Same with roads? All roads toll roads, have them run at cost or not at all?Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Same with roads? All roads toll roads, have them run at cost or not at all?
It's also a good argument for moving pensions to 401k's...instead of a government run one, but you and I have gone round and round on this.This is a fantastic argument for a government run universal pension program. Note that NOBODY has an issue with the portability of their Social Security.You rock. Also, this is one of the big problems with our shitty-ass health care "system." Hopefully the new reforms will help alleviate some of that "stuck in your job because you need the health benefits" problem that's been holding the American worker back these past decades.
It's also not the portability of SS that people have complained about...
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Yeah, because we have seen just how well the private sector is at managing finance.It's also a good argument for moving pensions to 401k's...instead of a government run one, but you and I have gone round and round on this.
It's also not the portability of SS that people have complained about...
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Same can be said of State and Federal as well.
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Yeah. So what is the advantage of switching again if both sides are not particularly reliable?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
In Holland we have a SS and the right of transfering pension rights to a new pensionfund if we change jobs. Or not, if that gives us a better deal.This is a fantastic argument for a government run universal pension program. Note that NOBODY has an issue with the portability of their Social Security.
Congratulations America
Well it would be better then the way pensions occur in America currently. And frankly as long as it is completely voluntary and is self funded (ie assets are you used for each individual) I don't care too much that the government would run it. Heck give it the same number of tax breaks that the 401k does. If people have a choice in investing in the market or grabbing very meager returns in some kind of government pension scheme (remember self funded, no grabbing extra funds from elsewhere) I'm pretty confident most people will choose the option that gives them control on how their funds are invested.This is a fantastic argument for a government run universal pension program. Note that NOBODY has an issue with the portability of their Social Security.
Chill, Choobs.
My objection is to the idea of pensioners at all. You're right Khend, pensioners have a contract. But if their employer goes bankrupt, they are a creditor along with all of the lenders to that company. Yet our governments don't go bankrupt. The just borrow and borrow -- and cut services -- to pay these obligations. Suddenly funding government pensions becomes a major function of government. I don't know about you, but I believe government should be for something more than that.
That's a pretty one-dimensional way to view things; my government has a pension, thus it works. Your country's government spends about half of the nation's total GDP, and the labor force is fairly rigid. The population is aging to the point that future generations can't realistically support pension obligations. As far as I can read, your cabinet members bicker over how the budget deficit has exceeded the terms of the Stability and Growth Pact.
So sure, you have a pension system and ostensibly the will to tax for it. But the numbers aren't on the side of this system continuing, not without gobbling more and more of your government spending.
****
Posting a New York Times opinion piece on a related subject-
October 12, 2010
The Paralysis of the State
By DAVID BROOKS
Sometimes a local issue perfectly illuminates a larger national problem. Such is the case with the opposition of the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, to construction of a new tunnel between his state and New York.
Christie argues that a state that is currently facing multibillion-dollar annual deficits cannot afford a huge new spending project that is already looking to be $5 billion overbudget. His critics argue that this tunnel is exactly the sort of infrastructure project that New Jersey needs if it’s to prosper in the decades ahead.
Both sides are right. But what nobody seems to be asking is: Why are important projects now unaffordable? Decades ago, when the federal and state governments were much smaller, they had the means to undertake gigantic new projects, like the Interstate Highway System and the space program. But now, when governments are bigger, they don’t.
The answer is what Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal once called demosclerosis. Over the past few decades, governments have become entwined in a series of arrangements that drain money from productive uses and direct it toward unproductive ones.
New Jersey can’t afford to build its tunnel, but benefits packages for the state’s employees are 41 percent more expensive than those offered by the average Fortune 500 company. These benefits costs are rising by 16 percent a year.
New York City has to strain to finance its schools but must support 10,000 former cops who have retired before age 50.
California can’t afford new water projects, but state cops often receive 90 percent of their salaries when they retire at 50. The average corrections officer there makes $70,000 a year in base salary and $100,000 with overtime (California spends more on its prison system than on its schools).
States across the nation will be paralyzed for the rest of our lives because they face unfunded pension obligations that, if counted accurately, amount to $2 trillion — or $87,000 per plan participant.
All in all, governments can’t promote future prosperity because they are strangling on their own self-indulgence.
Daniel DiSalvo, a political scientist at the City College of New York, has a superb survey of the problem in the new issue of National Affairs. DiSalvo notes that nationally, state and local workers earn on average $14 more per hour in wages and benefits than their private sector counterparts. A city like Buffalo has as many public workers as it did in 1950, even though it has lost half its population.
These arrangements grew gradually. Through much of the 20th century, staunch liberals like Franklin Roosevelt opposed public sector unions. George Meany of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. argued that it is “impossible to bargain collectively with government.”
Private sector managers have to compete in the marketplace, so they have an incentive to push back against union requests. Ideally, some balance is found between the needs of workers and companies. Government managers possess a monopoly on their services and have little incentive to resist union demands. It would only make them unpopular.
In addition, public sector unions can use political power to increase demand for their product. DiSalvo notes that between 1989 ad 2004, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was the biggest spender in American politics, giving $40 million to federal candidates. The largest impact is on low-turnout local elections. The California prison guard union recently sent a signal by spending $200,000 to defeat a state assemblyman who had tried to reduce costs.
In states across the country, elected leaders raise state employee salaries in the fat years and then are careful to placate the unions by raising future pension benefits in the lean ones. Even if cost-conscious leaders are elected, they find their hands tied by pension commitments and employee contracts.
The end result is sclerotic government. Many of us would be happy to live with a bigger version of 1950s government: one that ran surpluses and was dexterous enough to tackle long-term problems as they arose. But we don’t have that government. We have an immobile government that is desperately overcommitted in all the wrong ways.
This situation, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, has been the Democratic Party’s epic failure. The party believes in the positive uses of government. But if you want the country to share that belief, you have to provide a government that is nimble, tough-minded and effective. That means occasionally standing up to the excessive demands of public employee unions. Instead of standing up to those demands, the party has become captured by the unions. Liberal activism has become paralyzed by its own special interests.
The antigovernment-types perpetually cry less, less, less. The loudest liberals cry more, more, more. Someday there will be a political movement that is willing to make choices, that is willing to say “this but not that.”
Someday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12brooks.html
If my company raids my 401k I have SOME (if slight) means of recourse.
The Fed...not so much...suing the the Fed...yeah, right...
Also with my company, the money is mine.
With the Fed, they would just treat it like SS...they would plunder it for the pork of the week or say that they are just going to pool it and divide it up to be "fair".
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Pensions were not supposed to be a gamble.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
And when you get bad service from the government due to employee incompetence what happens? Nothing. Its a joke. Just try going to the damn DMV.Daniel DiSalvo, a political scientist at the City College of New York, has a superb survey of the problem in the new issue of National Affairs. DiSalvo notes that nationally, state and local workers earn on average $14 more per hour in wages and benefits than their private sector counterparts. A city like Buffalo has as many public workers as it did in 1950, even though it has lost half its population.
The workers kept their promise and provided the services asked of them, so...
N.Y. Faces $200 Billion in Retiree Health Costs
Will the employers keep thier promise to the workers?
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I guess it's one-dimensional in the same sense that your outright hostility and willingness to jump on every shrapnel of proof that socialism benefits people is one-dimensional; we're all products of our up-bringing and environment.
It is probably no surprise to you that I am actually aware of the inverted age pyramid problem. Haven't you heard that Kennedy speech, we do not do these things because they are easy but we do them because they are hard? The small and timid people of Finland have seen the genuine human pain behind the situation which Chaloobi outlined, and instead of telling each other to "chill" (why do you try to talk like a blonde surfer stoner?), they recognized that letting old people die wallowing in their own filth and poverty is beneath their human dignity. We're big on that here, looking out for other people. Sure, some of it is probably empty propaganda, but we've made socialism work for so many decades riding on that emotion. While trying to keep both murder-suicidal super-powers outside our borders, natch.
It is not so much the case that I am in favour of government pensions because my government offers such a pension right now. I am in favour of it because it is the right thing to do.
This is why we cannot debate the issue. Not realistically.
It is very possible that the growing global desperation for smaller iPods and sexier Axe spray will mean the demise of our social system. I'm not denying that. I'm not willing to accept that it's unavoidable, but economics isn't a hard science anyway so the point's moot. But, to me, that isn't proof positive that we were wrong, it is simply proof of humanity's failure.
Humanity doesn't have a very good track record, after all. But sometimes, in isolated cases, we've managed to be half-decent to one another. I think the Nordic countries are, on some level, one of those cases.
The fanatic capitalist says that opposing capitalism is like opposing gravity. The Wright brothers and the Apollo program opposed gravity, at great financial and personal cost, for a brief while. We recognize the grandeur of their efforts, 'the pale blue dot' is a history-changing event.
The culture of the Nordic countries has enabled us, for a brief while, to create a social safety network coupled with government-subsidized education and health care. The net has holes, and the education isn't always the world's greatest, neither is the health care, but it's there. Not because it is easy, not because it is working towards the dream of personal success, but because it is the right thing to do.
A man cried out to the Universe, "I exist!". The Universe replied, "that has created in me no great sense of obligation". But you can bet your next three God-damn mojitos that it should evoke some sense of obligation and responsibility in the people next to the yelling man.
Years and years the right-wingers have railed against all this, explaining how it isn't efficient, how it isn't helping make even smaller iPods. I don't care! You can keep your fucking iPods, I want there to be some base-line of human dignity guaranteed to my fellows. The 'American Dream' is a fucking monstrous nightmare, given what it has birthed. And just as I cannot escape the trappings and propaganda of our Nordic Dream, you cannot escape the American Dream. You were raised in that culture, and I sincerely doubt you can change. So why am I even writing this, fuck it
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
To be honest I feel more for the Rhineland model than for the nordic model, but I do agree that I consider the American way of life undesirable.
Congratulations America
Hooray, so you get $10 instead of $401,000!
Yeah, that surely will last you through the next decades!
(Let's not forget that lawyers cost money, folks, and that you don't have a "loser pays" system! And, I'm not quite sure, but over here in Germany it's quite possible to sue the Federal government. Seems to be different in the Land-of-the-not-quite-so-free.)
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
This is bullshit. Not the concept, but the idea that you believe this statement to be true.
And when you're done taking spinets from a survey, here is some more reasearch on the concept. I'll even get you started.
The average state and local government worker does earn higher wages – but this is because they are, on average, older and substantially better educated than private-sector workers.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 10-13-2010 at 11:45 AM.
The reason I'm criticizing your view as one dimensional is that you're making a very emotional appeal to baselines, to not leaving people to rot in the mud. Which is not the alternative to ending massive unaffordable entitlements.
But it's also clear that you haven't looked at the sheer unsustainability of the numbers. You sustain your elderly and your poor with a solid economy and a government that isn't sucking away services to pay pensions. You think you're so different from the Greeks because you don't have the corruption, the tax dodging and their sense of entitlement. But the accounting very clearly demonstrates that it's not going to work. While you're laughing/reeling at the horrors of capitalism, it's plainly a numbers game that just won't work out for you in the long term.
Still, I want you to come to Amerika and write a book. I will do the same about Finland. Except I only get a few days off per year.
Yup.....It's also a good argument for moving pensions to 401k's...instead of a government run one, but you and I have gone round and round on this.
They haven't complained about it because its not a problem, which is what I meant to say... But that's one of the biggest problems with employer provided anything - it tends to trap you.It's also not the portability of SS that people have complained about...
Lack of portability? Oh, wait-
Your madness is frustrating. What do you say to people who for whatever reason haven't saved enough to survive when they can't work anymore? Is it a fuck you or not? Or maybe its compassionate conservatism: "sucks to be you?"Chill, Choobs.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
We saw it too and created Social Security and Medicare to address it. But we've got a conservative faction that's been very effective at fogging the memories of why we have these things.
Weird that doesn't seem to be in the conservative calculus anyomre. Was it ever? Here, the Right thing to do is not let gay people get married, not let women have abortions, not let people smoke pot. And out the other side of the mouth they cry to get Big Government off our backs, which really means keep the government from making the well to do give up anything to benefit the destitute. What would Jesus do?It is not so much the case that I am in favour of government pensions because my government offers such a pension right now. I am in favour of it because it is the right thing to do.
BTW Ness- excellant post. You're getting down right inspirational in your old age.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
Really? How does that work, sustaning the poor and the elderly, without any kind of safety net? Churches?
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
Like I said, this entire conversation has been an exercise in futility and I don't really see why you persist in this bizarre gawking at the freaky foreigners thing.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Because I find it maddening that you are ostensibly a scientific person, yet refuse to examine simple financial/demographic projections.
Yes. But you don't offer any alternatives, my dear. You just want to get rid of everything you consider to be unsustainable, yet refuse the consequences of such actions.
I've learned that only constructive criticism is valid. What you're doing here is purely destructive - you don't offer any alternatives, probably because you think yourself secure so that you won't need them.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Of course I have alternatives —*re-vamp tax codes to be simpler and more competitive. Provide strong incentives to save such as tax-free savings accounts with no taxes paid if the money is kept there until the age of 60. Possibly allow the government to match savings contributions to a certain limit.
Anything to break the link between the government making so many unrealistic and debt-laden commitments to individuals. And to make people demand higher wages to stop companies from taking part in the farce that pensions will be there for us when we retire, so we don't have to be paid enough to save as much as we'd like.
The underlying issue is the age-pyramid, you said so yourself.
Your "alternatives" don't provide any solutions to that - because they're hocus pocus. I mean, just to take one example, you can "demand more money so you can save it!", but where is that money supposed to come from? Thin air? The printing presses?
In your bright world those measures would magically create money which we then can put into savings - and magically that money then will be enough to sustain us through old age. Riiiiiight.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I worked at a truck stop off I75 for my last year in highschool and my first 2 years in college. There was no greater means of motivating me to work hard in college. The facility had a gas station, a separate diesel station for full size tractor trailers, a gift shop and a restaurant. The folks I met working there are the sort of people who live off minimum wage or slightly more for their entire lives. They get inadequate to no health coverage, drive dented cars that break down routinely, live in trailer parks - with high interest mortgages and lot 'rentals' that will leave them with no equity - who try to scrape enough out of their income to put into a 401k, but basically live check to check. These people typically smoked, were overweight more often than not, didn't go to the doctor until they were desperate, and even odds didn't complete highschool. And there were lots of them.
When one of these people gets in a car accident and can't work anymore, how will your world view treat them? When they get old and can't work anymore and all they have is a very meager social security and a bit of 401k, what will your world view do with them? THAT is Real Amerika and again and again you get these questions and igorne them. And that's your answer isn't it? That's what conservatives plan for the working poor - have always planned - ignore them. Its not worth your dollar to help them and besides, Its their own fault for not having wealthier parents, or not knowing to work harder in school when their parents and peers didn't give a shit. Everyone in Amerika can have a white collar career, so long as they arn't lazy, right?
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
They are right Dread, the problem is not in the money, it's in the factor labor which is a direct resultant of the population. Your sustainability problem doesn't go away by a different model of financing, it will only go away by a disproportionate big number of people in retirement dying or keeping people in the workforce longer so that there are (relatively) fewer pensions to finance.
Congratulations America
Well, that's what a certain type of people think. But it simply isn't true; their savings mean nothing in an economy where the workforce is shrinking.
Congratulations America
It's not just the age pyramid. It's the overall lack of fiscal flexibility. In the case of the government, maintaining a pension system requires an ever-expanding base of current government workers and tax revenues that strips out funding for important services.
Laying the foundations for strong economic growth solves half the problem. Giving people strong bonuses and incentives to save is another important component. Making unrealistic and unaffordable promises is not the solution. Business will simply move on to Asia; there are a lot folks there who are hungry and willing to do cheaper work in increasingly professional fields.
Yes, many people are poor and live between paychecks. This is a reality. So we should promise everyone a totally unrealistic lifetime pension, and fully covered health costs no matter how much they may smoke? That's the Detroit model and it's an utter failure. The solution is providing opportunities to grow the economy and give people a chance to save.
I'd prefer realism and honesty to the accounting deceptions you were ranting about a few pages ago. Because you're really just talking about a different set of accounting deceptions.
I edited. And I don't understand your response.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
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