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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: axial who wrote (108740)	2/23/2010 6:23:28 AM
From: axial	12 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

John, one other thing... Until management and legislators take pay cuts, don't even think of asking labor for concessions. Imagine, for a moment that you're negotiating with labor, asking them to take a cut in wages or make some other concessions. The immediate response would be: "Why us? Did you make the people that caused this crisis take pay cuts? No! You bailed them out and gave them big fat bonuses with my tax money! You've got legislative assistants in Washington that make more than my members. Have you seen the congressional wage and benefit increases?" If you're asking for rationality at the bottom, then ordinary people must see it at the top: that's where leadership begins. So far working people have seen none. Jim

To: axial who wrote (108740)	2/23/2010 6:26:40 AM
From: John Metcalf	2 Recommendations Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 116555

<[1] Go on a self-righteous rampage, Mish-style: fire everybody, and disband unions.> Trig, I'm not a party to these proceedings. I'm certainly not on a rampage. You might consider whether you are projecting your own rampage. I'm just a citizen and taxpayer and OBSERVER. I don't know what your point of attachment is to public union contracts, but it seems emotional. What I observe is what I said and what Mish has said many times: contracts that "cannot be fulfilled, will not be fulfilled". I also said that courts are right to require contract fulfillment, even when the payer (States and cities, in this case) have no money (we will be totally screwed for years when required to pay what we don't have). Nevertheless-- it is not within the purview of the courts to determine whether fulfillment of a contract will bankrupt either party. Courts enforce legal rights and contracts. They don't (and shouldn't) make policy. Courts are not the answer to resolve laws that are unaffordable. Courts cannot decree money into existence, though they can direct payment of existing money, all of it. It is therefore obvious that State/local economic survival requires a way out of contracts that will not be fulfilled. Can you suggest how States/municipalities may fulfill contracts with insufficient funds without declaring bankruptcy? For myself, I wouldn't be threatened with a public employee strike. I could make a cash deal with striking firemen or sheriff's deputies that would get them here in less time than their bureaucracy takes -- and I don't need the administrative part of local government at all. I don't mind paying for the local schools. I'd like to see government administration grind to a halt because it is counter-productive to job growth and expensive to me. "That government is best which governs least." -- Henry Thoreau