No offence to anyone intended...

As much as I'd like spending as a % of GDP to be at pre-WW 1 levels of about 3%, I'd settle for the 10% it was during the so-called Great Depression.

I think 18% is just way too much.
 
Kevin B (Asheville said:
and many more examples of those who have not need charged. Shirley, you are not blond to that.
Click to expand...


I think you meant to write "not been charged". I trust you'll let me know as soon as the first example of a politician who has been charged with stealing from the non-existent SS "trust fund" occurs. ;) :pigsfly:
 
About that call for tax incre... er, "revenue"

Do you think anyone in the White House or the Democrat establishment has been following this story from Illinois? You may recall that Democrats in the Land of Lincoln pushed through a tax increases last year which they started collecting this year. What happened to all that new income? Quoting from the article:
"A 67 percent increase in the personal income tax rate and 46 percent hike in the corporate tax rate enacted by the state in January has been absorbed by Medicaid and public pensions and were not helping to pay bills, according to Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka."
​
 
Don't be bumfuzzled

Anyone reading or viewing the majority of the media reporting of this situation who wants to know what the real controversy is would have no idea that President Obama is refusing to accept a small debt hike because he demands tax hikes and a bigger ceiling increase to take him beyond the election season.
 
Personally...

I like Dr. Charles Krauthammer's prescription:



“It’s time to act. Time to call Obama’s bluff.
A long-term deal or nothing? The Republican House should immediately pass a short-term debt-ceiling hike of $500 billion containing $500 billion in budget cuts. That would give us about five months to work on something larger.”
 
ColonelHaiku said:
Do you think anyone in the White House or the Democrat establishment has been following this story from Illinois? You may recall that Democrats in the Land of Lincoln pushed through a tax increases last year which they started collecting this year. What happened to all that new income? Quoting from the article:
"A 67 percent increase in the personal income tax rate and 46 percent hike in the corporate tax rate enacted by the state in January has been absorbed by Medicaid and public pensions and were not helping to pay bills, according to Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka."
​
Click to expand...

Civil servant pensions are a contract between the gov't and the employee. There is no excuse for defaulting on this committment.
 
a better source for the entire
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Unsustainable

"Civil servant pensions are a contract between the gov't and the employee. There is no excuse for defaulting on this committment."

You will usually see these overly generous, sweetheart deal pensions - e.g., 90% of top salary year for life upon retirement in some cases, full medical coverage - have been granted in the "blue" states and they will be the first to be pushed into bankruptcy... and rightly so, as there won't be any excuses made...
 
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Well, all one can say....

is that the 18% was mooted by the so-called Conservatives and it is the rough average in Post WW2 era . Much as we would like to actually live in our 'Perfect World', we can't and won't.

The Cut-Cap-Balance idea has great merit except for the obvious escape hatch of the 'constitutional amendment' It seems to me that some progress could be made by a Cut-Cap-Pay-Go system. The Pay-Go law is already there so it is 'just' a matter of cutting and capping.
But as Matthew and I have discussed more than once here, the only real power the Congress has to reward and punish is through the tax code and Pay-Go would diminish someone's power.

The problem realy starts with the complexity of the taxation system, were it stipped to nothing but revenue generation devoid of all deductions, all credits, all incentives then the cash transfers that are accomplished through the IRS would at least be more transparent as direct legislation. We saw the outcry-however impotent-when Congress had to name names and tell how much was going to whom on a privelged basis in the auto bailout. If all transfers of cash were along that same model they would be subject to watchdogging in a much more straightforward way. I know this won't happen and that if it did the Congress would pettyfog its way around things:pigsfly:
 
nothing to do with blue / red (thats cop out crap fr those looking to blame, instead of solve) states.

90%? you got a cite for that?

most are in the 60-70% of the avg of top 3 earning years. and is pretty cosistant across all states.

So, you suggest, that civil servants that worked (on avg) at 70% of private industry equivilant salary, and then taking away the promised retirement benefit?

check out http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/
 
I'll look for data that supports 90%, in the meantime...

A new study has found that, on average, households need to shell out an additional $1,398 per year in taxes for 30 years just to cover state employee benefits.

American taxpayers would have to pay anywhere from $329 to $2,475 annually per household for 30 years, depending on what state they live in, to remedy the crises in their public employee pensions, a new study said Wednesday.
Taxpayers in New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Wyoming, Ohio and California would face the highest tax increases to fully fund their state’s pension obligations, assuming no policy changes, the researchers said.
For example, New Jersey households would have to pay $2,475 annually for 30 years, the highest.
The lowest increase would be for Indiana households, which would have to pay $329 annually for 30 years to fully fund their public employee pensions, the researchers said.
Below is how much households in the 10 highest and lowest states would have to pay in increased taxes annually for 30 years to solve the funding crisis in their state and local public pension plans:


New Jersey $2,475
New York $2,250
Oregon $2,140
Wyoming $2,080
Ohio $2,051
California $1,994
Minnesota $1,928
Illinois $1,907
New Mexico $1,756
Colorado $1,739
Georgia $803
North Carolina $784
South Dakota $776
Maine $761
Idaho $737
Arizona $608
West Virginia $600
Utah $538
Arkansas $534
Indiana $329
Nationally, the average increase for households would be $1,398 annually for 30 years, said Rauh, an associate professor of finance.


http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/22/public.pension.funding.crisis/index.html

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Notice blue states top the list of most owed and red states top the list for least owed.
 
Public sector employees are higher paid

Several analyses of average wages and benefits in the public and private sectors reveal that state and local government workers earn more than private sector workers. According to the most recent Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of December 2009, state and local government employees earned total compensation of $39.60 an hour, compared to $27.42 an hour for private industry workers-a difference of over 44 percent. This includes 35 percent higher wages and nearly 69 percent greater benefits.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau similarly show that in 2007 the average annual salary of a California state government employee was $53,958, nearly 32 percent greater than the average private sector worker ($40,991). In addition, as noted by reporter and Calpensions.com blogger Ed Mendel, in 2006 the state conducted a comparison of state and private sector compensation for the first time in two decades. While the Department of Personnel Administration survey did not include all job classifications, the analysis determined a number of benchmark job classifications and found that state compensation was greater than private sector compensation for clerical jobs, accountants, custodians, electricians, stationary engineers, and analysts, but lagged in medical occupations.
Moreover, data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis illustrate that average state and local government compensation has been increasing at a faster rate than average private sector compensation over the past 30 years (see the graph on page 89 of this Cato Journal article).


http://reason.org/news/show/public-sector-private-sector-salary
 
the above fails to take into account that the majority of state and federal gov't are higher educated that the average private industry worker, and when comparing avg salaries of like educated employees, the govt worker is making more than 30% less than the equivalant pvt industry employee.
 
But you said the private sector pays higher compensation

Kevin B (Asheville said:
the above fails to take into account that the majority of state and federal gov't are higher educated that the average private industry worker, and when comparing avg salaries of like educated employees, the govt worker is making more than 30% less than the equivalant pvt industry employee.
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Why take it in this direction?

"One major factor not discussed by the report's authors that could provide an explanation (setting aside the possibility that public-sector workers are actually overcompensated, relative to their private-sector counterparts) is the significant difference in job security. Government job security is famously, and notoriously, ironclad, oftentimes making it practically impossible to fire or lay off public-sector workers for the same reasons employees are terminated in the private sector, even in cases of poor performance or unethical activity. This job protection has tremendous value which is not captured in the Bender and Heywood report.
Whether for job security or other reasons, the attraction to government jobs is evidenced by job-quit rates. Lower quit rates indicate a lack of better job opportunities elsewhere. Indeed, as the Cato Institute's Chris Edwards points out (see pages 92-93), BLS data reveal that the quit rate is significantly lower in the public sector than in the private sector. Between 2001 and 2009, the public sector layoff and discharge rate is only about one-third of the private-sector rate. Surely, if government workers were so poorly compensated and were qualified to earn significantly more in the private sector, they would leave for those private sector opportunities and the quit rate would be much higher.

Rising Numbers of Government Workers
Even if we were to assume that the productivity of public and private sector workers is equal, or that differences in job security were not a factor, this would not speak to the necessity or sheer number of government employees, and thus to the overall cost or necessity of government programs. Unlike the private sector, where decisions on the number and compensation of employees are driven by supply and demand and economic realities, the size and cost of government employees is driven by the political process. Thus, government employees' labor unions are constantly pressuring legislators (who are frequently indebted to the unions for campaign contributions and other help provided to get them elected) to increase workers' wages and benefits, and legislators are always creating or expanding government programs that may or may not be needed or effective. These pressures are independent of economic constraints, and are limited only to the extent that taxpayers refuse to consent to additional borrowing or tax increases.
This has allowed governments at all levels to continue to add employees even during the severe recession that has forced a significant contraction in the private sector. Between December 2007 and December 2009, the private sector lost more than 7.3 million jobs, yet the number of government jobs actually increased by about 100,000

Productivity Differences
Even taking the study's analysis as given, this does not mean that the value of an average government worker's labor is equal to that of an average private sector worker with similar education and work experience. This is because private sector workers tend to be more productive. As Cato Institute Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards notes in a recent paper, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) National Compensation Survey, private-sector employees worked an average of 2,050 hours in 2008, 12 percent more than the 1,825 hours worked by the average public-sector employee.
Even on an hour-for-hour basis, one would expect private sector workers to be more productive due to the lack of competitive forces in government. Private sector businesses face constant pressures of competition to innovate and improve their goods and services, lest they lose business to their competitors. Government agencies, by contrast, are typically monopolies protected by law, and thus are not subject to such competitive incentives and pressures. (There is a reason for all those jokes and complaints about the efficiency of post office and DMV workers.)
 
you completely missed the point. you offer FEDERAL employee data to support your argument. When I discuss gov't employees, state and federal are avg'd together and then compare that to private industry....
 
you offer quotes instead of discussing.

Lets talk a subject I am familiar with.

CWA - Section 404 / 401 and development.

- US Army Corps of Engineers Staff - ~$60k
- NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources - ~$40k
- private natural resources consultant - ~$85k

Avg local income - $29.5k for family of 4
Avg home cost - $295k
 
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