The best part of that is that all four unions that did back Walker have been standing with the other unions and saying that this is a bunch of bullshit.

I'd like to know where my publicly funded electricity and internet are. I get bills every month for both. I pay taxes for the highway and rail system, and when I buy a computer, part of price for that computer is to recover the taxes the railroad or trucking company paid.

When an individual's total tax bill, federal, state, and local is 40% or more of their income, it's time to say enough and start taking back. Or maybe I should just quit my job and let the government give me stuff.

I know you're probably just kidding, but you suggest here that those in the highest income bracket should simply become destitute as a solution to earning too much money from a tax perspective.

Personally, I'd be more than happy to pay the highest income bracket in Ontario, which is closer to 46 or 47% when you combine federal and provincial income tax. It would mean earning more than 3.5 times my current salary. I'll take it. I'll take it instead of "free stuff" from the government.

I guarantee that your effective tax rate is not 40%. In fact, only the top 1% even get anywhere close to 40%. And the situation in Wisconsin wasn't created by a linear tax cut, but a very targeted one, which means that people are still paying the same. Which makes your point both false and irrelevant.

I looked up last years taxes. 12.2% federal income tax, 5.4% state income tax, 3.7% local property tax plus 15.3% for Social Security and Medicare gets me to 36.6%. Add in sales tax, gas tax, taxes buried in the costs of goods and services, and I'm within spitting range of 40%. I'm nowhere near the top 1% income group either. Time for the government to stop taking so much.

I read a number of articles that put Wisconsin's budget deficit in the $2 billion range last year. I attribute more of the curent problem to that than I do any tax cut.

Oh btw, the unions all came and said they would compromise and give the Governor everything else he asked for, as long as they retained their collective bargaining rights for the future.

They were refused.

Biggest protests yet as pro-Walker side, larger union crowd meet peacefully - JSOnline

Sounds as if the budget isn't the issue here to me.

I am not going to go into your specific situation as that would be rather pointless, especially since there would be all sorts of useless debates, such as taxable versus actual income and so on, and this is the internet.

But the tax foundation, hardly a pro tax think tank, estimates the total effective tax rate, by quintile, to be:
12.97% 23.21% 28.25% 31.32% 34.55%

So the richest 20% have on average a total tax rate, combining local, federal and state taxes of 34.55%. So again the 40% in taxes that individuals are supposedly paying is bullshit. And those figures are for 2004, and taxes are actually lower now.

In fact, as a percentage of GDP, total tax receipts at all levels of government were 24.8% in 2009, the lowest they've been since 1959.


Of course, as I said this whole thing is actually irrelevant, as the tax cut that put Wisconsin in the red again was a targeted tax cut and not a linear tax cut that affected everyone.

Ps: Sources:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/pdf/hist.pdf

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/wp1.pdf

Democrats need to learn how to do this. They need to start with a far left position and then come back a little.

Many Democrats are corporatists, they have no interest with a bargaining position starting on the far left. Democrat is not a synonym for liberal.

I keep forgetting that you guys don't really have social democrats, let alone a social democratic party.

Tangential factoid:

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina: 50th, North Carolina: 49th Georgia, 48th Texas: 47th, and Virginia: 44th.

Wisconsin is ranked #2 in the nation

...

I like this guy:

That has as much to do with the quality of education as the high school in my hometown where the teachers do have collective bargaining and which lost its college certification a few years ago.

It's been proven time and time again that just throwing money at schools does not guarantee a quality education.

All collective bargaining is good for is extorting more money from the long suffering taxpayer.

do you know what collective bargaining is?

Collective bargaining is a valuable tool. It allows many workers' salaries to be negotiated all at once, freeing up HR from endless meetings each year. I don't have a problem with it.

My problem is when the workers can strike when the negotiated wage is deemed unacceptable. We don't have to debate that part of it, as we won't change each other's minds. I just wanted to point out to Dogzilla that it isn't an "all bad" mechanism.

Yes I do. The union and management try to negotiate salary and benefits, with the union trying to extort more by threat of strike. All to frequently, government negotiators with no backbone cave in, rationalizing that it's only taxpayer money and there's more where that came from.

I suppose that anyone wanting to make a living wage with taxpayer money is the ultimate evil in your eyes

why shouldn't workers be able to strike?
it's the only weapon that equalizes the relation to capital.
it's fundamental to union organization, even in it's reactionary sector-monopoly american form.
give up the right to strike and you give up the game.

You do know that collective bargaining isn't restricted to government employees, right?

As for "trying to extort more" from the government, that applies to pretty much every facet of government spending, though I wouldn't call it extortion. As such, it includes all sorts of spending republicans do approve of, such as farm subsidies, business subsidies, military and police force wages and benefits, and the privatization, expropriation or licensing of any publicly owned resource for private businesses.

Finally, people who are really about "small government" should be consistent and demand that the same union busting rules they've been using be applied to businesses as well. But we know that won't be the case.

This is important. Just as management has the right to hire, fire, promote, demote, give shifts, take shifts away, give raises, cut pay, etc., unions should have the right to universally suspend the use of their labour. The threat of such an action often (but not always) remains their only recourse in the event of unfair or unreasonable management decisions. And this is where collective bargaining comes in, especially when there is a third-party arbitration.

Call this extortion if you will, dogzilla, but whatever it's called is to respond to management decisions that would otherwise amount to exploitation.

There is another alternative.

If the individual worker thinks he is being mistreated, there is nothing in this country preventing him from looking for other work or being self-employed.

I've done this myself, where I used jobs in my early career as stepping stones to get where I wanted. When I saw that my opportunities at the company weren't what I wanted, I went elsewhere.

This worked well for me. Not once in 36 years of employment have I felt I needed any union.

It's difficult to have to leave the state or public education to find another job as a teacher or other form of educator. And as far as I know you can't be self-employed and work as a teacher for the state of Wisconsin.

Good for you. I haven't needed unions either, but that's beside the point. This isn't about us.

It's as though you are arguing against the need for unions in the first place, which is a bit silly. Should I argue that the Declaration of Independence wasn't needed in the first place and that the American Revolution was a waste of lives and money? You guys should have become a constitutional monarchy like us. Rather bloodless.

Different situations, different outcomes.

If companies had the unconditional right to hire replacement workers, then a strike might be fair. As it is, hiring replacement workers results in intimidation and harassment of the replacement workers far too many times.

The equivalent to a worker's right to strike is the lock out.

Also, employers already have the right to hire replacement workers. As for these instances of "intimidation and harassment," not only are they already covered by the law, but they are also far less common than management violations of workers' contracted rights.

This is what troubles me most about public employee unions. Many taxpayers who cannot afford health care and pensions for themselves are forced to use what little money they have to provide those benefits for others. Also, I thought most public employees were somewhat protected by civil service rules and laws. This seems to be quite a bit different than private sector union employees striking against stock holders.

I guess I have a problem with forcing anyone who cannot afford health care and pensions for themselves to pay for others in the public sector including our politicians.

"This isn't just about public employees. What even a majority of the protesters don't know is that Walker's law would also place all of the state's Medicaid funding in the hands of the governor. State senator Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton -- one of the Dem law-makers who fled the state to block a vote on the bill -- told local media that this amounted to "substantial Medicaid changes" that put "the governor, all of a sudden... in charge of Medicaid, which is SeniorCare, which is BadgerCare ...and he has never once said what he intends to do” with those programs. But the provision led journalist Suzie Madrak to conclude that "the end game for all this is to defund state Medicaid programs and make it impossible to serve as part of the new health care safety net."

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews..._in_wisconsin/

I have computer troubles. I'm not sure if that link posted correctly.

Madison Protests Hit Largest Numbers On Saturday


this is about as venal as it gets, folks.
all this conservative horseshit about "fairness" and the other buzzwords that legitimate union-busting are simply figleafs.

the koch brothers want to get paid.

This is a red herring. If anything, it is a justification for progressive taxes. If you believe that the state should provide free education, then you are going to have to hire teachers, which means that the teachers will make more money than some folks in the state. Unless, of course, you make the teachers the worst paid occupation in the state (and we are not talking about any fat cats here, as the starting salary for WI teachers is just above 25k a year).

I agree with much of what you wrote but I still think there is something wrong with forcing people who cannot afford health care and other benefits to provide them for others who make more. Many of us pay thousands in state and local taxes for the free education you mention.
Wisconsin Teacher Salaries in Context | POWIP

The average teacher salary in Wisconsin is actually $46,390, not $78k. Starting salary is $25,222.

will,

I think the operative words are "with benefits" which can't be discounted.

The issue is not just about the cost of benefits that WI public employees receive...and which they have agreed to concessions.

The governor wants an end to collective bargaining. This is political, not economic.

Does the average household income figure also factor in benefits?

I'm having a problem finding out the exact number for teacher compensation for the whole state but below is apparently the numbers for Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee teachers union agreed to health benefit concessions in their contract last year that will save taxpayers up to $50 million.

Teachers' union ratifies new contract - JSOnline

This is not about benefits, it is about ending collective bargaining and breaking the public sector unions.

$100k is like $50k in the 90's, $30k in the 80s, $15k in the 70s, $7k in the 60s,... It's just like home prices have gone up along with other prices because the value of the dollar has sunk.

Blame inflation, greed, gov. debt, and the fed....

That's not very fair if you include benefits in one group and not in the other...

I wish I was in an union to collectively bargain to get the summers off at my job, not to force teachers to work year round (even though they probably do).

I don't see what the average compensation for the most expensive city in Wisconsin is supposed to indicate, by itself. Without comparing to what similar qualified people make in that area, that number is meaningless and yet another red herring that might incite but is irrelevant.

Median income in Milwaukee is over 60k (trying to use the 2000 census data without adjusting for inflation is nothing short of dishonest). This in a city where only about 30% have college degrees. And if the average salary there is 56k for teachers, the median salary is likely much less. So the teacher in Milwaukee is still making less than the average college graduate there in terms of salary. In terms of compensation I don't know.

In any case, this is a digression. As already stated the teachers have already accepted the cuts. The whole thing is about a lot more than that. This whole attempt to paint the teachers as some sort of maharajahs living at the expense of the poor working class folk is an attempt to incite the base, without much substance behind it.

I think many would argue that breaking the public sector union in Wisconsin is mostly about benefits since I believe the bill in question now allows for collective bargaining for wages.

Not quite.

It impacts areas of collective bargaining other than wages, including eliminating dues check offs, requiring annual union certification, repealing bargaining rights for certain employees completely...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says his budget-repair bill would leave collective bargaining “fully intact”

http://static.politifact.com.s3.amaz...antsonfire.gif

This is worth noting again:
Governor calls the above a "red herring" and refuses to even consider any negotiation.

IMO, this is an attempt by Republicans to lessen the political influence of unions and it is not limited to WI. Its ok for those elected officials to be beholding to the Koch brothers, just not unions.