The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

[lektrode]

Re: Who is paying

Happy 5th, lektrode. I won't celebrate the 4th again until this country remembers what the 4th is all about. It's about more than fireworks.

yep - 'celebrate' is a relative thing - not sure what i was happy about - cept the way the schweppervecence effect makes me all kinda 'bubbly'

Agree what you say, but what do you have any ideas for how to get those thoughts actualized? I don't. I don't believe that working within the political system or voting as a "small-r" will get anything good accomplished. All you or I can do at this point is sit and rant.

yep - altho it does have a certain theraputic value - its why methinks the primary problem is the failure of the lamestream media to focus on whats really going on - since it would make their team look bad for/to the un-enlightened

but if the shoe was on the other teams foot, by chrikie - we'd see 4" tall DAILY HEADLINES
and/or if even 20% of the electorate had read even 10% of whats on this website, read taibbi/thestone's excellent series and/or seen movies like INSIDE JOB or watched pbs/frontline stuff

hell, does anybody even watch 60 minutes anymore - or are they all getting their 'news' from MTV these daze?

from what eye can see lately tho - there's only 1 story that seems to matter - now that 'gun control' isnt much of a distraction...

[charliebrown]

Re: Who is paying

i think the only way we can get out is to try as much as possible to get out of the money system.
I know it is nearly impossible to get completely out, but every little bit helps. See if you can trade
services and goods instead of buying them, fix your stuff, grow your own food etc. Up here in the land of obummer,
everything single conceivable thing is being considered for taxation. soft drinks, plastic bags, bottled water, internet sales, speed cameras, red light cameras.

[flintlock]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

I gather you are in construction as I am. From my vantage point it is easy to see the deterioration of wages and with it the work force. While in college the company i worked for employed guys in their 50's down through high school kids in the summer, the older guys made enough to own homes, put their kids through college, take vacations... and most importantly they KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING. No drug problems, however they did drink, but we needed very little supervision on jobs, the owner spent the majority of his time selling.

Before I started this reply I went on craigslist for the town I was working in back then to see what ads there were and how much they paid. They wages that I saw listed are what I made as a 19 year old college student in 1987 and 20% less than I was making by 1990 when I went on my own. Adjust that for inflation and its no wonder quality employees have moved to greener pastures or simply just given up.

What has happened to construction in the past generation is now, it seems, moving into more "professional" jobs and it's funny, I listen today to some of my friends who are becoming subcontractors talking about how great it is and I think, "get ready because here it comes."

I also question how people don't see why this country is broke after an almost 40 year belief that cutting wages in the working class will lead to a robust economy for everyone. To me it's kind of like arguing that it's the roots of the tree that are holding it back and if the tree was just cut away from those roots it would grow to infinity. But as we know cut away the roots and the tree dies.

Your experience parallels mine almost exactly. Grown men could work hard and buy a house, a car, and raise a family. Nothing fancy, but they could survive. Now its pretty much left to younger kids and men with no dependents to do the actual work, as the pay scale is kind of a joke today, with the results you would expect. These guys consider themselves "experienced" after only a few years work. Almost none doing the actual work hold any kind of certification or have any formal training. The stuff I could show you!

[flintlock]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

Despite what one does for a living, I still think its wrong to change the rules in the middle of the game and keep the raising retirement age. People like me started paying in long ago, with a promise they would be able to collect. What is to keep Congress from raising it every time the money runs short? Hardly confidence inspiring.

And the people with physical jobs are not the only ones who need to worry. While physical impairments are a major concern with growing older, mental ones can be just as troubling yet difficult to prove. In my opinion, any change in the retirement age at this point should target a group BEFORE it comes of working age. That way it can be seen for what it is, a tax hike on the young.

[flintlock]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

Most "conservatives" aren't Conservative and most "liberals" aren't Liberal.

Looking at the two most recent piles of tripe the American people have placed in the White House tells me that they're mostly Yuppie Fascists.
("Gimme mine right now! Who cares about the future?")

Yuppie Fascists. I like that.

[DSpencer]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

Your experience parallels mine almost exactly. Grown men could work hard and buy a house, a car, and raise a family. Nothing fancy, but they could survive. Now its pretty much left to younger kids and men with no dependents to do the actual work, as the pay scale is kind of a joke today, with the results you would expect. These guys consider themselves "experienced" after only a few years work. Almost none doing the actual work hold any kind of certification or have any formal training. The stuff I could show you!

How can consumers tell the difference before hiring someone in these trades?

[BadJuju]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

A good friend of mine runs his own construction business. He said it has become impossible in the last couple years because of the tax raises. He has to pay approximately 61% or so of his income. This is for social security, medicare, workman's comp (he has to pay it for himself at about 31%), city and county business licenses that amount to about 5%, and I think a couple others. And because of this, a lot of illegal (not immigrants, but people that don't pay the taxes) contractors are taking a lot of work from legitimate businessmen. And these illegitimate contractors are really destroying the reputation of contractors in general because they do extremely shoddy work. He cannot afford to hire employees.

[flintlock]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

A good friend of mine runs his own construction business. He said it has become impossible in the last couple years because of the tax raises. He has to pay approximately 61% or so of his income. This is for social security, medicare, workman's comp (he has to pay it for himself at about 31%), city and county business licenses that amount to about 5%, and I think a couple others. And because of this, a lot of illegal (not immigrants, but people that don't pay the taxes) contractors are taking a lot of work from legitimate businessmen. And these illegitimate contractors are really destroying the reputation of contractors in general because they do extremely shoddy work. He cannot afford to hire employees.

Yes, its getting harder in general today for small businesses. I went through a spell a while back where the jacklegs where putting a pinch in my business. So I decided to downsize and focus on the customers who appreciate quality and service over the Blue light special mentality. Given time, a lot will come to their senses once they've been burnt a few times. My best customers are the ones with the contractor horror stories. They treat me like family!

[flintlock]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

How can consumers tell the difference before hiring someone in these trades?

It can be tough. I still cringe whenever I have to hire someone, which thankfully is not often. Lets just say I've learned a lot about other trades just to avoid dealing with some of these jokers.

i have a few general rules that usually work. Talking about home services in general here.

1) Avoid anyone that relies on massive advertising. A company a friend worked at had 5 full time people answering the phones for only 10 vans ! Thats how much traffic the ads get them. So why the heck would they care if you are not a satisfied customer? Their prices where so high they would almost never see a repeat cusomer, and their attitude showed it. They are after a quick score not a long term customer. And the quality was still uneven. I'm sure there are exceptions but I've yet to see it around here.

2) check references. Google them. Check online rating services. Ignore the glowing positive reports as many are fake. Key in on the details of the negative reviews. Does the customer seem unreasonable or sincere? I actually found a great doctor through one of these sites. But if a company screws over enough people word gets out. Just be aware many change names frequently to get around this.

3) ask if technician is licensed or just the company. Most states allow unlimited people to work under one license. Technically the license holder is checking the work and guaranteeing its correct. Yeah, sure. Now that doesn't mean an unlicensed tech working under supervision cant be great. But Id like at least somebody on the job with proof of minimum credentials, if possible.

4) I stay away from larger companies in general. Things tend to get away from management in spite of the best intentions. The business model today seems to be just hire almost anyone and throw them out there and see if they sink or swim. You can always apologize later if he screws up. In other words, the customer is the guinea pig. Something changes in attitude when the person responsible has to face the customers wrath face to face. With a smaller company, even if the owner isnt personally there for the work, he knows he'll catch hell if something goes wrong. Certainly not always true, of course. Big companies hide behind phones/email and their workers sometimes.

5) lowest price may be asking for trouble. Beware of add-ons.

6) you dont always get more just because you pay more. Dont assume high price = quality.

7) Missed/late appointments and being unprepared are warning signs.

8) communication is key. Most problems result from poor communication. Can you talk to a responsible person whenever you need to? Or will you play phone tag all day? Will the company make you responsible to supervise their workers? Will they make the fact their workers dont speak English very well your problem?

9) best way to find a good contractor is through another good contractor. They usually know who is good and who is not. Just beware of the General Contractor who gets kick-backs for referrals.

[kescwi]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

To add to what the others have said I would advise going to your county clerk of courts web site and looking to see if he/she has had trouble in the past. Not just criminal but liens by other contractors can be informative. That said, construction is a very litigiouse business and insurance claims can look as though one individual has file suit against another so be sure to ask further questions if you see something.

For me when i look up sub contractors or a GC's, it is liens or conversion that I'm most interested in. If/when I see that it tells me there are problems paying and that will usually be an indication of larger problems.

[shiny!]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

When interviewing contractors, you want someone who will give you detailed written estimates. Not, "will repipe house" but "will make X number of connections using X-specific parts and materials, including cleanup, etc...

For big jobs like remodeling, have them put it in writing when they will be finished. And nowdays with smartphones, contractors who must dig around inside walls and crawlspaces should take pictures as they go along; show you what they find as they're working, and how they fixed it.

After being burned by a cabinet maker who wasn't licensed with the Registrar of Contractors, I was told to make sure that anyone I hire is licensed with the ROC. So the next contractors I hired (bathroom remodelers and insualtion installers) were registered with the ROC. They were also listed in Angie's list, as were several plumbing companies I interviewed to repipe my house. It means NOTHING. ZIP. NADA.

The plumbers bid $2000-$5000 to repipe my house in PEX or copper. They kept pushing PEX, but I wanted cPVC. The plumber I settled on did the entire house in Flowguard Gold cPVC for $1000. He's a licensed plumber but not a registered contracter with the ROC. He gave me very clear, detailed written estimates and invoices. He took pictures on his iPhone as he worked to show me what he saw and what he did (that's when I learned how cool this is).

The bathroom remodelers were so incompetent, they didn't know which end of the hammer to hit with. They couldn't remove my subfloor or take a proper measurement! I fired them. This left my only bathroom completely gutted but for the toilet, with giant, gaping holes in the floor and ceiling. My plumber removed the rest of the subfloor and replaced it for me.

He discovered that an A/C duct under my floor had a gaping hole in it top and bottom (somebody had rammed the dryer vent through it), and also that my insulation was in bad shape. I was losing about 40% of my air conditioning and heating. So I called insulation companies for bids.

I hired one of the biggest, oldest insulation companies in the area. They left the job half finished because they were overbooked. I had to threaten them with the ROC to get them to come back and finish. For my leaking duct, they would have only sealed it on the bottom but not on the top, where it was hard to access.

They tried to sell me a "whole house duct sealing package for the low, low price of $450". The guy never looked at my ducts, but insisted that they were all leaking. I asked him to take pictures of each leak with his iPhone and show me. He said his company didn't work that way. I asked him how they could charge the same price for every home, regardless of the size of the home and the number of ducts involved? No answer.

Two other licensed contractors gave me bids to fix my leaking duct, ranging from $800-$1800. A third contractor said it was unfixable.

My $11/hour unlicensed handyman fixed it by chopping out a section of floor above the duct to access it from the top, then going under the house and patching it from the bottom. He then replaced the subfloor and tile; you can't even see where he had opened the floor. Took him less than two hours. Cost: $33 in time and materials. It's now the most solid duct in the entire universe.

[c1ue]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

Despite what one does for a living, I still think its wrong to change the rules in the middle of the game and keep the raising retirement age. People like me started paying in long ago, with a promise they would be able to collect. What is to keep Congress from raising it every time the money runs short? Hardly confidence inspiring.

And the people with physical jobs are not the only ones who need to worry. While physical impairments are a major concern with growing older, mental ones can be just as troubling yet difficult to prove. In my opinion, any change in the retirement age at this point should target a group BEFORE it comes of working age. That way it can be seen for what it is, a tax hike on the younger.

Fixed for accuracy. When we're talking 65 vs. 67 vs. 70 (or older), I don't think the term 'young' applies any more.

[Polish_Silver]

what is campaigning?

and i think The Solution is to bring back the broadcast equal time regulations, limit the campain season to 60days, END ALL FORMS OF PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISING

If a politician says anything in public is that campaigning?

How will you differentiate "campaigning" from communicating with voters from his precinct?

If some pro Romney guy organizes an email spam campaign, is that campaigning? And could you even determine who started it?

If GE buys a TV network, and highers a bunch of green energy friendly journalists and editors, is that political advertising? I don't see how you can regulate political advertising, because I don't see how you can differentiate it from any advertising. . I'd like to know what rules and definitions other countries use. I guess you could have more transparency, but that also has limitations.

I think what would help is public financing of campaigns, possibly weighted towards the smaller parties. In Germany, any party that gets above a threshold of votes gets tax money for campaigns, and TV time.

To support that, we also need a proportional electoral system--where voting for small parties is not a wasted vote. Occupy could not get any seats in congress because they could not get 51% in any state or congressional district. But if the senate was elected on a nation wide basis, with each seat representing 1% of the votes, occupy would have had 5-10 senators.

[lektrode]

Re: what is campaigning?

If a politician says anything in public is that campaigning?

How will you differentiate "campaigning" from communicating with voters from his precinct?

these are good questions, PS, that i dont necessarily have the time nor the smarts to type a comeback/answer for - however i simply refuse to sitback and say there's nothing that can be done to affect the status quo, so mights well leave things as-is ?

IMHO - what we have now is a situation that directly resulted from the repeal of the equal time regulations - nears i recall, if some media outlet expressed an editorial POV that raised a stink (in the political class) - they had to offer 'equal time' for rebuttal.

now they get to put out anything they want, any time they want and if somebody wants to rebut, then they have to pay millions to billions in paid political ads to counter? (or buy their own media outlet - so thank the lamestream liberal media for the rise of foxnews, which is/was essentially the only 'alternative' viewpoint of all the majors - and the lib/left/progressive cabal that controlled the whole show - along with the current administration - cant understand why fox and o'reilly, in particular - is number1 in the ratings?

and then they howl because the right spends millions/billions to get their message heard above the roar of the liberal's bullhorn?

again - i think its the mostly the liberal run editorial POV that fans these flames, since they PROFIT TO THE TUNE OF BILLIONS because of it - and then we get the side-effects of the lesser-means, but (perhaps) less big-money-influenced candidates who cant even get anybody to cover them, unless it suits The Agenda of the majors (using the recent lynching of paula dean as Exhibit A)

again - could you just imagine if it was 'big oil' that caused the economic wipeout of the century, not once, BUT TWICE IN 10 YEARS - just how big the daily headlines would be - STILL? - 5or6 years later - and what do we get, nearly NON-STOP DAILY COVERAGE OF ??

how about the failure to bring any real prosecutions of something thats been documented to death ?
never mind failure to put any kind of spotlight on the supposed 'pivot to jobs' that we've been hearing about for going on 5years now.

fat chance - that would distract them from the need to keep printing TRILLIONS to bailout their primary benefactors/backers.

its also all the proof i need to conclude that the manhattan bankster mob as well as a large chunk of the FIre brigade is all on that same team

If some pro Romney guy organizes an email spam campaign, is that campaigning? And could you even determine who started it?

If GE buys a TV network, and highers a bunch of green energy friendly journalists and editors, is that political advertising? I don't see how you can regulate political advertising, because I don't see how you can differentiate it from any advertising. . I'd like to know what rules and definitions other countries use. I guess you could have more transparency, but that also has limitations.

I think what would help is public financing of campaigns, possibly weighted towards the smaller parties. In Germany, any party that gets above a threshold of votes gets tax money for campaigns, and TV time.

To support that, we also need a proportional electoral system--where voting for small parties is not a wasted vote. Occupy could not get any seats in congress because they could not get 51% in any state or congressional district. But if the senate was elected on a nation wide basis, with each seat representing 1% of the votes, occupy would have had 5-10 senators.

yep = more good thinking - but again, since the politcal class is more concerned about preserving the status quo - along with their lifetime gravy train - we got about as much chance of that as the end of ZIRP any time soon.

[photon555]

Re: The Left's Four Fiscal Fantasies

Regarding SS, I believe we can all agree it was a terrible mistake to trust politicians with our money. They have made a royal mess of it, and now some people want to reward them by trusting them with our healthcare. Since it has taken decades for the failure of the politicians to play out in retirement plans, welfare, mortgage guarantees, and now healthcare, there is always a new generation eager to try their hand at the Three-Card Monte table. Hope springs eternal in the human breast... and there's always a con artist close by willing to sell the suckers something to fasten their hope onto.

Banking and Politics were invented to allow weak, incompetent, cowardly men access to women, money and power.