General Music Chat

Those retirement monies should be made available to a surviving spouse, & the unions are the ones who recognized it, & demanded it. It also works like that with SSI, thanks to the efforts of the unions who fought for such things. This is money YOU are working for. It is due you. Why shouldn't your family be able to get it when you die?

Look at the history - as taxes on the rich became lower, the incomes of lower & middle class ppl slowed in terms of costs of living, while the rich incomes continued to rise faster. As the unions declined, so has the non-union worker's raises & benefits. As the corporations bought more & more gov't officials, the gov't has grown exponentially, the rights of the citizen have been erased on a daily basis, the taxes on the rich are riddled with loopholes, while the lower incomes are saddled with the cost of everything. As we push ourselves into a global market, we find that the global market is set up to exploit us more than any mining co ever has. (Which is why our co's are outsourcing in the first place - it isn't because the American worker is roo greedy, folks. It's because the CORP is too greddy, & finds it wise to take advantage of ppl where it CAN...like GM, when they accepted the American bailout, only to invest billions in their overseas plants instead of our American ones.)

Those retirement monies should be made available to a surviving spouse, & the unions are the ones who recognized it, & demanded it. It also works like that with SSI, thanks to the efforts of the unions who fought for such things. This is money YOU are working for. It is due you. Why shouldn't your family be able to get it when you die?

Look at the history - as taxes on the rich became lower, the incomes of lower & middle class ppl slowed in terms of costs of living, while the rich incomes continued to rise faster. As the unions declined, so has the non-union worker's raises & benefits. As the corporations bought more & more gov't officials, the gov't has grown exponentially, the rights of the citizen have been erased on a daily basis, the taxes on the rich are riddled with loopholes, while the lower incomes are saddled with the cost of everything. As we push ourselves into a global market, we find that the global market is set up to exploit us more than any mining co ever has. (Which is why our co's are outsourcing in the first place - it isn't because the American worker is roo greedy, folks. It's because the CORP is too greddy, & finds it wise to take advantage of ppl where it CAN...like GM, when they accepted the American bailout, only to invest billions in their overseas plants instead of our American ones.)

GM = GREEDY MOTHERFUCKERS!

I know, let's just give money to people with no regard to reality. Who cares if there is no longer money to pay them...

And let's start companies not with the idea of providing goods and services in order to make money... no, let's invest time, money and research, with years of sacrifice just so we can give it to those who are willing to take zero risk. Let's do all this to employ people who just ask for more for doing less.

No, I have little to zero sympathy for most unions. The rank and file may be hard workers but the people who run the unions are more corrupt than politicians.

If someone is a liability, and are not willing to flex in order to help that which has provided them with a living, then they need to be cut. They obviously have no regard for everyone who would suffer if the entity they have become a leech on collapses.

The teachers who are setting the horrible example of lying with false doctor's notes and bussing in students should be fired. This is not assembly line work where there is no public consequence for inaction. These people a public servants. The more they strike and walk out, they cause people to suffer who have no power and control over their situation.

Elections have consequences, as I have had to suffer under the policies of the Asshole in cheif, so the liberal leeches are learning this too. They need to see that if the state runs out of money, they will ALL lose. The Governor of Wisconson is simply cleaning house the way every state and the federal government should.

This is rampant nation wide. Of you do not flex, you will break, and be removed. That is the nature of business and evolution.

Let me put it another way...

On a semi-regular basis we get people on band mix bitching about hoving to pay for the premium services. They of course get ridiculed and flamed. Rightly so in my mind.

Yet many of the ridiculers seem to think that tax payers, "evil" corporateins and other entities should just give away jobs, healthcare and other premium services for free.

Cognative Dissonance anyone?

Those retirement monies should be made available to a surviving spouse, & the unions are the ones who recognized it,

Yeah well I'm all for it but the numbers just don't add up, in Jersey an average teacher contribution toward health benefit is estimated to be &150.000.00 over 30 years from retirement to death they stand to collect approx. over a million per person who is going to make up that difference?.

I don't know how it is by you but here in Jersey home owners are squeezed out from their homes due to high property taxes this state is experiencing an exodus of citizens to the tune of between 50.000 to 75.000 thousand per year, some of them government employees moving to neighboring state while maintaining a job in Jersey, there is a law being proposed that would force government employees to reside in Jersey if they want to retain their job.

Look it's a mess everywhere and I get your point IE. the people responsible for killing our economy get bail out moneys while the average Joes is left to fend for He/r self I'm one of them the difference in our point of view is in addition to corporation I include an expensive government employees to the cause of our high taxes, anybody with power is responsible for this mess and unless these powerful entities learn to compromise Unions included we are going to be at each other’s throats.

It is important to recognize though while government is responsible for higher taxes with their lavish benefits… the abuses of a corporation like a GM, AIG, Bank of America Wall Street etc.etc. With their shenanigans have caused damages far greater than all government employees combined, that’s why I’m pissed off with the GOP with their hands off policy toward big shots as if they are entitled to wreck an economy with impunity while trying to solve our economically woes by targeting the most vulnerable and the least responsible while democrats go after big business while turning a blind eye to the waste in the government at any level.

There is enough blame to go around.

Sorry, BB, but I tend to look at it a little differently.

At the end of WWII, the taxes on the topmost eschelon of income were a few times higher than they are now. These ppl were paying back into a system that made available their great riches. This led to the booms of the 50's & 60's, even well into the 70's. The spillover of these boom times pushed us through the 80's, while Reagan & his ilk were reducing those taxes, reducing the controls on runaway corp's, reducing the union's power, & making way for the global market, the outsourcing of US jobs, all while increasing the tax burden on the lower classes & small businesses, & increasing gov't control over our behaviors, increasing gov't size, & deregulating big biz.

Ever since, we've been hearing this odd cry for reduced taxes for the top-most money-makers in our society, even though the evidence clearly shows that the older way worked for the ppl. Since 1980, we've seen the "hostile takeover" of growing businesses by huge corp's become the norm. We've seen the results of deregulation in the rising number of mining accidents & the destruction of our economy. We've seen the rich grow richer by nearly 200%, while 90% of our population's income has increased by less than 20%, as the cost of daily life increases...well...just look at the cost of gas, today, compared with 10 years ago. We've seen skyrocketing health care costs alongside reduced health care from insurance co's. We've seen extraordinary rises in our homeless population, while we constantly hear arguments for the reduction of gov't aid, even as our gov't encourages the continued outsourcing of American jobs.

Does it LOOK like we're a lazy ppl? Niot to me. It looks like we're a stupid ppl, though, when we are so eager to buy into this propaganda from those corp-owned individuals who don't face the problems of us everyday folk.

Ten years ago, my family made 1/2 what we make today, & we were better off.

Yes, I see a "cognitive dissonance," BB, but it isn't from the source you seem to think it comes from.

Right on Nav4, I agree, but don't move to MO. I paid my house off but my taxes and insurance, if added together, and then divided by 12, would rent a pretty nice place. I've worked hard for what's mine.

Benefits are not a freebie given away. I really DON'T CARE how much one has paid into a ripoff insurance system. Benefits are part of employee compensation for their work. People have been brainwashed by the CORPORATE media that, somehow, employees don't deserve a retirement plan or medical coverage or dental or whatever. "They should just be happy we allow those peasants a few crumbs we drop them." And when I say "peasants" I am literally using their language. Look up "peasant insurance" sometime. You are worth more to your boss dead than alive.

People who defend corporations and the super-rich are what Vladimir Lenin would have called "useful idiots" of the powerful.

I suppose to clarify my position, I am being made a partner so I have little things like Payroll and solvency to consider. I have to balance the additional tax penalty of hiring more people versus just doing the work myself and not taking extra contracts.

So I guess that makes me Mike and friend's enemy.

I actually have the reality of creating jobs or not... this is not rhetoric for me anymore.

If Obama had a spine and stood up for REAL health care reform, instead of socializing corporate profits, a lot of the burden of health benefits would be taken off of employers' backs. Government, unlike a business, can operate with deficits for a pretty long time without collapsing. Especially when said government outspends its military budget far beyond any others. If a fraction of that wasteful military budget (spent overseas) were used instead to rebuild infrastructure, socialize healthcare, and support other public services the economy would get a very-needed shot in the arm. And it could be done without raising anybody's taxes. Although, returning the tax burden to 1950's or 1960's rates would help a lot because businesses and wealthy investors were incentivized then toward reinvestment or philanthropy rather than just pocketing their earnings. The poor and middle-class pretty much don't need an incentive to spend. They need SOMETHING to spend in the first place.

Not the enemy, BB, provided you work hand in hand for the good of all, rather than for one or the other at the expense of someone. Employment is a two way street - & the mega-corp world tends to take controls of the employees' lives to the extreme, while reducing the reward for labor as far as they can push it.

Smaller businesses are the only things left to save ppl, provided thay handle things in a fair & just manner. It isn't the intent of unions or employees to destroy corp profits, as they are truly necessary. Just don't take things to such great extremes as ppl tend to do in this new "zero tolerance" world of us vs them, cuz it ain't s'posed to be like that