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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: roguedolphin who wrote (35399)	2/20/2011 8:40:23 PM
From: NOW	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71475

defense, when properly accounted for consumes nearly 50% of all discretionary federal spending on income tax this does not include SS, which is paid ofr seperately

To: roguedolphin who wrote (35399)	2/21/2011 1:47:26 AM
From: NOW	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71475

"First, let’s debunk a couple of issues thrown out by Wisconsin governor Walker’s camp before turning to the real culprit in state budget’s supposed tsuris. The state budget is not in any kind of real peril. The Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated that the state would end fiscal year 2011 with a gross positive balance of $121. 4 million and a net balance (after mandated reserves) of $56.4 million. Walker asserts there is actually a $137 million deficit. But where did that change come from? Lee Sheppard of Forbes estimated that Walker’s tax cuts for businesses would cost at the bare minimum $100 million over the state’s biennial budget cycle. Other sources put a firmer stake in the ground and estimate the costs at at $140 million. Viola! Being nice to your best buddies means you need to go after someone else. The second major canard is that Wisconsin state employees are overpaid. If any are, it sure isn’t the teachers, nurses, or white collar worker. Note this chart for Wisconsin workers by Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser (hat tip Mike Konczal) is of data on total compensation, meaning it includes benefits such as pensions and health care. And as Chinn notes in comments to the post, the disparity in the 1990s and last decade would have been more skewed in favor of private sector workers. The one group in which public sector workers are modestly more highly paid is non-high-school graduates, which one assumes include sanitation workers and janitors. Even then, the premium is not large.