If I were in charge....
...I’d order corporate travel programs to boycott all airlines that didn’t pass along to the buyer the funds from the recently expired federal tax on airplane tickets. Except for Alaska and Spirit, to my knowledge, all airlines have chosen to raise fares by an amount equal to the expired tax, reasoning the consumer already is used to paying the higher amount so why not pocket the tax portion no longer being collected for the government. The tax averaged about $20 for a $200 ticket. It’s all very legal, but not really ethical.
I’d maintain the boycott until the airlines dropped the greedy pricing practice. The only way to force airlines to behave is to hit them where it hurts. If it’s too much trouble to boycott all the airlines, then single one out. Within days it will lower prices, no doubt followed by the rest of the fly-boys.
...I’d require all states to pass laws requiring Internet retailers with nexus (offices, warehouses, or other tangible assets) within their borders to collect sales taxes. When the Internet began, it was appropriate to give Web retailers a break. But Internet retailing is quite vibrant these days; the price advantage most cyberspace merchants receive is unfair to brick and mortar companies.
Moreover, those sales tax dollars are desperately needed by state and local governments. They’d also help offset the loss of revenue (from sales and property taxes) when retailers, such as Borders Group, go out of business.
I would exclude Internet start-ups from tax collection liability either for their first five years of operation or until their sales exceed $50 million a year.
...I would require all newscasts and newspapers to show past positions (by date) of politicians featured in stories as a way of exposing hypocrisy or at least changed thinking. It’s truly ludicrous that for the most part only Jon Stewart on The Daily Show goes back to the archives to reveal outright reversals of previously hallowed statements. People (and by that I mean, reporters and editors), let’s get some accountability here, not just for politicians but also for your actions.
...I would disallow government pensions or other retirement benefits for any politician or public servant who resigns because of a sex or ethics scandal (or a felony conviction of any kind), regardless of how many “clean” years he or she served.
...I’d require all politicians to pass an economics class that includes some simple lessons. First, while businesses often resort to cost-cutting measures for short-term profit enhancement, long-term growth can occur only if revenues are raised.
Second, businesses will seek any way they can to increase profits and reduce taxes, even if it means not acting in the national interest, e.g., sending jobs overseas rather than employing more Americans.
Third, cost-cutting can be effective if it does not harm the product, such as by substituting inferior raw materials, or by delivering less value to the consumer.
Fourth, government is analogous to business in that budgets may be balanced by cutting programs, but the value passed onto the public may suffer in the form of fewer police and firemen, lower social security payments, fewer parks, more children per classroom, etc.
Fifth, given the aging of the baby boomer generation and their increased use of Medicare and social security, more revenue generation is required, generally in the form of more tax collections.
Sixth, businesses and individuals often live beyond their current means. They borrow against the future. Individuals do that when they buy a home through a mortgage or make credit card purchases; businesses do that by issuing bonds. There’s nothing sinister or bad in those practices. For anyone in our government to believe it is now a smart move to stifle the future is a repudiation of capitalism as practiced today in the United States.
Showing posts with label pensions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pensions. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Look for My Union Label
Let’s get my bias out in the open at the very beginning—30 years as a manager, yet I still identify with my two years as a union member back at the New Haven Register in 1975-76.
Perhaps that’s one reason I sympathize with public service employees in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere who are threatened with the loss of collective bargaining rights by newly emboldened Republican governors and state houses. Don’t focus on the demand to require civil servants to pay more for health care coverage and to contribute more toward their pensions. That’s an appropriate take back. Budget deficits are real and deep, with benefit liabilities a major factor. Belt tightening should be across the board and include government workers.
But the right to collective bargaining is a mainstay of union activity. Any action to strip that collective bargaining right is a first step in doing away with unions, both in the public and private sectors. For sure, not every union is pristine. Likewise, not every management team or politician is abusive or regressive. But history has shown time and again that unions have led to greater employee benefits for all (for non union workers and managers, as well), and that without union protection individual workers are vulnerable even if they are first-rate workers. A teacher I know in California, for example, received exemplary ratings from both her principal and independent test scores last year, but for some unknown reason this academic year has lost the confidence of this same administrator to the point that without a union to protect her she might well have lost her job or she would have had to resort to a costly, personal civil law suit.
The bogeyman du jour, probably des annes, is the labor union. Strip away public and private sector unions, the theory seems to go, and our economic woes will be on the road to solvency, our government deficits made less deep and our exceptionalism restored. If we eliminate unions, maybe we’ll be able to reduce, or even do away with, the minimum wage and worker benefits, especially that darned social security that we keep hearing is going to be bankrupt by the time baby boomers all retire. Who needs it anyway, since the economy is in such bad shape no one will be able to retire except the very rich, and since when do they need government help? If we could only do away with all those government entitlements and regulations perhaps then we’d be able to compete on the global labor market, compete with countries like Bangladesh, China, India, even Mexico. Without those costly wage levels and benefit programs plus OSHA and EPA rules to follow, we’d easily resolve our illegal immigration crisis. No self-respecting Latino would want to jump border fences or wade across the Rio Grande to enter a country that doesn’t provide any better earnings prospects and worker conditions than their native land. Without inflated union workers costs, no more manufacturing plants would be shut down in the United States, their jobs shipped overseas to lower labor markets. We’d go back to the way it was mid-last century, when all we did was close down northern plants and move the jobs to cheap-labor southern states. But at least we’d be keeping those “good” jobs in the good ol’ US of A, thus bringing more power to states that are the true core of our country’s creed, states that still believe the Civil War was a conflict based on states’ rights, not the exploitation of labor and human rights better known as slavery.
See, it all begins with getting rid of those damned unions. And the place to start is with public sector unions because we all know government workers, especially teachers, are slaggards, what with their two months off in the summer and all those winter and spring school breaks. Those damn teachers work just 180 days a year, while most others have a 261-day work year, before vacation and holidays. Those teachers have it cushy, considering we keep hearing education test scores keep dropping. They keep complaining parents aren’t helping out with good follow-up at home, but that’s merely a cover-up for no accountability. And, did you ever see state workers working hard at the motor vehicle department? And why is it my street never gets snowplowed until late afternoon? And building inspectors, why can’t they ever show up on time? Don’t they know they’re delaying my project, and when they do show up they are capricious, with no consistency from inspector to inspector? But that’s the type of service you get when jobs are guaranteed and you’re afraid to criticize because someone might go “postal” on you.
Those people in the badger state sure know which way the wind’s blowing. Let me tell you, that Gov. Walker, he’s a rising national star. He’s a man of principle. He’ll make those trains run on time in Wisconsin, or else.
The tragedy of it all is that too many workers—even some private sector union members, according to a NY Times article today— don’t realize they benefit directly and indirectly from the working conditions unions collectively attain for their members. They see an imbalance in civil servant contributions to health care and retirement benefits and selfishly turn their backs on their working class brethren. Ever since Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan convinced working class voters to vote with their hearts and not their minds, or pocketbooks, the American worker has had his and her earnings power reduced. It might be patriotic to support U.S. war efforts, but it is downright unpatriotic to vote into office legislators who sanction corporate rip-offs, be they unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, tax dodging schemes and plant closures that have transformed our economy from a manufacturing to a service-centric base. We no longer produce goods. All we do is create services to service the wealthiest segment of our population without taxing them appropriately.
Don’t worry about the rich. They have a union to protect them. It’s called the Republican Party, Tea Party members included.
Perhaps that’s one reason I sympathize with public service employees in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere who are threatened with the loss of collective bargaining rights by newly emboldened Republican governors and state houses. Don’t focus on the demand to require civil servants to pay more for health care coverage and to contribute more toward their pensions. That’s an appropriate take back. Budget deficits are real and deep, with benefit liabilities a major factor. Belt tightening should be across the board and include government workers.
But the right to collective bargaining is a mainstay of union activity. Any action to strip that collective bargaining right is a first step in doing away with unions, both in the public and private sectors. For sure, not every union is pristine. Likewise, not every management team or politician is abusive or regressive. But history has shown time and again that unions have led to greater employee benefits for all (for non union workers and managers, as well), and that without union protection individual workers are vulnerable even if they are first-rate workers. A teacher I know in California, for example, received exemplary ratings from both her principal and independent test scores last year, but for some unknown reason this academic year has lost the confidence of this same administrator to the point that without a union to protect her she might well have lost her job or she would have had to resort to a costly, personal civil law suit.
The bogeyman du jour, probably des annes, is the labor union. Strip away public and private sector unions, the theory seems to go, and our economic woes will be on the road to solvency, our government deficits made less deep and our exceptionalism restored. If we eliminate unions, maybe we’ll be able to reduce, or even do away with, the minimum wage and worker benefits, especially that darned social security that we keep hearing is going to be bankrupt by the time baby boomers all retire. Who needs it anyway, since the economy is in such bad shape no one will be able to retire except the very rich, and since when do they need government help? If we could only do away with all those government entitlements and regulations perhaps then we’d be able to compete on the global labor market, compete with countries like Bangladesh, China, India, even Mexico. Without those costly wage levels and benefit programs plus OSHA and EPA rules to follow, we’d easily resolve our illegal immigration crisis. No self-respecting Latino would want to jump border fences or wade across the Rio Grande to enter a country that doesn’t provide any better earnings prospects and worker conditions than their native land. Without inflated union workers costs, no more manufacturing plants would be shut down in the United States, their jobs shipped overseas to lower labor markets. We’d go back to the way it was mid-last century, when all we did was close down northern plants and move the jobs to cheap-labor southern states. But at least we’d be keeping those “good” jobs in the good ol’ US of A, thus bringing more power to states that are the true core of our country’s creed, states that still believe the Civil War was a conflict based on states’ rights, not the exploitation of labor and human rights better known as slavery.
See, it all begins with getting rid of those damned unions. And the place to start is with public sector unions because we all know government workers, especially teachers, are slaggards, what with their two months off in the summer and all those winter and spring school breaks. Those damn teachers work just 180 days a year, while most others have a 261-day work year, before vacation and holidays. Those teachers have it cushy, considering we keep hearing education test scores keep dropping. They keep complaining parents aren’t helping out with good follow-up at home, but that’s merely a cover-up for no accountability. And, did you ever see state workers working hard at the motor vehicle department? And why is it my street never gets snowplowed until late afternoon? And building inspectors, why can’t they ever show up on time? Don’t they know they’re delaying my project, and when they do show up they are capricious, with no consistency from inspector to inspector? But that’s the type of service you get when jobs are guaranteed and you’re afraid to criticize because someone might go “postal” on you.
Those people in the badger state sure know which way the wind’s blowing. Let me tell you, that Gov. Walker, he’s a rising national star. He’s a man of principle. He’ll make those trains run on time in Wisconsin, or else.
The tragedy of it all is that too many workers—even some private sector union members, according to a NY Times article today— don’t realize they benefit directly and indirectly from the working conditions unions collectively attain for their members. They see an imbalance in civil servant contributions to health care and retirement benefits and selfishly turn their backs on their working class brethren. Ever since Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan convinced working class voters to vote with their hearts and not their minds, or pocketbooks, the American worker has had his and her earnings power reduced. It might be patriotic to support U.S. war efforts, but it is downright unpatriotic to vote into office legislators who sanction corporate rip-offs, be they unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, tax dodging schemes and plant closures that have transformed our economy from a manufacturing to a service-centric base. We no longer produce goods. All we do is create services to service the wealthiest segment of our population without taxing them appropriately.
Don’t worry about the rich. They have a union to protect them. It’s called the Republican Party, Tea Party members included.
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