Iamsemisweet
Posts: 3651
Joined: 4/9/2011
From: The Great Northwest, USA
Status: offline
|
My "original OP" included a link to a quite lengthy article that discusses potential solutions. Obviously you didn't read it. Your choice, but don't pretend to know my position on things.
You are correct about one thing, I don't want my taxes raised, particularly for the sole purpose of paying public pensions. Greed is still greed, regardless of the size of the ambition that drives it. I am not putting this in bumper sticker speak for you, but the article you didn't read puts it this way :
The problem, he explains, pre-dates the most recent financial crisis. “Hell, I was here. I know how it started. It started in the 1990s with the Internet boom. We live near rich people, so we thought we were rich.” San Jose’s budget, like the budget of any city, turns on the pay of public-safety workers: the police and firefighters now eat 75 percent of all discretionary spending. The Internet boom created both great expectations for public employees and tax revenues to meet them. In its negotiations with unions the city was required to submit to binding arbitration, which works for police officers and firefighters just as it does for Major League Baseball players. Each side of any pay dispute makes its best offer, and a putatively neutral judge picks one of them. There is no meeting in the middle: the judge simply rules for one side or the other. Each side thus has an incentive to be reasonable, for the less reasonable they are, the less likely it is that the judge will favor their proposal. The problem with binding arbitration for police officers and firefighters, says Reed, is that the judges are not neutral. “They tend to be labor lawyers who favor the unions,” he says, “and so the city does anything it can to avoid the process.” And what politician wants to spat publicly with police officers and firefighters?Over the past decade the city of San Jose had repeatedly caved to the demands of its public-safety unions. In practice this meant that when the police or fire department of any neighboring city struck a better deal for itself, it became a fresh argument for improving the pay of San Jose police and fire. The effect was to make the sweetest deal cut by public-safety workers with any city in Northern California the starting point for the next round of negotiations for every other city. The departments also used each other to score debating points. For instance, back in 2002, the San Jose police union cut a three-year deal that raised police officers’ pay by 18 percent over the contract. Soon afterward, the San Jose firefighters cut a better deal for themselves, including a pay raise of more than 23 percent. The police felt robbed and complained mightily until the city council crafted a deal that handed them 5 percent more premium pay in exchange for training to fight terrorists. “We got famous for our anti-terrorist-training pay,” explains one city official. Eventually the anti-terrorist-training premium pay stopped; the police just kept the extra pay, with benefits. “Our police and firefighters will earn more in retirement than they did when they were working,” says Reed. “There used to be an argument that you have to give us money or we can’t afford to live in the city. Now the more you pay them the less likely they are to live in the city, because they can afford to leave. It’s staggering. When did we go from giving people sick leave to letting them accumulate it and cash it in for hundreds of thousands of dollars when they are done working? There’s a corruption here. It’s not just a financial corruption. It’s a corruption of the attitude of public service.” (emphasis added)
quote:
ORIGINAL: DomYngBlk
quote:
ORIGINAL: Iamsemisweet
Your original OP layed it out there like there isn't a ready solution. I don't care that you don't want your taxes raised. The problem isn't going to go away without that happening. Unless, you want to cancel out all the pension obligations which would only create another problem. Try to think past the problem to the logical solution.
Yes the gov't needs to do as in days past and employ a vast amount of people to help the unemployement.
Yes companies should be smacked over the nose with a newspaper like a bad dog so that they realize that they reside in the USA and not in any other country. Not being patriotic and doing what is best for your Countrymen first is what they have been all about. That needs to change.
< Message edited by Iamsemisweet -- 11/9/2011 10:38:14 AM >
_____________________________
Alice: But I don't want to go among mad people.
The Cat: Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
Alice: How do you know I'm mad?
The Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here.
|
RE: California AND bust - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread