born yet, they were your elected representative. That your mother cold-heartedly screwed you over doesn't mean I have to drop everything to come help you.
Are you really claiming that everyone now has to drop everything to help irresponsible people such as the boomers, but that nobody should have to lift a finger to help me?
Seriously?
"His name was James Damore."
or know the difference between an Ionic bond and a chemical bond?
What, was that a test? An ionic bond is a chemical bond. Covalent, I think, is the word you were looking for.
I would have known that in 10th grade (biology was 9th grade, and chemistry was 10th).
So yes teachers and schools need to be held accountable even if I hate it for my job.
The problem is that nobody can agree on a fair way to hold teachers accountable.
Learn to love Alaska
Now you're talking about fair... I get it, I really do. However, the mess we're in on every front was 100 years in coming
So tell me why my generation has to be the one to make all the sacrifices? We have the opportunity to get the previous generation to make a sacrifice simply by not honoring unfunded promises that they made to themselves on our behalf.
Is it because that too is not fair? Really?
"His name was James Damore."
You had to know some fucking moron would show up and shout "Bush's Fault". It's as predictable as some low loser wanting his Obamabucks.
Just so you know, Obama make Bush look like a piker. So far 5 trillion in 4 years (only 800 billion of that was Stimulus).
So take Obama's dick out of your mouth and try paying attention.
Not in Anchorage School District. They lied and committed fraud to keep him "normal", but classified him as "special" when his test results were poor so they wouldn't count against the school or district. Though the fraud wasn't proven in court because they illegally destroyed records, so I should say "I heard" or "in my opinion" or other weasel words so they don't sue me. They were so testy because they lost a case in court where they had to give lots of special care to a "special" child of two lawyers.
I luckily made it through the school system without being diagnosed. Though I was in private school for a few years because schools weren't set up to cope with 2nd graders who were smarter than their teachers. I was beat for not doing an art project properly, so my mom took me out of public school until she couldn't afford it anymore.
Learn to love Alaska
That wouldn't happen to be Ptarmigan elementry would it :-)
http://saveie6.com/
Then they should have voted for politicians better at negotiating contracts, and got what they deserved. The taxpayers are only paying for what was promised by their elected representatives. If there's a problem, the taxpayers need to reexamine their choices for representation.
A lot of these taxpayers didn't vote in the people that put these pension plans in place. That was the generation before them.
Not only that, but a good number of the voters are dumber than the politicians. Look at people like Peggy Joseph who believed that Obama would fill up her tank and pay her mortgage. Any idiot can tell you that such a model is unsustainable, even in the most socialist/communist of countries, nobody could get away with such a thing (they believed they could when they did the violent revolutions, but it never worked out that way - even the Russians had rubles.)
Even in our democracy, she's definitely not alone. People will very often vote for whoever they think will give them money because they really don't get it that somebody else ultimately has to pay for it, and that somebody else may very well be them, even if they are destitute. Unfortunately, those people tend to be the slight majority these days, which is why most of the states in the union are broke. (I think Texas is the only state with a treasury surplus - could be wrong.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Nope. The Civics lesson is that when the government enters into a contract with an individual that it cannot then decide later on that it doesn't liked the contract and legislate to undo it. No matter how silly the pension agreed by some chicken shit politician who thought they could kick the can down the road to someone else.
There's a wonderful irony that republicans want to fight government tyranny by getting the government to unilaterally change the terms of binding legal contracts entered into by itself. I can buy the right of the government to invalidate portions of contract law, but to invalidate contracts it is a party to, that's fairly dodgy.
Personally, this is why I support the idea of the voucher system. The public school system sucks, and evidently even the teachers are aware of it.
Who cares about cream skimming. If I had it my way, the asshole students would be expelled from public school anyways, all they do is make things worse for the other students.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Are you really claiming that everyone now has to drop everything to help irresponsible people such as the boomers, but that nobody should have to lift a finger to help me?
I'm saying that the system should never punish one group for the actions of another. When people advocate hurting the boomers to help themselves, I hold up a mirror, and they always find that act abhorrent if it happens to them, but are ok with it if it's done by them.
But the way government works, a politician speaks for the land, and those on it. So you are held to the decisions made before you were born, and your estate can be held to laws passed after you die. If you don't like it, then we need to change the legal system.
Learn to love Alaska
Nope, Turnagain.
Learn to love Alaska
Yea, Obama shouldn't have started those two wars and enacted the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, otherwise we wouldn't have that huge debt.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
So your arguement is "democracy doesn't work". I can't disagree, but what can you do about it? The founders of the country limited the vote to rich white people.
Learn to love Alaska
Hate to have to say this about Illinois Governor Quinn.
I don't think Illinois Governor Quinn intends to honor any promises made to Illinois retirees. Typically, retirees took below market wages for decades in exchange for promises of a decent pension with cost of living (COLA) increases to partially compensate for inflation, and paid health insurance. Employees had to accept hefty deductions for the pension itself and additional deductions to fund a COLA. The State was supposed to match those contributions. In addition, many employees were asked to forgo eligibility for Social Security. This was so the State wouldn't have to kick in their required Social Security contribution.
I've read the legislation Quinn and his allies have been trying to run through. He wants to sock retirees with the full cost of health insurance, and make them forgo their COLA. Some of these retirees are making less than $12,000 annually, and may not be able to keep their homes if Quinn's proposals go through. Governor Quinn asked the families of retirees to talk to them over Thanksgiving dinner. My kids told me that I should not agree to give up any part of my retirement benefits. They weren't sure they could afford to support me. They said I should not trust Governor Quinn.
It turns out that the State hasn't been making their matching contributions, and in some cases the State may actually have side-tracked employee deducted contributions. In addition, the State of Illinois has been promising tax breaks to wealthy corporations - promises they can't make good on if they have to pay what they owe retirees.
So the companies that pay OUR pensions rob us, why should we let the GOVERNMENT workers keep theirs?
This line of reasoning results in a race to the bottom and ends up with everyone except the top 1% wallowing in the gutter. You should be asking why corporations are allowed to steal from their workers, not why governments have to keep promises to theirs.
Apparently in 2008 your pension fund lost $17 billion dollars. Compound that with the problem that there are no good/safe investments anymore so if miracles don't happen with your pension's investments the state will have to fund the difference... hence how pissed off the average person is.
I'm sorry that you're earning 20k less than the private sector... I assume that you're a newish employee since it looks to me like the people at the top are still doing very, very well for themselves.
Let's attempt to be honest here. Each and every presidency since I became aware of politics has left behind a debt greater than the presidency before it. The only exception was Clinton. As much as I despise the man, Clinton, and as much as I despise his "greatest" achievements, as much as I despise Clinton's politics (both of them, actually) his presidency did SOMETHING right.
But, yeah. Two wars. That put a huge freaking hole in what I'll laughingly refer to as a "budget". Tax cuts for the people who would have paid the lion's share of his wars? That was just adding insult to injury.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's a fair enough thing to have an issue with passing debt onto our children, but you've got to be careful to properly define debt.
If you don't pay for road maintenance for 50 years so the whole road network has to be redone at a significantly higher cost than the maintenance would have cost, that different as well as the productivity lost is a debt passed on to future generations. If you scrimp on education so that the nation doesn't have the workforce necessary to keep the economy going, that cost of fixing that problem is a debt passed on to future generations. The same goes for a lot of things that government does, even under some circumstances things like wars. Putting off any sort of problem nearly always creates a debt whether that's financial or otherwise and the financial ones are actually usually the easiest to get out of.
I'm not disagreeing with you that debt is being passed on that does not need to be. The Bush tax cuts should never have gone into place in the first instance for anyone, if there was excess money being gathered by those taxes it should have been spent paying down the debt. Given how hard getting tax increases passed tends to be tax cuts of any sort shouldn't even be contemplated unless the government is debt free and able to pay for everything it's trying to do. I would personally also argue that the Iraq and Afghan wars, Department of Homeland Security and a whole bunch of other things Bush did were also foolish expenditures, though I don't have the evidence to confirm that. None of us really know how effective Homeland Security is or isn't and it could actually be a very good investment.
Obama's not innocent either. The bailouts should have come with pink slips for everyone in the executive team at those companies or at least with some sort of strings attached to stop them doing it again. The Affordable Health Care Act is likely substantially more expensive than a single payer system(though of course a single payer system probably wouldn't have passed). That said though, if you want to tap two people on the head for causing most of the deficit it'd be Reagan and Dubya.
Median tenure in the 50's probably was lower. But, you're getting your numbers mixed up. My father's generation fought World War 2, then came home, and STARTED GAINING THAT TENURE. I was born in the middle of the fifties. My dad ended his career in 1980, with a little over thirty years on the same job, when cancer killed him.
The fact is, huge portions of my dad's generation did indeed work one job, from the end of the war, until they retired or died.
Me? Graduated high school in 1974, therefore only ENTERED the work force in the mid 70's. Had I taken my Dad's advice, and taken a job at his plant, I would have been out of work in less than nine years.
I suppose I should emphasize that I'm not a baby-boomer, myself. The real boomers were born between '45 and '55, I believe. I came along a year after that, and I find myself pegged as a boomer sometimes, but I really don't think that I am one.
The real baby boomers fought VietNam. I graduated high school the year AFTER Saigon was evacuated.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
got what they deserved
Wow, thanks a lot. I just moved to a new area 1 1/2 years ago so should I be exempt from all the crazy, unfunded promises that were made here?
I thought it was more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOXtWxhlsUg
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Someone is going to HAVE to lose out, to not get all of what they promised. The coming fight is who is going to be left holding the bag.
Which is how Ponzi schemes always end. But you knew that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Which is how Ponzi schemes always end. But you knew that.
I recommend anyone who doesn't know that watch the end of any Mission Impossible TV episode, where the mark comprehends they've been had... that look on his/her face? That is you, before you know it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Civics lesson is that when the government enters into a contract with an individual that it cannot then decide later on that it doesn't liked the contract and legislate to undo it.
Why not?
There's this thing in the world called bankruptcy. It's a backdrop to contract negotiation. It basically says that if I make a contract with you that is so bad that you can't sustain the contract, you get to get out of honoring the contract.
Just because, 10, 15 or 20 years ago, a group of employees managed to convince a politician to give them a contract that no reasonable party could expect to be maintained doesn't mean that now, 20 years later, we can't say, "That was ridiculous. It's going to bankrupt the state and we have to undo it."
Illinois is a particularly good (bad?) example of this. Many years ago teachers convinced politicians to set up a state-paid teacher retirement system. And they put in things like a formula where the school districts pay into the system based on the salary of the teacher that year, but the retirement payments paid to the teachers (and administrators, superintendents and others are in the same plan) are based only on the highest-paid 4 years of each participants career.
I'll give to 15 seconds to figure out what happened.
That's right, unions and administrators all started negotiating contracts where the school district gave participants huge raises in the 4 years before their retirement. Didn't cost the school district much in retirement plan contributions (they're only paying the higher rate for the last 4 years of a 30-year career) and the participants get a huge benefit - a much larger pension for the remaining 20 to 40 years of their lives.... paid for by the state aka the taxpayers.
When you get down to it, it's just a short step away from a conspiracy to steal money from the taxpayers of the state, and at some point the taxpayers are going to put a stop to it.
paintball
I think the Irony is that what will ultimately be the undoing of governments, local or state (maybe even the Feds) are the ridicules promises and agreements the Democrats entered into with others.
And I don't know about your statement in general since the Feds are talking about essentially Federalizing your 401K.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Through snow up to their chests and fighting off Grizzly Bears?
Give me a fucking break with your histrionics.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
They didn't limit to them. It was just impractical for most to do so, so they didn't.
Each state had its own laws regarding elections (and they still do, but they are mostly the same or similar now) and in fact some states (e.g. New York) didn't have anybody vote for the federal offices at all. Rather, the citizens voted for their state government (state senate, governor, etc) and their state government decided who they would send to Washington, which included their presidential electors. Back then, the federal government was about the best interests your individual state, and not e.g. Hollywood lobbyists.
I don't think the states prevented anybody from voting (except blacks in the southern states, and women in the rest - only slaves fit under the "lesser persons" definition) but it was up to them who could vote nonetheless. Most states did it the way we do it now, only they would typically only poll in the capital cities. Either you lived near there, traveled there (which in many cases took a day or even a few days,) or you could afford to hire a messenger to deliver your (handwritten) vote to there before the polls closed.
Communications being a lot slower then than it is now, most people didn't keep up with current events in Washington, or even care. Mainly just the wealthy did.
Today you end up with people who vote for absurd reasons, because like other people then, they didn't care much about current events either. E.g. "I'm voting for him because my friends are voting for him" type of thing. To me, the South Park guys nailed this one - if you don't keep up with current events or are apathetic about voting, don't vote. This pissed off the likes of Sean Penn, P. Diddy and several others who espouse the "vote no matter what" message, of course. I did exactly that last election, I only voted for one person - Jeff Flake, due to his anti-SOPA and anti-earmarks stance.
As for what to do about it...hmm...that is a very interesting question. I would say maybe require every voter to do the same thing immigrants have to when they migrate here legally every say 12 years or so. That is, pass civics, history, and American government exams. There are two problems with this though:
- First, different people interpret history differently, and what might be a "fact" to one person is "fiction" to another person, or at least stretching the truth. That basically forces people to accept one version of history, which treads on shady waters.
- Second, politicians love votes, and they would never like it if anything stopped anybody at all from voting, even if they're a total moron. Look at all of the problems we have with trying to get voter ID laws. (Really, what college student doesn't have an ID? I'm in college, and I haven't met another student without one. You have to have one to use the library, the computer lab, or even register for fucking classes. How the fuck does that discriminate against them? As for old people, just let them bring in their damn social security check.)
I would love to at least have a test to make sure that they actually know how the constitution is written, because that is something you either know or you don't - you can interpret it in different ways. But knowing the words themselves, e.g. what is the purpose of article 3, or what right does the second amendment prevent from being infringed - not so much. But that will probably discriminate against e.g. hispanics who can't read English, so it'll never fly.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
If the company's operations were sold off, piece meal, then the return could have been much higher. But we'll never know because Obama did steal the equity from the bond holders and handed it over to the UAW. Then he ditched the retirement plans for everyone but the UAW. You can't deny the GM deal was a Crony Capitalist's Dream come true.
If Air Force One went down in a ball of flames with him on it, I'd be sad for all the Air Force people on board.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
With investment proceeds inherently uncertain, in a defined benefit scheme (ie where the pension is agreed up front and not directly related to the amount contributed nor the returns) someone always gets screwed. Its usually the taxpayer as the schemes are usually too generous, but sometimes its the employee.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
We've become a nation of Corporations owning and operating a subsidiary Government
Countries have always been exploited by corporations: Remember the East India company? The difference being, in the US the corporations won a long time ago. Revolution and civil war and world war kept the trading companies down for a long time. But the corporations have grown so big their plutocracy can not be hidden any longer.
oh yeah dude. If you're over 50, we're going to eat you.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
We'll also immediately be left wanting for public servants, who won't work for crap pay, no job security, and no retirement either.
Nope. The Civics lesson is that when the government enters into a contract with an individual that it cannot then decide later on that it doesn't liked the contract and legislate to undo it. No matter how silly the pension agreed by some chicken shit politician who thought they could kick the can down the road to someone else.
So instead of enacting Bush's tax cuts as normal legislation, Congress should have entered into a 'contract' to set those rates with taxpayers and that way no future Congress could ever raise those taxes again? Or write a contract with oil companies to give them access to some oil field and never impose any new environmental regulations on them. Or give Blackwater a 100 year contract to defend US embassies abroad with no oversight .... [ Feel free to substitute whatever other policy you oppose that has, at some point recently, passed or could have passed through Congress. The specifics are illustrative only. ]
I don't know who taught you Civics but that's not how a representative government works, no legislature can bind a future legislature except by going through the supermajority process of getting an amendment passed. Otherwise, it defeats the power of voters to repeal policies that they no longer support and replace them with new ones. You wouldn't allow your political opponents the power to entrench their legislation in such an irreversible way, why should you think that you can do so for your own?
Most of the towns in Alaska have no roads to any other towns. Yet, they are held to the standards designed around CA and NY schools. You *can't* get a child from home to the second closest school and back in 24 hours, even if they spent 0 hours actually *in* school (unless you charter an aircraft for every student - OLPC isn't one lear per child - not that Lears can serve the local airports). That's not histrionics, that's fact. That your opinion conflicts with reality doesn't change reality.
Learn to love Alaska
Also, your willingness to pay for that peace of mind means that you'd be willing to pay for the same service from a "private" organization (i.e., one that doesn't take your resources by threat of violence).
Oh, jeez you're an idiot. Just like the idiot next door who thinks he could save money by not paying for fire service in your hypothetical universe. In the UK, that would lead to my house being severely damaged, probably burned down. In California or New Mexico, it might lead to 50,000 square miles being torched due to a wild fire starting.
Opting out of fire service is simply cannot be an option much like opting out of proper sewage disposal cannot be an option.
There are probably a million better ways to organize fire-extinguishing services,
No, that really seems unlikely. And history also does not bear out your assertion.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The Histrionics are that any federal official or judge would require such a scenario. The Goverment has its share of dogmatic idiots, but clearly, what you describe would never be required.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Government bosses are happy to agree on payments that will come do after they leave office. The Government employees know this so they negotiate these nice package. That doesn't make it the right thing for taxpayers or those that come later that have to foot the bill.
So you and the rest of Illinois have been living with lower taxes and higher benefits than you could afford at the expense of your future benefits. It sounds like a choice that the voters have been re-validating for the last 20 years. Aren't the voters asking to get paid on both ends?
Kinda saying they'll be on par with the private sector, eh?
And yet....we keep on working under those conditions.....why should they be any different?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Retroactively deciding that they don't get it the pension is no better than retroactively taking $25 out of their salary every month, except that since the salary is already in their pocket and the pension isn't it's a heck of a lot easier to take away the pension.
Yeah, there's risk in doing something for the promise of a reward in the future and because of that risk the promise has to be even sweeter. But in the end if the society of the future can't afford it, it can't afford it and that's just all there is to it. Look at Social Security, it's in the same boat. You think I don't know today that in 35 years when I retire there's a huge chance SS won't pay me even as much as I put in, let alone the promised growth of those investments?
But here's one thing I promise you. In 35 years when I hopefully retire, I WILL NOT be bitching and moaning about the politicians 35 years from now and the greedy young people 35 years from now "making it retroactively shittier" by not giving me everything that was promised by someone else, decisions that the young people never even had a chance to vote on. I guess I have too much compassion to force other people to work harder than I did to give me a more comfortable life than they will ever have despite their hard work.
The only time inter-generational debt is morally defensible is when the future generation benefits from the debt as well. I'm not a balanced-budget radical.. if we take a loan to build an interstate system that is useful for 100 years, it's fine for the people 100 years from now to share in that debt (though still a bit unfair since there might be better alternatives in the future, and it's prone to legitimate miscalculations that leave them with a useless project). What isn't fine in any sense is to take a 200 year loan for a project with a 100 year useful lifespan. That's theft. And I believe that's one reason Congress is unable to "bind" future Congresses by passing laws. In 104 years, people will start saying "Hmm.. why are we paying for this crap?"
What you can take away from that, and what you should have learned in your youth by simply watching the news once in a while, is that you can't trust the government with long-term financial promises. That lack of ability to trust the government is built into our system and serves as a warning to those who would seek to profit today on the work of those who aren't even born yet: your plan has a good chance of failing. After putting in the work, you'll end up with a bunch of paper obligations that aren't worth anything.
If we need to screw a few teachers unions to remind everybody of this truth, so be it! We'll be better off in the long run.
Try life in the "Dreaded Private Sector" and see if you like that...
So if they did show they voted for fully funding it, then they deserve what they were promised?
If it wasn't fully funded, the voters should have said "Hey you're not fully funding these pensions, what's going on??" Then elect people who fully fund them.
The responsibility still doesn't transfer to future taxpayers.
All that transfers is a feeling of guilt for screwing people who worked for something they ended up not getting. And that's why very few people say stuff like "Cancel the pensions and screw them, haha!"
But it's entirely reasonable to say "Well, you're not going to get quite what you expected because we can't afford it. It's got to be cut X%."
Your fears suggest that people will organize solutions. However, your solutions shouldn't involve putting a gun in my face or throwing me into a cage.
No, that really seems unlikely.
--- said the actual idiot.
Your fears suggest that people will organize solutions.
Yes, it's called the government.
However, your solutions shouldn't involve putting a gun in my face or throwing me into a cage.
If your lack of willingness to pay for a fire service puts my life in danger, then why not?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Pensions are an unknown cost which makes them very difficult to budget. For instance, you want to hire a new teacher, it is impossible to know how much that teacher will be compensated by the pension over the years. This compensation depends on how your investments perform over the years.
Pensions are a guaranteed benefit (payout). This is very different that a 401k or 457 which are defined contribution. Once the employer pays a 401k or 457, they are no longer required to pay any more money. If the stock market does not provide the expected return for a pension, the tax payers are required to pay the difference.
This means that the a pension is an insured investment with tax payers being the insurers. It is very rare that money is set aside for this insurance. This is similar to self insuring your house while having a mortgage. If something happens to the house you will be bankrupt.
Government, especially as you envision it—a centralized power structure—is ONE solution of many possible solutions; it is merely a local extremum in the field of solutions.
To a civilization as young and naive as we, a centralized power structure just appears to be the inevitable solution (in the same way that, say, monarchies and dictatorships once seemed inevitable) simply because it is all we have ever known and it is self-reinforcing—by its very nature, a centralized power structure tends to inhibit evolution of the solution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces in order to maintain its own hegemony; we are stuck on this small foothill in the field of solutions.
By your ignorance and fear, you are blinded into believing that existing solutions are superior, when what history has actually shown us is that existing solutions and understandings are, in retrospect, almost always risible if not appalling.
Confiscating resources by threat of violence is an ancient and despicable principle; it has no place in a modern, enlightened civilization, and yet you would place it as the foundation stone of social organization. It's risible—nay, it's appalling!
I take it you have never been really sick. These people are already on their own, only a single payer system would help them. Employers will drop you if you can't work, either because you are sick or you are trying to take care of a sick person. Tying healthcare to employment is a travesty and it is a huge drag on the economy.
Cheap storage VM.
I had a hilarious facebook discussion with a former classmate on election day. He was ranting about Obama and trumpeting how much taxes he paid. Meanwhile he claimed his income was around $300k and his tax rate appeared to be around 25% or 28%, something perfectly normal if not low.
People be crazy...
Cheap storage VM.
I also found it amusing that he had some sort of made up job that is only possible because of our complex legal system, forensic psychiatrist or something like that. Sucking of the teat of the gov, IMHO.
Cheap storage VM.
People at the top always do well, they are managing a very complex system, whether it is public or private. What is your point?
Cheap storage VM.
Future generations don't benefit from education? The Constitution is ample example of one Congresses ability to bind another. Should we throw it out? I sure as shit never voted on it, nor did my father, grandfather or, great grandfather.
Cheap storage VM.
Your a moron, money is fungible, we are all paying ourselves. I pay taxes and play by the established rules our our country. I didn't make the rules and if I could they would be totally different.
Cheap storage VM.
If only there were some way that Obama could have eliminated those pesky Bush tax cuts. Oh, yeah, he could have eliminated them by doing... nothing. That's right, all he had to do was wait for them to expire and the Bush tax 'problem' would be gone. But he wanted to get re-elected, so he kept them in place so that he wouldn't be seen as a tax-and-spend liberal.
And if only there were some way we could put Obama in charge of the military so that he could order all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan...
Each and every presidency since I became aware of politics has left behind a debt greater than the presidency before it. The only exception was Clinton
Sadly, even that isn't true. The national debt still grew by around 1.5 trillion dollars under Clinton. To be fair, Clinton and the (then) fiscally responsible Republicans managed to get the deficit eliminated by the end of his term.
What really blows my mind is that it took Clinton eight years to accumulate that much debt. Obama is now doing nearly that much every year he has been in office...
Your solution would impact 90% people who did nothing wrong and 10% people who f'ed up the system. His solution would impact 100% people who f'ed up the system. I know which one I prefer. His solution would also fix this problem, it is attacking the roots, not the symptoms.
Cheap storage VM.
so punish the 9 to hurt the 1?
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Simple, amend it.
Private sector work offers similar conditions plus some flexibility. It's often much easier to shop around for employers if your current one is deteriorating, but there's not exactly a huge number of public sector employers who need your particular obscure skillset. People who can jump ship will, people who only know how to operate a water treatment plant will have to retrain to something more marketable before they jump ship.
NCLB does *require* it. There have been a number of news reports on at-risk schools in Alaska in that scenario. Reality trumps your opinion. Maybe a judge will overturn NCLB when it gets to that point, but it hasn't been overturned yet, so the law, as written, does require exactly that. But doesn't define what happens when it costs over $1000 per day to get a student to the 2nd closest school when their closest "fails".
Learn to love Alaska
I always had an issue with philosophical and extremely popular notion of passing debt onto the next generation. Thankfully under most circumstances, for individuals, debts are null and void when an estate is settled. But not for governments. Tax revenue shortfalls have been solved by inflating the money supply and borrowing. We have a huge debt that will eventually come due. The last handful of generations have known this and done very little to do with it.
Ultimately, I'd say this comes down to a question of fundamental human rights. The children of one generation have a right to not be born into debt as a result of the actions of the previous generation. Debt slavery is just as illegal as any other form of slavery.
There are very few exceptions. If the Earth was about to be destroyed by an asteroid, sure, the government can go into debt to try to stop it. Anything less serious than that, no. A war or a police action is not a justification for going into long term debt.
As a fundamental right, in the USA, we can then assert this right under the 9th Amendment, as a right retained by the people. Persons in governments -- whether State, City, or Federal -- that create economic policies that lead to long term debt infringe this right are thus violating their oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights. As such, they disqualify themselves from holding any position of public trust or responsibility.
We need to be converting most or all public retirement systems into private ones such as the 401k system, with appropriate rules on investments to ensure stupid people can't hurt themselves too badly.
Its the same with any retirement account though - my 401k got hosed in 2008 - that is after all the same year the stock market crashed.
well yea, it's a travesty to handle it through employment. I'm just trying to say why it is so difficult to change from that model.
Even if their employer drops them, they can transfer to the COBRA program and it will cost them similar premiums and deductibles as most employer plans. The ones who are truly on their own are the sick who got that way during a time when they didn't have insurance, and there are a lot of them.
Not similar to what they have been paying, similar to what they & their employers have both been paying, which is way higher then most people realize.
Cheap storage VM.
How many of the employees are now white and in their 50s? 60s? 70s? That's new.
That was pretty common when I worked at McDonalds 20 years ago.