Pensions killing NY

"Matt: I don't like sweets. Forget the bon-bons. How about a pension?"

Don't worry. Your pension is your "DH".

Matt, seriously... if you want to argue this, it would help you to know at least a few of the facts

NYTimes -
According to the labor bureau, 7.2 percent of private-sector workers were union members last year, down from 7.6 percent the previous year

I don't care for bon bons either.

Sigh, AR. I had to explain to a housewife that joint physical custody generally means NO child support.

"I said salary + benefits.... and you're conveniently leaving off overtime."

No I'm not. Overtime is extra pay for EXTRA WORK. If overtime is killing the budget, management's solution is simple: STOP WORKING EMPLOYEES OVERTIME.

Done.

*****

No, they're not. Union membership is declining overall in the US, and the % private just went under 50% for the first time ever, meaning private is falling even more."

Wrong. While union membership HAD been declining, the decline has halted, and in many sectors, picked back up.

"No I'm not. Overtime is extra pay for EXTRA WORK. If overtime is killing the budget, management's solution is simple: STOP WORKING EMPLOYEES OVERTIME. "

Except when its mandated by union work rules!

Seriously, do you not know anything about this stuff?

The city could decreased overtime DRAMATICALLY with basic work rule changes.

Hell, the courts found some of what the unions do ILLEGAL (as I posted above).

"Wrong. While union membership HAD been declining, the decline has halted, and in many sectors, picked back up."

nope. You can keep repeating it, but you're off here. Its down significantly. Numbers above.

"Except when its mandated by union work rules! Seriously, do you not know anything about this stuff?"

I know how unions work. I also know that there is absolutely no union contract in this country that would pass muster with the NLRB that could ever "mandate" overtime.

one more time for you, Matt... "According to the labor bureau, 7.2 percent of private-sector workers were union members last year, down from 7.6 percent the previous year"

"Its down significantly."

A .4% decline is not "down significantly". It's a statistical halt.

here is another:

Organized labor lost 10% of its members in the private sector last year, the largest decline in more than 25 years. The drop is on par with the fall in total employment but threatens to significantly limit labor's ability to influence elections and legislation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703822404575019350727544666.html

@ar I can't find more data, us labor stats site is very painful to navigate.

> A .4% decline is not "down significantly". It's a statistical halt.

Except thats actually 6%.

And, as I noted, overall, it lost 10% of private membership!

A 6-10% drop IN A YEAR and you're calling it the end of a decline. Funny.

Well, at least we know where your credibility is.

darkbird, they wouldn't want the masses to have easy access to info. that implies power. I agree with you that our governments have become massive enablers of dysfunctional systems. I just wouldn't blame that on the employees themselves. finding a good job with benefits and security hasn't been so easy.

Matt, cops and firefighters are not averaging less than 50k. Your facts are wrong all over this issue. Cops and firefighters average $65-70k in base salary, plus they get overtime.

And yes, if someone is healthy at retires in their early 40s, a lifetime COLI-adjusted pension and free health care for their whole lives is a problem.

Miners work dangerous jobs, and they shouldn't get these pensions, but Matt thinks cops should because, well just because, and the miners should just all become cops.

The fact is, if cops and firemen had defined contribution plans, with the city matching the same way it is done in private industry, and had to pay a percentage of their health care premiums, and were offered the same pay, and had 30 year retirements instead of 20, they would still do it, because it is still a good deal.

"The drop is on par with the fall in total employment."

That line says it all.

matt, do you really think there are no ridiculous work rules with unions? Eva Moskowitz had committee hearings a few years ago that highlighted all the rules in the teachers' contract, and the union was embarrassed by these crazy unproductive rules. Of course, they wouldn't agree to change anything . . .

"Eva Moskowitz had committee hearings a few years ago that highlighted all the rules in the teachers' contract, and the union was embarrassed by these crazy unproductive rules."

Share some with us.

I'd like to remind you that nothing gets written into a ratified contract that isn't mutually agreed upon by MANAGEMENT.

That is the point! Politicians are not management. They are not looking out for the customer (taxpayers) with the interests of efficiency and productivity in mind. Politicians will give things away to the union in exchange for help in getting votes.

"That is the point! Politicians are not management. They are not looking out for the customer (taxpayers) with the interests of efficiency and productivity in mind. Politicians will give things away to the union in exchange for help in getting votes."

"Politicians" are not the ones bargaining teachers' contracts. Or firemen's contracts. Or police contracts.

matt, you are confusing your past/present experience with unions in the private sector - the one's giving all the goodies away in the cupboards are the politicians who have in many ways become a proxy for the public sector unions. talk about unregulated.

What "politicians" are bargaining the contracts at the management side of the table for the teachers, cops, and firefighters?

Starting tomorrow, the chairwoman of the City Council's education committee, Eva Moskowitz, will convene a series of hearings on the contracts that govern New York City's school system. The most important of these, the teachers contract, will be taken up on Thursday. To the best of our knowledge, and the councilwoman's, this is the first undertaking of its kind in Gotham: exposing to the light of day in a deliberate manner the details of the 316-page document that binds the hands of the Department of Education and virtually every public school principal in the five boroughs. The spectacle will be of interest to every parent with a child whose education is ruled by this ream of paper.

It has been no mean task to convene these hearings. Potential witnesses, including teachers, principals, and retired principals, have been extraordinarily skittish about testifying, according to Ms. Moskowitz. They are so skittish that Ms. Moskowitz is not releasing a witness list ahead of the hearings. Some of those testifying — at least three people, according to Ms. Moskowitz, including current and retired principals — will appear via audio recording, with their voices distorted. It's enough to think that comparisons of New York's education establishment to a monopoly is too mild a metaphor.

Aside from educators testifying in a manner normally reserved for informants on the Mafia, there will also be on view the pettiness of the teachers contract. The basics, such as salaries, pensions, and health care, will be aired, as well as what the contract dictates schools can and can't ask teachers to do. Sol Stern, author of "Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice," has dubbed the UFT agreement the "we-don't-do-windows" contract. Among the things teachers can't be asked to do under the contract: walk children to a school bus, patrol the lunchrooms or the hallways or the yards, cover extra classes in an emergency, come in more than one day before classes begin at the start of the year, attend more than one staff meeting a month, and attend a staff meeting during lunch.

Ms. Moskowitz pointed to some other problems with the contract in a conversation with The New York Sun yesterday. "One of the problems that jumps out at me is there's a one-size-fits-all model," she said, especially as regards hiring and firing processes. "With compensation, if you have conformity, you're going to have a hard time getting science teachers.… There's a market out there," she said. Similarly, there's the problem of principal discretion. "Fifty percent of openings are subject to the UFT [seniority] transfer program," she said. "I can't imagine having an employee I haven't even had a chance to interview." Furthermore, when a failing school shuts down and a new one is opened in its place, 50% of the teaching positions at the new school must be filled by the most senior teachers from the school that was shut down — hardly a recipe for a turnaround.

All of this hardly scratches the surface of the problems in the teachers contract. Ms. Moskowitz knows she can only expose a condensed version on Thursday. To that end, she has published "Council Notes," fashioned after Cliffs Notes, of the teacher's contract in an 18-page booklet. Other topics covered include the inability of principals to discipline and fire incompetent teachers, restrictions on principals assigning teachers where they are needed, and the disincentives to principals honestly evaluating teachers.

Matt, who do you think negotiates the contracts?

okay, the credibility meter just went tilt.

matt has never met a fact that he couldn't distort or simply ignore when it suits him. that's why the only conversation possible with matt relies on pointing and laughing.

"Among the things teachers can't be asked to do under the contract: walk children to a school bus, patrol the lunchrooms or the hallways or the yards, cover extra classes in an emergency, come in more than one day before classes begin at the start of the year, attend more than one staff meeting a month, and attend a staff meeting during lunch."

Taken out of context, it's easy for the layperson to misunderstand the intent and use of such contract clauses. Sadly, those clauses were put into the contract largely to stop management abuses; they were not simply dreamed up out of nowhere.

Years ago, there WAS a problem with principals overscheduling teachers to do ADDITIONAL duties that interfered with their classroom prep time during the day (like patrolling hallways, lunchrooms, etc.). Also, before that clause was put into the contract, principals used to use such tasks as punishment for teachers they didn't like; quite a few teachers were consistently singled out and forced to perform double-duty, or else face disciplinary action. There were principals and school administrators who would schedule "staff meetings" EVERY SINGLE DAY during lunch. Many teachers were finding it impossible to patrol hallways, attend needless staff meetings, and make it to their own classes on time. Thank God the union stepped in and reigned in these management abuse tactics.

*****

"Furthermore, when a failing school shuts down and a new one is opened in its place, 50% of the teaching positions at the new school must be filled by the most senior teachers from the school that was shut down — hardly a recipe for a turnaround."

What many taxpayers fail to consider is the real reason behind "failing" schools. Most of these "failing" schools are in low-income neighborhoods, where children come from poor, single-parent households that do not value education in the first place. There is only so much that even the best teacher can do during school hours to motivate a student to learn. If the parents at home aren't there for the pass-off, the student is destined to fail. This is not the teachers' fault.

*****

"Other topics covered include the inability of principals to discipline and fire incompetent teachers, restrictions on principals assigning teachers where they are needed, and the disincentives to principals honestly evaluating teachers."

Again, specifics please? Most of the school principals I know and have interviewed over the years have told me that all that's required to discipline and fire incompetent teachers is creating a valid paper trail -- something they admit many of their colleagues -- who are incompetent MANAGERS -- fail to do.

"Matt, who do you think negotiates the contracts?"

ADMINISTRATORS, not politicians.

Are you friggin' serious, Matt? Administrators who are appointed by ... POLITICIANS. And who can be fired by ... POLITICIANS.

"Administrators who are appointed by ... POLITICIANS. And who can be fired by ... POLITICIANS."

Wow. You really don't understand how most government jobs operate.

Most of these administrators are HIRED into these positions, not "appointed".

Hired, appointed, whatever. You wanna say "hired", fine. Same deal. The top administrators are but apparatchiks. Hired by whom? Who hires Klein? Who hires the head of the LIRR? MTA? Who hires the chief police commissioner? Who hires the gov't negotiators?

Yes, and who is responsible for passing statutes that protect pensions and benefits and statutes that regulate strikes by the public service?

matt, you should really stop now. if you seriously think that for public sector employees, their contracts are not ratified by "elected" officials then there is not point in responding to your posts on this thread.

Waa, waa, I have to be in a staff meeting during lunch. I can't remember the last time I didn't work through lunch.

If a Principal is such a bad manager, the results will show and he or she will be gone. That is how it works in the private sector.

If the reason a school is failing is that the neighborhood is low-income (blame the environment, not the person is typical liberal nonsense), explain how charter schools without union restrictions, in the same neighborhood or even the SAME BUILDING as a UFT schools dramatically outperform them.

Matt, face it, the unions are killing NY.

LICcomm: "I can't remember the last time I didn't work through lunch." Sucker!!!!!! Maybe if you had some mettle, or managed your time better, you'd be able to spend "lunch" having lunch. You might even recharge your mental batteries, such as they are, and become a productive member of society.

LICcomm: "explain how charter schools without union restrictions, in the same neighborhood or even the SAME BUILDING as a UFT schools dramatically outperform them." ... in fact, a substantial number of charter schools fail. The children are the victims of that cruel experiment.

I prefer to work through lunch alan. To get more work done. Some people care about their work, unlike you who cares about gaming the system.

Nice lie about charter schools. How about just sticking to facts?

lunch is when lic engages in deep circumspection.

and, as he doesn't have lunch, nothing deep is happening, circumspect or no.

LICcomm circumnavigates lunch so he can give a full 17% all afternoon.

http://gothamschools.org/2010/04/16/chancellor-orders-troubled-brooklyn-charter-school-to-close/

12.5% of all charter schools nationwide wind up closing permanently. Epic fail.

The whole charter debate is bullshit. They cherrypick the students and get rid of rthe ones that won't follow the rules. Obviously they're going to have better scores. Its just a way to break the unions. Most of teachers I know are incredibly hard working and are not paid enough IMO.

No, not just pensions - it's saliva: When Passengers Spit, Bus Drivers Take Months Off.
Fifty-one New York City bus drivers who took paid leave after a spitting incident had, on average, 64 days off. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/nyregion/25spit.html?hp

that's just ridiculous. If you need more than a couple of days off to recover from that then you should find a new job.

One thing that I never understood though was why MTA buses do not take exact change. Shit, when I was in Ireland the bus driver would give you change and a receipt.

Good -- the TWU's given the City a strong incentive to stop assaults on its bus drivers, and the City can implement whatever program it thinks is best to bring the number of those incidents down as close to zero as possible. So far they've put informative stickers inside the buses.

Sorry, the MTA, not the City.

More often than not, people eligible for a pension don't collect it for very long. They die. That is one reason why the gov't does not mind being generous with pensions vs. salaries.

Eva Moskowitz? She earns close to 400K as an "educator" and her kids do not attend her charters. Total narcissist.

marquez- charter schools do not cherry pick the students. That is a mistruth. Applications are open to everyone and students are selected by lottery.

Of course alan thinks it is fine to take two months off, paid for by taxpayers, because of spit. Hell, why not a paid year off?? The drivers are unions, so they deserve it! Pathetic.

Here is what we learned for anyone who ever thinks of hiring alan- he cares more about not working than working, he wants long lunches, and he deserves months off at a time.

The lottery is self selecting somewhat bc the least engaged parents and students are not going to be entered. More importantlu hough they get rid of the kids who can't follow the rules or do well before the testing grades.

Actually bloomsday, Ithink that eva's daughters do attend one of her schools. I'm not a fan of hers but at least she's not hypocritical on that aspect.

LICcomm, are you calling me George W. Bush?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?pagewanted=print

A building on 118th Street is one reason that the parents who are Perkins’s constituents know that charters can work. On one side there’s the Harlem Success Academy, a kindergarten-through-fourth-grade charter with 508 students. On the other side, there’s a regular public school, P.S. 149, with 438 pre-K to 8th-grade students. They are separated only by a fire door in the middle; they share a gym and cafeteria. School reformers would argue that the difference between the two demonstrates what happens when you remove three ingredients from public education — the union, big-system bureaucracy and low expectations for disadvantaged children.

On the charter side, the children are quiet, dressed in uniforms, hard at work — and typically performing at or above grade level. Their progress in a variety of areas is tracked every six weeks, and teachers are held accountable for it. They are paid about 5 to 10 percent more than union teachers with their levels of experience. The teachers work longer than those represented by the union: school starts at 7:45 a.m., ends at 4:30 to 5:30 and begins in August. The teachers have three periods for lesson preparation, and they must be available by cellphone (supplied by the school) for parent consultations, as must the principal. They are reimbursed for taking a car service home if they stay late into the evening to work with students. There are special instruction sessions on Saturday mornings. The assumption that every child will succeed is so ingrained that (in a flourish borrowed from the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a national charter network) each classroom is labeled with the college name of its teacher and the year these children are expected to graduate (as in “Yale 2026” for one kindergarten class I recently visited). The charter side of the building spends $18,378 per student per year. This includes actual cash outlays for everything from salaries to the car service, plus what the city says (and the charter disputes) are the value of services that the city contributes to the charter for utilities, building maintenance and even “debt service” for its share of the building.

On the other side of the fire door, I encounter about a hundred children at 9:00 a.m. watching a video in an auditorium, having begun their school day at about 8:30. Others wander the halls. Instead of the matching pension contributions paid to the charter teachers that cost the school $193 per student on the public-school side, the union contract provides a pension plan that is now costing the city $2,605 per year per pupil. All fringe benefits, including pensions and health insurance, cost $1,341 per student on the charter side, but $5,316 on this side. For the public-school teachers to attend a group meeting after hours with the principal (as happens at least once a week on the charter side) would cost $41.98 extra per hour for each attendee, and attendance would still be voluntary. Teachers are not obligated to receive phone calls from students or parents at home. Although the city’s records on spending per student generally and in any particular school are difficult to pin down because of all of the accounting intricacies, the best estimate is that it costs at least $19,358 per year to educate each student on the public side of the building, or $980 more than on the charter side.

But while the public side spends more, it produces less. P.S. 149 is rated by the city as doing comparatively well in terms of student achievement and has improved since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over the city’s schools in 2002 and appointed Joel Klein as chancellor. Nonetheless, its students are performing significantly behind the charter kids on the other side of the wall. To take one representative example, 51 percent of the third-grade students in the public school last year were reading at grade level, 49 percent were reading below grade level and none were reading above. In the charter, 72 percent were at grade level, 5 percent were reading below level and 23 percent were reading above level. In math, the charter third graders tied for top performing school in the state, surpassing such high-end public school districts as Scarsdale.

And from a previous post- who said we can pay more taxes because we dont pay as much as other western countries- that is NOT true. In NY I pay 45% of my income to the federal, state and local govts and if i bought a house in Westchester or LI in a nice neighborhood I would pay an extra $25k+ in property taxes.

In Canada, even in Quebec, the highest taxed province the taxes are LESS.

http://www.ey.com/CA/en/Services/Tax/Tax-Calculators-2010-Personal-Tax

And you get universal health benefits, govt paid maternity leave for a year, private schools and universities that cost a few thousand a year vs. $30k+ here...

So we're taxed like a socialist country but get services like a capitalist country.

You have no objective rule of law and a marxist running the regime. Obama has come to divide. Obama and the left need to first bankrupt the country before they can fundamentally transform America into a socialist state.

5thGenNYer, the main ingredient that was removed in that scenario is the children of parents less together, less concerned, less involved, or just plain bad (you decide) who don't apply for charter lotteries.

I think we can agree that those are the same ones who didn't read to their kids every evening from the time they stopped spitting up, and all in all don't foster education in their children. Those kids all wind up in the gened school, zero in the charter. Cherry-picking?

As for the costs, that's sustainable only if they keep replacing the teachers with other inexperienced 22-year-olds, or find great teachers who will stay on for a whole career at the total compensation level of a 22-year-old, with no concern for his post-career future.

finallyjoy: and we don't get Terence and Philip either. :(

How is this one from the MTA union?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/load_of_bull_spit_K82GyAVAsN8qitzDlOMueO

we are paying our civil servants the most - i know teachers who make over $150k/year and schools where the average teacher salary is $100k/year; and we are among the worst in terms of international rankings. And even salary aside (which it was noted the charter teachers have a slightly higher salary) there's no reason why the unions (especially PUBLIC employee unions) have cadillac benefits - why is the teachers benefits at the charter school

All fringe benefits, including pensions and health insurance, cost $1,341 per student on the charter side, but $5,316 on this side.

http://teachersunionexposed.com/international.cfm

http://resource.educationcanada.com/salaries.html/

How is the charter school doing the cherry picking if it is the parents who are the ones not applying? Twisted liberal logic.

5thGen- you pay an effective rate of 45%?? Really?? I can see total marginal rates being that high, but actually paying that as an effective rate? Hard to believe.

5th gen
The max salary for. Nyc public teacher wout overtime is 100k. Not sure were those 150k ppl work
Licc - fine then. Its self selecting and the schools weed out the rest. Either way the charterts benefit.

LICC- I definitely notice its about 45% when i get my bonus. Its a bit less with my base salary, but then i have to pay medical on top as well.

here's the retort to that ridiculous Brill NY times article:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/charter-schools/about-the-brill-story-on-chart.html

"...But Brill has it wrong. The student bodies aren’t the same. Here’s a breakdown, according to the NYC Public School Parents blog.

At P.S. 149, 20 percent of the kids are special education students; and 40% of these are the most severely disabled, in self-contained classes. Eighty-one percent are poor enough to receive free lunch, and 13% are English Language Learners. In 2008 (the latest available data) more than 10% were homeless.

At the Harlem Success Academy, 49% of the students are poor--a difference of 32 percentage points. Only 2% of the students are English Language Learners (compared to 13% at P.S. 149 --more than six times as many). The school says it has16.9% special education students, (compared to 20% at P.S. 149) and of these, few if any are the most severely disabled. The charter school had three homeless students in the 2008-09 school year, less than 1 percent of its population (compared to P.S.149’s 10 percent).

It is worth noting that education historian Diane Ravitch reported in her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System that only about 100 of the 40,000 homeless schoolchildren in New York City public schools are enrolled in charter schools.

Charter school advocates don’t have to make bogus comparisons to boost their argument in favor of an expansion of these institutions.

The truth may not be as compelling, but it has the virtue of being, well, true. Some charter schools are excellent and work wonders with kids. Some do an average job, and some are awful. There is no evidence that charter schools are the silver bullet that will “save” public education.

Traditional public schools have to educate every student who is eligible to enroll. They can't counsel students out, as many charters do, or select who they want. This is not an excuse for bad schools. But it is part of the reason that the job of the traditional public school system, which still educates about 95 percent of all schoolkids, is far more complicated than many reformers today would have you believe. "

mmarquez- in LI, and Westchester- take a look at Scarsdale, Great Neck, Jericho, Hewlett-Woodmere,Briarcliffe, Bronxville, etc :

http://myshortpencil.com/newyorkteachersalaries.htm

I real could careless what Westchester and Long Island schools pay their teachers. Clearly the towns think it is worth it. Otherwise they could just get replacements at much lower prices which would still be much higher than surrounding areas.

mmarquez110: presenting factual data . . . Twisted liberal logic.

of course LICC feels that way. Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

i'll say it again. to think that our economic problems are due to overpaid civil servants and union workers is just completely and utterly absurd. wake up, people! try turning off fox 5 news once in a while...

> "The drop is on par with the fall in total employment."
> That line says it all.

Yes, that I was right.

Thanks.

(especially since you can't fire union folks as easily, of course). And the % unionization went down 6%!

"I'd like to remind you that nothing gets written into a ratified contract that isn't mutually agreed upon by MANAGEMENT"

Yes, they're called the politicians bought by the unions. You still haven't figured this out yet, have you?

"What "politicians" are bargaining the contracts at the management side of the table for the teachers, cops, and firefighters?"

Try Sheldon Silver, for one.

seriously, Matt, you should read up on this stuff.

"Taken out of context, it's easy for the layperson to misunderstand the intent and use of such contract clauses"

OK, now we're just going off the deep end. "layperson"?
Because you need a PHD to understand what teachers do and what walking kids to a schoolbus is?
Because this is some magical set of activities that noone would understand without training?

Seriously, wow, you are grasping at straws.

"There is only so much that even the best teacher can do during school hours to motivate a student to learn. If the parents at home aren't there for the pass-off, the student is destined to fail. This is not the teachers' fault."

If this is the case, and the teacher's can't effect change, then lets hire minimum wage workers to teach them, right?

The premise is REDICULOUS. Good teachers can teach kids even if the parents do crap. I know many that do.

If all the blame goes to the parents, then there by that logic there is no reason to send quality teachers to good schools.

Not very union of you.

> > > Administrators who are appointed by ... POLITICIANS. And who can be fired by ... POLITICIANS."

> > Wow. You really don't understand how most government jobs operate.
> > Most of these administrators are HIRED into these positions, not "appointed".

> report abuse Hired, appointed, whatever. You wanna say "hired", fine. Same deal. The top administrators are but
> apparatchiks. Hired by whom? Who hires Klein? Who hires the head of the LIRR? MTA? Who hires the chief police commissioner?
> Who hires the gov't negotiators?

Matt, now you're just getting dumb. THey are controlled by the politicians. If you don't get this, you don't belong in the discussion.

"If the reason a school is failing is that the neighborhood is low-income (blame the environment, not the person is typical liberal nonsense), explain how charter schools without union restrictions, in the same neighborhood or even the SAME BUILDING as a UFT schools dramatically outperform them."

Bingo.

Any surprise the UFT is trying to shut down these charters? BECAUSE IT PROVES THEM WRONG!

The tax burden, costs and inefficiency of government, and government work disincentive programs, are major causes of today's economic problems. try turning off MSNBC once in a while . . .

Silly me. I thought it was causd by the financial crisis and unsustainable defense spending. What exactly do you mean by work disincentive programs?

LICcomm means the mortgage/banking crisis and unsustainable crony-capitalism unnecessary-war spending. Plus "inefficiency of government", meaning the rich aren't paying anywhere near their fair share, while the working class is overtaxed to support them.

You need to learn to speak LICcomm-ese

> I thought it was causd by the financial crisis and unsustainable defense spending

If you think defense is what drives US spending, yes, silly you. Entitlements, including pensions, are several times more, and growing faster.

Its this lack of understanding that allows wasted spending to continue.

54% of Federal outlays are attributable to military spending.

and worth every damned cent, you communist. after all if we don't spend it surely someone else will, and then our military spending wouldn't be more than the entire REST OF THE WORLD'S COMBINED. no?

Oh, go on, you namby-pamby effete-snob petit-bourgeois liberal. We need to catch up with Saudi Arabia to reach highest military spending vs. GDP.

Duck and cover.

AH, quit trying to flatter. i see through your words of praise.

> 54% of Federal outlays are attributable to military spending

Only if you remove entitlements from "outlays".... not very honest.

Health and Humnan Services and Social Services EACH spend more than the entire Department of Defense.

or, to look at it another way, social security is bigger than defense. Medicaid is bigger than defense. Safety-net programs are only 25% less than defense (and retirement programs are more than 25%) And they're all growing faster.

Defense 'aint what's blowin' the budget.

Why is it "honest" to lump distinct insurance programs in with discretionary government spending choices?

Military spending is up more than tenfold compared with about ten years ago ... that's not "busting the budget"?

okeh, "blowin'"

> Why is it "honest" to lump distinct insurance programs in with discretionary government spending choices?

Its not honest to call it all "insurance".

And its certainly honest to include it in items we spend money on when counting money we are spending.
If we run out of money because its all going to that, then ignoring it makes no sense.

Why is it "honest" to lump distinct insurance programs in with discretionary government spending choices?

because those 'distinct insurance programs' are nowhere near funded on a free standing basis going forward. you can't really not understand that, can you? i mean, you realize that even if we were to eliminate defense spending entirely, we'll still be in a deficit in the future w/o changes to the system?

btw, isn't defense spending really insurance?

In the same way gasoline applied to the walls of a house is.

You still have to pay for the gas, though...

You can just tent Long Island City and condense the vapor instead of buying gasoline.

The primary reason these great benefits came about was that during good economic times, the public sector unions effectively negotiated substantial salary/benefit increases. When the economy tanked, the private sector reacted by eliminating jobs and reducing wages. The public sector made no such adjustment because they had contractual agreements backed by the taxing ability of the state or federal government. How many people in the private sector have lifelong contracts? Very few.

Look, it makes no sense for a Yonkers policeman to be able to retire at 40, collect a $110,000/year pension for the next 35 years, and likely not even have a college degree. If that was the deal, you would have had lines down the block to take that job 20 years ago. Yes, he deserves a pension but he also needs to work like the rest of us until he is at least near 60. If he has any abilities whatsoever, he should be able to find another job to supplement his pension from this point forward. This stuff has to stop or our country will collapse like General Motors.

I guess many of you missed last Sunday's 60 Minutes (that bastion of conservatism) segment on charter schools. It showed a boarding charter school in DC that has made incredible gains with some of the poorest children in the area. A true lottery selection. Love the rich liberal New Yorkers who would relegate these kids to schools that have been proven to be ineffective despite surging budgets.

can i get a hellyeah! or an amen! or umhuh! or a truedat!

ah, your turn.

"A true lottery selection" would not require application ... it would be a random lottery of all school-aged children in the city. The application-submission process is a major part of the selection process, whittling the sample group down enormously.

rf, sidecar's on me.

i can't believe some of these comments are being made on a NYC real estate blog. maybe if it was the bible belt, i would understand. this country is doomed... and karma's a b*tch.

sure, but i think you broke that promise to me already but i hold no grudges. i do think your explanation above is weak though. think you are going to lose the battle on this one but always fun to have a go at it.

glamma, simple economics here. just do the math, nothing personal. wheres financeguy when you need him?

Glamma: if your grandpop wasn't a pension recipient, would you still have the same opinion?

I have a relative who is a benefit of a similar kind of setup - paid far less in and will be getting more out (though the pension is taxable).

The problem is that the public & politicians have delayed the full accounting of these plans for way too long. Now we have to cut, and someone's gonna suffer. Either you have new hires completely denied these benefits or started on PT/probationary status forever (this has happened elsewhere) or you re-open pensions. Regardless, no-one's going to love the outcome.