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BackTrak wrote:QUOTE (BackTrak @ Aug 7 2013, 06:11 PM) ....
So, that was one guy's view of how to do social welfare.

Is it more efficient to just have a few very rich people try to do their own thing to help other people sometimes, or is it more efficient to have a large committee try to figure out a common thing to help other people?

I don't want some rich guy's so called 'charity' which he is giving solely to appease his own demons.
www.biography.com/people/andrew-carnegie-9238756/videos/andrew-carnegie-full-episode-2071932799

MrChaos wrote:QUOTE (MrChaos @ Aug 7 2013, 03:11 AM) The age old parenting trick; One kid will cut it but the other chooses first. There is a reason this is done. In my long and varied life I have seen time and again people have great difficulty when they feel that they were "Cheated" i.e. got less then everyone/someone else even to very small differences in shares. Being generous with your stuff is not the same as being ok with getting the smaller slice.

Exactly

HJ_KG wrote:QUOTE (HJ_KG @ Aug 7 2013, 08:13 PM) I don't want some rich guy's so called 'charity' which he is giving solely to appease his own demons.
www.biography.com/people/andrew-carnegie-9238756/videos/andrew-carnegie-full-episode-2071932799

Well said. I'd rather he treated his workers better than that he built a bunch of libraries that his employees never have time to visit because they have to work 80 hours a week.

HSharp wrote:QUOTE (HSharp @ Aug 7 2013, 07:56 PM) Personally I feel excessive taxation shouldn't be the answer but neither is low taxation, I actually feel that taxation on personal income isn't they key for job creation but instead there needs to be more incentive to hire employees. If you can make it cheaper for companies to hire employees but also make it easier to remove employees then it can add job motility by making it easier to get a job and provides less of a risk for the employer if they have to remove the employee.

This is a lot like the way it works in the US right now. Here, employment is at will and it's very easy to get rid of employees. I suspect it is one reason why our unemployment rate is typically lower than Europe's. The other side of it though is there are regulations and taxes that are disincentives to hiring and make it more expensive for employers to hire people.

One reason I think nationalized health care would be a HUGE economic benefit is that employers would no longer have to worry about health care benefits and regulations and that would make it enormously cheaper and less complicated to hire people.

HSharp wrote:QUOTE (HSharp @ Aug 7 2013, 07:56 PM) I also hate government pensions because they are a black hole and an ageing population means it's costing more and more money to keep it up.

Pensions are not economically sustainable unless they are well planned out and payouts are based on actual employee contributions (meaning no guaranteed sum payout in most cases). Unfortunately government pensions don't work that way, but perversely government requires private pension in the US to work that way and passed comprehensive legislation to make sure private pensions are safe. Of course most private industry has moved away from paying pensions because they're really hard to sustain economically.

In the case of government pensions, they just raise taxes to pay for them, meaning private suckers aka people like me and MrC have to pay for the generous pension benefits that government workers are promised by politicians who never have to worry about paying the bill. Consequently, I agree that government pensions should be removed entirely, in favor of something far closer to a 401k type of system with set or matching contributions from government.

TakingArms wrote:QUOTE (TakingArms @ Aug 8 2013, 01:20 AM) In the case of government pensions, they just raise taxes to pay for them, meaning private suckers aka people like me and MrC have to pay for the generous pension benefits that government workers are promised by politicians who never have to worry about paying the bill. Consequently, I agree that government pensions should be removed entirely, in favor of something far closer to a 401k type of system with set or matching contributions from government.

If you move them to a 401(k) style retirement (457 would be better for government employees), then prepare to give everyone a large pay raise if you want to retain them. As state & local government jobs in the mid to high echelons typically pay considerably less than their equivalent private sector jobs.

People work for the government for three reasons: Health benefits, pensions, better hours.


In the state of California, even the supposedly doomed CalPERS is doing quite well these days. Taxpayers pay nothing more than the employers share of the pension contribution, and since many local governments are exempt from Social Security it actually saves the taxpayers money.

Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Aug 8 2013, 03:03 PM) If you move them to a 401(k) style retirement (457 would be better for government employees), then prepare to give everyone a large pay raise if you want to retain them. As state & local government jobs in the mid to high echelons typically pay considerably less than their equivalent private sector jobs.

People work for the government for three reasons: Health benefits, pensions, better hours.

This is pretty silly, if you remove pensions it doesn't mean everyone will quit, well actually it will probably lead to mass strikes until pensions are put back in however there is always this scare of brain drain and losing employees but really a job is a job and many government jobs don't even require anything more then finishing high school, there won't be empty jobs because there will be many people willing to take them.

TakingArms wrote:QUOTE (TakingArms @ Aug 6 2013, 09:07 PM) And also we probably wouldn't have all the social welfare programs we have. etc.

Why wouldn't we have them? You have to keep the populace "happy/fed" enough so that you can maintain control.
People with nothing to lose start revolutions. The whole "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing...

I saw that stat before and i think it is about how much everyone owns. In italy for example many people own their houses, each house 400k makes the avg climb. In the U.S. most people that own their house actually own a trailor and most others live for rent. Also houses are made mostly of cheap wood and plastics (which is super stupid in hurricane regions but ...) so the houses have a lower base value.
If I understood it correct the statistic only counts direct ownage.. so if the houses are owned by the state they don't count into the statistics.. if the houses are owned by companys which are (on the avg) owned by the people living in the houses they are also not counted.

i do not think pensions and such things were designed with people collecting on them for 20-30 years after they stop working in mind

Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Aug 8 2013, 10:03 AM) If you move them to a 401(k) style retirement (457 would be better for government employees), then prepare to give everyone a large pay raise if you want to retain them. As state & local government jobs in the mid to high echelons typically pay considerably less than their equivalent private sector jobs.

I agree with HSharp. The argument that people take government jobs just for the benefits is trotted out a lot but I don't think it is all that true. Most government jobs I know DO have great benefits, but they are also pretty low stress compared to private sector jobs, and come with a ton more vacation/sick time and better hours. Maybe some positions would have to have an increase in pay, but I'm sure most government jobs would get filled even without pensions.

I do think pensions make sense in the military and for police and firefighters, where there's less space for older people, but with today's medical care people are still capable of quite a bit physically well into their 40's and 50's so a pension after just 20 years doesn't make sense. It should take at least 30 years to vest (maybe slightly less in the case of the military) and they shouldn't actually start paying until a person hits retirement age (or is physically disabled due to their job).

TakingArms wrote:QUOTE (TakingArms @ Aug 8 2013, 10:39 AM) I agree with HSharp. The argument that people take government jobs just for the benefits is trotted out a lot but I don't think it is all that true. Most government jobs I know DO have great benefits, but they are also pretty low stress compared to private sector jobs, and come with a ton more vacation/sick time and better hours. Maybe some positions would have to have an increase in pay, but I'm sure most government jobs would get filled even without pensions.

I do think pensions make sense in the military and for police and firefighters, where there's less space for older people, but with today's medical care people are still capable of quite a bit physically well into their 40's and 50's so a pension after just 20 years doesn't make sense. It should take at least 30 years to vest (maybe slightly less in the case of the military) and they shouldn't actually start paying until a person hits retirement age (or is physically disabled due to their job).

I agree, the benefits to government jobs are numerous... but pay is definitely not one of them (except for the more entry level jobs like HSharp points out - those tend to pay comparatively well plus have great benefits).

But you get beyond that and government pay quickly starts to pale in comparison to private sector. Made up, in part, by increased compensation in the health benefits department, but still less so overall.

Having a proper pension also reduces stress in a persons life, because not everyone is a risk taker, some people want the safe bet. Stress reduction leads to widespread benefits in everyone's lives up to and including a reduction in medical costs! Which directly impacts everyone's health insurance costs. Not only that but it leads to higher productivity at work. In fact, I've always been a proponent of restructuring Social Security as a proper pension fund with an investment arm so that it can generate greater returns on its investments than the paltry interest rates that .gov currently pays it. Plus it will be investing in the economy, which should help create more jobs (although may lead to inflation).

Pensions would be far easier to predict and fund if interest rates were allowed to float and be dictated by the market (as inflation would be less). I think people tend to forget that even a "low" 3% inflation means that prices double every 23.5 years, which may sound paltry, but that has a devastating effect on long term investments such as retirement.



@TakingArms - There is a reason that economics is a dismal science, there is no right or wrong or any way to actually PROVE anything. To address your earlier question, most of my economic reading came from textbooks while I was in school supplanted by reading articles written by economists. It has also been shaped by looking at the fiscal and monetary policies of various different administrations and coming to my own conclusion about them. I do not subscribe to any particular school of economics as I think it is foolhardy to pigeonhole myself into a school of thought.