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Seems pensions are becoming very elusive for most of the population and in the same light, several cities in California are insolvent and one of the top stated reasons is pension/medical commitments to retired are unsustainable.
A very good friend is city manager for a Bay Area city... the most pressing issue is public safety will consume the entire budget in 17 years...
I agree... my law enforcement friends in other states can't believe the wage and benefit scale in the Bay Area... let alone California.
No one in my family has ever drawn a pension... I work in a Hospital and even the 401k match went away 7 years ago.
Truly wealthy have good and bad income years... yet, their asset base endures.
Anyone remember when Corporate titans like Lee Iaccoca worked for $1 a year as the top man Chrysler... for many years he had no "Income" and then he exercised his Stock Options and the payday of a lifetime...
Maybe a better definition is required because everyone is not on the same page...
to OP it is NEVER INCOME you look at as 1% of 0.01% always hide their income.
you have to look at total WEALTH
fools have to stop thinking income determines your status.
the rich look at their wealth NOT Income.
they all know that they hide their true income after all
Nope. You go to jail for hiding income. Just ask Wesley Snipes.
Now, if you have high income, you may very well have a some good sized deductions. If you do business as a DBA, you may have high deductions. You might even be too aggressive with your deductions, in which case you might end up owing the tax you would owe anyway plus interest... and if you're really too agressive, perhaps a penalty. For the most part, you don't go to jail for aggressive deductions so long as there is a reasonable argument to back them up. For the most part, you DO go to jail for hiding income.
The issue (and what this OP is vaguely trying to address) is why we tax wealth more favorably than income. That probably has a lot to do with income inequality spiraling out of control.
Basically, our policy makers are bootlickers for the rich.
The issue (and what this OP is vaguely trying to address) is why we tax wealth more favorably than income. That probably has a lot to do with income inequality spiraling out of control.
Basically, our policy makers are bootlickers for the rich.
Well, the taxation issues are interesting and certainly germane but I have not addressed taxation either directly or indirectly and have not asked any questions about taxation. Not sure why you concluded that I am "vaguely" trying to address taxation issues.
SportyandMisty, you know that you troll - with your references to public pensioners as the top 1%. I'm not going to specifically quote your long harangue against a specific nurse listing California, which has the highest public pay for nurses and thus isn't even representative of salaries for the one subclass of workers, which are themselves not representative of the subclass of all workers of similar education or background.
So, to wit: A) You selected an unrepresentative anecdote - from one state - of a small outlier class of employees with more generous pensions than normal to serve as an example.
B) You, before and after, extrapolated that example to act as if it WAS representative. Even though it is also from a state with much higher cost of living expenses and in a region (if SF, as the other poster noted) with high COL even for that state.
C) Even so, you gnored that, by income or assets, even this *extreme* outlier case falls WELL SHORT of top 1% status. Average assets of the top 1% in assets are about $9 million. Income, as laboriously noted over and over, would be $400k.
Have another shot of bourbon and make another random post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwhitegocubs
... I'm not going to specifically quote your long harangue against a specific nurse listing California....
You are wrong. No where did I harangue against a nurse listing. I respect nurses. I admire nurses. It takes a very special person to be a nurse, and I tip my hat to every nurse everywhere. Nursing school is demanding, and the nursing profession is even more demanding. In short, kwhitegocubs fails -- again.
But go ahead and make more personal attack if they make you feel better. Have another beer & make another attack.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwhitegocubs
... which has the highest public pay for nurses and thus isn't even representative of salaries for the one subclass of workers, which are themselves not representative of the subclass of all workers of similar education or background.
So, to wit: A) You selected an unrepresentative anecdote - from one state - of a small outlier class of employees with more generous pensions than normal to serve as an example.
B) You, before and after, extrapolated that example to act as if it WAS representative. Even though it is also from a state with much higher cost of living expenses and in a region (if SF, as the other poster noted) with high COL even for that state.
C) Even so, you gnored that, by income or assets, even this *extreme* outlier case falls WELL SHORT of top 1% status. Average assets of the top 1% in assets are about $9 million. Income, as laboriously noted over and over, would be $400k.
Let's review.
On A above, you are wrong. Those pension of those nurses is less generous, not more generous, than other public sector employees. Those nurses get 54% of final year as the baseline for their pension. Other public sector pension plans go as high as 90% and even 95% of final year as the baseline for the pension. kwhitegocubs fails -- again.
On B above, you are wrong. It is in California, but it is not in a high-wage/high COL area. It is not in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is nowhere near the coast where wages are higher. It is in a low COL, low wage area in the Inland Empire. kwhitegocubs fails -- again.
On C above, you are wrong. I only mention the value of the pension, not the value of the nurse's assets. The nurse will have other assets accumulated over her lifetime, just as the rest of us accumulate assets over a lifetime. kwhitegocubs fails -- again.
In conclusion, you are wrong on every point you tried to make. Go have another scotch & make another post.
OK, we get it. You don't like facts or data if they disagree with your narrow-minded view of the world.
Let's take another anecdote, again just for fun, for the open minded people who might read this thread, lest they somehow think you actually, you know, have a point somewhere buried in your ideological ramblings.
This time data are from Las Vegas, NV. Las Vegas is a relatively low cost of living area, with lower wages. Las Vegas is a blue collar city (not that there's anything wrong with that) and is service oriented. Over 2/3 of the people who work in Las Vegas put on a name tag before going to work.
This time, because you just really don't believe data, I've actually included some of the names of specific, real life people who earn specific compensation.
OK -- I know, I know. You'll accuse me of cherry picking the most highly paid. But let me stop you now because there is no cheese at the end of that tunnel.
Those were just random entries. Just to show you what cherry picked entries look like, here are nurses at the top of the tier. They work at the county hospital, called University Medical Center. As with all public hospitals, they serve the elderly, the indigent, and patients with few assets and little income. Often, these patients have no surviving relatives.
Oh -- maybe you just don't like nurses. How about paramedics & firefighters? Do you like them?
Now, paramedics & firefighters earn every dollar. But they do make quite a few dollars, don't they? And some can retire at 55 with 90 % salary for pension.
So... work for 30 years, retire at 55, and collect a pension for 30 to 40 more years, based on your life expectancy.
Would you like me to do the math for you? What is the present value of a 30 year stream of pension payments that start at, say, 90% of 180,000 = 162,000, increasing at 2 percentage points higher than the rate of inflation, year after year? That is, if you worked in the private sector where you have to save for your own retirement, how much would you need to save so you had a financial benefit equivalent to the public sector pension?
Again, I'm not claiming this is Wolf of Wall Street territory. But, financially speaking, few would argue that it is very comfortable.
Sportandmisty although a FEW public employees make income in the top 1% income tier; the majority don't even come close. Even with your data you posted only one nurse made an income in the top 1% and thats IF you go by individual income data not household income which has a higher requirement. Furthermore, the ones that have a ton of overtime are only able to achive this because of vacancies that they are filling. For example, lets say a fire department has 200 needed positions but has 180 firefighters. 20-40 out of those 180 may be able to make a killing in overtime. But the other 140-160 won't come anywhere near the figures you posted above.
If you look at the whole data of the 291 firefighters from the list above, it will reflect exactly what I just stated.
SportyandMisty, your claim is bull and you know it. Pensions are not a percentage of your final salary, but a percentage of your final year (usually average of your highest 3 or highest 5 actually...) multiplied by your years of service. Most California public workers do not get anywhere near 90% unless they were one of the rare individuals who got 3@55 or 3@50 pensions and worked for 30 consecutive years in the public sector. Those pension plans have been eliminated except for certain public safety workers.
HOWEVER, outside of California, most of those pension calculation rates are considerably lower, and most new public workers are projected to get considerably lower pensions as a result.
Let us ONCE AGAIN reiterate:
A) You've looked only at nurses, only at a purportedly random subset of nurses in two particular localities, and once again extrapolated those data points as representative of the class of all public workers in all occupations.
B) You've doubled down on your very much non-randomly sampled representative class (nurses across the nation wouldn't come even close, you would have to look at ALL PUBLIC WORKERS).
C) Your forumulae for calculation are nonsensical and made-up.
D) Bonus: You said that someone retiring at 55 (uncommon to qualify for full pensions at 55 even in government, it is 59.5 in federal government for example) will live "30 or 40 more years", which is a purposeful exaggeration of the actuarial estimates.
E) Double Bonus: In terms of income-plus-benefits, exactly zero of the nurses in your "random" cut-and-paste from the University Medical Center at UNLV would qualify as in the top 1% in income, and every one of them (as well as the other Clark County workers) earned 5 figures or more from overtime, which indicates that hiring more nurses would be vastly more efficient than working extant nurses what appears to be as much as 70 or 80 hours per week. Only 3 from the total sample worked no overtime. It's unsurprising that one hospital with an overworked staff and drastically inflated salaries due to overtime would serve as your "random" and representative example. If you want to indicate that public workers are somehow the real 1%" then please show AVERAGES. You know, national and/or federal, state, and local. Not cutting and pasting salaries from a couple hospitals.
F) We all get it. You claim I'm drinking (what?), make irrelevant posts, abuse even the most basic understanding of how proof of a general claim (reminder: you weren't originally speaking about nurses specifically, but public sector workers broadly) might work, and try to belittle the government and its workers at all opportunities, either passively or aggressively. It's fine, your anarcho-capitalist utopia of greed will never come to be and your transparently illogical assertions will never convince anyone.
EDIT: Look at the Nevada salary scales and salary maximums: http://hr.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/hrnvg...fitsSurvey.pdf. They are not unreasonable nor out of line with average nurse salaries in the private sector (per BLS) of $70k for RNs. The only thing making it unreasonable looking in your chart is the selection of a single locality (and most a single hospital!) with outrageously high overtime averages. The ones with no overtime have total pay and benefits of 90-100k it appears, which is not much different than the private sector expectation ($70k plus an unknown quantity of benefits and health benefits).
Last edited by kwhitegocubs; 07-01-2014 at 02:10 AM..
quite the contrary, your previous response was murky and mysterious.
My previous point was self-evident: those who are part of "the 1%" are aware of that they are part of that class; they don't have to wonder about it. Thus, it follows that those who do wonder cannot be part of said class. If you are unwilling to accept that simple fact, then there's nothing I can say to help you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by escort rider
The more precise the labeling the better
Hmm, why would one seek to neatly label the income and/or net worth of others?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escort Rider
In this thread we are not focused on any individual's income, which is unknowable to us anyway. So therefore your statement about minding our own business is a non-sequitur.
One makes their private matters unknowable to someone else precisely because such matters are none of the other person's business. Thus, my point was relevant, and thank you for underscoring it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escort Rider
The phrase "the 1%" is bandied about quite a bit, so we are engaged in defining that. How is it relevant whether it is "viewed as a pejorative (note correct spelling) by the left"?
The phrase "the 1%" was introduced into the American political lexicon by leftists, as a perjorative label, for use in their class-warfare rhetoric. One has no need to define "the 1%," unless one is engaged in spreading (or debunking) that very rhetoric.
And if you're right of center, then why did my remark about the left warrant a response from you?
The top 1% to me refers to wealth and not income. It means you're making more on your investments than a professional income would pay. If you're in the top 1% for income for a short period of time, you're not likely going to be able to become wealthy unless you can extend that time and start multiplying your wealth.
And as others have pointed out, you may be making $350K annually but with the COL, there's not that much left to build wealth on.
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