RE: It Will Only Get Worse

[BK]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Mesyn191,
Where will the cash come from in order for State/local/counties to keep funding their work forces? I think our fundamental disagreement is you believe in Keynesian economics - and I don't.
I have a little background in Accounting and a key concept for companies is Working Capital - or CASH Management or where will the Money come to pay Bills in the next 12 months?

Cities/Towns/Counties have the mis-fortune of not being able to print money to fund operations - they can't tax the Rich because the rich will flee. This leaves towns/cities/counties with the one-trick pony property taxes. Voters are going to be very angry if their Property taxes keep going up and their Property values are falling.
Alternatively - this leaves raising the Sales tax or creating local VAT taxes - all have their problem unless they are passed nation wide at the same time.

So, Where will the Money come from to fund the higher-and-higher labor costs for state/local/county - the only effective source will be Cash from the Federal Government - thanks to the power of the printing press.

[mesyn191]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

I think done properly that Keynisian economics can work yes. I don't think the people running the show now for the last 2 decades at least have been doing proper Keynisian economics and that has baked a lot problems into the proverbial cake. Some pain is unavoidable, but we could be doing things a hell of a lot better.

Cities/towns/counties cannot print the cash, the federal government can though, at least up to an extent. Though if you note the post above yours where I replied to someone else I think it is apparent that government is misspending huge amounts of money and that money could be redirected to improve the economy without cuts or tax hikes which many are still vehemently opposed to. The federal government can establish nationwide tax laws that would effect the rich everywhere they went. I guess what I'm getting at is the way the system is currently set up solutions have to come from top and then on down to the states for the most part. To look at the states in isolation is to artificially limit your view.

Of course then you have to ask yourself why the government isn't helping the states out or helping them out enough rather? They've made a few token gestures but its chump change when considered over all. I think they're being left out to dry since the government can't prop up the banks and run 2 wars and all that while helping out the states too. FIRE at its worst basically.

[dropthatcash]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

I've read that the entire budget for public civilian employees is something like $2-300 billion a year. The deficit is something like $14 trillion IIRC. You keep hatin' on those public sector unions who may possibly be wasting some of that $300 billion or so, which is large BTW but piss ant in the grand scheme of things, while FIRE blows trillions of our cash. Also you're going to have to demonstrate a link between "BIG POWERFUL UNIONS", which don't even exist anymore, and FIRE because for some reason FIRE keeps busting what little unions we have left while outsourcing jobs and slashing wages and benefits.

Better check your figures, American school administration and teachers alone earn over 300 billion a year. As for your comparing debt to yearly public sector pay, that's akin to claiming a car only costs what the yearly finance cost was rather than the total amount paid (interest, principal and down payment). Here's a more accurate (buy not perfect in nuance) comparison; all school employees salary (379 billion a year) times their 30 employment equals $11,370,000,000 or almost as much as the total federal debt. Add in the other local state and federal employees and you'll find the source of the debt and deficit problems.

Here's an interesting stat; the librarians in Detroit 'earn' 69 thousand dollars a year plus 38 thousand in benefits (107k a year). The same person doing the same kind of work in the private sector, i.e. someone working at Barnes and Noble earns 18K and 5 K in benefit (23k a year). Guess which employee gives you better service?

[seanm123]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

I would take issue with your analogy. Barnes and Noble vs libraries? Cuom already that is sad, simply sad since a library lends books vs selling them, and the staffing levels are quite different don't you think? I have an old high school friend who is a librarian in an inner city, a city declining just like Detroit and is about to lose her job. Her husband is a teacher in a small city where the majority of the children are born to parents that are Central American immigrants where English is not their first language. These middle class folks are scraping by. Neither city has a Barnes and Noble to fall back on once the library is closed, Detroit apparently has two Barnes and Noble stores, I doubt they are the in the top 10% store sales in that declining chain. The population is already dumbed down since I was in school and removing teachers and librarians will only raise a generation of imbeciles. The big box book store was a glorious thing while it lasted. To people in many parts of America, they were a kind of Aladdin's cave, and if Barnes and Noble survives this downturn it will only exist in the big cities and the rest of the country will be big pockets of third world like illiteracy without libraries.

[BK]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Libraries demonstrates how our system evolved. A disclaimer: I love libraries - my child is a regular user of libraries. In general most libraries are under utilized for reading books - reading books takes effort and many are happier to use the library to get Movies, play video games, or search the web (Not that you can't learn a lot from sites like itulip - I suspect data would show lots of dating sites and other entertainment sites).

Libraries were originally created by Donations of Wealthy individuals and they were considered library companies or independent non-profits. Over time our Political system took over the libraries and made them required Public utilities. Over time the Librarian positions were Unionized and wages/benefits went up.

If you look at a Library today - they have not improved there efficiency in any way. My local Community as a County Public Library where there are often more library employees than there are patrons. The Library is great and serves a fraction of the local communities population very well. My informal survey tells me that the library is used heavily by educated families who value education.

Libraries survive because society is never able to look at real data and ask does a library system built in the 1880s really make sense today. If you say anything bad about Libraries you risk being labeled anti-education or what about the children.

Just like libraries our Fire Departments were once independent businesses. Fire Departments still carry their name "Fire Company" from the days when they were for profit entities without Unionized employees. While people were busy trying to survive and pay their bills Government as grown and grown and grown.

I don't have any answers, but I know we are in for a lot of pain if we have to continue to run Libraries and other public services as they were designed in 1800s because thats the right way.

Perhaps it would be cheaper to give really poor children BN gift cards or access to Kindles (or alternative) with paid for free down loads. I suspect this could be done a lot cheaper than running an 1800 library system for ever and ever. The future isn't going to look like 1880 I hope.

[Sutter Cane]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Here's an interesting stat; the librarians in Detroit 'earn' 69 thousand dollars a year plus 38 thousand in benefits (107k a year). The same person doing the same kind of work in the private sector, i.e. someone working at Barnes and Noble earns 18K and 5 K in benefit (23k a year). Guess which employee gives you better service?

Spoken like someone who has never done any serious legal, historical, scientific, or technical research. "The same person doing the same kind of work in the private sector, i.e. someone working at Barnes and Noble"?! Sure, a librarian at a suburban branch lending out romance novels to soccer moms might be comparable to a Barnes and Noble employee, but that's hardly the profession as a whole.

Next time you are involved in some serious litigation, make sure to seek out a firm that pays their law librarian minimum wage. I'm sure they'll pass the savings on to you, and you'll get what you pay for.

There was just a thread that talked about the perils of not being able to keep track of records properly:

Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records – "including case files relating to preliminary investigations" – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term "Orwellian," devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or "Matters Under Inquiry" – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission's internal website. "After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation," the site advised staffers, "you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI."

Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.

The widespread destruction of records was brought to the attention of Congress in July, when an SEC attorney named Darcy Flynn decided to blow the whistle. According to Flynn, who was responsible for helping to manage the commission's records, the SEC has been destroying records of preliminary investigations since at least 1993. After he alerted NARA to the problem, Flynn reports, senior staff at the SEC scrambled to hide the commission's improprieties.

Most archivists at NARA have graduate degrees in information/library science, whatever they are calling it now, they have to take classes in records management and such. Those classes often have an ethics component.

But hey, no need for any high-falutin' education for these jobs. Let's just hire some minimum wage slaves to handle this task, instead. That'll work out well.

[dcarrigg]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Perhaps you can explain that New Jersey needs to pay School Crossing Guards $30-$50 - per hour to cross children across the street.

Outrageous claims require overwhelming evidence. I want proof - or it's a bold-faced lie.

$50/hr for a crossing guard doesn't jive with my sense of reality. Maybe if it was overtime on christmas and the crossing guard was a cop I'd believe it.

Salary.com puts the median at the 40hr equivalent of $13.12/hr for crossing guards in the Newark area of NJ. That sounds about right and there's a link to back it up.

We hear enough lies on news. We don't need them here. I, for one, won't stand for it.

P.S. I did some searching. The only thing close to a supporting article that I found for your assertion was a Jersey City Independent article in which the author misread a per-diem rate in a union contract and stated it as hourly (meaning it was the difference between $48/day and $48/hour). This appears to be the 'snopes' answer as to why the $50/hr crossing guard myth in NJ exists.

[Sutter Cane]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Libraries were originally created by Donations of Wealthy individuals and they were considered library companies or independent non-profits.

And they remain non-profit. Egads! So-shul-ism!

Over time our Political system took over the libraries and made them required Public utilities.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Over time the Librarian positions were Unionized and wages/benefits went up.

You say that like it's a bad thing, too. Yeah, why didn't those librarians resign themselves to ever-dwindling wages and benefits like the rest of America? How dare they!

The Library is great and serves a fraction of the local communities population very well. My informal survey tells me that the library is used heavily by educated families who value education.

Libraries survive because society is never able to look at real data and ask does a library system built in the 1880s really make sense today. If you say anything bad about Libraries you risk being labeled anti-education or what about the children.

In my neighborhood, the library seems to be used primarily by the homeless to get out of the weather. It is neither suitable or effective as a homeless shelter, and that seems to drive away educated families who value education, but addressing homelessness would require dealing with societal problems that are beyond the scope of the library. Easier to dump them on the library and hope no librarians get stabbed. Society should probably ask if this really makes sense today, as well.

Just like libraries our Fire Departments were once independent businesses. Fire Departments still carry their name "Fire Company" from the days when they were for profit entities without Unionized employees.

And there were so many problems with that system that we evolved to our current system of publicly funded fire departments. Who wants to return to those days? Only extreme libertarians, and only in theory, not when their own house is actually on fire.

I don't have any answers, but I know we are in for a lot of pain if we have to continue to run Libraries and other public services as they were designed in 1800s because thats the right way.

Perhaps it would be cheaper to give really poor children BN gift cards or access to Kindles (or alternative) with paid for free down loads. I suspect this could be done a lot cheaper than running an 1800 library system for ever and ever. The future isn't going to look like 1880 I hope.

Lots of libraries do lend out ebooks right now. I would say that as e-reader costs creep down as did the cost of pocket calculators, libraries will see a significant decline. However, right now a large portion of the population either can't afford the technology (too poor), or can't use it (too old and/or not tech-savvy enough). Also, for extremely small children e-readers will probably never be an option, since most parents won't want their ipad to get the same treatment as children's books. I would hope we would agree that providing books to children to encourage their literacy is something that, while not profitable in the short term, is socially beneficial in the long term.

At any rate, I am wary of primarily storing knowledge electronically rather than on paper. A paper book, if properly cared for, can last hundreds of years. Electronic files are a crapshoot even if stored with the utmost care, and may not be readable a year from now given changes in technology. They might also be more easily changed in a 1984, Winston Smith-style manner, without leaving any evidence of these changes.

I also think the media we have access to is already too heavily in corporate hands. Trading libraries for gift cards to a corporate book shop seems like it would only make this problem worse.

[mesyn191]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Better check your figures, American school administration and teachers alone earn over 300 billion a year. As for your comparing debt to yearly public sector pay, that's akin to claiming a car only costs what the yearly finance cost was rather than the total amount paid (interest, principal and down payment). Here's a more accurate (buy not perfect in nuance) comparison; all school employees salary (379 billion a year) times their 30 employment equals $11,370,000,000 or almost as much as the total federal debt. Add in the other local state and federal employees and you'll find the source of the debt and deficit problems.

Yea this is some pretty facetious "math" you're doing here to inflate the numbers and make things look worse. Typical.

Here's an interesting stat; the librarians in Detroit 'earn' 69 thousand dollars a year plus 38 thousand in benefits (107k a year). The same person doing the same kind of work in the private sector, i.e. someone working at Barnes and Noble earns 18K and 5 K in benefit (23k a year). Guess which employee gives you better service?

Depends on the level and amount of work expected of each. I doubt its the same. Even if it was it just goes to show you badly corporations are treating workers and the wages/benefits required to maintain a decent standard of living. Yet you'd want to punish those who are doing OK and drag everyone down poverty levels of wages right? How the hell would that make the country a better place?

None of you people who're saying cut public employee wages have addressed the fact that this is actually net negative for the local and state economies who engage in such regressive policies. You cut wages in a recession you're going to make things worse, for both the gov and businesses, there is no getting around this. Austerity does not work, its just going to cause another series of social calamities like we last saw during the Great Depression. You want mass rioting? You want ex soldiers and civilians shot in the streets or even worse, forced into state sponsored slave labor via the private prison system? Because that is where we're headed.

[Chomsky]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

We hear enough lies on news. We don't need them here. I, for one, won't stand for it.

+10000000000

Thanks, as always, for your reality-based take on things, dcarrigg.

[jpatter666]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Lots of libraries do lend out ebooks right now. I would say that as e-reader costs creep down as did the cost of pocket calculators, libraries will see a significant decline. However, right now a large portion of the population either can't afford the technology (too poor), or can't use it (too old and/or not tech-savvy enough). Also, for extremely small children e-readers will probably never be an option, since most parents won't want their ipad to get the same treatment as children's books. I would hope we would agree that providing books to children to encourage their literacy is something that, while not profitable in the short term, is socially beneficial in the long term.

At any rate, I am wary of primarily storing knowledge electronically rather than on paper. A paper book, if properly cared for, can last hundreds of years. Electronic files are a crapshoot even if stored with the utmost care, and may not be readable a year from now given changes in technology. They might also be more easily changed in a 1984, Winston Smith-style manner, without leaving any evidence of these changes.

I also think the media we have access to is already too heavily in corporate hands. Trading libraries for gift cards to a corporate book shop seems like it would only make this problem worse.

Interesting points and ones I've been mulling for some time. Let me throw out some observations.

1 ) E-Readers are relatively cheap -- they're aren't practical in the Third World yet, but getting there fast. Newer low-end models will display advertizing which will help drive down the price.
2 ) My latest Kindle can hold 3000 books -- for many people, that's an entire lifetime of books
3 ) Most books with expired copyright are freely downloadable from Amazon or other sites I have a huge selection on my Kindle of classic books that I always meant to read but did not. Because these copies are mine and I can read them slowly without having to return them to the library, I'm actually getting through them.
4 ) Because I'm not lugging big heavy books around, I find myself reading more. Most e-reader owners are reporting the same.
5 ) The flexibility and immediate speed of downloadable books has led me to read many books I otherwise would not have
6 ) Ease of publishing an e-book has opened the doors to many aspiring writers to be able to get their stories/novels to the public. The publishing industry may be about to go through the same consolidation as the music (and currently film)
7 ) For technical books, imagine being able to "update" your e-book with the latest changes. For students imagine the benefits (and weight savings!)
8 ) I can understand the concern about a few copies of an electronic file -- but an e-book with copies all over the world? Even my local copies are backed up to the cloud. Not sure on your concern here.
9 ) 1984-type "edits" are a legitimate concern. Not sure to what level that fear cancels out the obvious benefits.
10) Amazon is now pushing the Kindle format over the physical format. Didn't used to be that way.

To me, e-readers have "crossed the chasm" and are fast becoming a standard part of our lives.

[BK]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse - Crossing Guard Data - Linwood-NJ $30-$49 per hour

Wages for Part-time Crossing Guards for Linwood - Where the range goes from $30 - $49 per diem - in my area guards show up for 1/2 hour in the Morning 1/2 hour in the afternoon.
- New Jersey - can be found here:
http://www.linwoodcity.org/pdf/Salar...nce01-2011.pdf

Just search for "Crossing Guard"

In Chicago - find details here: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.ed...tion%20wage%22
Crossing guards in Chicage - make $10-$13 per hour plus Holiday pay, they accumulate Vacation time, they get a Uniform allowance, on and on and on.....
Its not the hourly Dollars that gets expensive its all the EXTRAs

Best Regards.

[Fiat Currency]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

... If you look at a Library today - they have not improved there efficiency in any way. ... The future isn't going to look like 1880 I hope.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle2135999/

The library is not just a book warehouse anymore

There is a teen lounge with Xbox gaming consoles and a big-screen TV, complete with chairs that look like oversized hammocks to accommodate the favoured semi-sprawl of the adolescent set.

In another area, a seniors’ lounge with more traditional furniture next to a fireplace. A coffee shop. A long countertop for people who want to plug in their laptops.

Oh yes, and books.

After all, this is a library – Surrey’s new central library, to be precise. But its 150,000 books will take up just half of the available space, the most obvious sign of the accelerating transformation of the library in the 21st century.

“Libraries are not book warehouses anymore, they are active places to find inspiration or knowledge,” says Surrey’s chief librarian, Beth Barlow. As a result, Surrey’s new library, slated to open next month, has scampered even further down the path that many public libraries have headed toward in recent years: community meeting ground and social hub.

“It’s becoming that third place,” says Ms. Barlow’s deputy, Melanie Houlden, talking about the idea popularized by American writer Ray Oldenburg. His 1989 book The Great Good Place argued that “third places” – cafés, barber shops and bookstores, where people gather and talk separate from where they live or where they work – are the foundations of civil society.

Surrey is not alone in that focus on giving less space to books. Diana Guinn, the Vancouver Public Library’s director of neighbourhood and youth resources, says the new Riley Park Library, at the former Olympic curling rink, had more people-space built in than previous branches. The future Strathcona branch, just being planned now, will have more, including a “living room” for people to sit and read. “We’re trying to make sure that people have enough space just to hang out.”

All this sounds lovely, but poses the question for librarians, library users and the people who design the spaces for this place that also has books: what is a library? Is it a place to take out War and Peace? Or a place to entice teenagers with World of Warcraft, in the hopes they’ll move on to Tolstoy?

There has always been a tension about the function of libraries, says Eric Meyers, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s school of library, archival and information studies. Some have seen libraries mainly as book depositories, the places that preserve print, much as medieval monks preserved manuscripts for hundreds of years from the Greek and Roman classical eras – a dedicated act of curation that eventually gave birth to the Renaissance. Others have seen them primarily as places that teach people how to access information.

The Internet and Google have shifted the balance. “What has brought the debate to the fore is the plethora of information people can get outside the library,” says Mr. Meyers. “It put the libraries back on their heels and they were forced to re-envision themselves.”

If information is everywhere, then the library’s function as a community centre and “knowledge-building space” has become the unique thing it could offer.

Chapters, with its comfy chairs and compelling book displays, was another prod to librarians about the possibilities for luring people to books, adds Ms. Houlden.

That doesn’t make everyone happy. People from American writer Nicholson Baker to local book lovers have been outraged at the way libraries have dumped – often literally – large collections of newspapers, journals and books that simply hadn’t been taken out for a while to make room for hanging-out space, video-game collections, and computer stations. (The Vancouver Public Library got rid of 128,000 print items in 2010.)

Mr. Meyers, a self-confessed lover of books on paper, says the trick for libraries is to figure out which print resources their community is using heavily, and to stock those, while ensuring that less-used but still valuable books and journals are preserved at one institution that is available to all. “What you decide to stock shouldn’t just be based on ‘I love to see books on bookshelves.’”

That has changed budgets. In Vancouver, only $2.5-million was spent on print materials in 2010 out of a total materials budget of $4.8-million. Surrey spent about 12 per cent of its $2.1-million materials budget on electronic resources.

The librarian’s role has changed less than that of the library. “Think of us as knowledge and information curators – we bring together the best resources from across all dissemination platforms together for our patrons,” says Ms. Guinn.

At public libraries everywhere, that’s meant a new focus on teaching new groups of users – immigrants, homeless people, teenagers, seniors – not just how to find a print volume, but how to work with all the different kinds of technology to find the most reliable information on the Internet, download a book remotely to their e-readers, and get children excited about reading.

For Bing Thom, designing the new Surrey library with all of those requirements meant thinking about what the core function of a library is. So, although he incorporated many social spaces, his design reinforced what he believes is that essence.

To reinforce the idea that the library is not just another community centre or coffee shop with a lot of laptop workers, he created grand, airy spaces that reinforces a sense of sacredness, with light slanting in obliquely to create an “internal lightbox.” He also insisted that it be painted white, a soothing colour but one that demands care (and which maintenance departments typically hate).

“I truly believe they are the new cathedrals. Libraries are changing, but what doesn’t change is that sense of sanctuary,” says Mr. Thom. “It’s a social space, but it’s also a psychological place where there’s a kind of relaxed tension. You’re working with other people who are also working, so you are kind of inspired by them. There’s no other civic space like it.”

[reggie]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Thank you for posting this Don. The gentleman is talking about a verboten subject: reality.

As an aside, instead of "eat the rich", perhaps what's needed is "eat the banksters"?

It's not about eating one segment of the population, it's about eating the system that we're all either building, or allowing to be built, around us. Turning the public against various subgroups is just another form f suicidal manipulation.

[c1ue]

Re: It Will Only Get Worse

Here's an interesting stat; the librarians in Detroit 'earn' 69 thousand dollars a year plus 38 thousand in benefits (107k a year). The same person doing the same kind of work in the private sector, i.e. someone working at Barnes and Noble earns 18K and 5 K in benefit (23k a year). Guess which employee gives you better service?

I guess it depends on what service you mean.

A real librarian is responsible for managing books and finding information.

A Barnes and Noble employee is responsible for selling books and stocking shelves.

To equate one with the other is to completely miss the concept of information management and retrieval, as well as to completely miss the distinction between what you find in a Barnes and Noble vs. what you should find in a real library.

Hint: The real library may have romance books, but doesn't stock hundreds of the same one.