Reader JC sent in some Young Conor pieces. One is on California’s problems, with a reference to a Michael Lewis piece, and some pieces in Reason, to make the following points: public union pensions are too high, it should be possible to fire a teacher, and the prison union situation shows how pernicious the influence of public unions can be. JC asks, basically, doesn’t Conor have a point on public unions?
My answer, put simply, is that Conor is picking one turd out of a shitpile, the turd he thinks stinks the most, while he’s ignoring the turds his Reason allies crapped into the pile. If I were to answer Conor in the form that is required of serious people, I’d write 10,000 words on the topic, but I’m not serious, so instead of drilling into the details of pensions, teachers and prisons, let me ask a question that doesn’t seem to come up every time we’re bemoaning the mess that is California. Why isn’t New York in the same bad shape? After all, New York has high public union pensions, and we have teachers’ unions and prison unions. Yet, we don’t have two of the three problems Conor identifies: we aren’t being bankrupted by our public pensions and we have state-run prisons. (And, I’d argue, while our urban schools have serious problems, like California, the average New York suburbanite is much more likely to send their kids to an excellent public school.) If the problem is unions, why aren’t New Yorkers as fucked as California?
I’m sure there’s a far more sophisticated answer, but I’m a simple man, and the simple answer that I see is that New Yorkers avoided the bullshit that Californians bought from the conservative movement. Let’s review, from the Lewis piece Conor recommends:
[…] California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits—no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it—and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. “The vicious cycle of contempt,” as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect.But when you look below the surface, he adds, the system is actually very good at giving Californians what they want. “What all the polls show,” says Paul, “is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what they have now got.” As much as they claimed to despise their government, the citizens of California shared its defining trait: a need for debt. The average Californian, in 2011, had debts of $78,000 against an income of $43,000.[…]
Not everything in that list is a conservative shibboleth, but there are plenty (term limits, contempt for government), and let’s not forget that California’s tax system is regressive:
California’s high tax burden ranking is a mix of relatively high sales, income, automotive fuel and corporate taxes, offset by relatively lower property taxes and very low taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages.
Public unions, like real-estate developers, corporations, and every other interest group lining up for a drink at the government sugar tit, are going to push their agenda. A state with a fairly dysfunctional government, like New York, might not respond perfectly, but it will avoid gross stupidity. A totally dysfunctional government–made that way in part by what Jesus and Ayn Rand dictated, Prop 13 and term limits–is going to get rolled, hard, by every special interest, including public unions. To single them out without addressing California’s other obvious problems is just finding a convenient scapegoat to advance the cause of Conor and his Reason buddies.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I think it could be stated even shorter: The fucking Republicans rigged things so that they could fuck up stuff even when they didn’t have a majority, making it hard for California to do what needed to be done.
Trollhattan
Now that Howard Jarvis and St Ronaldus are burning in hell together, you’d think we could fix Prop 13 but nooooo, it’s too magical to mess with.
And if they’re worred about pensions ruining eddykashun, they might also consider our $/student expenditures are among the lowest in the nation, in a high cost-of-living state (implying we might effectively spend the least in the nation).
But good news, we have Michelle Rhee sniffing around for
a massive grift paydaya solution.sharl
No one could turn the flamethrower on young Conor (“Neo-Confederate Conor”) – and his supporters – like that cudlip gal who used to comment here.
It’s for posts like these when I actually miss her and the 65% of the total comments she would occupy, posting on all the wrongs committed by the object of her wrath.
Jeff Spender
Young Conor.
I read his wanking on Atlas Shrugged–or as much as I could stomach–and it is clear to me he has all of the intellectual and emotional depth of flea.
taylormattd
This type of political system appears to be common on the left coast. Many of the western territories when they were admitted to the union and coming up with their Constitutions, enshrined in them these quasi-populist, anti-representative mechanisms that cause nothing but trouble.
Here in Washington, bastion of gay marriage and legal weed, we also have the most regressive taxation structure in the country. Literally the most regressive. And this has happened through decades of right wing tax cutting / taxation limiting voter initiatives, combined with no income tax. As a result, there is no way to generate state revenue other than sales tax, property tax, and fees. And of course, cutting the crap out of state government.
I just thank god that (unlike California) it takes a supermajority, both in the Legislature and then by a popular vote, to change the Constitution.
patroclus
Even in union states, tenured teachers can be fired for all sorts of things, like embezzling school funds or committing a crime. It’s just that you can’t fire teachers for corporate-like downsizing purposes because, you know, the education system isn’t a business and it takes years to develop good teachers and they’re underpaid generally and if they could be fired willy-nilly, you wouldn’t be able to attract teachers at all.
Further, public union pensions (for teachers and others) aren’t “too high” – they just haven’t been gutted like business pensions were 30-40 years ago so that everyone could have a 401K which loses 50% of its value when someone named George Bush is President.
Turgidson
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yep, and a mere few months after the voters in this state finally cast aside enough GOPers to kill their veto power for the time being and approved a reasonable tax hike, the state’s outlook has already improved considerably. Lots of bullshit still to deal with, but it’s a start.
Amazing what is possible when the
domestic terroristsloyal opposition doesn’t have the power to strangle all useful policymaking in the crib. I hope the country eventually discards the teabagger morons in the House as well, but am not holding my breath.gocart mozart
Micky Kaus?
taylormattd
@gocart mozart: Allegedly.
mistermix
@patroclus:
This was already way too long but that’s another good point I made to JC in an email I sent him. Today’s pensions are the product of negotiations long ago when the promise of a good pension was used as a retention tool. You can’t evaluate them fairly without looking at total compensation for the life of the employee.
Mark S.
@patroclus:
this
kindness
For many years public employees here in California voted to take lower paychecks so as to have a higher retirement fund. The governments, both local and state accepted these contracts uniformly and in almost every case never made the appropriate contribution to the retirement funds. That coupled with those funds getting slammed by the Wall Street fraudulent mortgages that went bust in 2008 left those retirement funds underfunded across the board.
This is not the fault of the employees. Asking for them to be the ones to make up for the losses by accepting less now is wrong. You know GE would never allow a person with a contract with them pay less than the contract. Yet here we want to jump on the employees like they were the problem while not one Wall Street crook has been brought to trial.
Go figure.
Yutsano
@gocart mozart: Too soon?
Chris
@patroclus:
This. Republicans bitching about “high” union salaries (public or private) simply because those salaries haven’t plummeted the way most of the private sector salaries have is the equivalent of telling a mugging victim that it’s unfair to him that other people haven’t been mugged.
Needless to say, CEOs bringing in seven-figure salaries while some of their employees still can’t get health care doesn’t provoke that kind of rage. Because they’re your betters and shut up that’s why.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@gocart mozart: Yugi did. It’s a pretty good spell card to have in your deck.
PeakVT
Let me point out that the California state government budget is fairly close to being in balance. The CA government is still a mess because it has revenue stovepipes running every which way, but it is nowhere close to bankruptcy, which is what most conservatives were predicting a couple of years ago.
Mnemosyne
Whenever someone tries touting the wonders of term limits to me, I point them to our golden state, where there’s a constant churn of politicians moving from job to job without ever learning how to do any of them.
I’m actually okay with term limits at the very top (ie mayor, governor, POTUS) but term limits on legislators are a fucking disaster.
MattR
@Chris:
From what I can tell, private enterprise is allowed to be inefficient because FREEDOM!!, but everything in the public sector needs to run without any waste (because government is evil)
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Sorry to OT threadjack but I need a little help:
Can someone please explain to me why this xkcd comic strip is funny? My dad forwards these occasionally and I can never understand what they’re trying to say. I feel like Jerry Seinfeld showing his “flaming globes of Sigmund” note to others and my dad is Tor Eckman.
Persia
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Don’t forget the joys of energy deregulation, which IIRC the state has never really recovered from. The free market!
Ben Franklin
PERS pensions are ridiculously rich. You shouldn’t be able to retire @100%.
There’s also the problem of nepotism and the good-old-boy networking.
SatanicPanic
@kindness: Yeah, our great mayor raided the fund to pay for a ballpark. heckuva job.
Mnemosyne
@PeakVT:
That’s because we were finally able to drive the number of Republicans in the legislature down to below 1/3rd, which means they can’t gum up the works anymore and we can actually pass a reasonably rational budget.
I mean, I’m not thrilled that I’m paying frickin’ 9% sales tax, but I’d rather do that than have the state declare bankruptcy, and a majority of Californians seem to have made the same decision I did in November.
Yutsano
@Chris: Y do hate teh jerb kreaterz? R u 1 of those soshalists or something?
Mike G
Shorter Young Conorfederate:
Contracts regarding unions and pensions can be tossed aside at will, but tax rates and bond repayments are sacred.
If they’re so concerned about prison guard unions, maybe they shouldn’t have lustily cheered for lunatic sentencing laws that have tripled prison populations and costs in the last two decades so the lawnorder crowd could get their authoritarian punishment-boner on.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: Arrrgh term limits are so stupid. Really, when you think about it- CA should be the ideal state for conservatives. We tried all their stupid plans (term limits, ballot initiatives, 2/3 majority requirement to raise taxes) and they didn’t work. Maybe the problem is actually with their ideas.
Joshua Norton
They must be doing something right here. People are snapping up multi-million dollar homes like they were Girl Scout thin mints on sale.
The unions are an eternal right wing whine. Enron and their co-conspirator wingnuts with their corrupt utility privatization plans did more damage than some schlub watching over cell block C.
catclub
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I got nothin. I enjoyed it, but cannot explain it either.
Was it the April 1 xkcd?
he explores lots of ideas, some work, some don’t.
Mnemosyne
@Ben Franklin:
Why not? After all, we’re not talking about a CEO who’s going to retire with 100% of his multi-million dollar income (and, yes, they do retire at 100% of their income — what, you thought Bob Iger was going to get a retirement salary cut?)
We’re talking about, what, someone making $70K a year, tops? Why is it a moral outrage for someone with that small of a salary to retire at 100%?
Pinkamena Panic
@Jeff Spender: Hey now, let’s not be talking shit about Flea.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
I think that’s why they hate us — we’ve proved that their stupid ideas don’t work, and they’re sulking.
PeakVT
@taylormattd: Cali is in desperate need of a new constitution.
@Mnemosyne: Supermajorities were part of the solution. So were the recovery and Brown’s tax initiatives.
BGinCHI
Is “reader JC” John Cole?
Man, this blog is really getting meta.
Holden Pattern
@PeakVT:
Which is the result of more ballot-box budgeting to deal with the stupidity of Proposition 13. The only way that any revenue measures could pass was if you stovepiped them to specific programs that you could convince 50%+1 of the voters were worth saving / doing, while still allowing the (disproportionately white and affluent) electorate to rest easy knowing the rest of the government, which as we all know just serves the gay unionized blah and brah street thugs, was still going straight to hell.
MattR
@Mnemosyne:
Especially if they forgo bigger pay raises in order to get that 100% pension. Would it have been better if that person was making 100K a year but only gets a 70% pension? That person would actually cost the state more money over his lifetime (of employment and pension).
The Moar You Know
I have yet to hear an explanation from any of these idiots proclaiming that California is the most fucked-up state in the union as to why people won’t stop moving here.
And I wish they would. Maybe we need to fuck it up some more.
Kyle
@Ben Franklin:
Yes, because there’s none of that in the business world or the Republican Party.
In the CA college system at least, a 100% pension requires 40 years’ service. It’s not like a CEO who fucks up a company in two years then retires with a six-figure pension for life.
Trollhattan
@Ben Franklin:
PERS pensions are not “rich.”
Thank you for playing.
catclub
@MattR: A lot of it is this.
Anybody who earns a salary can understand retiring with a 100% pension (important if true.). [Never mind the similar complaint does not come up for 38 y.o. military ‘retirees’ who have put in their twenty years. Funny that.] {Actually that will probably be next and I should not have mentioned it. Again, it is unfortunately too easy to understand and relate to.}
Enron’s billions scammed from California ratepayers, are much more arcane. CEO multi-million dollar pensions, not able to relate to personally, cannot fathom.
Joshua Norton
One of our major problems is the constant “budget by Proposition”. Every election someone’s pet project ends up on the ballot that requires a certain amount of the budget be set aside just for that purpose. They mostly pass because they sound good at the time but all these programs and their required funding have taken a huge chunk out of our discretionary finances and really screwed up the works.
Villago Delenda Est
CEO salaries and compensation packages, and pensions, are WAY too high.
But you never hear the fucktards at Reason complain about them.
This is because the fucktards at Reason should all be taken behind the building and shot.
The Moar You Know
THIS. Oh lordy, this. We have public school teachers driving from Modesto to San Francisco – about a three hour commute each way – taking shit salaries for decades in exchange for the privilege of retiring without eating catfood. We have cops driving from Temecula to San Diego – only a two hour commute each way – for the same reasons.
And then when shit goes bad it’s their fault.
Fuck that noise.
catclub
@MattR: $70k/yr is absurdly generous and makes union employees too wealthy, but somehow $250k/yr is not when it comes to taxing the wealthy.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@catclub:
What do Carnegie Mellon University, Baidu, Inc., Roombas, UIC, and a fictional dog creator have to do with one another and why would it be funny?
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub:
Hell, according to OvenMitt, $250,000 is “not much”, when he’s referring to his speaker’s fees. It’s fucking pocket change to parasites like Rmoney.
Holden Pattern
@Joshua Norton: The REASON that we have budgeting by proposition is that IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO RAISE ANY REVENUE AT ALL BECAUSE OF THE SUPERMINORITY VETO RIGHT IMPOSED BY PROP 13.
If you don’t like ballot-box budgeting, you need to get rid of Proposition 13. It’s that simple.
BGinCHI
The simple fact is that anyone who doesn’t see, for example, that education and public services like police and fire are a crucial part of the economy have no business talking about money or economics in any form.
The right has no arguments. Just vague, mistaken ideas.
Ben Franklin
@Kyle:
Yes, because there’s none of that in the business world or the Republican Party.
Oh, I could anticipate the drift of the thread.
Both sides do it.
The Moar You Know
@Ben Franklin: There’s a comment that could have come from the mouth of any of Cali’s most insane right wingers and pretty much nobody else.
Why not, when it’s 100% of a contractually agreed on lower-than-market labor rate?
Omnes Omnibus
Fuck Conor and fuck anyone who thinks that government operations should be run like a business. They are fundamentally different things with fundamentally different goals.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: I’m a native San Diegan, almost fifty years old, and there’s never been one single mayor of this city that hasn’t deserved a good long stretch in federal prison.
That only one has is a crime against God and humanity.
Gotta say the ballpark is pretty nice, but it’s not what I would have spent the money on even if we’d had it, which we didn’t.
MomSense
Question for the NY and CA BJers. In many states, public employees receive their pensions but do not receive Social Security. I think that many people who complain about public employees’ pensions do not realize that these employees will not be drawing Social Security.
What is the policy regarding Social Security in CA and NY?
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know:
Fucking A.
R-Jud
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: There’s a site for this: ExplainXKCD.com.
jl
@MomSense:
” What is the policy regarding Social Security in CA and NY? ”
I do not know in general. I do know that some local public employee associations and unions in CA opted out of social security, and these employees hoped to get a better deal with their own state, and sometimes county, retirement programs.
If anyone knows more about it, this CAer would like to hear.
Edit: In other words, I don’t think there is a uniform policy.
Haydnseek
@MomSense: I have a friend who for decades has received a PERS check every month because her husband, a CA state employee, died in a work related accident. She has worked in the private sector her entire professional life, paid into SS, but will never receive a SS check. When I informed her of this, she didn’t believe me, and became quite angry, as she was counting on both checks for a cushy retirement.
jl
” the bullshit that Californians bought from the conservative movement. ”
I agree that created a toxic mess.
I consider the following statements to be unfair to the great state of CA.
” why aren’t New Yorkers as fucked as California? ”
” the mess that is California. ”
I take it Mr Mix lives in one of those dinky little Eastern states, and does not appreciate the complexities of living in a large industrial economy (seventh largest in the world… WE RUUULLLE, dude!)
Trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
But he’s full of shit. For one thing, he seems unaware that teachers don’t participate in PERS.
Oops.
For another, ranks and file state employees who are in PERS do. not. receive. 100%. And new hires get worse deals, as they’re multitracking at this pont.
The best state deals, of course, are cops, prison guards and firefighters. Go ahead and tell them they’re not worth it. There are some spectacularly dumb municipal pension deals, which are under PERS, but blame that on the city, not the state and not on PERS.
Roger Moore
@patroclus:
More important, they haven’t been stolen by corporate raiders like Mitt Romney. That’s the real end game with all of the pension crap the Republicans are trying to pull. You can’t do it exactly the same way the corporate raiders did- you can’t just buy the government and convert the government pension funds into dividends for your shareholders, but you can try to default on the pensions and use the accumulated pension funds to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s pretty much the same game.
Holden Pattern
@MomSense:
As far as I know, the short answer is that it’s a mess. Some agencies and governments withdrew from SSRI for their employees, which means that those pensions have to be reconciled with SSRI benefits to which the employees are entitled for other work in their lifetimes. Some agencies/governments didn’t, which means that those pensions are in addition to SSRI (which, let me remind you, has been paid for by SSRI contributions).
No, the people who complain about public employee’s pensions don’t give a shit about whether or not those employees may also get SSRI benefits based on the SSRI contributions paid. They’re people who have an agenda, crabs-in-a-bucket haters, or people who are ignorant of the deal that their government cut to keep present taxes down by trading present compensation for future compensation and only see the bill as it’s coming due (helped along by the people with an agenda).
Haydnseek
@jl: We’re seventh now? Excellent! Last time I looked we were eighth.
Trollhattan
@jl:
There was a time when state employees opted out of SS in lieu of PERS, but that loophole was closed decades ago and they’ve been in both systems since (including FICA payroll witholding). Sorry I can’t be more specific on dates, but know it’s not the case today.
Roger Moore
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
It has some inside jokes that are probably funnier if you’re a regular XKCD reader. But the really interesting thing is that the comic is (or was for a while) actually dynamic. The names of the specific institutions involved varied over time according to some kind of formula I haven’t figured out but probably related to the Wikipedia funding bleg he included in the alt text and clickthrough.
jl
Ok, to be serious, public union pensions are not breaking CA. It is true that political triangulating BS by both GOPers and sadsack Dems like Grey Davis produced some outrages, and the correctional officers union deals are examples. But one of the reasons that happened is the reactionary BS CA bought 30 years ago that lead CA to create its prison industrial state. That is the disastrous idea, pushed by conservative economists and sociologists, that there was a unchangeable ‘criminal type’ personality. and the one of the most efficient ways to reduce crime was to round up the bad guys and lock them up for good. And this had an unfortunate interaction with the US miserably failed war on drugs.
However, now listen carefully, the total public sector pension bill for CA is about average. Yes, the state workers pay and pensions are much higher, but CA has a lower proportion of state workers compared to county and local government workers than average. When you add them all up, CA has an about average public sector wage and pension burden on its economy.
Of course, with the prop 13 mess, and reactionary obstructionist GOP in the state leg that could block pretty much everything, CA had a hard time paying for average or below average provision of services.
Local teachers pensions, many of which have opted out of Social Security (at least for a lot of current retirees, I am not sure how much it has changed recently) don’t get big pay and big pensions.
I worked out the numbers a few years ago in a comment, with references to Census Bureau numbers, but don’t have time to do that now.
Ben Franklin
@The Moar You Know:
From the Jesuit’s mouth….
http://www.jerrybrown.org/pension
The Moar You Know
@MomSense: I can only speak for California teachers as that’s all I know – but they most certainly don’t get Social Security.
MomSense
@Holden Pattern:
I agree that people like Conor and the punditocracy do not care one bit–but I have found in discussing the issue with ordinary people–they do not know about this problem. The assumption is that the teachers and other public employees will get Social Security like everyone else. I have found that they will most often change their minds when this is explained.
Not sure that I remember correctly, but I think Morning Ho made a comment on this subject a couple years back that caused me to think that he does not know this either. I wouldn’t be surprised. Pundits are not required to be knowledgeable about the subjects they discuss and they are sufficiently shame resistant so as not to care.
The Moar You Know
@Trollhattan: I know what he is and full of shit is the least of it.
indycat32
@Haydnseek: Why would she not receive a SS check if she’s paid into SS? I worked for the Univ of California San Diego in the 80s, then moved back to Indiana and worked for the State. I now receive a pension check from California and Indiana, and Social Security.
MomSense
@The Moar You Know:
Same here in Maine.
feebog
@momsense:
As a retired Federal Employee living in California, I did not pay into or qualify for Social Security. The same for any state or municipal employee. After “retirement”, I went into private practice and have since garnered enough quarters (40) to qualify for minimal social security benefits. But wait, there’s more! Because I am a retired Federal Employee, I am subject to a 50% reduction in my social security, even though I have earned it by working part time for part of my former career and now working full time for myself. Sucks.
darkmatter
@BGinCHI: Not only is he the blog-owner, he’s also a commenter.
Randy P
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: it appears to be a lot of in jokes that only Carnegie Mellon grads would understand. I laughed at the roomba though.
jl
@Trollhattan:
Thanks, that is good news. I tried to research this a while ago and it is hard to find complete information on it.
Another point that is overlooked, at least for CA, is that the housing boom played a big role in what now seem to be public salaries and pensions that seem to big. During the housing boom, government had to compete with private sector in attracting applicants. CA governments had a hard time getting the people it wanted when the unemployment rate was low, and lots of people were self employed and gonna make lifetime bank in the housing market. Public sector salaries and pension provisions are harder to change quickly than in private sector.
And BTW, an earlier housing boom in CA created serious problems with its old fashioned property tax system the lead to volatile and unpredictable property taxes in the first place that lead to prop 99. I also ranted about this a few years ago in a comment, with links, but I got no time now to repost.
So, IMHO, there is nothing that Conor, or Reason, or conservatives have to say about what went on in CA that is correct, or informative, or has any hope of solving CA’s problems. Rather, these folks bright ideas were a big factor in creating the problems.
What they should say that would have value is “We were wrong about everything. We are sorry. We will go away now and not wreck up your place anymore with crummy advice that don’t work. Please try to forgive us someday for being wrong about everything and ruining peoples’ lives.”
MomSense
@feebog:
I have heard similar stories from people in my home state of Maine. It really does suck. Sorry. If I ruled the world I would change this first!
But it does bug me because it should be a fairly simple thing to fix!!!!!
Holden Pattern
@MomSense:
I assume they do “know” that the dreaded public employees OMIGOD DON’T EVEN HAVE TO PAY SOCIAL SECURITY. But they don’t know the back end of that bargain, because they’ve only been told the front end because that whips people up into a froth of stupid.
Haydnseek
@indycat32: Here deceased husband was a firefighter, and apparently this was the deal they had agreed to at the time. I’m sure Los Angeles County policy was a factor as well. At any rate, it was decided that they were only partially liable for his death, and offered her a lump sum. She wisely declined, and will receive a PERS check for the rest of her life. The system is very complex, and changes from time to time. Others in her situation may have a different arrangement, depending on a host of factors, not least of which is the machinations of the legislature at any given time.
MomSense
@Holden Pattern:
Froth of stupid is right! Froth of stupid is pretty much what passes for news these days.
jl
@jl: Sorry, meant Prop 13. Prop 99 is the cigarette tax and anti-smoking program thing.
catclub
@feebog: “Because I am a retired Federal Employee, I am subject to a 50% reduction in my social security”
Since you are already a retired fed employee, I am guessing you were in the old retirement program, in which feds did not pay SS while working for the federal government.
catclub
@catclub: I just found a related fact sheet. the first sentence:
“If you receive a pension from a federal, state
or local government based on work where you
did not pay Social Security taxes, your Social
Security spouse’s or widow’s or widower’s
benefits may be reduced.”
Bubblegum Tate
@taylormattd:
Seriously. I was only vaguely aware of it when I moved out here to Cali, but now that I’ve been here for a decade-plus, I know it all too well. It’s basically like those batshit crazy Pawnee town hall meetings from Parks and Recreation, except it’s real, and it’s for the entire state.
Just the ballot initiative thing alone is supremely WTF. To make another TV reference, it’s like Agnes Skinner badgering the bagger at the grocery store:
Agnes: And you, start over. I want everything in one bag.
Pimple Faced Kid: Yes, ma’am!
Agnes: But I don’t want the bag to be heavy.
Pimple Faced Kid: I don’t think that’s possible!
Agnes: What are you, the possible police? Just do it!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@R-Jud:
You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
jl
@Haydnseek:
” We’re seventh now? Excellent! Last time I looked we were eighth. ”
Maybe we are eighth. Thanks for info. But, CA is growing faster than rest of US economy, and our main competition is Eurozone countries that are going into the toilet. So, maybe CA will rise again!
Trollhattan
@jl:
I suspect wingnut knowledge of all things California ended when Rush decamped Sacto for New York. And yeah, we’re sorry.
BTW, my pet theory is term limits only passed because they were desparate to get rid of Willie Brown. Nice work, guys.
Ben Franklin
@The Moar You Know:
WTF is your problem? One issue voter?
Sorry if I stepped on your pet dick.
jl
@Trollhattan:
Unruh, Brown… That may be what drove the CA GOP crazy. The CA Dems produced some political geniuses that the GOPers couldn’t defeat even when they were riding waves of popularity.
Say what you want about their policies, but they were effing political geniuses.
Some of Willie Brown’s amazing feats of strength and death defying escapes from destruction when he remained Speaker when the Assembly was majority GOP, that stuff would make a good political movie.
Edit: I should confess that I am partial to Willie Brown. I used to work in the same building he did. He had no clue what the eff I was of course. But I always gave him good-natured harassing, and he took it in good humor and wise cracked back.
Trollhattan
@jl:
A Willie Brown biop would be great. And yeah, Unruh v. Reagan could be another. (The latter was before my time here, but I’ve been reading some history and their battles were epic. Gov Reagan also ran headlong into the unions and I think that’s why he went after PATCO with such zeal. Payback, bitchez!)
MattR
@Ben Franklin: And? What was I supposed to be learning from that link?
jl
I remember walking by SF City Hall when he was just elected mayor and he was just finishing a TV interview.
ME: “what the hell happened to you. I don’t see you around the Sutter place anymore”
WB: “Well, hell, I got a new job, man. Haven’t you heard?”
ME: “In this low rent dive? You coulda done better than that.”
WB: “Ha ha ha! I try my best, man, I try my best. You can’t condemn a man for trying his best, now can you?”
Ben Franklin
@MattR:
Right-wing dogma. IOW whatever you want it to mean.
Roger Moore
@MattR:
It’s not clear to me, since nothing there actually supported the points the idiot was trying to make. I think you’re supposed to be so impressed that he’s referencing our illustrious governor that you don’t bother to read what Gov. Brown is actually saying.
joel hanes
@Bubblegum Tate:
Software developers have a maxim : under every patch you’ll find a bullet hole.
The distinctive populist features of California government (e.g. the system of public propositions) are not a good fit for current conditions, but they exist for a good historical reason.
At one time, the railroad barons owned the state government in fee simple, and ran California pretty much as a private fief. (The judicial doctrine that corporations are persons under the law is an accidental side-effect of this era — the original corporation to which it was applied was a railroad). Californians of that time were blocked from establishing adequate civil institutions largely because the railroads would not tolerate competing centers of power.
The proposition system was created as an end-run around the corrupt state government, and succeeded in that end.
To our sorrow, Messrs Jarvis and Gann and Reagan noticed that, with sufficient agitprop, a majority of the citizens could be bamboozled into destroying the institutions of civil governance in the long run, in return for tax advantages (for some people) in the short run.
Alex S.
California: hedonistic West Coast state.
New York: puritan East Coast state.
Hence, California is vulnerable to populism which always ends up hurting the majority of the populace (like the regressive flat tax).
New York prefers sin taxes much more than California.
Also, in New York the government is a corrupt machine with two corrupt parties that loot the taxpayers. But to do that, they need to keep the machine going.
In California however, one party is against the idea of a functioning government, hence, the political system is almost completely dysfunctional.
jl
@joel hanes:
Sufficient agitprop that pushed a very bad solution to a real problem. To ride my hobby horse once again, real estate and housing booms in the late 60s wreaked havoc with the CA property tax system, which lead to corruption, and abuse and special treatment for special interests. The CA leg had a state wide reform that pushed residential property taxes up with the next housing bubble. And CA leg was at fault for dithering on a fix.
Perhaps unfairly, I view lax regulations that encourage get-rich-quick boom bust asset bubbles as a conservative policy, and ultimately, favoring that type of economy deserves as much blame as anything else for the CA tax system mess.
@Alex S.: until the beginning of WWII, I will match CA state and local government corruption against anything you want. Bring it on, dude!
Mnemosyne
@MattR:
This is what I learned:
IOW, the previous administration (cough*Governator*cough) was playing games with the pension system and letting their buddies retire on artificially increased salaries. Brown wants to stop playing that game and only have people retire at normal salaries, not single-year boosts.
I’m not sure what Ben thought he was linking to, but it sure didn’t support his claim that the whole pension system is OUT OF CONTROL!
Elie
@taylormattd:
For WA state, (which as you say, just voted down a state income tax one more time a couple of years or so ago), I have even so called liberal friends who voted against adopting the income tax. I screamed at one: “How could you — poor people are the ones who bear the cost of our governance and the rich get a relative pass!”. She said, that it was her money and she wanted to give as little of it as she could to the government. She then went out and campaigned for Democrats! Go figure —
jl
@jl:
” until the beginning of WWII, I will match CA state and local government corruption against anything you want. Bring it on, dude! ”
Sorry, make that early 60s. I forgot about Los Angeles.
Ben Franklin
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not sure what Ben thought he was linking to, but it sure didn’t support his claim that the whole pension system is OUT OF CONTROL!
What did it matter?. They were on a roll, and I don’t mean pastrami on a kaiser.
Alex S.
@jl:
Well, even the 60s are half a century ago…
Today, the political landscape of California is neatly divided in a bigger democratic area and a smaller republican area.
In New York, the parties must have some kind of secret arrangement that ensures that neither party gains complete control (I remember that party switching trick earlier this year, also the recent story about the Democrat bribing his way onto the Republican ticket).
Though I don’t know when California began holding populist referendums to doom its revenue base.
glasnost
Without defending CF or Reason in general, what about high-level state and municipal guys getting 100% – or 90% of an 150K salary? Or a 250K salary?
I’m not a trojan horse or a glibertarian, but I think that’s not a good use of public money. I think it is the point that these guys have, and the existence of it very much undermines us.
jl
@Alex S.: I just wanted to make sure everyone knew the CA state and local government could be an grotesquely corrupt as anyplace else. Local bragging rights mean something even out on the left coast.
As a commenter above said, initiative referendum process was introduced over 100 years ago to break strangle hold Southern Pacific RR (and other robber baron corporations like Standard Oil of California) had on pretty much everything.
Prop 13 was in early 70s I think. And even then, Prop 13 was a a horribly bad answer to real problems with the CA property tax system. It was not just right wing BS that won a majority out of the blue. The big corporate real estate owners who backed Jarvis and his gang saw their opportunity and they took it. An update of George Washington Plunkett’s definition of ‘honest graft’.
A corporate ‘initiative referendum industrial complex’ has grown up that swamps the ballot with crooked and misleading schemes in CA. I’ve read polls that say that voters tend to look at all such propositions on the ballot with suspicion and when in doubt vote them down. As far as I can tell, recent election results seem consistent with that. I do know political analysts say that early polls have to give a proposition something like 70 percent support, otherwise it has a slim chance of passing, since after the initial announcement it is all downhill from there.
There are leg measures and some recent props that have tried to reform the process, but it is a race with corporate initiative referendum boiler room operations that are always cooking up new schemes for the unwary or angry CA voter.
Mnemosyne
@glasnost:
Realistically (and removing the former governor’s pension games) how many of those people are there? Fifty? A hundred? Are we supposed to tank the entire pension system because a handful of people at the top made a halfway decent salary?
I know right-wingers love to cherry-pick and find the one “outrageous” pension among the tens of thousands of completely ordinary ones, but we shouldn’t be basing our public policy on whether one guy — or 10 guys — get a $200K pension. That’s stupid, frankly.
Pooh
@Mnemosyne: Especially considering that they, you know, negotiated for that 100% as part of taking the (in 2013 dollars) $70k 30 years ago. Maybe without the 100% they would have needed $90k (again in 2013 dollars) to do the same job. It’s almost like there was a give and take, as opposed to a take and take, which seems to be the goal of Young Conor and the Randroids.
Alex S.
@jl:
Thanks for the info.
And thanks for mentioning the ‘honest graft’. It’s what Conor doesn’t get – in the short term, yes, populism gives the people what they want. But people can be misled in the short term. In the long term, you get a bankrupt state with a suffering infrastructure. Add Reagan’s Chicago School conservatism that wants to drown government in a bathtub and you get political dysfunction.
Ben Franklin
@Mnemosyne:
Handfull at the top? Try over 9000 starting at 100k per year.
http://database.californiapensionreform.com/
Mnemosyne
@Ben Franklin:
From the “about us” section of that website:
Gosh, I can’t imagine why a Howard Jarvis acolyte would be interested in killing the California
unionspension system, can you? They must be completely disinterested parties who have no stake whatsoever in busting unions.(Hint in case you’re not local: all “Concerned Taxpayers” are part of the movement Jarvis founded. He may as well have touted his membership in the John Birch Society.)
ETA: IOW, I think your source is full of shit. But, hey, if you want to support right-wingers and tax “revolters,” be my guest. Just don’t pretend you’re a liberal for doing it.
glasnost
Who said anything about basing our entire public policy on these guys? I think we should stop the sweetheart deals for these guys, specifically. Why are we handing people like CF embarassements to spank us with? Why are we allowing ourselves to be sucked into this kind of PR nightmare, especially when we’re not defending it on its own merits?
Ben Franklin
PERS retirement calculator.
Taking my private pension info and entering same. I currently receive $18000 per year.
Joe Blow gets 28K
http://www.pers.state.ms.us/memberservices/calculators/benefitestimatecalculator.cfm
Ben Franklin
@Mnemosyne:
*chuckle*
It would go very hard on a liberal who comments here.
Haydnseek
A bit of calm regarding Prop 13 might be in order here. In the 70’s, I remember my parents discussing their difficulties paying their extremely high property taxes. They both had decent full time jobs, saved and invested wisely. The house that they bought in 1957 for 14, 500 dollars was taxed at such a high rate that they actually considered moving. Yes, property taxes had to go down. No, they didn’t have to be lowered to the point where public schools have to conduct bake sales and car washes just to buy chalk for the blackboards. There was a middle ground, but the repubs burned the villages and salted the earth to the extent that a middle ground ceased to exist. I live in that house now. I pay the tax. If it goes up, fine. We have schools here that need to be funded, and by funded I mean art, music, and everything else that makes us human, not this Jesus rode a dinosaur to chick-fil-a to score grub for the last supper bullshit.
Ben Franklin
@Mnemosyne:
Go ahead and debunk the stats, you being a ‘liberal’ and all.
jl
@Ben Franklin:
Sorry, I think these lists are stupid. Try doing a search on Julius Schachter. He’s a world famous researcher in microbiology at University of California. Almost 200 publications and runs a world famous lab. He could make very serious bank at big pharma that would make what he earns at UC look pretty sorry.
There is a lot of abuse in the CA state public pension system, I would not deny that. But I would not buy into any of the Conor/Reason mag/glibertarian propaganda. It is a loser’s game, at least if you want to solve the real problems rather than screwing over the vast majority of honest state workers who do not earn, and will not get a pension anything near as big.
Ben Franklin
@jl:
I would not deny that. But I would not buy into any of the Conor/Reason mag/glibertarian propaganda
I didn’t buy into the meme, but I get weary with the cheer leaders and entrourage.
Pension reform is not a crazy republican conspiracy, and folks to the Left of BJ are not libertatrians, as comforting as that might seem.
PeakVT
@Haydnseek: But Prop 13 was a moronic response to the problem. The correct response to taxes that are “extremely” high (whatever that means) is to vote for politicians who will spend less, not to permanently cripple the government’s ability to raise revenue.
Prop 13 was nothing more than promise of the conservative version of a free lunch: Cut taxes today, and cut spending on mumble mumble at some point in the distant future.
jl
@jl: Of course, if the real purpose is to destroy public institutions by denying them access to world class talent, then maybe such lists are just the thing. If you can get, say, one world class medical researcher or outstanding DA to go over to corporate for every three or so mediocre desk jockeys you can shut down who are gaming the system, maybe that is a good deal for the glibertarians.
Mnemosyne
@glasnost:
They are being stopped — see the link to Governor Brown’s policy changes above. Not surprisingly, many of the worst abuses happened under the Schwarzenegger administration, but Conor’s not going to mention that part.
But, again, I think we need to point out that they’re cherry-picking their numbers. Ben says that OMG 9,111 state employees get pensions of more than $100K!
Do you know how many state retirees, survivors, and beneficiaries were getting pensions from the state as of 2008? 476,252.
So we’re supposed to dismantle the pension system in California based on the $100K+ pensions of 0.2% of the beneficiaries?
jl
@Ben Franklin: Fine, I get your point. I am just very suspicious of gimmicks like that list you posted. I have to admit I don’t like them to some extent because I am envious, since there is no way I will ever be on one. But, besides that, I do think you damage your case with links like that.
Mnemosyne
@Ben Franklin:
Here are the numbers for you again:
Pensioners getting more than $100K a year: 9,111
Total number of pensioners in the CalPERS system as of 2008: 476,252
But, hey, let’s dismantle the whole system so that 0.2% of the pensioners don’t get benefits you think they don’t deserve.
Mnemosyne
So I guess my answer is, No, JC, he doesn’t. He could have had a point about cronyism infecting the pension system, but somehow libertarians never want to look at cronyism or other forms of favoritism when they can blame unions as a whole.
Haydnseek
@PeakVT: Yes, it was a moronic response. I’ve been banging that drum for years. Property taxes had to go down, but not so radically that the public education system that was the model for the entire country was gutted to the extent that we are now in a slap-fight with Mississippi. The CA legislature now has a legislatively effective Dem majority, so I’m not surprised to see recent research that shows some improvement economically.
Ben Franklin
@jl:
, I do think you damage your case with links like that.
You may be one of the few who think I have any credibility at all.
Currying favor is not one of my objectives.
Trollhattan
@jl:
Dragging back in late, but found an article (couple years old, but seemingly still relevant) on the complexity of calculating SS benefits against some public employee pensions. It’s not as cut-and-dried as I’d thought (would have to parse each BU contract to see whether it’s universal).
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/02/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20101102
But, CA state employees do participate in SS, so I don’t believe it’s an issue for those hired after they began FICA witholding.
Jay C
@PeakVT:
IIRC, back when Prop 13 was floated, one of its main selling points was that since trying to “get politicians to stop spending” was a fool’s errand, the “voters” should have (and did) enact revenue-restricted laws that would force them to “stop spending”. Which, of course, was a pretty broad mandate, since Howard Jarvis and his cronies were the sort of old-school reactionary Republicans absolutely convinced, as a matter of political faith, that virtually ANY spending by the State government was, ipso facto, wasteful and unnecessary, Needless to say, things didn’t quite work out like they had planned…
Bubblegum Tate
@Mnemosyne:
If you identify yourself as “a taxpayer,” you’re about to be an asshole. If you identify yourself as a “concerned taxpayer,” you can’t be anything other than an asshole.
glasnost
Um… no…? Who’s dismantling anything? Who wants to dismantle anything? “This guy has a point” DNE “so let’s implement his suggested agenda”.
.
The plan sounds like it deals well with what pretty much everyone is admitting were some bad spots, problems, and embarassments. So… good… I guess (has the legislature actually implemented Jerry Brown’s plan?)
It’s cute to blame this on Arnold, but since we’ve had at least a legislative majority in CA since forever, we were complicit for these embarassments. It’s good that we’re fixing it in CA.
We should be fixing it in other blue states. When the 0.2% are gone, the talking points will also be gone. For republicans, they are talking points of above-average effectiveness, because of the kernel of truth.
“The average CalPERS pension is $2,100 per month. There are, however, instances of highly compensated government employees earning excessively large pensions, and a reasonable “cap” on these excessive retirement benefits should be imposed. ”
Yes.
Bill Murray
@Ben Franklin: so your point is you have a shitty pension deal, and so should everybody else? Nobody deserves a comfortable retirement unless they were high-level management in a private company.
I guess I’m asking what is your point except that PERS people have a better retirement deal than you and you don’t like that. Also your link didn’t work.
Ben Franklin
@Bill Murray:
“Oh there won’t be any tip. But on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness”
So, you got that going for you.
Mnemosyne
@glasnost:
You may want to look at what a two-thirds majority means in California before you decide that the Democrats are equally to blame. Hint: if it’s anything to do with spending or the budget, a two-thirds majority is required to pass any law.
Since the pension funds are withheld from the employee’s paycheck, what you’re going to need to do is put a “cap” on the maximum amount that’s eligible to be withheld like we do with Social Security. It would be a major asshole move to do a full withholding on the paycheck of someone who makes $200K a year and then say, “Sorry, your pension is only based on a salary of $100K because some people from out of state decided you make too much.”
Also, I once again draw to your attention that those “excessively large pensions” are drawn by 0.2% of the retirees, and yet you’re proposing massive pension reform that would penalize all CalPERS retirees because you think 0.2% get too much.
Mnemosyne
@glasnost:
I guess my question for you is, if someone who works for the state earns an average $200,000 salary for, say, the last 5 years that they work for the state, should they be allowed to collect a pension based on that salary (which would put them in that “excessive” 0.2%) or should their pension be artificially set to a different salary because $200,000 is too much for a state employee to be making and collecting a pension on?
As I said above, it sounds like there were abuses with the system and certain people were getting their buddies to artificially inflate their salaries for their last year of service to boost their pension. But is your position that certain salaries are just too high for a state employee to be making, so they shouldn’t be allowed to collect a pension based on that salary?
Trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
If somebody would like to place metrics on “excessively large” then there can be a discussion. Until then it’s meaningless wanking.
Here’s a thought: take a large CA department, tally its budget, number of employees, number of clients/customers, capital assets, etc. Now find ten CEOs in the private sector running companies of similar size and compare their compensation packages, including retirement. I wonder who makes more? How many orders of magnitude apart might they be?
Since government is actually an extension of we, the people, why do we value it less than our blessed corporations, over whom we have no influence? Why don’t we insist that department heads come from the same talent pool? Would we get better government services?
lojasmo
@Ben Franklin:
God, you are a glibertarian little bitch.
2% of Cal PERS retirees draw pensions of greater than $100K. The california pensions system is 3% of the budget.
Ben Franklin
@lojasmo:
I can see the sweat. What else did you find, Lojam?
ffredpalakon
A while back, I wrote “Conor Friedersdorf: An Almost Irrelevant Man” after I got very, very angry with the way Friedersdorf tends to be a little selective about what he gets outraged about (deaths because of the drug war, yes, deaths because of straw gun buys whereby guns end up in Mexico, not so much; Obama supporting drone strikes is worth getting outraged about, Gary Johnson openness to continuing the drone program gets no mention), and tried to go exhaustively through a lot of his work to show the selectivity of his judgements.
Long story short: in the course of the refutation, I brought up the very piece mentioned, the Michael Lewis screed “California and Bust” and cited the excellent critical response already made by James Thomas Snyder, a resident of Vallejo, who chastised Lewis for knowing too little of the history of the place, “Our Town: A Literary History”.
glasnost
Why do you keep saying this? What am I proposing? I’m not proposing anything of the sort. The quote is from Jerry Brown’s plan, man. From the link you pointed out to me. How does the cap penalize “all CalPERS retirees”? That’s not what a cap means.
We shouldn’t be paying 100K or 150K pensions to people that leave government making 200K or 250K a year. It’s not a good use of public money. We should be using that money to make tuition cheaper, or nutritional assistance to poor people, or subsidizing improved insulation of old houses, or something else actually progressive.
We shouldn’t be guaranteeing large incomes to retired public employees after they retire. It’s always going to be wildly unpopular. It’s always going to look like waste and abuse by definition. And it’s not neccessary to avoid financial harship for retired people. That’s the goal we should be setting. The priority should be avoiding financial hardship for low and mid-level public employees, not on helping people in the top 10% of the income distribution maintain a high-end lifestyle after they retire. Politically, it’s toxic. It undermines support for entire pension systems. It’s a weak point, and no one is really trying to defend it on the merits.
I think 50K would be a good cap, but I wouldn’t flip out over something somewhat larger.
Trying to provide high-public servants with compensation that matches private sector compensation is a fool’s errand, a waste of time, and political suicide. Private companies are free to waste money indefensibly by throwing it at their leaders. We are not free to chase that arms race anymore than we are free to screw people and do many other harmful things done by private companies.
And again, not neccessary. It’s enough to make people reasonably affluent. If they want to be in public service, they might as well do it because they believe in what they are doing, not so they can cash in on an equivalent basis.
TG Chicago
More thoughts on pensions from an NPR report on a legal real estate boondoggle:
So yeah, the stupid, greedy public employees are the ones to blame for shortfalls. Not the 1%ers who stole the money from the fund.
Roger Moore
@Ben Franklin:
Considering there are over 2 million employees of all branches of California state and local government, 9000 is a relative handful. And $100K is not an outrageous pension. Government administrators are doing very important work and deserve to be compensated appropriately. That’s going to result in a lot of senior officials getting large pensions, especially since they’ve accepted smaller salaries to get them. Talking about how many people get pensions of such and such a size without comparing them to what private sector employees with similar levels of responsibility are getting is purely intended to shock and outrage, not to inform.
liberal
@Trollhattan:
Prop 13 is definitely California’s main problem.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks you could shovel that much money into landowners’ pockets in return for exactly nothing, and expect anything short of dire consequences.
Mnemosyne
@glasnost:
Labor law is no longer a progressive value? Making sure that employees don’t get screwed out of their retirement after working someplace for 20 years is no longer a progressive value?
You claim that you value the work that the government does, but you sure don’t seem to value the people who actually do that work. We’re supposed to tell the professor who taught undergraduates for 20 years, “Sorry, but we’re going to retroactively cap your retirement at $50K because tuition is too high”?
Here’s another hint: tuition is not too high because of professors’ salaries at public universities, or even their retirement benefits. You’re cutting money based on the fact that you don’t like public employees, not based on rational spending.
No, the goal of Social Security is to avoid financial hardship for retired people. The goal of an employer pension is to compensate someone for many years of loyal service to the organization, which is why most of them don’t give a full pension until you have worked there for at least 20 years. And, yes, a teacher who worked at a public school for 20 or 30 or 40 years should be rewarded for sticking it out and not have to be figuring out which brand of cat food is on sale this week so they don’t starve.
Mnemosyne
@glasnost:
Yeah, who needs public employees? Let them eat cake if they were too stupid to go work in the public sector.
liberal
@jl:
Does he get a state “pension”? In a lot of places, the profs mainly get a 403(b) retirement plan (basically a 401(k) for profs and some others), which is a defined contribution plan, not a “pension” which usually means a defined benefit plan.
Trollhattan
@glasnost:
Okay, why not? And, who’s “we?”
FWIW, CalPERS income, FY 10-11:
Member contributions
$3,600,089,338
Employer contributions (3,103 total employer organizations)
$7,465,397,498
Investment & other income
$43,907,435,683
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
You need to double check your math. 9111 is about 2% (actually closer to 1.9%) of 476,252, not 0.2%. The point still stands, that we’re talking about a relatively small fraction of all pensioners. And you can bet that most of those people making over $100K are not making a lot over $100K. As I said above, talking about how many people are making X amount without any kind of comparison to other states or the private sector is purely intended to shock and outrage, not to inform.
liberal
@glasnost:
Huh? Who said anything about matching?
As an aside, I think pay for federal Congresscritters should be dramatically boosted, accompanied by extremely draconian laws to get rid of the revolving door.
Ben Franklin
@Trollhattan:
Taxpayer contribution $11 Billion and change.
jl
@liberal: I don’t know how the UC or Cal State plans work for all the different types of teachers and researchers. I do know enough about professional schools that, for example, clinicians, engineers and lawyers who might have a lot of income from their practices, are more likely to have skimpy or no defined benefit package.
The name Schachter I saw on the list seemed vaguely familiar, so I googled it. IIRC he is a PhD but didn’t look to see whether he is an MD as well. If just a PhD I would guess most of that is a regular defined benefit state pension from what I remember.
liberal
@ffredpalakon:
Michael Lewis is a blithering idiot.
That anyone takes him seriously is amusing.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Ah, well, math never was my strong point. I divided 9,111 by 476,252 and the calculator showed me 0.01913 and some change, so I must not have moved the decimal point over far enough.
Still, we’re supposed to reduce the pensions of everyone in the system because people think 2% of the pensioners get too much money?
Mnemosyne
@Ben Franklin:
And by “taxpayer contribution,” you mean “the salaries we’re paying those state government leeches and the operating costs for those useless schools, hospitals and universities?”
jl
@Roger Moore:
” Government administrators are doing very important work and deserve to be compensated appropriately. ”
I remember reading that most of the high pensions are for high skill high credentialed professional employees who have lucrative opportunities in the private sector.
Seems to me that bigshot public administrators (like whatever suit is runing Road Dept. or School district) are part of the overclass now, and they seldom last long to get a old fashioned defined benefit package. They get their golden parachutes when they take off for elsewhere after a few years.
I think the problem is lower level administrators and other workers who game the system with overtime, or late career pay raises that just get them past some criterion for a higher pension. But the glibertarian propaganda I’ve seen doesn’t bother go through how much each case costs. They just want excuse for battle axe ‘reforms’ that can hurt a lot of ordinary workers who do not have much income, either while working or after.
Roger Moore
@glasnost:
Why not? It’s not as though we just decided to hand that money over to them as a gift; pensions are part of a negotiated compensation package. Government employees have generally accepted smaller up-front salaries in exchange for their relatively generous pension plans. If we throw the pensions out- which is likely to be challenging by itself, since they’re part of a negotiated contract- we won’t save much, if any money. All we’ll do is drive up the employees’ salary demands, since they’ll need to save more for retirement.
Holden Pattern
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, come on. You know that gummint employees don’t actually work or nuthin’. They just lazes around on they behinds suckin’ up the money from good hard workin’ folk in the private sector. Evvybody knows that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ben Franklin: Pensions are deferred compensation for work done by an employee. Of course a big chunk of it is going to come from the taxpayers who benefit from the government services.
Ben Franklin
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.
http://reason.org/news/show/public-sector-private-sector-salary
jl
@Ben Franklin: If that is just a report of a BLS survey statistic, don’t mean much. You have to adjust for fact that public employees are more highly educated on average than private sector workers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ben Franklin: So now you are flipping to arguing that public workers are overpaid in general?
Your own link says:
JoyfulA
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Carnegie Mellon is a top school for robotics, about 4 hours from NYC, which ties in with Roomba and instant dog, but I don’t know what UIC is.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Exactly. Let’s say you work for a private company and have a 401(k) that you’ve been contributing to for 20 years. Should your company be allowed to take 50 percent of it away from you because they have other expenses that need to be covered?
And before you say, “But that’s my money!” … so is a pension. It’s part of your salary that’s put into an account that you later receive benefits from.
Or, hey, let’s say the private company is generous and says they’re only going to reclaim the matching contributions they’ve made over the years. That’s totally fair, right? After all, that wasn’t money that you earned.
Full Metal Wingnut
@Mnemosyne: Why can’t we make it so that you max out at a certain grade? Like, the maximum you can get is, say, 70k. So for a teacher at the end of their career it’s 100%, and for a high-level administrator at over 100k, it’s well under 100% but still a perfectly reasonable retirement package (and as the child of a teacher I have to say-if it’s good enough for a teacher it’s good enough for you). I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Full Metal Wingnut
@Full Metal Wingnut: another thing is, I think pensions are more important at the lower end of the salary spectrum. Someone who makes well over six figures, say 200k has more money to play with, savings-wise, than someone in the mid-five figures like a teacher. Honor current arrangements, and for future hires make pensions a sliding scale from 100% based on income level. So, e.g., someone at 150k gets about 2/3-that’s about 100k, more than reasonable. Again, higher salary, more money to save. I get that people have varying expenses and life situations, but this is no less true for people with a lower income.
Now, I don’t think this arrangement is necessary budget-wise. But should it become a prudent course of action, I don’t think it would be at all unjust. What I find unjust are the terms continuously changing and the rules being written and rewritten as you go c
Mnemosyne
@Full Metal Wingnut:
As long as the required contributions to the pensions max out at that dollar amount, sure. But some people don’t seem to have thought through the fact that they want people to make contributions for the full value of their salary of $200K but only get a pension for half that. Maxing out future benefits should also mean maxing out contributions, and you can negotiate your salary above that.
Full Metal Wingnut
70k is a very good salary, but only goes so far in a very expensive state. Well into the six figures is a little rich. I make in that area (although less than 250) and I don’t get a pension-I save money. Now, I know this sounds like: I don’t have one therefore they can’t. What I mean is, past a certain income, a pension is less of a necessity. There’s something I find irritating about that-my tax dollars funding a full pension for someone who makes the same money as I do? I think it’s just unnecessary.
Just to reiterate-I fully support 100% pension for people like teachers. At that income level, it’s really really hard to sock away enough money for a comfortable retirement. But I would venture a guess that most people at my income level don’t have a pension. It would be nice-it would help, but if I could have one I certainly wouldn’t need a full one. I have more money to save. So that’s my belief.
Ben Franklin
@Full Metal Wingnut:
Just to reiterate-I fully support 100% pension for people like teachers. At that income level, it’s really really hard to sock away enough money for a comfortable retirement. But I would venture a guess that most people at my income level don’t have a pension. It would be nice-it would help, but if I could have one I certainly wouldn’t need a full one. I have more money to save. So that’s my belief.
The TEACHERS is what sends them into orbit without a re-entry pattern, and I concur with you completely on that issue.
CALTRANS, not so much.
JustRuss
@Ben Franklin: A lot of the low-end jobs in the public sector, such as janitorial work, get outsourced to the private sector. So comparing average salaries doesn’t tell you much, unless you’re talking about comparable jobs.
MEA
State pension recipients include doctors (who are needed to run the public health programs that keep you from getting sick), lawyers, engineers, toxicologists, and biologists (environmental protection). Lots of highly skilled, specialized jobs that are done best with commitment to the mission. The public has to pay for good talent, and historically we have gotten really, really good talent on the cheap by the combined use of the civil service system and good pensions. That combination lets public servants BE public servants. We can be idealistic and worry about the public interest, instead of just thinking “what is in it for me?”
Is it possible for the “higher end” public employees to be saving on their own for retirement? If you want to be so foolish as to create incentives for corruption, sure, go ahead. But we want to create incentives for dedicated public servants who passionately pursue their mission, and who keep their significant expertise and specialized training and knowledge working FOR the public.
One of the biggest problems that the public sector faces is “revolving door” issues — we don’t want our regulators coming from and going back to the regulated industry. Well, a dedicated civil servant needs something in return for all that dedication. The potential for windfall profit that exists in the private sector is something we don’t want to encourage, because we don’t want public servants on the make.
Pensions are really cheap if in return you get dedicated public servants. That is why I took a public sector job gig. My pension is a pale shadow of the old system, and I am certainly more inclined to look at other options than the older generations who were more locked into generous pensions. I am a dedicated civil servant in a regulatory enforcement job, but with all the bashing of public employees sometimes I calculate my pension, and think “is it worth it, or should I jump ship?” Working in the public interest is fantastic, but at a certain point the private paycheck becomes attractive. Gut my pension — or the pension of those who come after me – and more people with expertise will jump ship. We have specialized expertise. I’ve had recruiters call me. I would land on my feet. But I would like to not have to think about it. I like to be able to say “NO! I get enough to be secure, so I don’t have to be on the make. I can concentrate on my job”
Pensions are one component of protecting the public interest.
And what is “enough” varies and must address high compensation high skill folks like doctors. It isn’t all teachers and prison guards and generic administrators.
glasnost
This.
It seems like we agree. I don’t really see the significance of this point, though. If your pension contribution doesn’t max out at the dollar amount, you have… a slightly lower salary. I guess I’m not against it, but it’s hard to see how this amounts to more than a few hundred bucks either way.
You really don’t understand how excessively large pensions for high-salary public employees amounts to a giant neon bullseye to be painted on the back of the entire pension system. Republicans are using examples like you (or the hypothetical you) as self-evidence evidence of a bloated and corrupt system, and even solid liberals feel like they have a point (full metal jacket). So the extra 100K in your pension endangers the reasonable pensions of low and middle-income government employees. And then you lose anyway, at the hands of those republicans and easily annoyed voters. You just take the system down with you. See Winsconsin and Ohio, for starters.
if a 200K salary and a pension that’s still better, even at 50K a year, than most 401K plans and their pathetic 4% matches, isn’t good enough of a living for you to nobly fulfill the public interest, than walk. Someone who cares about the cause more than you and is equally talented will take your place.
glasnost
Median personal income in america: about 6-7% of americans make > 100K per year. We’re all about getting the billionaires, the top 0.01%, to sacrifice for the less well off, but when we start asking the mere top 5% to cut back to pensions that are only 10X better than the average 401K instead of 100X better, suddenly we find out who the fair-weather progressives are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
Curtailing 100K and 200K pensions is politically neccessary to protect pensions who actually need them, and I don’t feel sorry for your struggle to avoid succumbing to the private sector dark side. Do the right thing, or don’t. The right thing will draw the people who do it.