Four questions presented in the hopes of some resulting pontification and/or simple answers.

1. Will Wisconsin public unions have collective bargaining taken away from them? Yes.

2. What will the status of public unions resemble one year from now? A cornered badger. Really, if the attempts at voter suppression against minorities in general coupled with the specific attempt to crush what's left of unions, and in the wake of Citizen's United at that, fails to raise hackles in an organized manner then every cynical pessimistic thought will be proven to be accurate enough in spirit.

3. Will Obama gain a popularity boost from this episode? Yes. I don't know how he'll do it but I am confident he will find a way to git 'er done.

4. Is what is happening more a case of working within the system or outside it? It was initially the state senate fleeing the state that touched off the protests, but for the most part - so it seems - since that time it's been a movement sprung up from people fed up with their government employees. So, a little and a lot of both.

The bullshit is strong in these ones.


http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-m ... share_copy

I'll look at Stewart later. I'm busy playing Bear & Cat.

The Wisconsin Democratic state senators have been a fine example of how a real-political political party should act. I wouldn't want to be a teacher. No...

Here is an interesting article.

--Dedicated to the peaceful protestors in Wisconsin, February 19, 2011.

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.

Budget deficits are a ruse, as we've seen in Wisconsin, where the governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.

Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work, and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the president has discussed. But deficits are not what really matters to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: Empathy -- citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility -- acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one's fellow citizens.

The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.

In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should not have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used again conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture, or even death, say, for women's doctors.

Freedom is defined as being your own strict father -- with individual not social responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will of course need a gun.

This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.

What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.

Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific "cuts" is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American -- the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.

Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud over and over that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.

Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called Democratic Communication Disorder. Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media, and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.

And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks -- talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. "Benefits" are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.

Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like "entitlements" instead of "earnings" and speak of government as providing "services" instead of "necessities."

Is there hope?

I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work -- not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police, and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy -- the democracy of caring, of social responsibility, and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.

I don't see articles like this as very helpful for addressing our problems. There's a quality in such articles that reminds me uncomfortably of one religion going against another. We shouldn't be reinforcing ideological lines when everyone--except maybe the writer of the article--agrees that we're in a fiscal crisis. I'm not knowledgeable about the specific case of Wisconsin, but the budget problems of the states are grim, over 550 billion dollars (Washington Post) in unfunded health benefits for public retirees, not to even mention pension liabilities. We've got public employee compensation systems that look as though they can't be sustained, and I say this as a public employee myself.

I favor what my state's Sen Mark Warner (D-VA) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) are doing to promote real debt reduction. Their proposal involves everyone sacrificing, including corporations, and it includes entitlement cuts, which the President and his party as well as Republicans have been afraid to approach seriously.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financia ... R2KJO0.htm

The article shows the farce that some situations really are. The part relating conservative ethics to a father type relationship doesn't do anything for me. But the financial part does. It's just one big card trick. The elephant in the room is taxing the rich. But politicians are destroying GOOD programs just so they won't have to push the taxes of the rich back up a little. America has certaintly prospered the entire time the top tax bracked was at 91%. How are people so gullible to think that pushing the tax back up to 39% would negatively impact the economy? That extra 3% income is hoarded anyways, not spent. If you gave the middle class an extra 3%, they'd pump it right back in to the economy.

Your article is refreshing and exciting, and exactly what I wish to see more of. But how do you persuade a whole country of this? How do you persuade the horde of people in Wisconsin seeking to destroy unions that a summary of their efforts = less money for the middle class, more money for the rich. Where there is an unspoken answer that could be implemented immediately that is the opposite. The public voice is ruled by certain media outlets, initially, which trumpet the evils of the deficit side by side with the evils of class warfare. So it appears the only solution is to weaken the unions so the state doesn't have to pay it's middle class workers as much. God forbid raising taxes on a few rich people instead.

This whole topic makes me so angry that I know I must be missing something. What am I missing? If we raise taxes on the rich too far(and corporations), they will move overseas. Is there really no political "trick" to keep corporations interested in staying in the US? Is it merely speculation, or are there supporting statistics? As for the impact on the economy, supply-side economics is a load of crap. When the upper brackets are given more slack, it is much more likely they will save the money rather than spend it. They will not hire another worker unless the demand for their product or service requires it. In which case, the sales fuel the hire.

There is no value for anything in our economy, including money, unless there is a person who wants something. Human want, on an individual level, is what creates value. It's what gives money it's power. There would be no economy without the pool of "wanters" who are also willing to spend their money. That is the middle class, not the upper class.

The wealthy do indeed hoard cash and assets thereby removing them from the economy. They'll use the words "save" or "invest" not "hoard," but the fact remains that a large percentage of their wealth remains set aside and is not spent creating jobs, buying goods and services, etc...

We're all "supposed" to be setting money aside in an effort to build up some financial security and increase our net wealth, but the lower class can currently not even afford the basics in life while the middle class cannot afford to save enough to ensure any semblance of security. It's a sad situation.

The only way wealth can be removed from the economy is for it to be converted into a hard asset like gold and then stored. However, the very act of purchasing the gold transfers the value of the gold into the economy by the money used to purchase the gold.

Interbane where is your quoted article from? I also do not find such rhetoric helpful.

This is all interesting to me esp today when my sister is going ballistic over proposed cuts to her daughter-in-law's salary/pension in Ohio. My niece makes 93K a year for teaching second grade for 186 days a year. I guess whether you consider this little or a lot depends on where you stand. To me this is huge. I know some people make more in the private sector but this is a far above average salary. In my town, the wealthiest in Maine the average salary is 77K.

this is from Interbane's article quoted above.


I guess I just don't get this. How are their what are paid for by tax payers? Should my niece be flooding the streets to demand more from me with my 1/3 of her yearly salary? Or the teachers in my town, where 66% of my tax dollar goes for their expenses?

What do you think of the following?

Wouldn't transferring it to a bank in say the balmy haven of the Cayman Islands and letting it sit there earning interest remove it from the US economy?

And for the money that is stored in US banks that portion is used for speculation in the US a case (a matter of opinion how good) can be made that not only is it a poor way to improve an economy but that it actively works against it from happening at all.

True. Corporations and the wealthy would use their money to upgrade facilities and build new ones in order that they could avoid declaring a higher net income. This would result in increased eceonomic activity, of course. These days corporations have incentive to do just the opposite - declare a high net income and avoid building new facilities since the old ones typically aren't covered by more recent environmental regulations. Of course the preferred alternative is to avoid paying income taxes etirely through loopholes and tax havens a la Bank of America.


Great news! to answer your question I think what you're missing is that we don't need the corporations nearly as bad as they need us. The corporations are not the problem. The problem is the public. so mlet's take your supposed dire occurance and say that the corporations do actually leave for the Cayman Islands or wherever. Do you think that industry will stop? There will be something to fill the void and I suggest it's likely for it to be a combination of government spending and community owned enterprises. A friend handed me a page a year back or so that he wanted me to read. It was called Bar Stool Economics or something similar and the intent of it was to present in a folksy way the idea that if Atlas Shrugs He might just get up and leave. The example used someone [hoo hoo I found it online!]

Bar Stool Economics
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

•The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
•The fifth would pay $1.
•The sixth would pay $3.
•The seventh would pay $7.
•The eighth would pay $12.
•The ninth would pay $18.
•The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers", he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20". Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

•The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
•The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
•The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
•The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
•The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
•The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.

Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

http://doc.cat-v.org/economics/bar_stool_economics

Georgia... thank God this isn't from Texas!

Anyway, apart from the characterization of the poor as being inherently violent and the foolishness of comparing this breakdown to how we pay our taxes when it's actually referring to income taxes alone (and this without so much as a nod toward tax havens) the oddest part about it is that though the threat is obviously intended to be felt from the shrugging of the drunken atlas's shoulders I just don't see it as a bad thing that the self-oppressed rich guy opts to leave. Is it really the case that there is no one, or better yet, no idea, to take his place? Please.

The founding fathers saw this possibility as well. That the majority middle would tax the minority rich too much. The consequences are dire. That end of the spectrum has been carefully avoided during the history of our nation(even considering prosperity while the upper bracket was at 91%), while the other end of the spectrum is routinely ignored. Every much as problematic to a nation is wealth inequality.

America scores bottom of the charts on wealth inequality. We are on the opposite side of the spectrum right now from overtaxing the rich. We desperately need to do something to move back to the middle. It should be done cautiously to avoid an overcorrection to the end of the spectrum your "barkeeper" story exemplifies.

The proof is in the pudding, there are wealthy people speaking up left and right about how ridiculous the inequality problem is. Many are even OFFERING to pay more taxes. Yet the ones who want every penny they can get are also the ones ambitious enough to fund lobbying organizations.



This reminds me of of cutting my dog's have when I was little. I intended to only cut a little. But the problem was I'd alway find an area where the hair appeared to be longer. So I'd cut that area. Then I found another area of slightly longer hair. So I cut that area too. In the end my poor dog was naked.

You're looking at your niece's salary thinking it is a lot. Perhaps the truth is you're not paid enough, or the factors that caused her to be paid more are not factors you can take advantage of. If unions fight for the wages of people in the middle class, that is a good thing, even if you don't have a union fighting for your benefit.

A recent study has shown that if wealth inequality ratio were to stay the same as it was a few decades ago(instead of drastically polarizing), every middle class person in America who makes around 50k a year would make 5-10k more per year. Along with the inequality, there is also polarization amongst the middle class due to the decline of unions. What few unions there are left are rare enough that the benefits in pay they provide have allowed their beneficiaries to pull ahead.

The answer isn't to continue looking at those who make more than you(especially when it's your money) and find a way for them to make less money. The answer is to realize the entire middle class needs a pay raise up to that level. If you keep cutting away at the upper middle class, all that will be left is the lower middle class.

What this study doesn't address is how much better the economy would be in such conditions. Imagine if all middle class families had that much more money per year. Whereas the rich spend a much smaller percentage, the middle class spends nearly 100% of it. It would all go back into the economy, like a boost of adrenaline.

One of the few forces fighting against wealth inequality are the unions, by allowing for collective bargaining rights. Although you don't make as much as the people they represent, shame on you for seeing their results as a problem. They are fighting for the middle class, you should be proud that they've at least won some victories. Why don't you join the fight yourself instead of simply assuming that "this is just the way it is". It might only seem to you to be a fantasy that you could make 10k more a year(and almost certainly even more) based on nothing but better wealth inequality.

The problem is in the other direction, and everyone seems to be blinded to it. Fortunately I've seen far more publicity about the problems and America's nonchalant ignorance of it. Hopefully the grassroots organizations such as MoveOn will gain new members. Perhaps more unions will pop up from nowhere and fight for the middle class.

Interbane said:



Well I don't really "earn" anything at all as I am retired as is my husband and we live on a fixed income and pay NO income taxes. Teachers salaries are paid mostly by property taxes in the communities the schools are in. Because of an issue in our town that we were very active in, the property tax distribution and acquisition were very central to our case. Property taxes of course are based on the value of the property. Our particular neighborhood is comprised of relatively modest homes on very small lots. . . I think it totals something like 7 acres. Many properties in this town are on 3 acre or more lots (in fact small house lots like ours would be illegal today). Anyway one way of looking at the property tax charges are that these seven acres are far more profitable to the town than say two or three of the bigger lots, yet the average income of our property owners would be far less than theirs. . . therefore we carry more of the burden of all of the towns services of which education is by far the highest and the one least responsive to cutbacks and changes.

Being unresponsive to cutbacks isn't bad. It's far easier to cut something than it is to grow it back. There is also a sort of 'bias' in that the things which stand out the most are easily contrasted and easily picked for "cutting".

The problem isn't the teachers being paid too much. The problem is that there is an inequality in taxation, if you would call it that. The consequence is that your 'burden' is a larger share, proportionately, than it should be.

The solution isn't to start cutting the salaries of the middle class. The solution is to fix the way taxes are collected. I don't know what the fix might be in your situation, but that doesn't mean there isn't a fix. The wealthier of our citizens can afford to pay far more in taxes, as is plainly evident by the wealth inequality. Don't let them fool you.