[livinincali]

[quote=CA renter]
From the Tax Foundation (hardly a hotbed of liberal politics), you’ll see that the govt share of per-capita income was around 11.8% in 1977, and it’s 11.24% in 2010. That’s the total going to CA and local municipalities AND what’s going to other states (we also subsidize those in the “red” states who fight against paying their share of the tax burden). If you look just at the local/state burden, it was ~9.08% in 1977, and 9.0% in 2010. So, considering the fact that we have expanded services, as I’ve mentioned above, the government is actually working more efficiently than they were in 1977.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/californias-state-and-local-tax-burden-1977-2010%5B/quote%5D

Good government should work more effectively than it did 30+ years ago. The problem remains that taxes come from GDP. Based on your linked article taxes as a percentage of income are relatively high. You argue that we’ve expanded services compared to then so we should raise taxes. I argue that we should reduce service to those that we can afford. It’s also pretty obvious that over time government budgets have deferred mainteance and other costs in order to expand the percentage dedicated to salaries and benefits for employees. Just look at the San Diego unified school district where salaries and benefits over the past 10 years have expanded faster than revenues.

My major point is public sector workers have maxed out the expansion of wages and benefits without harder political choices. They already take 90+% of most public sector budgets. They’ve already increased taxes to the high end of the historical average. They’ve already made the most painful public layoffs. They are really out of options to continue to expand wages and benefits at a rate greater than the economic growth.

Is it that you can’t see that fact or you chose not to believe it. You really think the current crop of college kids that have been screwed by the bankers and screwed by debt are going to think they have a moral obligation to pay those public sector pensions? That’s the question that matters isn’t it.

[livinincali]

[quote=CA renter]
I’m not talking about GDP growth. I’m talking about population growth. THAT is what adds more to our social/legal/physical infrastructure burden. And many of these new residents are not contributing as much to the tax base, per capita, as the residents who were already here before 1970. From 1970 to 2010, California’s population grew by almost 87%, and this is only what is officially accounted for. There are probably many “undocumented” immigrants who are not counted in those numbers.
[/quote]

The tax base (i.e. revenue available to distribute to Public Sector Employees) is directly related to population growth and productivity growth. More people working and people working more productivily expand the economy. Unfortunately with the way the public sector operates you don’t get to include the growth from population as you must expand the employee count to match the population growth.

The public sector revenue source is directly related to GDP as it is a tax on overall GDP. Therefore in order for public sector employees to grow their wage and benefit package in excess of the private sector GDP growth they must do one of four things.

1) Increase the amount they take from the private sector. Add taxes or increase taxes.
2) Allocate more of their budget to salaries and benefits and stop allocating money for known other costs like maintenance.
3) Defer compensation and promise future returns.
4) Improve efficiency. Provide more services with fewer workers.

For a long time they’ve relied on options 1-3 and public sector employees have enjoyed a period of expanded standards or living though those means. Now they are relying on option 4 and hoping that courts will force option 1 but it’s most likely that when push comes to shove it will be easier to leave public sector retirees high and dry. They are the minority in this mathematical equation.

[livinincali]

[quote=no_such_reality]
BG, per CAPITA, adjusted for inflation, MORE is collected now.

The problem you highlight is that spending has grown even FASTER than inflation and population growth.

No economies of scale, no efficiencies, it’s gotten more EXPENSIVE faster than inflation and population growth.

For every person in the state we had previously, if we collected $10 in property tax, today, after factoring inflation, we collect $11 per person in the state.[/quote]

This is exactly the problem. Salaries and benefits of public sector employees have grown faster than the economy as a whole. For awhile they’ve been able to hide that growth by allocating an increasing portion of the budget to salaries and benefits and then use bonds and other measures to pay for other costs such as maintenance. Of course now that we’ve run out of easy options to keep public sector salaries and benefits growing faster than the economy we’re seeing an attempt at productivity improvements. I.e. cut the low level employees, privatize services so the expansion of benefits and salaries can continue for top tier of employees.

At some point he public sector will be reset and the standard of living for your average public sector employee will be reduced, but it certainly won’t come without a fight. There’s going to be some winners and a lot of losers, but the math dictates the exponential growth in public sector salaries and benefits is pretty much at it’s end. In the future public sector salaries and benefits will have to grow slower than the economy or significant productivity improvements will have to be made.

[livinincali]

There’s a significant number of pensions that will not be paid in full because the math just doesn’t work out. Current promises will be broken one way or another, the biggest question is how. I suppose if I’m in line to receive one of these pensions I defend it as best as I can, but if you see the writing on the wall maybe it’s time to figure out what acceptable losses you’re willing to take now.

The way it’s headed right now is there’s a day coming where the pensioner’s checks are going to bounce. At that point it will be too late to do anything. We’ll run through the various court systems but massive tax increases on the majority will fail. Even if the pensioners successfully argue most of the cities budget should go to pensioners rather than current employees providing services the citizens paying those taxes aren’t going to stay in a city where they get no services for those taxes.

If your a public sector employee would you rather know now that your pension isn’t going to get paid in full. Would you rather start planing for a retirement that isn’t going to include 60-70% of your highest salary for life or do you want to be surprised one day in the not too distant future. I honestly don’t see the scenario where you end up being the winners at the expense of everyone else. Our leaders committed fraud in that they made promises that were impossible to fulfill.

[livinincali]

[quote=spdrun]Simple solution: limit working hours to 35 per week + 4 weeks mandatory vacation + holidays for most W-2 employees. Combine that with national health insurance for all, so that employers would have to provide very minimal benefits — cost of hiring goes down.

You’d have (a) more people hired, since the possible work done by a single worker will decline and (b) people having more time to spend with families and kids.
[/quote]

Sounds like France. How is the their economy doing right now? Unfortunately the socialist managed economy idea looks good on paper but performs poorly when implemented in the real world. When the competitive nature of people is allowed to function it seems to bring about the most innovation and growth. Unfortunately it also leaves a bunch of people behind. I don’t have a fair equitable solution. The economists that seem to think they have a solution don’t seem to understand the complexity that leads to unexpected and unintended results. maybe we’d be better off just letting the economy ebb and flow naturally rather than trying to meddle in something we clearly don’t really understand.

[livinincali]

[quote=KIBU]
How about starting with accepting that we do have a serious problem with guns in this country. From there, nothing ever could stop Americans in finding a solution for anything. If we don’t accept that there is a problem, don’t kid around with solution.[/quote]

I think the better line of questioning would be we have a serious problem with violence in this country. Guns are just a tool to carry out that violence. Can you confidently say that without the guns the violence would go away. I’d be somewhat hard pressed to believe that.

The two primary areas where violence comes from is the war on drugs and mental unstable people taking various drugs that can have adverse effects. Most serious disputes over drugs are settled by murder because you can’t use the courts to settle those disputes. Many mentally unstable people see improvement from various psychotropic drugs yet a small minority don’t. The warning labels on those drugs do describe adverse effects such as violent behavior.

If we got rid of the war on drugs and spent that money on treating mentally unstable people we’d probably have a far greater effect on violence than any proposed gun regulations.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
Never is probably an exaggeration, but if the assertion was that gun owners should be required to have insurance covering every possible kind of damage done by a gun, then I suspect it would be pretty cost prohibitive. Standard homeowner policies and umbrella policies cover accidental gun discharge. I don’t know whether they require prior disclosure or listing, I’m guessing not, at least for liability purposes. I know there is also concealed carry coverage available, though it excludes criminal acts.[/quote]

Statistically speaking there just aren’t a whole lot of cases where a law abiding citizen accidentally discharges a weapon and it causes injury. It happens but it’s relatively rare in the world of gun violence.

One’s of my points was mandatory gun liability insurance isn’t about compensating victims it’s about trying to attach an annual cost of ownership to firearms. A gun ownership tax isn’t going to pass but if you disguise it as insurance maybe it will.

In the recent mass shootings I don’t see how any of the proposed regulations would have prevented or limited the damage. I just see in effort to collect and track more data on American citizens in the guise of safety. Maybe you like the idea of big brother, most people seem to think it’s ok until you end up with the wrong dictator.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
If your car is stolen, no coverage (and probably no liability). If the gun is used by the insured in the commission of a crime, no coverage.[/quote]

So basically gun liability insurance never pays. These 2 stipulations pretty much exclude every instance in which somebody would make a claim. Better hurry up and mandate it be required, because clearly that would be effective.

[livinincali]

[quote=bearishgurl]FSD, that was my thought, too. Really, how much could the 30 fixed MIR rate have changed from 21 or even 30 days ago? And I agree that if it is even up a fraction of a point, that is not enough to kill the deal unless it really isn’t a “deal” to begin with.
[/quote]

Quite a bit. Rates have gone up about 50 basis points in the past month. On a $500K loan the difference between 3.5 and 4.0 is 2245 to 2387. If you qualified at a maximum payment of $2250 then you’d be forced to look at houses that are priced around $470K rather than $500K to make that payment at the higher rates.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
I’m not sure what kind of liability insurance would pay those claims, unless there is a concurrent change to current liability laws. But is your argument really that we shouldn’t require insurance because there would be insurance fraud?[/quote]

What would be the requirements to get paid in a gun liability case. Does the weapon need to be recovered. Does the weapon need to have gun liability insurance on it. How many murders per year are committed by nice law abiding citizens that register their guns and pay gun liability insurance. What problems does mandatory insurance solve vs the ones it creates.

Let’s take the Sandyhook case and apply what gun liability insurance would do. Presume Lanza’s mother is paying her liability insurance. Does the liability insurance pay for the victims of of Sandyhook. The weapons were stolen. Lanza killed his mother at which point it’s somewhat hard for her to be liable anymore. I would think the insurance company would fight pretty hard against paying off the claims and that’s a pretty clean example where you’ve recovered the weapons and know exactly what took place.

[livinincali]

[quote=ocrenter]
#1. Mandated gun liability insurance.
[/quote]

If you put a little thought into this idea it might be the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. Just think though some of these thought experiments.

1) Does a single crackhead mother of a gangbanger son who’s been convicted of multiple crimes get a check for $2 million when her son gets killed?

2) Does a husband or wife get a reward of $2 million when they successfully get away with having their spouse killed.

3) Do you get a check for $100K when you accidentally get shot in the foot by your hunting buddy. Are you sure it was an accident, what if it was on purpose?

It would be good for for the insurance business. It’s probably also good for your real purpose in proposing the idea. In essence you want to charge enough for people to own a weapon so they’ll give up the ownership of that weapon. If I charge $2000 per year to drive a car I bet I fix a lot of the traffic problems.

[livinincali]

There is only one way to completely end all gun violence and that would be to establish a police state and subject everyone to random search and seizure. The Department of Homeland security would be able to show up at your house at any given time, secure you in hand cuffs, and thoroughly search your home. You and your neighbors would be encouraged to report each other for suspicious behavior to the government which would like trigger another annoying search and seizure.

Most people don’t really want to live under an arrangement where you’re subject to search and seizure whenever some government official decides it’s the right time, but without going down that road you’ll never be able to effectively stop all gun related violence. The arms race already happened and you can’t put the genie back in the box by limiting future purchases. It might make you feel good that you did “something”, but it’s impossible to prove that you did anything to prevent future incidents of gun related violence.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
Yeah, except that order for 1.6 billion rounds? There’s no evidence it actually ever existed. Lots of talk about it. Same number keeps going round and round. Changes a bit. One article actually doubled it. 1.6 billion on top of 1.6 billion used over the last year. But dig some. See if you can actually find a specific citation. If there are citations, they all seem to lead back to Alex Jones. What the DHS actually said is that they’ve contracted to purchase up to 750 million rounds. Not this week’s order. Or this month’s order. Or even this year’s order. It’s over 5 years. And the actual obligation to purchase? Zero. It’s tin foil hat material.[/quote]

750 million rounds over a 5 year period is still rather large for an agency that admittedly uses about 15 million rounds in a given year for training purposes. For a government that’s been caught trying cover up all kinds of leaks and trying to distract attention through talking points I don’t have a whole lot of faith in just trust us.

Spending money this way is beyond absurd well into perverse. According to the AP story a DHS spokesperson justifies this acquisition to “help the government get a low price for a big purchase.” Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center: “The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises.”

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]The shortage of ammo is pretty easy to explain. People who are afraid the government wants to take guns is driving some people to buy ammo. The myth that ammo is being purchased by the government at any significantly higher rates than in the past has been debunked so many times, I shouldn’t have to address it. Because you might have read it on infowars.com doesn’t make it so.[/quote]

There’s articles from reputable sources that suggest the DHS did have contracts out to bulk buy more ammunition than they would ever need. Forbes published this http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/

Recently the house passed a bill to delay the DHS’s purchase. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/05/house-votes-to-curb-dhs-stockpiles-ammo/
There certainly arguments to be made that the DHS purchase wasn’t ordinary but the reasons why are just speculation. Did they do it to limit supply for private citizens. Did they do it to push up prices. Is it something more nefarious, who knows, get your tin foil hat out.

[livinincali]

[quote=HLS]
Obviously not available today, but what if CD rates were 6%+ and the interest stream paid the full payment on an amortized mortgage ?[/quote]

Banks aren’t in the business of losing money. How would a condition where 30 year fixed mortgages are 3.5% and CD rates are 6% ever exist? Banks would be losing money like crazy if that condition ever came to pass.

Individually someone might be able to borrow at 3.5% and invest to earn a return at 7% but that can’t be the case at the macro level because the math doesn’t work. Almost everybody thinks that somehow they can win at this game of borrow low and earn a spread on the return. Of course plenty of people end up rich doing that and plenty of people end up in bankruptcy doing that.

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