GREEDY slackers are PROLONGING the recession

[Bobby-Joe]

American Enterprises Instantiates Kevin Hasset, AEI's director of economic-policy studies, adviser to John McCain in his bid for the presidency, fingers who is to blame in this prolong recession.

Your Fat Paycheck Keeps Your Neighbor Unemployed: Kevin Hassett

So here comes the leap into ice-cold water: The biggest problem with the labor market right now is that wages are too high. As Washington again turns to government spending as a cure for unemployment, some against-the-grain thinking is in order.

Economics teaches that full employment would be reached if wages adjust downward, to a level that better reflects current circumstances. At lower wages, employers would desire more workers. Labor markets generate persistent unemployment only if wages are sticky, failing to fall as demand declines.

So why aren't American Workers doing their civic duty and taking the pay cut the market demands? Because of unions, unemployment benefits and minim wage. The traditional socialists evils. But above all because most Americans are lazy slackers there just there to suck off the tit of the hard working rich.

...the natural reluctance of workers to accept lower pay is amplified by how their wage helps define their identity. A $60,000-a-year office worker might have an extra-hard time coming to terms with becoming a $40,000-a-year worker.

That's right your typical American "worker" would rather destroy the economy then help their neighbors by taking a voluntary 30% pay cut. Meanwhile senior staff at American corporations have scramble to find money for executive bonus packages while the lazy workers go blow their money on wide screen TVs with their corporate welfare checks.

America is a democracy. That means people need to merit reward. You don't get the right to steal money from someone else. You don't get the right to force your boss to lay off your coworker just so you boss can get the quarterly bonus he merits for his hard work.

[HTannor]

Re: GREEDY slackers are PROLONGING the recession

A stunning revelation, Brother Bobby-Joe.

After reading your material I immediately called my employer, a Major local publishing company, and demanded they cut my wages.

And now, the kicker! They refused to do so!

They explained that, since I am self-employed as an independent distributor of their product, they had no control over what I was paid.

So my next call was to me. I demanded that I cut my wages. I agreed and immediately wrote myself a smaller check.

Brother Bobby-Joe, I have stood up and met the challenge of whoever it was you were quoting and feel better for it.

I will now repair to my wet bar and have a drink of some cheaper, rot-gut scotch and feel better for it.

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

Re: GREEDY slackers are PROLONGING the recession

A first-hand account from the trenches of Obama's class-war:

The rhetoric in Washington about taxes is about millionaires and the super rich, but the relevant dividing line between millionaires and the middle class is pegged at family income of $250,000. (I’m not a math professor, but last time I checked $250,000 is less than $1 million.) That makes me super rich and subject to a big tax hike if the president has his way.

I’m the president’s neighbor in Chicago, but we’ve never met. I wish we could, because I would introduce him to my family and our lifestyle, one he believes is capable of financing the vast expansion of government he is planning. A quick look at our family budget, which I will happily share with the White House, will show him that like many Americans, we are just getting by despite seeming to be rich. We aren’t.

I, like the president before me, am a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and my wife, like the first lady before her, works at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she is a doctor who treats children with cancer. Our combined income exceeds the $250,000 threshold for the super rich (but not by that much), and the president plans on raising my taxes. After all, we can afford it, and the world we are now living in has that familiar Marxian tone of those who need take and those who can afford it pay. The problem is, we can’t afford it. Here is why.

The biggest expense for us is financing government. Last year, my wife and I paid nearly $100,000 in federal and state taxes, not even including sales and other taxes. This amount is so high because we can’t afford fancy accountants and lawyers to help us evade taxes and we are penalized by the tax code because we choose to be married and we both work outside the home. (If my wife and I divorced or were never married, the government would write us a check for tens of thousands of dollars. Talk about perverse incentives.)

Our next biggest expense, like most people, is our mortgage. Homes near our work in Chicago aren’t cheap and we do not have friends who were willing to help us finance the deal. We chose to invest in the University community and renovate and old property, but we did so at an inopportune time.

We pay about $15,000 in property taxes, about half of which goes to fund public education in Chicago. Since we care the education of our three children, this means we also have to pay to send them to private school. My wife has school loans of nearly $250,000 and I do too, although becoming a lawyer is significantly cheaper. We try to invest in our retirement by putting some money in the stock market, something that these days sounds like a patriotic act. Our account isn’t worth much, and is worth a lot less than it used to be.

Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby so we can both work outside the home. At the end of all this, we have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive.

If our taxes rise significantly, as they seem likely to, we can cut back on some things. The (legal) immigrant from Mexico who owns the lawn service we employ will suffer, as will the (legal) immigrant from Poland who cleans our house a few times a month. We can cancel our cell phones and some cable channels, as well as take our daughter from her art class at the community art center, but these are only a few hundred dollars per month in total. But more importantly, what is the theory under which collecting this money in taxes and deciding in Washington how to spend it is superior to our decisions? Ask the entrepreneurs we employ and the new arrivals they employ in turn whether they prefer to work for us or get a government handout.

If these cuts don’t work, we will sell our house – into an already spiraling market of declining asset values – and our cars, assuming someone will buy them. The irony here, of course, is that the government is working to save both of these industries despite the impact that increasing taxes will have.

The problem with the president’s plan is that the super rich don’t pay taxes – they hide in the Cayman Islands or use fancy investment vehicles to shelter their income. We aren’t rich enough to afford this – I use Turbo Tax. But we are rich enough to be hurt by the president’s plan. The next time the president comes home to Chicago, he has a standing invitation to come to my house (two blocks from his) and judge for himself whether the Hendersons are as rich as he thinks.

...my wife is a pediatric oncologist who paid nearly $300,000 to go to medical school, and makes about the same as a fireman....A teacher and fireman in Chicago can easily top $250,000 in income...

[Bobby-Joe]

Re: GREEDY slackers are PROLONGING the recession

...my wife is a pediatric oncologist who paid nearly $300,000 to go to medical school, and makes about the same as a fireman....A teacher and fireman in Chicago can easily top $250,000 in income...

This is like that letter from the stockbroker earlier this year: what is the point of becoming a success when some dead beat UNIONIZED fireman makes as much as you? Well? That fireman gets a sweet tax payer FINANCED pension to splash water on our barbecue when we put to much lighter fluid. Lets see MR UNION fireman work the eighteen hours days it requires to be a lawyer, CEO or stockbroker.

Todd Henderson worked HARD to make themselves who they are by pulling themselves up by their parents BOOTSTRAPS!! Their grandfathers fought in WWII and this is how their grandchildren are rewarded for their sacrifice: taxed to death by the nanny state.

Were is our country Mr Obama? WERE?

[Rev. M. Rodimer]

Re: GREEDY slackers are PROLONGING the recession

I had no idea that a teacher and a fireman could make a combined income of $250,000 in Chicago.

With pay scales like that, you'd think they could get some decent teachers!