If Chicago is bad off, who isn't? (Springfield, Marshall: chapel, houses)
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The history of guaranteed pensions is actually far less extensive that one might think.
The reason is pretty simple -- it is expensive and generally difficult to predict the long term capital requirements to fully fund pensions.
no, the problem is Illinois and many other states (and corporations) didn't live up to their end of an agreement and contribute to pension plans.
either way, it's not relevant to the issue of the 150,000,000 vs. 400, and you still haven't answered far more pertinent questions regarding your underlying assumptions about the economy.
again, should a 3rd generation Rockefeller who never had to work a day in his life be taxed at a lower rate than your average working stiff?
and actually learn something. if we followed your crackpot theories we'll continue our decline to a feudal society with the 1% of dukes & earls and everyone else a serf.
If high taxes stop job growth than how do you explain New York City? They have higher state taxes than Illinois AND they have a city income tax, property taxes are very high and cost of living is much higher than in Chicago. Yet New York City currently has a lower unemployment rate than Chicago. In the 1970's Chicago fared better than New York City in terms of financial issues in spite of being run by the machine of Richard J. Daley so unless you are saying something is different about the current machine than the old Daley machine it is not clear that corrupt politics ruins a city either. Also I don't consider myself as someone with his head in the sand, I know we have problems but the original topic of the thread is that our problems are a part of an overall terrible US economy, local politics deserve some of the blame of course but this notion among doomsdayers that Chicago is somehow uniquely screwed makes no sense from a historical standpoint. New York City went bankrupt in the 1970's and bounced back, Chicago is not in as bad a situation as that and hopefully we never will but whatever problems we have we can fix and bounce back and really we aren't that much further in a hole compared to many other places anyways. Chicago is a world class city, the Dakotas and other places in the sticks are not, people come here for some of the same reasons they come to New York City in spite of high taxes and cost of living, it is where talent wants to be and there is culture here that can't be found in some random place in the sticks somewhere.
speaking of NYC, I just saw this - it all comes back to a society where corporations have slowly but surely managed to remove all barriers to monopolization. There's a reason Adam Smith, only the effin' godfather of capitalism, was gung-ho about regulating industries to prevent monopolies.
If high taxes stop job growth than how do you explain New York City? They have higher state taxes than Illinois AND they have a city income tax, property taxes are very high and cost of living is much higher than in Chicago. Yet New York City currently has a lower unemployment rate than Chicago. In the 1970's Chicago fared better than New York City in terms of financial issues in spite of being run by the machine of Richard J. Daley so unless you are saying something is different about the current machine than the old Daley machine it is not clear that corrupt politics ruins a city either. Also I don't consider myself as someone with his head in the sand, I know we have problems but the original topic of the thread is that our problems are a part of an overall terrible US economy, local politics deserve some of the blame of course but this notion among doomsdayers that Chicago is somehow uniquely screwed makes no sense from a historical standpoint. New York City went bankrupt in the 1970's and bounced back, Chicago is not in as bad a situation as that and hopefully we never will but whatever problems we have we can fix and bounce back and really we aren't that much further in a hole compared to many other places anyways. Chicago is a world class city, the Dakotas and other places in the sticks are not, people come here for some of the same reasons they come to New York City in spite of high taxes and cost of living, it is where talent wants to be and there is culture here that can't be found in some random place in the sticks somewhere.
people like chicago103 prove why sanity rules on this thread. the number of refreshing and worthwhile voices here is incredible. and so encouraging.
I don't believe the Rockefellers have much to do with the current financial mess in Chicago or Illinois.
I would question whether you think retirees and others whose modest income consists largely of the proceeds from annuities and dividends should be treated differently than those whose large income comes from those sources, if so then you'd probably support reforms to the Alternate Minimum Tax, unfortunately most really really rich people are not paying AMT and the bulk of folks that do pay it are contributing a pretty healthy sum to the IRS -- Alternative to the Alternative: The Economic Effects of AMT Reform
Don't really follow how the serfdom thing comes from a fair tax system-- if anything the imposition of high taxes has more similarity with the latter serf laws than anything I would propose: Serfdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In fact, anyone familiar with the work of Hayek, one of histories strongest opponents to "central planning" and the corrupting influence of coerisive / exclusionary labor unions authored a classic that lays out just that argument : The Road to Serfdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediahttp://goo.gl/JUwyyhttp://goo.gl/cSoUF
I think you seriously misunderstand Hayek, fail to understand the historical periods he was writing in, and to be honest - I'm not even sure you've read anything more than blurbs pushed out by current "conservatives" (who he would despise if he was still alive today).
In no system that could be rationally defended would the state just do nothing. An effective competitive system needs an intelligently designed and continuously adjusted legal framework as much as any other.
How does that jibe with the revisionist views you're attributing to him?
Leaving out the fact that the mortgage crisis is pretty much irrefutable evidence of the failure of his belief that order comes from the decentralized decisions of individual participants (AKA "spontaneous order"), The Road From Serfdom is written in opposition to a form of Socialism that is long dead, and a form of wartime planning that is the exact opposite of what the war in Iraq was. The waste and corruption of Defense contractors in Iraq is another data point that directly contradicts his beliefs in spontaneous order.
Anyways, what Hayek was opposed to was government controlling the means of production and central planning. I'm not really sure why you think that has anything to do with today's liquidity crisis or current government programs. The current stimulus packages being offered are about counter-cyclical budget policy, not about central planning in any way, shape or form.
I don't believe the Rockefellers have much to do with the current financial mess in Chicago or Illinois.
I would question whether you think retirees and others whose modest income consists largely of the proceeds from annuities and dividends should be treated differently than those whose large income comes from those sources, if so then you'd probably support reforms to the Alternate Minimum Tax, unfortunately most really really rich people are not paying AMT and the bulk of folks that do pay it are contributing a pretty healthy sum to the IRS -- Alternative to the Alternative: The Economic Effects of AMT Reform
chet, i'm not really capable of carrying on a dialogue with you. we go back and forth, but nothing registers. no progress is made.
do you know why I asked you to answer the following question:
Do you believe that a society that has as much wealth in 400 familes as it does in the 150 million people who make up the bottom 50% of its economic ladder has any ability to continue to function, or even exist, with such a wide income discrepencey?
I ask this question....which you dodge repeatedly....because I want to know what is in your heart, not your brain. what you feel. and what you feel about others. how their suffering registers with you. and what empathy you are drawing upon within yourself.
every conversation you have here you compartmentalize the uncompartmentalizable. You hyperfocus on Chicago and Illinois seemingly without a clue that neither Chicago or Illinois can operate at a functional, rational level when they are part of a nation where, well you, you know, 400 families have the same amount of wealth....
Neither Chicago nor Illinois are in competition, so to speak, with other US cities or states as much as they are with parts of the world that can clean our clocks because they have a sense of social agenda, that we are all in it together, where government needs to be responsive to the people and not to the corporations, corruptly operating through a corrupt American government, that seem to own the American people.
These countries are not socialistic. Socialism is just one more pathetic -ism, one that comes up with the notion that the state should run the economy. No, they are not socialistic, but do have a strong social agenda: affordable health care for all, free education from kindergarden to advanced college degree, good services from the commons and a high quality of life for all. Do they pay more taxes than we do? Hell, yes. And gladly for that combined taxation contributes to and enriches their quality of life. And with a small differential between richest and poorest, they benefit from far less crime than we do, for it is the inequities that is the source of the crime. and the US is the poster child of inequities. Ironic isn't it, based on the idea that this was once the place you came to in order to be free of the inequities of the old world.
Do these other societies operate well today? No, they don't, although they do operate a helluva lot better than we do. But sadly no society can operate well on a planet with seven billion people, headed for ten billion by century's end. Put that into perspective of the first billion (after thousands upon thousands of years of mankind on this planet) reached around 1800 and it should send shivers down your spine.
the very capitalism that you seem to expound is based on endless supply for endless demand. it doesn't work and it is as toxic as all the other -isms, just like the absurd communism that collapsed not so long ago. In the process, we are raping the planet, destroying its climate, reducing the amount of livable land at the very time that we explode in population.
Yet you cling to how Chicago and Illinois operate having some importance in a nation that has gone mad. You tout every injustice to the powers-that-be, but show not a drop of understanding or empathy for all the downtrodden that they have created. Again: you may speak with your mind, but you clearly do not speak with your heart. And without it, I don't see many here who can or want to have a conversation with you.
You are defending a cancer, a late stage capitalistic system that is now devouring itself along with all of us. It is a cancer because only a cancer bases itself on endless growth. And yet that is what capitalism does, and now it does it not through competition but through the cooperation and partnership of government in a rigged game. You rail on unions, when they are the last true line of defense against a corporate machine that is calling all the shots. Your view of union is pure straw man; he just doesn't exist. What exists are the remnants of vigorous union movement in the US that kept the little guy in the game with the big guys and allowed them a livable income and that so called American Dream. America thrived and Detroit thrived and all of Michigan thrived when GM, Ford, Chrysler, and the UAW thrived. Back in the day.
So, for the love of god, man, tell me: should i be concerned about the "power" of unions and the business climate of Chicago and Illinois when I live in a nation that through its military/industrial complex spends more on "defense" than all the nations in the world combined? And that it fights two wars in the Middle East, tax free and "off the books" through creative borrowing? Should I care more about the unions than I do about what BP did to the Gulf of Mexico and all of us? Should the business climate of Chicago concern me more than the pile of garbage, twice the size of Texas, that floats in the Pacific Ocean today?
The American people, whether or not they occupying Wall Street anyplace else or no place at all, are getting this now.
And even if you lack a heart (you have given us every indication that you do; I'm taking your own words as evidence), even being totally self-centered would be enough for this to send those shivers down your spine....because, quite frankly, when this thing collapses (and it will soon enough....the emperor wears not clothes, it's clear, and that's no wizzard behind the curtain in the Emerald City), it collapses on you along with the rest of us.
Even if when the s**t hits the fan, you're still grumbling about how Chicago and Illinois are not competitive with other cities and states with a more friendly business climate.
I know you won't respond to this, chet. you never do. and it doesn't matter. I get the reality of what we have done and what we face. From reading your fellow forumers, a remarkable group of people here who are sensitive, aware, well informed, and compasionate, I know that 99% of them see the same things I'm seeing.
I think it pretty clear that posters like edsg25 are overly concerned with the emotional nonsense doublespeak that politicians in Illinois have mastered -- "what about the CHILDREN, the DOWNTRODDEN, the DISADVANTAGED" while these same politicians act in their own self-interest which ends up shortchanging the very groups that the platitudes are designed to appease.
The only defense there is against this irrational behavior is to look at the data and the data very much shows that job losses in Illinois are contrasted with increased employment in states that do not have the culture of corruption and that have rational means of meeting their budgetary obligations.
While lunatics prattle on about some sinister forces being responsible for the sorry mess that Illinois finds itself facing after decades of make-believe budgeting, sane voters in other states affirm their leaders' decisions to make real progress on breaking the corrosive ability of illegitimate collusion that result in unsustainably generous "bargaining".
I believe the sort of effort that was successful in Wisconsin is desperately needed in Illinois. The lack of separation between "law making" and "governing" is exactly what Hayek found as a growing cancer in systems of 'representative' democracy a mere three or four decades ago. To quote directly:
Quote:
We should want an assembly not concerned with the particular needs of particular groups but rather with the general permanent principles on which the activities of the community were to be ordered. Its members and its resolutions should represent not specific groups and their particular desires but the prevailing opinion on what kind of conduct was just and what kind was not.
I ask you: is it just for school boards and the state legislature to approve pensions that they do not fund?
The illegitimate demands of "collective labor" are the clearest example of "specific groups and their particular desires" distorting the role of the legislature.
I would hope that efforts to "clean-up" abuses of government that are well documented would be the concern of more citizens instead of the foolhardy belief in lunatic "conspiracy theories" that exist only in the fevered imaginations of the overly emotional.
Campaigns based on juvenile insults of one's opponent and vague promises of unrealistic "something for nothing" have gotten Illinois into the crisis that we currently face and the way out is not to vilify any one group. The parallels between scapegoating of the successful and other ugly periods in history ought not need to be pointed out...
The very premise that "forces beyond the control" of law makers in Chicago / Illinois belie the FACTS that other states are creating more jobs, are attracting more business, have net positive migration and overall are on a trajectory to overtake Illinois in many ways.
Deniers will only hasten the spread of the ruin that will be inevitable without drastic changes in the way that Illinois budgets for the government supported workforce / retirees.
I laugh at the ad hominem attacks leveled against me. My motivations to responding to this thread are simple -- to poke holes in the patently false supposition that "it ain't the fault" of law makers in Chicago and Illinois that years of fake budgets have left the state on the precipice of doom. I further find it hilarious but completely understandable that fools that continue to re-elect the charlatans who "weep all the requisite tears needed of "feeling" politicians" would swallow, hook, line and sinker, the fairy tale that "but for those mean ol' rich people" everything would be rosy in Illinois (or the nation). Such irrationality is of course how crooks caught red handed shaking down marks for "campaign contributions" still have the affection of large percentages of voters.
The simple reason that anyone that lives in Illinois ought to be a heckuva lot more concerned with budgetary hijinks in Springfield than which White House resident "lied" 8+ years ago is that the corruption in Illinois has so isolated elected official from any efforts to unseat them that they quite literally will be able to raise taxes without limit until they die. On the national scene there does at least seem to be some ability to at least elect folks that profess some desire to change course...
Last edited by chet everett; 11-16-2011 at 07:00 AM..
The simple reason that anyone that lives in Illinois ought to be a heckuva lot more concerned with budgetary hijinks in Springfield than which White House resident "lied" 8+ years ago is that the corruption in Illinois has so isolated elected official from any efforts to unseat them that they quite literally will be able to raise taxes without limit until they die. On the national scene there does at least seem to be some ability to at least elect folks that profess some desire to change course...
and Chet's partisan/social conservative true self pops up. this may surprise you, but many of us find it quite logical to be outraged by "D" corruption in the City and County and State while also being outraged at "R" corruption at the State and Federal level.
what the hell ANY of that has to do with screwing over union workers who kept their end of a deal is beyond me.
you want to go after union leaders who aren't acting in anyone's best interest but their own, hey, join the club - you apparently don't know many working stiffs, as no union people I know love the fact that a bunch of suits at the top fleece the system.
but your "doesn't matter about who lied 8 years ago" is preposterous - if we hadn't gone to war in Iraq & Afghanistan while also cutting taxes, the country would be in much, much better shape.
what's next, a delusional defense of supply-side economics?
don't make me quote Adam Smith at you, pal! I am being generous when I say you are way, way out of your depth on the economic front.
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I am being generous when I say you are way, way out of your depth on the economic front.
