The other day, I passed along a question from “Terry”, a regular in my comment section:
Why should I be required to work until I’m 70 so you can retire at 55?
Polls, incidents, and other ephemera aside, that really is the only question that matters, in Wisconsin or, really, anywhere. It’s a moral question; is your life, your job, your time on this planet worth so much more than mine that I should be required to pay for you to have that benefit?
Government union workers, for the most part, do the same sort of work all of us in the private sector do. A teacher doesn’t have any voodoo that a corporate trainer doesn’t (indeed, most of the corporate trainers I’ve met started as teachers); a public works employee does the same things a carpenter or block layer or pipefitter or a few dozen other trades do in the private sector. So when one of them asks the rest of us “Could you do my job?”, it’s not like society at large can’t respond “we already do”. Cops and firemen are exceptions – at least partly.
And it’s not like government workers still make the traditional trade-off – lower pay for better benefits. That was the case, not too long ago – but fifty years of union organization have have given unions members pay equal to or better than their private-sector equivalents (in the lower to middle income brackets, at the very least) along with the defined-benefit pensions that add the lifetime salaries for 20-30 years’ work.
So the question remains: why should I have to work until I’m 70 so you can retire at 55?
Someone on Twitter the other day told me “they’re not mutually exclusive”, although he couldn’t say why. The fact is that right now, in this economy, and likely for the rest of my working life, they are mutually exclusive; as my “pension” – my IRA and the value of my home – have shrunk your pension remains a “promise”. And if I can’t pay for that “promise”, the IRS and MN Department of Revenue will make my life hell.
So all you Wisconsin union supporters – please make the moral case: Why should I be required (by the force of law, with tax agents and sheriffs with guns) to work until I’m 70 to (be able to afford, maybe, if I’m lucky) to retire so that you can retire at 55 (and life the rest of your life on money that the full force of the state will extract from me, and my children, and my grandchildren? While I scramble to try to make up the losses of this last three years, likely for the rest of my working life?)
The comment section is yours.
The guy who said “they’re not mutually exclusive” later said he thought everyone should retire at 62, proving he’s from Planet Liberal.
Another union supporter later tweeted that the state government union employees have “better retirement fund managers”. In some cases, no – and it’s irrelevant because, good manager or bad, good times or bad, those “managers” can send people to the legislature to appropriate money to make up any differences between the “promises” and the fund balance. And those “appropriations” come from me. They are collected by the MN Department of Revenue if I cooperate, and a Sheriff’s deputy if I don’t.
Libs just never ever get it.
…definitely one of the more eloquent.
Pffft….You poor boob.
You wouldn’t know eloquence if it came up and snatched your Victory Gin bottle from your hand. Eloquence is more that stringing a bunch of multi-syllabic words together to form the lengthy barrage of meaningless papspew you are famous for.
An eloquent statement must convey an idea that people of wide experience can grasp without effort and appreciate without regards to agreement. Since you start with premises *you* don’t even understand, your amphigory is doomed even before you bury it six layers deep in drunken babble.
In short, deegee, you’re a pompous dim-wit whose twisted rhetoric is unfit for consideration by anyone of even average intelligence….I’m sure all of the millions of moonbats that flock to the Penisblog love it to death.
“your amphigory is doomed even before you bury it six layers deep in drunken babble”
“amphigory” – very cool, I like that.
I agree with Scott — amphigory is what the French would call le mot juste.
1. Does the WI Governor need to be worried about inquiries possibly being made by the local Sheriff related to comments the Governor made about getting outside elements involved in the protests to stir up trouble?
2. Any truth to the stories about WI losing Fed road $$$ if the WI unions are denied collective bargaining rights?
1. The “comments” were pretty clearly in jest.
2. Not sure. Not sure it should matter. The public employee pension time bomb will not be defused with federal road dollars.
News from “conservative” sources (or putatively conservative ones, like Fox) you treat with great suspicion, demanding a sometimes-absurd amount of “FACT-CHECKING”, to the point where FACT CHECK has become one of this forum’s inside jokes (and you seem to disappear from the discussion when the “conservative” source pans out).
News from “liberal” sources, you seem to present without even the faintest shred of curiosity; your “avalanche of violence” and “conservatives are racist” threads were classic examples of Ready! Fire! Aim! “journalism”. This forum has busted you at this repeatedly.
The “two ruler” issue.
Palin comes from geographically large state that is small in population That’s critiqued as a possible disqualifier for the VP slot.
Biden’s Delaware is about the same size, in sq. miles and population, as Hennepin county. Delaware is tiny. That is not even mentioned in the MSM.
You heard that Alaska was a “welfare state”, it government and citizens dependent on federal largess for a large part of their income. You did not hear that nearly 50% of Delaware’s GDP came from the often despised financial sector, eg insurance companies and banks.
Liberals are totally blind to their own prejudices because they are constantly reinforced by a media that shares them.
You heard that Alaska was a “welfare state”, it government and citizens dependent on federal largess for a large part of their income.
That one is a particularly noxious Krugman-turd that DG’s colleague Penigma likes to present as unvarnished truth. The west, especially Alaska, have a lot of federal land, lots of military bases and lots of Indian land – all of which is considered “welfare”. They also have lower per-capita incomes and tiny populations, so any federal money has a disproportionate effect on the economy.
Krugman is a liar and a stooge, and the smarter lefties know it.
Well, as a conservative (and a Wisconsinite), I hate to bring up the elephant in the room… but here t’is.
Public-sector employees made the better bargain years ago when they opted for lower salaries in order to obtain good benefits and job security. It was trading a shot at the big brass ring (remember yuppies?) for knowing that your family would always be supported.
Gee, that’s really un-American, huh?
Now that the private sector has driven the country into a near-depression, yahoos like Scott Walker ride in on their white horses and want to blame it all on state, county, and municipal employees. That’s a strategem that would have given Machiavelli fits of envy.
You (other) conservatives are on the wrong side of this one. It’s not government employees that drove Wisconsin’s budget off a cliff. And they’re not the ones who should be required to fix it, either.
Leave it to a dufus like Walker to go after mostly lower-middle-class people (and I am one of them, a municipal employee) to “balance the budget and make Wisconsin open for business!” Pathetic.
Well, as a conservative
Like Obama is a conservative. You have written nothing here that Obama would disagree with.
Seriously, where do they get you guys? Do they hand out a list of blogs to comment on “as a conservative” at moveon.org rallies?
I know! I’ll make up a throwaway account at firedoglake, in the very first line of my very first post I will write “as a liberal . . .” and then I will trash Wisconsin’s teachers, organized labor in general, and praise Bush, Palin, and the war in Iraq! They’ll have to buy the “as a liberal . . .” line because I said I was!
Fiendishly clever! It just might work!
I have conservative credentials going back to when Christ was a corporal–a mere glance at my blog will bear that out (it’s almost as old as Mitch’s).
But if you really buy into the line that the private sector does not bear scrutiny, AFTER it almost destroyed the United States of America in the name of gluttony, you really have been drinking the Kool-Aid.
When the rest of you went Tea Party, I got off the train.
BTW, Terry, I note that you did not address a single one of my points. Typically (just like Walker).
Herr Lugers, could you be more specific as to how the private sector “almost destroyed the United States of America in the name of gluttony”? ’cause Venezuela ain’t lookin’ all that much better with its greatly-reduced private sector.
I mean, subprime lending was a factor, but the market wasn’t exactly headed that way before the Government Sponsored Enterprises of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jumped in and started buying up bad loans, you know?
“When the rest of you went Tea Party, I got off the train”
What does this even mean? You believe that all this spending IS sustainable and there is no reason for fiscal sanity?
The private sector has almost destroyed the USA? Really? Are you insane? Speaking of ducking the question, I see nothing addressing the question of taxing the rest of us into working into our 70’s so that public employees can retire at 55 and have us pay their pensions for the next 30 years or so.
Typical.
Alois vom Lugers said:
“Public-sector employees made the better bargain years ago when they opted for lower salaries in order to obtain good benefits and job security”
Do “they” still have “lower salaries” now? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but that’s not what I understand to be correct. And, if I understand correctly, “they” may have better than “good” benefits. I could be wrong, so please inform me if I am.
Also, the “years ago” thing makes me suspect that you believe “public-sector employees” have a “right” to their jobs.
“the private sector has driven the country into a near-depression”
This is unsupportable, in my opinion. Our government creates and enforces the rules by which the private sector “plays”, but they bear none of the responsibility in your opinion?
“Scott Walker … want to blame it all on state, county, and municipal employees”
“It’s not government employees that drove Wisconsin’s budget off a cliff. And they’re not the ones who should be required to fix it, either”
Health and retirement benefits are a big financial problem for the country and for the states. Don’t pretend you can fix that problem without changing anything structural on the “outgoing” side.
Alois, I don’t consider National Socialism to be a “conservative” ideology. Do you?
Alois: a municipal employee? Yup…”Conservative as old as Christ”? Not so much.
Man oh man oh man. You guys absolutely DO NOT GET IT, do you?
My point is that public-sector employees are among the few rank-and-file workers these days making a decent living BECAUSE they have protections, and now that y’all who love the private sector so much have been abandoned by selfsame private sector (i.e. you keep getting your wages cut, your jobs shipped offshore, and forget about health insurance) you’re getting all pissy and you want to go after the people who made a BETTER DECISION long ago–i.e. to make less money but to have more job security and health insurance. Give me a break, pleeeeeeeeze. Yeah, I can totally understand why you want to take your ball and go home now, and you’ve got your bully boys like Scott Walker to make sure you get your way.
YOU were the ones who wanted to grab the big brass ring and make a fortune and live in a McMansion. Some of the rest of us made more responsible decisions for our families. And if you’ve got a problem with that–bite me.