United States Heading towards a Depression?

Hi Boys and Girls!!!!

O_Nation: Of all the jurisdictions in the United States to overspend in stupid ways it strikes me that Orange County, Ca, one of the consistently most conservative regions anywhere that has consistently voted in Republican local, regional, state, and national political candidates would set up a government employee pay rate where lifeguards can make that much as government employees.

This is a jurisdiction that once in a blue moon, maybe once a decade votes for a democrat for virtually any office. Even if one democrat sneaks into the board of supervisors on a local basis that dem is always going to be outvoted by a massive GOP majority.

Its been that way for decades. DECADES. On top of that the pretty well educated and primarily wealthy population in Orange County is not up up up for increasing taxes. Orange County went bankrupt in 1994. As a first shot to pull out of bankruptcy a vote was put out to increase the local sales tax by $0.05. Voters overwhelmingly voted it down. Voters in Orange County, even faced with the attacks of the entire financial world in 1994-1995 would not stand for raising a tax.

So how did this GOP haven of government provide for government employees such as lifeguards to get paid up to $265,000 per year? (actually according to this and other articles its somewhat less: http://orangepunch.ocregister.com/2011/05/06/laying-off-lifeguards/44647/ Still absurdly high costs.)

Meanwhile, according to Indeed.com privately paid lifeguards in the area earn around $25/year. It appears that the continuously Conservative government of Orange County seems to be willing to pay local government employees through the nose without any care in the world.



Seems to me....their long and unalterable run of GOP politicians have set up a sweet deal for local government employees. Incredibly sweet and overpaid.

How did these GOP budget and anti government employee hawks do such a thing? Is this a GOP norm???

 

What would that entail? Unless it's cutting taxes to encourage employment and production, I don't think the government should be involved. Increase in public sector means increase in taxes to pay the public workers.

 

IMO, absolutely. I also happen to agree with the need for safety nets, and the fact that not everyone takes advantage of them. My story may be anecdotal, but in addition to the story above, I have two other friends and one family member in academia, all of whom take advantage of the system in exactly the same way(All hard core liberals as well), so with four anecdotal stories that read the same way, I came to assume it was standard practice.

@Earlpearl: Welcome back! While I appreciate your misstatement filled diatribe on the wrongdoings of Orange County, I should have probably pointed out that LA County is worse, so partisans(like yourself) wouldn't start jumping up and down screaming about the evil of those dwelling in the sole bastion of conservatism on the coast of California.

For example the Cty of Los Angeles, whose Democrat mayor Villarigosa co-chairs the 2012 Obama reelection campaign. The good mayor spends 28.6 million dollars annually on gasoline which supposedly fuels fire trucks and police cars. A recent audit of gas expenditures brought to light that $7 million of the 28, or 25% of the gas was probably stolen from the city by it's own employees, who in most cases used the fuel in their own vehicles, though in one case, a city employee was caught selling fuel filled containers out the back door of a fire station (over 144 filling stations within fire and police stations around Los Angeles).

Take the city of Bell (one city within Los Angeles County), whose all Democrat city council and mayor managed to create an $800k salary for the mayor and half million dollar salaries for the city council members by towing cars from newly creating red parking zones.

Take the city of San Francisco where one in three city employees make more than $100k per year. Gavin Newsom, with a base salary of $250k per year, not including benefits, pension, etc, is only the 29th best paid employee of the city, with a few having a BASE SALARY in excess of $330k per year.

This is not a Republican or Democrat problem, this is a problem of big government and California is the epicenter of big government.


Regarding the rest of your misstatements, you clearly need to educate yourself on OC politics and demographics. Yes it is wealthy like Los Angeles and SF, and yes it is conservative while LA and SF are extremely liberal. I like to think the difference in ideology explains why OC is generally wealthy, unlike LA and SF which are pinpoints of extreme gluttonous wealth surrounded by a sea of poverty.

 

you seem to have a number of friends and family who are libs. has anyone from RED WORLD investigated you???? you could be a traitor.

thanks for the welcome, O_nation. been working...making a few bucks here and there. . Exactly what was wrong? Is OC not one of the most well known conservative centers in the US? Is its county government not dominated by the GOP and has it not been dominated by the GOP for decades???? It is, per the newspaper acct spending up to $200,00+ on lifeguards. I basically confirmed your anecdotal acct. I also think its absurd, as you do. The only difference is, as I pointed out, that OC is an entirely GOP hardcore jurisdiction. Even with that distinction its government is paying some employees absurdly high amounts. That makes it similar to all the bastions of liberalism. I asked you to explain that. Can you???

. nice catch O_Nation. is anyone from OC stealing gas? You should check. They might not be...afterall the govt employees of this conservative bastion seem to be earning more than the average income of all residents.

tar and feather them.

I doubt if most people spend their time checking the daily activities of any government and how they spend money on a regular basis. It is too time consuming for regular citizens.

What I was getting at O_Nation is why does OC with this historically solid and unbroken timeline of GOP control have these stark examples of rampant government overspending???

As to philosophy: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina are incredible examples of solid conservatism and also incredible examples of low income by person, by family, by every measure possible. Exactly how does that square with your comments above comparing the wealth in good old conservative Orange County with cities such as LA and San Francisco?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income

 

Probably that.

Job creation is kind of complicated for me. However, I do think outsourcing is a piece of the puzzle. In my opinion, Obama's ideas are better in this area.

For example,

Both parties want to reduce the corporate tax rate. Also, Obama wants to give a variety of tax credits as incentives specifically to companies that hire American workers since many US jobs have been lost from outsourcing. He even wants to give a 20% tax credit for corporations that are currently outsourcing, if they bring the jobs back to the US. In contrast, Romney wants to eliminate taxes for all overseas profits. Right now US corporations can delay paying taxes on overseas profits until they're brought back. But, they would probably still need to pay eventually. To eliminate this tax altogether would act as an incentive for American corporations to hire workers overseas. So, with Romney's plan, it would significantly encourage more outsourcing and the result would be a loss of more jobs for Americans.

Although, I do realize addressing outsourcing isn't the whole solution. It's just the first thing I thought of.

Same here. My own personal experience led me to believe it was not standard practice. But, I guess it's hard to say for sure.

 

In other words, I have friends in low places. I believe intolerance and witch hunts are normally the domain of the liberals. My right wing friends have no issue with my liberal views, but even my liberal family members are completely intolerant of anything varying from Rachel Maddow's view of the world.

Start by googling the name Loretta Sanchez, and check out how long she has been in office. The rest of your "facts" were equally out of whack.

Like everything else I put to print, it is factual. If it were conjecture, it would normally have a disclaimer next to it.

I did earlier. You must not have read it. Big government knows no party boundaries. It is the root cause for the existence of the tea party. New political boundaries are forming beyond political parties. Its the stateists(Republican and Democrat) vs the libertarians(Tea Party Republicans, Libertarians, Ron Paul people).

Perhaps, but that isn't the point. Corruption in LA is an epidemic. Liberals like yourself, and especially angelinos should be putting party aside to call it what it is and condemn it.

That is true across the US. It is what happens when you have a stock and real estate boom followed by a two recessions and a decade of zero income growth while everyone working for the government gives themselves 3% annual cost of living raises on top of their 6% annual salary bumps.

Funny you say that. When it became public knowledge how much the city council had voted to pay itself, the lazy Democrat city voters who had been asleep at the voting booth for so long suddenly woke up and found themselves gathered by the hundreds outside the city office, on the edge of rioting. The Mayor is now finally looking at some jail time, but only because so much political pressure was brought to bear. Had he only opted to pay himself a paltry half million a year, he'd probably still be running the show.

Oh, I think in a few months here, you are going to witness how many voters have taken the time to update themselves on the activities of their governance. I pretty sure you can kiss the Senate goodbye, and Obama too.

Funny list. You'll find wealth of the average citizen coincides with natural resources, size of the population, and particularly with Maryland, the presence of federal government. Washington DC is the new hotspot to put yourself in the path of taxpayer dollars and money borrowed from China.

 

LOL. You still don´t get it that it is not about the Republicans or Democrats, it is about a culture of the last 30 years which glorified greed and personal gain over everything else. When everyone in corporate world only thinks about how much they can steal, why should government employees be any different? A culture of only think about yourself which spread and glorified by neo-cons has destroyed any sense of society and social responsibility.
If a car hits a person and kills him, does this mean cars are bad? The same is with government. The problem is not with government, it is a lack of control, moral and losing direction that is causing the problem. Government employees have seen that in corporate world, they don´t care and are stealing everything that is not nailed to the ground, so in their mind they think why shouldn´t we do the same?

 

It's so simple isn't it? Yet so many are still trapped in the ridiculous left-right paradigm, namely EarlPearl.

The parties don't give a single shit about anyone, why be their fan boy? Is sickening.

 

Earl is the most logical of them and the only one among them who has practical business experience and that is the reason he know their right-wing rhetoric about tax cuts and non interfering government is just nonsense.

 

Well you are half right. It is a growing cultural cancer, but one of entitlement, not greed. If you think greed is unique to the US, you have never been anywhere in the world.

BTW, having a follower of Marx tell me about logic was comedic. Thanks for the morning laugh.

 

I understand for you as neo-con, people asking for a roof over their head, not dying of hunger or having access to medical treatment equals to culture of entitlement. Lets have the bastards live in street, eat from garbage bins and die of simple diseases, so God forbid the persons who makes 10 million dollars a month won´t need to live on $9,750,000 /month.

 

There in lies the problem. A culture of entitlement and dependency, not one of greed.

Those who are dependent on the system, much like our young friend Julian up in Canada, without the business owners producing capital; there is no source to fund the entitlements and dependents.

 

Earl is nuts. If I remember rightly he thinks tax increases are fine just because he can earn more commission. What about everyone on fixed incomes, you know, the vast majority of normal working people?

I'm going to ignore your crazy idea that tax cuts and less government intervention is a bad thing. Ironically, you just contradicted yourself. Pandering as a leftist and criticising the right when you know full well both parties are the same. The differences they air in public is all for show to keep the people fooled and divided.

 

Unfortunately for Obama and guys like Julian, this dependency and entitlement mindset is all they have ever known. Having been raised on the dole, it's impossible for them to understand that some people actually have to go to work in order to generate the revenue that supports them.

Another thing Julian does not understand is that people in the US who are stuck in this entitlement mentality and reap these benefits are not without a roof, have fat bellies, can afford to dine out, and have plenty of access to even the most unnecessary of elective health care.

Poverty in the US is defined by the number of cell phones, tv's and portable entertainment devices you have. Those who are truly homeless and eat from garbage cans rarely if ever reap any benefit from the social programs our society has in place for them.

The majority of people taking advantage of these programs are doing just that; taking advantage. And those systems are in place to keep those that provide those services in power.

Government and Taxes have their place. Government's role is to protect that tax payer and provide an economic environment by which that tax payer can generate tax revenue so the Government can provide for basic services, like fire, police, roads, etc...

Government exists because of the people, not the other way around.

Julian and Obama will never understand that. They are so desensitized by the system that has kept them dependent on that system they will never realize the truth involved in entitlement.

 

I think I'd ask those without a roof over their heads to build a roof to live under. If you need food, you can always grow some(America's poorest are actually it's most obese, so your statement is idiotic at face value). America's poorest also already have access to free medical care, so you are wrong on that count as well.

Ahh, there it is. Your real problem with America: Income inequality. Its not that our poor are starving, or that they don't have shelter, or that they don't have medical care. Your issue is with the guy who makes $10 million a month while others live paycheck to paycheck. What can I say to that? Read a history book? Perhaps read some Aynn Rand, a product of a culture that promised equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity?

 

You all think the US and Canada is bad for the entitlement mentality, you should come here to Britain - or don't. My generation - the one succeeding yours - is tragic.

 

The guy making 10 million lives with the fear that it could all be gone in an instant; then what?

The guy living pay check to pay check gets that pay check because of the risk that the guy making 10 million a year takes. The guy living pay check to pay check loses his job; get's another job.

 

I have an old girlfriend who told me something similar last year. For what becoming a doctor cost her, she will be playing catchup most of her life. Medical malpractice insurance increases constantly and it is one of her biggest expenses (In 2007, OB/GYNs paid on average $275,466 annually for malpractice insurance). But the truth is, she is a work-slave for life.

I find myself agreeing with gworld. While I can't speak to government employees, I can tell you that in the corporate world at some point corporate officers benefits no longer became connected to the company's well-being. I know of several mid-sized ($50M/year sales) companies where the CEO deliberately tanked the company's products, so sales would plummet, so he could lay people off, so the stock price would plummet, so his friends could buy the company at a bargain - and, as part of the deal, the CEO got a huge bonus. so, the CEO makes more money if the company fails than if it succeeded. The CFO and other officers were furious, but the CEO just happily crapped on the company because he had the support of the Board - who also stood to gain.

How do you revamp a corporate system so that doesn't happen? You can't make bad decisions illegal. It comes down to the old adage of "You can't legislate morality".

 

This guy went through all the actual business numbers with me(post college debt and lost time). Medical malpractice insurance costs, office staff, insurance forms and compliance personnel, the whole enchilada. For general practitioners, it doesn't pencil out at all. Doctors have one of two possible routes to go down to make more than 150k a year. 1) Join a specialty elective surgery practice that does not take walk ins (boob jobs, plastic surgery, etc) 2) Find a hospital that does profit sharing with it's doctors.

 

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm

As usual you two are full of BS.