Again, I don’t have a problem with public servants taking cuts, but the first losses have to be borne by those who caused the liabilities in the first place.
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Why?
And that is where we differ CAR…Your argument that fire and police are not overpaid is fine, and for the purposes of my point, I am happy to leave that issue alone.
I was merely pointing out, that one does not have to happen before the other. They must both happen in whatever order we can muster. It makes no sense to hold public sector union compensation over the heads of the tax payer so that they will claw back ill gotten banking industry gains. To the taxpayer all that matters is getting his listing ship of state right. The order of makes no difference.[/quote]
Why? Because the cuts won’t be as drastic if we force the financial industry to take the first loss. We can’t know what we’re really dealing with until after they’ve taken the first loss.
None of the union members I know of want Joe Sixpack to pay for the losses. Go to the rallies, and you won’t see a single sign saying, “raise property taxes,” or, “raise sales taxes.” What you will see are lots and lots of signs expressing anger and frustration with the bailouts, and how unions want Wall Street to pay for the damage they created. They all want *Wall Street (and associated parties)* to pay for it, not you.
You keep trying to make this about J6, but it has nothing to do with him/her. This is a battle between labor and capital; J6 is just being drawn into it by the capitalists/financial elite because the elite have the money/power, but they don’t have the sheer numbers that the unions do; and, ultimately, they need the numbers. That’s why they are trying to reframe this into a “unions vs. taxpayer” thing, when nothing could be further from the truth.
There is another issue behind the attempts to dismantle unions, and that’s the desire of the powerful to privatize everything and sell public assets to a handful of very wealthy folks who want to strip all revenue generating assets from the government (and all the people who benefit from govt services) and funnel it to a very small number of people. If the unions are decimated, be prepared to pay a whole lot more for all “public” services. I think a lot of people tend to underestimate all the benefits we derive from a well-financed, benevolent, fairly non-corrupt government.
Again, if this low/no tax Libertarian Utopia exists, can somebody show us an example of it? I’ve never seen any evidence that shows low/no taxes and a weak government provide for a successful economy and thriving middle class. If there’s an example of out there, please let us know. In the meantime, back in Realityville, the most successful, democratic, countries with high standards of living tend to have very socialistic (NOT communist — there is a difference) tendencies.
