The Youth Unemployment Bomb

[The Kernel]

Worker contributions are too low as well for the most part, don't know why but that's the way it is.

Because of public sector unions of course. They don't give a shit who pays for the overly generous retirement packages as long as it isn't them because like you pointed out, they know the government can just print money at the expense of the taxpayers in order to fund them.

This is exactly why collective bargaining for government workers needs to be outlawed. Unions are fine for private companies, but public sector unions are a fucking cancer.

So effectively you have a system where public sector workers get a free ride from the rest of the taxpayers, got a shortfall cause we spent all the pension money on something else and mis-managed the shit out of the funds? Who cares, we'll just make it up by taxing the shit out of everyone else! It's a hell of a racket, thank god I'm part of it.

Yeah but then you actually have to work for the fucking government. I'd rather enjoy my job and have to deal with financing my retirement myself then want to shoot myself in the head 8 hours a day.

[Bakustra]

Worker contributions are too low as well for the most part, don't know why but that's the way it is.

Because of public sector unions of course. They don't give a shit who pays for the overly generous retirement packages as long as it isn't them because like you pointed out, they know the government can just print money at the expense of the taxpayers in order to fund them.

This is exactly why collective bargaining for government workers needs to be outlawed. Unions are fine for private companies, but public sector unions are a fucking cancer.

So you're saying that the possibility of exploitative actions is so minimal for public employees that the "overly generous retirement packages" outweigh any benefits of public unions and so they should be immediately crushed and outlawed. Firstly, I'm not sure how tenable this is when you consider the events going on in Wisconsin currently, and secondly, I'm not sure how you can say that private sector unions are better, seeing as they could do the same thing, as has been leveled at every major union in the US, most especially the UAW. So why exactly do you believe what you believe?

[aerius]

So you're saying that the possibility of exploitative actions is so minimal for public employees that the "overly generous retirement packages" outweigh any benefits of public unions and so they should be immediately crushed and outlawed. Firstly, I'm not sure how tenable this is when you consider the events going on in Wisconsin currently, and secondly, I'm not sure how you can say that private sector unions are better, seeing as they could do the same thing, as has been leveled at every major union in the US, most especially the UAW. So why exactly do you believe what you believe?

With a private sector union there's only so many demands they can make before the company goes bankrupt. With a public sector union there's no such check in place, the union keeps making demands and the government usually meets them because they know they can jack up the taxes on everyone. There is little incentive to keep costs reasonable, everyone talks it but very few actually do it. So what ends up happening is a ton of revenues get leeched to the public sector workers, taxes go up, citizens get frustrated and anyone who can get the fuck out of town does so.

[Bakustra]

So you're saying that the possibility of exploitative actions is so minimal for public employees that the "overly generous retirement packages" outweigh any benefits of public unions and so they should be immediately crushed and outlawed. Firstly, I'm not sure how tenable this is when you consider the events going on in Wisconsin currently, and secondly, I'm not sure how you can say that private sector unions are better, seeing as they could do the same thing, as has been leveled at every major union in the US, most especially the UAW. So why exactly do you believe what you believe?

With a private sector union there's only so many demands they can make before the company goes bankrupt. With a public sector union there's no such check in place, the union keeps making demands and the government usually meets them because they know they can jack up the taxes on everyone. There is little incentive to keep costs reasonable, everyone talks it but very few actually do it. So what ends up happening is a ton of revenues get leeched to the public sector workers, taxes go up, citizens get frustrated and anyone who can get the fuck out of town does so.

There's only so many demands before the government goes bankrupt too, and the UAW has been accused I-don't-know-how-many-times of driving the Big Three to the verge of bankruptcy. Furthermore, do you have specific examples of this happening, that is, the evil, evil unions driving wages and benefits up, up, and taxes rising precipitately to match? Or is this just "everybody knows" bourgeois crap?

[aerius]

There's only so many demands before the government goes bankrupt too, and the UAW has been accused I-don't-know-how-many-times of driving the Big Three to the verge of bankruptcy. Furthermore, do you have specific examples of this happening, that is, the evil, evil unions driving wages and benefits up, up, and taxes rising precipitately to match? Or is this just "everybody knows" bourgeois crap?

And what happens when the government goes bankrupt? It's a hell of a lot more serious than a company bankruptcy. As in you don't want to go there.

As for raising taxes, easy, city of Toronto. The city worker chucklefucks got a major raise in 2009, we got jacked with property tax and service fee increases shortly thereafter along with service cuts.

[Bakustra]

There's only so many demands before the government goes bankrupt too, and the UAW has been accused I-don't-know-how-many-times of driving the Big Three to the verge of bankruptcy. Furthermore, do you have specific examples of this happening, that is, the evil, evil unions driving wages and benefits up, up, and taxes rising precipitately to match? Or is this just "everybody knows" bourgeois crap?

And what happens when the government goes bankrupt? It's a hell of a lot more serious than a company bankruptcy. As in you don't want to go there.

As for raising taxes, easy, city of Toronto. The city worker chucklefucks got a major raise in 2009, we got jacked with property tax and service fee increases shortly thereafter along with service cuts.

The point is that there isn't some sort of defining line between a public-sector union and a private-sector one such that you can denounce the one as useless parasites and the other as beneficial.

You haven't shown the spiral that you claimed- wherein benefits and wages go up and up while those proletarian bastards get fat and happy- possibly even buying Cadillacs. In fact, did the city workers maintain the benefits they were striking over, or did they trade some of them for the raises?

[aerius]

You haven't shown the spiral that you claimed- wherein benefits and wages go up and up while those proletarian bastards get fat and happy- possibly even buying Cadillacs. In fact, did the city workers maintain the benefits they were striking over, or did they trade some of them for the raises?

They kept all their benefits and got a 10% raise over 3 years as I recall. That a pretty nice pay raise during a recession when everyone else is taking a pay cut or losing their jobs. Did I mention that they get paid $30 an hour to cut grass? Their salaries are about double the private sector average for equivalent jobs plus they have a much better benefits package. Fuck'em.

[Bakustra]

You haven't shown the spiral that you claimed- wherein benefits and wages go up and up while those proletarian bastards get fat and happy- possibly even buying Cadillacs. In fact, did the city workers maintain the benefits they were striking over, or did they trade some of them for the raises?

They kept all their benefits and got a 10% raise over 3 years as I recall. That a pretty nice pay raise during a recession when everyone else is taking a pay cut or losing their jobs. Did I mention that they get paid $30 an hour to cut grass? Their salaries are about double the private sector average for equivalent jobs plus they have a much better benefits package. Fuck'em.

Do you have a source for that as well as the ability to generalize that further to US public sector employees and unions? Or is this more bourgeois rage?

[aerius]

Do you have a source for that as well as the ability to generalize that further to US public sector employees and unions? Or is this more bourgeois rage?

It was in the local papers a couple years back, the central libraries have copies but I ain't dragging my ass down there for a fucking internet debate.

As for US public worker compensation, go back to the link I posted for San Jose workers and tell me that there ain't something wrong when workers can cash out sick days and vacations that amount to several times their base salary.

[Bakustra]

Do you have a source for that as well as the ability to generalize that further to US public sector employees and unions? Or is this more bourgeois rage?

It was in the local papers a couple years back, the central libraries have copies but I ain't dragging my ass down there for a fucking internet debate.

As for US public worker compensation, go back to the link I posted for San Jose workers and tell me that there ain't something wrong when workers can cash out sick days and vacations that amount to several times their base salary.

The City offers a vacation sellback program to roughly 950 employees, under which they have the option of selling back up to 120 hours of vacation time for cash compensation. In 2010, the City Attorney’s Office learned that under IRS rules, every employee in the program would be required to pay federal taxes on the hours they could sell back regardless of whether they actually sold any vacation time back to the City. As a result, many of these employees sold the full number of hours back to the City. Starting in 2011, the program has been reformulated to avoid this unintended tax consequence for executive managers and one bargaining group that agreed to the change.

They don't. You notice on that page that there's a little thing at the bottom, about how there's a "sick payout on retirement." Now notice that the employees "receiving" more than their base salary are retired? That's a presumably one-time payout to retirees. That's also one city, out of how many? And for that matter, it ignores other public workers like teachers too. If you're not going to put in any effort or thought than I don't see why I should believe you about this union menace creeping up on our streets.

[Uraniun235]

another huge terribly formatted post

I'm going to open with this: it is tremendously satisfying to see that I have annoyed you so much. It is a delightful compensation for having to parse your terrible quote-by-quote posting and I thank you for it. I can only imagine that your ire will continue to grow.


So, I can't really offer an intelligent debate about financing and growth and risk and what not, because finance absolutely bores me to death and the thought of spending time studying it is about as unattractive to me as the thought of studying the Bible. (I'm sure this will immediately prompt further outbursts about how stupid I am, etc.)

That said, I do want to clear up one point: I'm not against reforming pensions. If there's still an agency offering grossly unrealistic pension plans, they need to stop immediately. I have no problem with the fact that I got in too late to enjoy a defined benefits package. But, to be blunt, I also have no problem with soaking the rich to pay for someone else's pension that they effectively lucked into, as long as it means that the idiots who set up the plan don't get to skip out of it like they probably imagined they would.


You're right that the monolithic use of "the government" is generally overbroad, but the ability to raise taxes extends to state governments as well. This might be provincial of me, but I'll use Oregon as an example again, where there is no "department of education" pension plan and "department of transportation" pension plan and so on - it's all consolidated under one state-level agency. So for our intents and purposes, the statement that 'the government' can raise tax revenue to meet its obligations is still accurate.

I disagree about departments standing on their own. There should be oversight to prevent them from making undeliverable promises, and if the state executive and/or legislature neglect this duty, then they should share the consequences (getting slammed at the polls after raising taxes to cover the mistake) and thereby learn a lesson to maintain oversight and control. That's the whole key here - there needs to be oversight, regulation, and control.

I'll predict that the retort to this would be: 'But you know it would never work that way! government sucks!!'

Well, in that case, I'm all for firebombing Wall Street right now, because I also know that the federal government will never exercise effective oversight and regulation on those entities which can also get everyone into trouble by making unsustainable promises, but our system is still built on the premise that someone is keeping the players (semi-)honest.


governments break promises all the time, nuhhh read a history book

Alright, I'll admit, I argued from an overly idealistic position. But answer me this: Do you think that governments should be breaking promises all of the time? I don't; if they can't keep them they shouldn't be making them. I think governments should behave ethically, even when it is inconvenient for them to do so. That doesn't mean I actually imagine that they will, but that doesn't stop me from wanting otherwise. There's no rule that says I or anyone else has to argue from or for what's politically feasible. (frankly, we're in an age where "stop occupying afghanistan" is not politically feasible in the US, but I imagine there's plenty of people here who think we should anyway )


I'm also not sure what to make of your last "slam". I work a full-time job and pay my taxes in full, and I don't expect a defined-benefits pension when/if I retire.


I will give in and quote you once, though...

This is exactly why collective bargaining for government workers needs to be outlawed. Unions are fine for private companies, but public sector unions are a fucking cancer.

If the union demands were so onerous, why didn't the government refuse to concede? Surely there's loads of scabs out there willing to take the job. Surely the government has far larger reserves of cash to wait out and break a strike. If Reagan could break the air traffic controllers, why would any government continue to concede to a bunch of teachers?

[aerius]

If Reagan could break the air traffic controllers, why would any government continue to concede to a bunch of teachers?

Think of the children! Why do you hate children? Do you want all the kids to grow up unedumacated?

*government then hands over a 20%/year pay raise because if they don't they must hate kids*

[The Kernel]

Think of the children! Why do you hate children? Do you want all the kids to grow up unedumacated?

*government then hands over a 20%/year pay raise because if they don't they must hate kids*

You should hear the California prison guards union and their "soft on crime" rhetoric, it's even more nauseating.

[aerius]

You should hear the California prison guards union and their "soft on crime" rhetoric, it's even more nauseating.

Sounds like our police union, "give us more money or the criminals win and the city become like Detroit".
They don't outright say it but it's strongly implied.

[Bakustra]

If Reagan could break the air traffic controllers, why would any government continue to concede to a bunch of teachers?

Think of the children! Why do you hate children? Do you want all the kids to grow up unedumacated?

*government then hands over a 20%/year pay raise because if they don't they must hate kids*

So do you have any examples of this happening, especially given the efforts in Wisconsin to destroy the teacher's unions, or is this more misplaced bourgeois jealousy?

[aerius]

So, I can't really offer an intelligent debate about financing and growth and risk and what not, because finance absolutely bores me to death and the thought of spending time studying it is about as unattractive to me as the thought of studying the Bible. (I'm sure this will immediately prompt further outbursts about how stupid I am, etc.)

The fun part is that calculating pension payouts is actually the same as a mortgage calculation except you're going in reverse to get from the monthly payouts to the lump sum you'll need to make those payouts. This is something that we learned to do in high school math so everyone should know how to do it (if you didn't learn how to calculate mortgage payments in high school you need to go bash some heads at your school board). Once you have that lump sum it's another mortgage calc to figure out how much money needs to come out of your paycheque to pay for everything.

Since we have the internet these days you don't even need high school math, hell, you don't even need a mortgage calculator because they have retirement savings calculators that can crunch all the numbers for you. Go here, punch in the numbers and it'll tell you how much needs to come out of each paycheque. All you need is the average life expectancy, the retirement age, your age, the average inflation rate, and the interest rate on US T-bills. All that stuff can be found in 5 minutes on Google.

In my case it comes out to something like $430 on each of my bi-weekly cheques for what my pension will pay out. The actual amount they deduct is well under half of that so I know for fact that my pension fund will go broke unless they do heavy stock market speculation, grab a ton of money off the government, or they own a sports team or something that generates a massive income stream (the Ontario Teacher Pension Plan owns all our sports teams).

[Uraniun235]

If Reagan could break the air traffic controllers, why would any government continue to concede to a bunch of teachers?

Think of the children! Why do you hate children? Do you want all the kids to grow up unedumacated?

*government then hands over a 20%/year pay raise because if they don't they must hate kids*

Twenty percent?! I'm guessing they weren't near poverty level to begin with, either. That's enormous. When did that happen? The school district I work at hasn't adjusted the pay scale up beyond inflation for over ten years - it's been trimming services and staff for most of that time.

I'll admit that I'll tend to be more sympathetic to teachers because - especially lately - I've been hearing some really depressing stories about the administration being simultaneously abusive and unsupportive and generally running teachers into the ground. The Union isn't almighty everywhere... and, to be blunt, we're probably going to see some of them broken in the next few years.

This is something that we learned to do in high school math so everyone should know how to do it (if you didn't learn how to calculate mortgage payments in high school you need to go bash some heads at your school board).

It wasn't, and I agree 100% that personal finance should be taught in high school, along with critical thinking and other skills. Unfortunately the district is looking at a 20% cut to the budget next year (this is following a ~12% cut to the budget last biennium) and is even more focused on raising test scores, so there's no way they're going to consider adding/reintroducing anything to the curriculum.

[Thanas]

Politico has got an article up about the protests.

Of course, they focus on the Tea Party....

[Starglider]

The school district I work at hasn't adjusted the pay scale up beyond inflation for over ten years - it's been trimming services and staff for most of that time.

I don't know about your region, but in the US, why would you even consider increasing the pay scale faster than inflation? The inflation-adjusted median wage in the US has been flat (recently, slightly declining) since the late 90s. Why should teachers get rises when the rest of the population doesn't? Is there some desparate shortage of teachers now, compared to the late 90s, that requires higher wages to pull people from the private sector? Of course not, there is in fact a huge surplus of skilled people who could train to be teachers. In actual fact the escalation of public sector pay and federal worker pay in particular contrasts with steadily falling median private sector real wages, giving the roughly flat combined medium. It's true that about half of this comes from the top 5% of earners who probably don't pay enough tax anyway, but unfortunately the other half comes from struggling middle class taxpayers. In short the public sector middle class is being preserved and expanded at the cost of the (much larger) private sector middle class. Yes, income inequality is already too high and still growing in most first-world nations, which is a big problem, but the 'fuck you I've got mine' attitude of public-sector unions is actually making the problem worse in the long run.

[Bakustra]

The school district I work at hasn't adjusted the pay scale up beyond inflation for over ten years - it's been trimming services and staff for most of that time.

I don't know about your region, but in the US, why would you even consider increasing the pay scale faster than inflation? The inflation-adjusted median wage in the US has been flat (recently, slightly declining) since the late 90s. Why should teachers get rises when the rest of the population doesn't? Is there some desparate shortage of teachers now, compared to the late 90s, that requires higher wages to pull people from the private sector? Of course not, there is in fact a huge surplus of skilled people who could train to be teachers. In actual fact the escalation of public sector pay and federal worker pay in particular contrasts with steadily falling median private sector real wages, giving the roughly flat combined medium. It's true that about half of this comes from the top 5% of earners who probably don't pay enough tax anyway, but unfortunately the other half comes from struggling middle class taxpayers. In short the public sector middle class is being preserved and expanded at the cost of the (much larger) private sector middle class. Yes, income inequality is already too high and still growing in most first-world nations, which is a big problem, but the 'fuck you I've got mine' attitude of public-sector unions is actually making the problem worse in the long run.

So your solution is to have public-sector workers cut wages so that they can suffer alongside everybody else, rather than campaign for greater economic equality, or push for unionization in the private sector or anything else that would alter the downward slide?

[aerius]

So your solution is to have public-sector workers cut wages so that they can suffer alongside everybody else, rather than campaign for greater economic equality, or push for unionization in the private sector or anything else that would alter the downward slide?

Good luck with that. If you think the outsourcing of jobs is bad now, wait'll you see what happens when you try to push all the wages upwards. Unless you're going to put in some tariffs and reform the tax code to discourage corporations from moving everything they can overseas, you're going to end up making the employment & wage conditions even worse.

[Starglider]

So your solution is to have public-sector workers cut wages so that they can suffer alongside everybody else

Yes. If everyone is suffering, the chances of a genuine reform are a lot higher. If only private sector workers are suffering, most of the energy that could be going towards that will get channeled into public sector hate instead. Republicans channel that to distract from the real issues.

rather than campaign for greater economic equality

As aerius says, that isn't going to get any traction when there's a convenient, much easier target. Of course I'd be a lot more sympathetic if any public sector unions were actually saying 'it's not that our compensation is too high, it's that private sector compensation is too low'. I have never seen this statement made by any public sector union, certainly they are never going to expend one drop of effort on general inequality when they squeeze taxpayers for bennies instead.

or push for unionization in the private sector or anything else that would alter the downward slide?

A combination of globalisation and the resulting loose labour market has made unionisation ineffective. All unions can do is destroy local companies and hasten their replacement by non-unionised, usually globalised alternatives. Large-scale political action is necessary, and frankly I wouldn't trust unions even as organisers of that, given their total inability to grasp large-scale issues.

[Ariphaos]

Because of public sector unions of course. They don't give a shit who pays for the overly generous retirement packages as long as it isn't them because like you pointed out, they know the government can just print money at the expense of the taxpayers in order to fund them.

This is exactly why collective bargaining for government workers needs to be outlawed. Unions are fine for private companies, but public sector unions are a fucking cancer.

I've seen just as much crap from private sector unions. Still, I don't disagree with their right to effectively exist. By all means, restrict what sort of bargains and agreements the government can enter into, or require minimum performance standards as long as they are actually merit based and weighted to the conditions they are in. But I don't think destroying collective bargaining is justified or even particularly constitutional - people should have a right to organize.

[bobalot]

Because of public sector unions of course. They don't give a shit who pays for the overly generous retirement packages as long as it isn't them because like you pointed out, they know the government can just print money at the expense of the taxpayers in order to fund them.

This is exactly why collective bargaining for government workers needs to be outlawed. Unions are fine for private companies, but public sector unions are a fucking cancer.

I've seen just as much crap from private sector unions. Still, I don't disagree with their right to effectively exist. By all means, restrict what sort of bargains and agreements the government can enter into, or require minimum performance standards as long as they are actually merit based and weighted to the conditions they are in. But I don't think destroying collective bargaining is justified or even particularly constitutional - people should have a right to organize.

Could someone provide me some evidence that the pension for the average public sector worker is generous?

[mr friendly guy]

Actually can the North Americans explain what a public sector pension entails, what you need to do / how long must you work to be entitled to it. Over here we use the term pension as a subset of social security. As a government health worker I don't get a pension when I retire unless I fit the criteria for some other form of welfare. I am entitled to superannuation of which 401k is the closest equivalent over in the US. The only government profession that I am aware of which can get some benefits after retirement, not related to superannuation is a politician. As far as I am concern, I am planning on building assets so I can retire comfortably when the time comes.