Public Pension Millionaires

[jk]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

the most optimistic politically-aware guy i know thinks our politics will be saved, eventually, by the demographic changes happening here. in a generation whites will no longer be a majority of the population, and multiculturalism will be a reality, not a school of literary criticism.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

Our current economic model, he said, will be of little use to us in an age of ecological deterioration and growing scarcities...Our two options, he said, will be “hanging together or falling apart.” Offer argues that we cannot be certain that growth will continue. If standards of living stagnate or decline, he said, we must consider other models for the economy. Given the wealth and resources of industrialized nations, he said, a drop in living standards to what they were one or two generations ago would still permit a good quality of life.

Offer has studied closely the economies of World War I. Amid this catastrophe, he notes, civilian economies adapted. He holds up these war economies, with their heavy rationing, as a possible model for collective action in a contracting economy.

“What you had was a very sudden transition to a serious scarcity economy that was underpinned by the necessity for sharing,” he said. “Ordinary people were required to sacrifice their lives. They needed some guarantee for those they left at home. These war economies were relatively egalitarian. These economics were based on the safety net principle. If continued growth in the medium run is not feasible, and that is a contingency we need to think about, then these rationing societies provide quite a successful model. On the Allied side, people did not starve, society held together.”

However, if we cling to our current economic model—which Offer labels “every man for himself”—then, he said, “it will require serious repression.”

“There is not a free market solution to a peaceful decline,” he said.

“The state of current political economy in the West is similar to the state of communism in the Soviet Union around 1970,” he went on. “It is studied widely in the university. Everyone knows the formula. Everyone mouths it in discourse. But no one believes it.” The gap between the model and reality is now vast. Those in power seek “to bring reality into alignment with the model, and that usually involves coercion.”

“The amount of violence that is inflicted is an indicator of how well the model is aligned with reality,” he said. “That doesn’t mean imminent collapse. Incorrect models can endure for long periods of time. The Soviet model shows this.”

Violence, however, is ultimately an inefficient form of control. Consent, he said, is a more effective form of social control. He argued, citing John Kenneth Galbraith, that in affluent societies the relative contentment of the majorities has permitted, through free market ideology, the abandonment, impoverishment and repression of minorities, especially African-Americans. As larger and larger segments of society are forced because of declining economies to become outsiders, the use of coercion, under our current model, will probably become more widespread.

“One of the unresolved issues in social science is how does the system hold together,” he said. “We have the economic model of the invisible hand, the miracle of the market, but we know it is not true, since government allocates up to 50 percent of output and income. We don’t actually rely on the ‘free’ market for our prosperity. Even the market sector is mostly dominated by entities with large market power.”

“We have this model that we are all selfish and somehow this generates the miracle of cooperation,” he said. “But equilibrium is only a truism for the well-off. There is money in the bank. The car is in the drive. The shops are full. The semesters follow each other. There is an overseas conference. The world seems to be OK. But if you look the other way, look at these other people, there is a world of hardship, misery and suffering. These suffering people are not always visible to invisible-hand advocates.”

“Experimental economics has, in fact, demonstrated that when people are placed in experimental situations they do not behave as individualistic maximizers,” he went on. “Some of them do. Some of them do not.”

“Adam Smith,” he noted, “wrote that what drives us is not, in the end, individual selfishness but reciprocal obligation. We care about other people’s good opinions. This generates a reciprocal cycle. Reciprocity is not altruistic. That part of the economic core doctrine is preserved. But if we depend on other people for our self-worth then we are not truly self-sufficient. We depend on the sympathy of others for our own well-being. Therefore, obligation to others means that we do not always seek to maximize economic advantage. Intrinsic motivations, such as obligation, compassion and public spirit, crowd out financial ones. This model can also motivate a different type of political and economic aspiration.”

“The free market norm assumes a frictionless exchange which maximizes everyone’s well-being,” he said. “The existence of ... coercive instruments, such as the prisons and the enormous military, makes you think that the theory is not all it is purported to be. There is a gap between what it pretends to be and what it is.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print...ve_it_20140302

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

Is it possible that the discourse is changing because political discourse in the US is irrelevant? At best, much less relevant. If Obama represents the left, to my mind, the argument on the left is completely irrelevant and capitulatory. How could it be relevant when there are too many people vying for too few scarce resources? The right gets that it's every person for themselves in a world with 7B+ humans. The left is still apparently trying to raise the living standard of the least among us while the right is busy crushing these same folks to dust if they can't prove utility. At this point the left in the US wants to be the 'nice' version of the right. That's why the right has no interest in discourse, the left has no ideas. I don't see this changing any time soon.

I reckon when it comes to unsustainable pensions, I would hazard a guess that there's a fair few folks collecting them that would personally identify with the right side of the political spectrum.

For example, a couple million veterans of the US military….who are amongst the first to make financial sacrifices due to the recent focus on military pension reform with the reduction in the military budget.

[santafe2]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

I don't think this is true at all. I think there are two clearly different strands on the right. They both have an interest in discourse. Ideas still matter. To both sides of the isle. But the non-intervention vs. the traditionalist right is a competition of ideas I'm distinctly interested in.

I think we're saying somewhat the same thing. The Wall Street right and the Tea Party right may be talking amongst themselves about the best way to run the country but no one is interested in ideas from the left. Those ideas are relegated to the pages of the Nation but they are never taken seriously in major media or political discourse. Obama is at best a Reagan Republican. This is what passes for the left in the US.

[lektrode]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

I think we're saying somewhat the same thing. The Wall Street right and the Tea Party right may be talking amongst themselves about the best way to run the country but no one is interested in ideas from the left. Those ideas are relegated to the pages of the Nation but they are never taken seriously in major media or political discourse. Obama is at best a Reagan Republican. This is what passes for the left in the US.

its pretty clear that most of us posting here agree on WHERE we are - it seems that we only disagree on HOW we got here.

and the dividing line seems to be on WHAT needs to be done to repair the damage that the past 50years or so of OUT OF CONTROL congressional 'horse trading' has done TO THE REST OF US

along with 50years of can-kicking, back-slapping, vote-buying that has culminated in a MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR GIVEAWAY that has done NOTHING for the interests of main st, has been perpetrated AGAINST The Rest of US, all the while our 'benevolent public servants' in the POLITICAL CLASS are concerned only with consolidating their own power and securing their re-elections.

and today - since 2008 in particular - we have 'end justifies the means' and 'triangulation' politix of the WORST kind - with whats been occuring since that time is all the proof to conclude that the .gov NO LONGER SERVES THE PEOPLE, it has become the other way round - with one side promising to give away the treasury to buy the votes of the gov-dependent and the other side giving it away to the gov-enabled - with the term 'bi-partisan' basically code for 'you support my giveaway/boondoggle and i'll support yours'

while the lamestream media fans the flames of the manufactured controvery du jour and profiting handsomely no matter what the outcome

and its why nothing will change as long as the system is rigged to ensure the status quo.

and the ONLY way to fix that is with TERM LIMITS FOR CONGRESS (the house) and return to the prev practice of the states governors appointing the senate.

[vinoveri]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

the most optimistic politically-aware guy i know thinks our politics will be saved, eventually, by the demographic changes happening here. in a generation whites will no longer be a majority of the population, and multiculturalism will be a reality, not a school of literary criticism.

Does this mean that multiculturalism will have caused the culture to evolve into a relatively homogeneous society with regard to cultural ideals, e.g., without the culture wars or that simply we will have become more balkanized as a society?

In my view, multiculturalism is frequently used as a smokescreen and euphemism and hammer to support new policitcal and social theories which evolve in the academies and often turn into politically correct dogma.

Culture is an extremely complex and intricate thing which represents, well, a culture; IMO multiculturalism is one of those Orwellian nonsensical terms which sound nice but misued when used to describe anything other than pluralism of ideas and cultural backgrounds that exist in our country.


As a normative term, it refers to ideologies or policies that promote this diversity or its institutionalization; in this sense, multiculturalism is a society “at ease with the rich tapestry of human life and the desire amongst people to express their own identity in the manner they see fit.”^[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism

Great example of gobbydogook.
Promoting diversity would be fine IFF there are active force resisting diversity BUT WHY should this be a goal in and of itself (again, pure DOGMA - some may agree, some not, but it is still dogma NOT Truth)

"A society at ease" - give me a break - society is made of individuals - what this really says is anyone who does not SUPPORT everyone's elses "expression of their own identity" will wind up with a boot on their neck

[jk]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

In my view, multiculturalism is frequently used as a smokescreen and euphemism and hammer to support new policitcal and social theories which evolve in the academies and often turn into politically correct dogma.

that is multiculturalism as literary therory

Culture is an extremely complex and intricate thing which represents, well, a culture; IMO multiculturalism is one of those Orwellian nonsensical terms which sound nice but misued when used to describe anything other than pluralism of ideas and cultural backgrounds that exist in our country.

to me it implies not just pluralism de facto, but mutual tolerance.

As a normative term, it refers to ideologies or policies that promote this diversity or its institutionalization; in this sense, multiculturalism is a society “at ease with the rich tapestry of human life and the desire amongst people to express their own identity in the manner they see fit.”^[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism

Great example of gobbydogook.
Promoting diversity would be fine IFF there are active force resisting diversity BUT WHY should this be a goal in and of itself (again, pure DOGMA - some may agree, some not, but it is still dogma NOT Truth)

"A society at ease" - give me a break - society is made of individuals - what this really says is anyone who does not SUPPORT everyone's elses "expression of their own identity" will wind up with a boot on their neck

it's called tolerance. democracy at its best, imo, is not just majoritarian rule. majoritarianism is what mohammed morsi thought "democracy" meant. it's been interesting observing the [relatively] swift changes in cultural attitudes towards homosexuality and same-sex marriage. apparently the culture can change more rapidly than we might have thought.

i think what my friend meant is that he [optimist that he is] foresaw a society of tolerance and perhaps even mutuality instead of one at war with itself. btw, i think that's what's meant by "at ease" with differences. [it doesn't read like gobbledygook to me.]

[jk]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

Violence, however, is ultimately an inefficient form of control. Consent, he said, is a more effective form of social control. He argued, citing John Kenneth Galbraith, that in affluent societies the relative contentment of the majorities has permitted, through free market ideology, the abandonment, impoverishment and repression of minorities, especially African-Americans. As larger and larger segments of society are forced because of declining economies to become outsiders, the use of coercion, under our current model, will probably become more widespread.

it's probably no accident that the u.s. has the highest rate in the world of incarceration.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

Explosive cognitive dissonance on display in this thread.

Channeling anger over public employee pension plans into advocating for expanded use of and "better" 401k plans? I apologize if this has already been explained, but in which of the multiverses is the stock market not simply a better marketed casino operation? All of a sudden, long-term buy and hold investment strategies are all the rage again? Simply unbelievable.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

Explosive cognitive dissonance on display in this thread.

Channeling anger over public employee pension plans into advocating for expanded use of and "better" 401k plans? I apologize if this has already been explained, but in which of the multiverses is the stock market not simply a better marketed casino operation? All of a sudden, long-term buy and hold investment strategies are all the rage again? Simply unbelievable.

DING Ding ding! Thank you. You are the winner. (End of thread?)

[vt]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

Sounds good but Slim forgets that pensions are ALSO invested in stocks and bonds, some of which are buy and hold and managed by the same all Street crowd .And some go bankrupt.

"During fiscal year 2010, the PBGC paid $5.6 billion in benefits to participants of failed pension plans. That year, 147 pension plans failed, and the PBGC's deficit increased 4.5 percent to $23 billion. The PBGC has a total of $102.5 billion in obligations and $79.5 billion in assets" (from PBGC Wikipedia)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100929269

http://www.freep.com/article/2013120...odes-Kevyn-Orr

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreyd...cial-security/

Social security is underfunded:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-s...s-social-secu/

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

State and local pension funds are underfunded:

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/fi...4-pensions.pdf


No one here is advocating buy and hold. But extremely low cost 401K plans are just now being rolled out and there are ways to avoid the buy and hold mantra.
The advantage of a low cost 401K is that it is owned by the worker and the employer has to contribute at least a minimum to the workers account. A pension is not owned by the worker and ends at death. Many pensions, as are private fixed annuities, are not indexed to inflation which will result in a lower standard of living in future years.

The problem is FIRE. Fix that and you've started to accomplish a part of the retirement security issue.

[vinoveri]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

it's called tolerance. democracy at its best, imo, is not just majoritarian rule. majoritarianism is what mohammed morsi thought "democracy" meant. it's been interesting observing the [relatively] swift changes in cultural attitudes towards homosexuality and same-sex marriage. apparently the culture can change more rapidly than we might have thought.

Yes, and depending on the specific cultural attitude, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. "Don't tear down a fence unless you know why it was put up in the first place" someone once opined

Why have the cultural attitudes shifted so rapidly I wonder - IMO some people have been bullied, but most are relatively indifferent (b/c they are tolerant to begin with) and are go-with-flow gentle people who have no dog in the fight but had heard the bull-horn on these topics from every corner of society - higher education, media, cinema, and now gov for the past 15 years and acquiesce and are more comfortable going along with the current wave - in short most people are not contentious and will go along with the prevailing opinion eventually just to keep their lives uncomplicated. They have indeed been successfully "re-educated".
A small fraction of society has been relatively "liberated" over the past 20 years - good for them. In the meantime the middle and working classes have been decimated, the rule of law shredded and our government has become an out of control turn-key police state, where people are more dependent than ever on the government. Surveys of what college students' consider the most important issues reveal: Gay rights, abortion, climate change to top the list. Notwithstanding one pro/con feelings for the importance of these, I wonder if these are more of a distraction to the larger issue of economic justice.

i think what my friend meant is that he [optimist that he is] foresaw a society of tolerance and perhaps even mutuality instead of one at war with itself. btw, i think that's what's meant by "at ease" with differences. [it doesn't read like gobbledygook to me.]

Certainly a laudable goal and no doubt worth pursuing and especially so if one adopts a secular humanist world view wherein we are all stuck on this rock in a virtually infinte cold universe, alone, and we need to get along and not kill each other. The problem as I mentioned earlier is there is no "Opt Out" option according to current agenda (e.g., boot on neck if you don't go along), and the hypocrisy (or at best blatant inconsistency) of the current efforts to promote "tolerance" are glaringly obvious when it comes to those viewpoints which are at odds with current vogue, e.g., various religious world views. IMO "tolerance" in the current lingo means "support" or "embrace" - it does not mean "live and let live". The best we can hope for imo under such a program is to tolerate one another but not trust each other as society balkanizes and we live in our little worlds under the iron hand of state positive law.

From the same article wiki article:

Critics of multiculturalism often debate whether the multicultural ideal of benignly co-existing cultures that interrelate and influence one another, and yet remain distinct, is sustainable, paradoxical, or even desirable.^{[137][138][139]} It is argued that Nation states, who would previously have been synonymous with a distinctive cultural identity of their own, lose out to enforced multiculturalism and that this ultimately erodes the host nations' distinct culture.^[140]
Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study how multiculturalism affects social trust.^[141] He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions," writes Putnam.^[142] In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that

[W]e hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.^[141]

Ethologist Frank Salter writes:

Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism. For example, the degree of ethnic homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic product as well as the average wealth of citizens. Case studies of the United States, Africa and South-East Asia find that multi-ethnic societies are less charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure. Moscow beggars receive more gifts from fellow ethnics than from other ethnies [sic]. A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public goods in the United States found that ethnically or racially diverse cities spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public services than do the more homogeneous cities.^[143]

Dick Lamm, former three-term Democratic governor of the US state of Colorado, wrote in his essay "I have a plan to destroy America":

"Diverse peoples worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they are not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent."^[144]

In New Zealand (Aotearoa), which is officially bi-cultural, multiculturalism has been seen as a threat to the Maori, and possibly an attempt by the New Zealand Government to undermine Maori demands for self determination.^[145]

[Master Shake]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

From Charles Hugh Smith. Best explanation I've read of what's actually happening, stripped of standard R v D politics.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept10...fare09-10.html

[Master Shake]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

I think we're saying somewhat the same thing. The Wall Street right and the Tea Party right may be talking amongst themselves about the best way to run the country but no one is interested in ideas from the left. Those ideas are relegated to the pages of the Nation but they are never taken seriously in major media or political discourse. Obama is at best a Reagan Republican. This is what passes for the left in the US.

If you truly believe the section I bolded, why would anyone take you seriously?

[BadJuju]

Re: Public Pension Millionaires

It is no shocker that American politics have moved further and further towards conservatism. Despite all the proclamations to the contrary, Obama is most certainly not a liberal. I don't know about calling him a Reagan Republican, but still.