Welcome to Berkeley, probably still the best public university in the world. Meet your classmates, the best group of partners you can find anywhere. The percentages for grades on exams, papers, etc. in my courses always add up to 110% because that’s what I’ve learned to expect from you, over twenty years in the best job in the world.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits. And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine. This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.
Swindle – what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future. (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job.
Young people who enjoyed these ‘loans’ grew up smarter, healthier, and richer than they otherwise would have, and understood that they were supposed to “pay it forward” to future generations, for example by keeping the educational system staffed with lots of dedicated, well-trained teachers, in good buildings and in small classes, with college counselors and up-to-date books. California schools had physical education, art for everyone, music and theater, buildings that looked as though people cared about them, modern languages and ancient languages, advanced science courses with labs where the equipment worked, and more. They were the envy of the world, and they paid off better than Microsoft stock. Same with our parks, coastal zone protection, and social services.
This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves. “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s? Posterity never did anything for me!” An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph.
Now, your infrastructure is falling to pieces under your feet, and as citizens you are responsible for crudities like closing parks, and inhumanities like closing battered women’s shelters. It’s outrageous, inexcusable, that you can’t get into the courses you need, but much worse that Oakland police have stopped taking 911 calls for burglaries and runaway children. If you read what your elected officials say about the state today, you’ll see things like “California can’t afford” this or that basic government function, and that “we need to make hard choices” to shut down one or another public service, or starve it even more (like your university). Can’t afford? The budget deficit that’s paralyzing Sacramento is about $500 per person; add another $500 to get back to a public sector we don’t have to be ashamed of, and our average income is almost forty times that. Of course we can afford a government that actually works: the fact is that your parents have simply chosen not to have it.
I’m writing this to you because you are the victims of this enormous cheat (though your children will be even worse off if you don’t take charge of this ship and steer it). Your education was trashed as California fell to the bottom of US states in school spending, and the art classes, AP courses, physical education, working toilets, and teaching generally went by the board. Every year I come upon more and more of you who have obviously never had the chance to learn to write plain, clear, English. Every year, fewer and fewer of you read newspapers, speak a foreign language, understand the basics of how government and business actually work, or have the energy to push back intellectually against me or against each other. Or know enough about history, literature, and science to do it effectively! You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less, trained worse and worse, loaded up with more and more mindless administrative duties, and given less and less real support from administrators and staff.
Many of your parents took a hike as well, somehow getting the idea that the schools had taken over their duties to keep you learning, or so beat-up working two jobs each and commuting two hours a day to put food on the table that they couldn’t be there for you. A quarter of your classmates didn’t finish high school, discouraged and defeated; but they didn’t leave the planet, even if you don’t run into them in the gated community you will be tempted to hide out in. They have to eat just like you, and they aren’t equipped to do their share of the work, so you will have to support them.
You need to have a very tough talk with your parents, who are still voting; you can’t save your children by yourselves. Equally important, you need to start talking to each other. It’s not fair, and you have every reason (except a good one) to keep what you can for yourselves with another couple of decades of mean-spirited tax-cutting and public sector decline. You’re my heroes just for surviving what we put you through and making it into my classroom, but I’m asking for more: you can be better than my generation. Take back your state for your kids and start the contract again. There are lots of places you can start, for example, building a transportation system that won’t enslave you for two decades as their chauffeur, instead of raising fares and cutting routes in a deadly helix of mediocrity. Lots. Get to work. See you in class!
UPDATE: Like your political science in musical form? Here’s the way people thought about this stuff back in the day, and maybe should again. Bet there’s a good rap along these lines waiting to be born…
Cross-posted from the blog The Reality Based Community.
Greg – Where do you think our $3 a gallon gas comes from? Maybe a huge military complex that ensures supply and huge government subsidiaries? Paid for pay you and me – I would rather have put in education …
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Our $3 of gas (as opposed to the $9 for a gallon of gas in Europe) comes from the U.S. not taxing it enormously like European countries do. Some 75% of what you pay for gas in Europe is paying for the taxes. Yet another area where the Europeans add taxes so that they don’t have to add it directly to your income tax. Do some research and actually get educated before the next the time that you just post, thanks.
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How has this blog, and even this letter, influenced or impacted the faculty on the Berkeley campus? Has it caused some questions surrounding the way in which new media technology can impact how we exchange ideas and opinions?
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Sigh. And this is why nothing changes, and nothing gets done, because it’s so depressing reading the bitter comments. What happened to respectfully disagreeing?
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“Take back your state for your kids and start the contract again” should be a candidate for a new rallying cry, with new a new culture of role models like Michael and Rosemary, to inspire the newest generations to restore democracy for all the people instead of greedy special interests that have corrupted and destroyed every civilization to date.
The root causes of every major economic, political, social and environmental problem we have in America today is due to the corruption of the majority of our judges and politicians, returning us to the days in Athens before they created the Rule of Law and Democracy to provide government for all the people instead of the aristocracy. We are still failing to meet that goal and time is running out faster than ever before due to Global Warming.
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Thank Prop 13 for this one!!!!
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Great letter and great statements regarding the OBVIOUS. The only thing missing are the solutions. Dear Prof, I totally respect and agree with what you are saying, how about suggesting more solutions? It’s one thing to stir the pot, it’s another to give answers in order to solve the problems. Please please blog about solutions. I think you may have some.
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As the father of a UC-Berkeley student, the husband of a California public school teacher and the father of a Teach For America alum who worked in the Richmond, CA school district, let me suggest that all this focus on ideology (text and comments) misses several important points. Are we allocating the public resources we have wisely? Are we looking for creative solutions to difficult problems? Are we rewarding the behavior we want to see? I suspect not, pretty much across the board.
For example, I am absolutely in favor of providing “second chances.” I absolutely support the ideal of providing a place where high school graduates who may not be ready for a place like UC-Berkeley can get prepared to enroll there. In my judgment, the mission of the California community college system is a noble one and one that ought to be continued. But any fair assessment of that system must also conclude that it’s a mess. According to research performed under the auspices of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at CSU Sacramento (link), only 24% of students entering a JC to seek a certificate, get a degree or transfer to a four-year school accomplish their goal within a six-year period (and it’s only 14.5% of total students). Thus California ranks near the top in terms of getting students in the door of higher education, but in terms of actual achievement -– either via a degree or by transferring to a four-year school -– California ranks near the bottom. That said, a community college education remains remarkably inexpensive — costs are the lowest in the nation and a small fraction of the average cost nationally. Thus we’re paying a very high price for surprisingly little return.
Moreover, and more importantly, many community colleges are replete with students of means who have always had tremendous opportunities available to them who are wasting their time (and taxpayer dollars) there. Roughly 50% of California community college students have annual family incomes in excess of $50,000 and roughly 25% have annual family incomes in excess of $80,000 (link). Why should taxpayers provide — essentially for free — second, third and more chances to students with means and opportunity galore who have consistently refused to make good academic and educational choices while, at the same time, charging students who have made the best choices higher and higher prices and prices that are, by far, the highest in the system? Is it too radical to suggest the our UCs charge prices more like what community colleges charge (to reward student acheivement, to keep more of our best students “home” and to ease the financial burden on these students and their families) and that community colleges charge prices more like what the UCs charge for those who can afford them? It seems to me that the same amount of money could be put to much better use.
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JP : “I was directed to this statement by CTA as a “must read”. well, after reading I must also apologize to those students who are being taught such progressive nonsense. As a public educator, I want to tell you the students and those others who are trying to “start the discussion” you have been betrayed by those in your professor’s generation and liberal idealism. Unfortunately we have all walked way in some way shape or form from fiscal conservatism. CA spends more money on welfare and other social give away programs than any other state in the union! We have given more services and money to ILLEGAL ALIENS than any other state! You can’t keep spending more money than you take in without consequences…do you know that state revenues have consistently grown over the last 5 years but state spending has far outgrown the revenues?!? Has anyone taken economics 101 and discussed how governments make money??!! That’s right taxes…oh I’m sorry in California we sometimes call them fees to disregard the State Constitution but that’s a discussion for another time. Back to taxes…Professors and teachers like myself as well as all firefighters, police officers, and all other government workers are PAID through tax dollars. So when I or other gov’t workers pay taxes we aren’t really paying taxes that increase revenues ONLY private business does that! Where am I going with this? Well, the truth is when you create a climate in which business (private sector) can not thrive, you destroy the tax base and therefore government does not have enough money to waste. And by the way, education is NOT a right! You must earn it like everything else that is worth anything (except salvation) in this world. The “man”, California,or some other s”oppressor” does not owe you your existence, education, free rent, free health care, or any other material good you need to earn it by YOUR INDIVIDUAL MERIT! I am sick and tired of the CTA, NEA, and academics such as this professor setting and talking about agendas that are disastrous for education, students, families, and the greatest Nation to exist on planet earth, AMERICA.”
Absolutely brilliantly stated. I couldn’t have worded it any better so decided to quote you.
This is not a Socialist country people, there are plenty of Socialist/Communist countries if you don’t like what America stands for: “and to the REPUBLIC, for which it stands…” – Michael O’Hare is another typical Berkeley professor who’s ideals are delusional.
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Thank you Baby Boomers!
Don’t worry. Gen X will fix it. Like ever other mess you guys have made……..
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Well, we already got ours. Can’t wait to see what your children will hate you for.
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Since when does ‘socialism’ exclude democracy? Have a look at Europe, dear fellow Americans, and see socialism and democracy at work. Over here, though, education is meant to free, paid for by the State, which increasingly can’t subsidize the bill. Education costs! We as citizens must contribute. And it is an invaluable resource. It would prevent absurd statements that equate social conscience with forms of lived totalitarianism. Socialism is not an epithet, but a functioning system.
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It seems as if Professor O’Hare and his students have a robust test bed of public opinion here to start the semester. Which of these opinions are based on fact and which are based on value systems? Can the classes get their hands on data and facts that help the public make informed decisions? Does the PPIC budget fact sheet (cited earlier in the thread) really help voters compare California’s tax burden with other states?
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Well said.
To counter “Joe D” $65,000 for a teacher salary? Where did you get this from? Is this College prof, or elementary school teacher? Sounds like jealousy to me.
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Your instinct is right– the figure Joe D used is one promoted (and inaccurately portrayed) to fuel anger. Presented without any context, it makes it seem like the salaries K-12 teachers receive are undeserved, higher than they would get on the open market, and somehow unfair to those whose work provides them lower salaries– in other words, it is a figure used by politicians to whip up resentment.
So what are the facts?
A good source for useful information on K-12 teacher salaries for all 50 states is here. This site aggregates data from many sources.
Starting salaries range from the mid-$20,000 to mid-$30,000. California starting salaries, at $35,760, are lower than Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. It appears that the average salary– which includes long-term teachers whose salaries increased over their years of service– for California is the highest, but it is lower than Joe D thinks: $59,825.
This site is just one of many that show about the same pattern. But the reason why I use it is that the authors have also compiled what they call a “comfort index”, comparing salaries to cost of living in each state. Lower numbers are better. Higher numbers mean that it is harder to live on the salary given cost of living in the state.
California, at 44, is almost the least livable state, given teacher salaries. Only Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Vermont have worse “comfort scores”.
Let’s debate these issues; but maybe actual facts could be used, instead of unsourced claims? Can we have a discussion that takes into account the actual cost of living?
Many of the sites I found that claimed California had the highest average salary for teachers, and gave numbers close to (but not equal to) $65,000, attributed the data to the American Federation of Teachers.
Tracking down the most recent AFT report from 2007, it said that the beginning salary for California was 9th nationally, at $38,875, about the same as the more detailed site I link to, which assembles its information from multiple sources. Because AFT uses a slightly higher average salary for California, it claims California has the highest average teacher salary– again, a number that is affected by how long people stay on the job, the proportion of beginning vs. experienced teachers, and thus a really bad number to use for comparison from state to state.
Most important, the AFT survey notes that K-12 teachers still earn only 70% of what people with their level of education earn if they go into the private sector. Or, to underline this point yet again: working in the public sector means accepting a much lower salary. That’s why it is called public service.
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Also look at this detailed comparison of California K-12 teachers’ salaries, teaching burdens, and California’s per person spending on teaching. The argument built on cherry-picking one number does not hold up. California is not spending enough on educating the next generations, the people who will build our new bridges (we hope), maintain our decaying roads (we hope), find new solutions to water shortages (we hope), and be the innovators of new businesses to rebuild employment (we hope).
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Thanks for the links. Teachers are VERY much middle class, these aren’t the 200k a year businessmen who took the bailouts.
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Looking at salary alone is is a horrible way to see how much a person is getting paid and is simple a piece of the pie. What about all the other stuff being paid out to them? Medical, Dental, 401k, Pension, taxes, etc? All this costs money too or do you think all this is “free”. What people need to start looking at is the total compensation package. How much does really cost to keep that person on the payroll. $65k seems fairly accurate when you look at that number.
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The point of the article is that somebody else paid for our education, and education is what made it possible for the state to have been great in the past.
I don’t have any children attending classes in any California schools, but I have to pay for somebody else’s kids to go there. Why do I think this is a good thing? Because somebody else’s kids are going to be creating new businesses, running the government, paying the taxes and doing whatever else it is that people will do in the future.
If those kids are rotting in prison (oh yeah, now I have to pay a private company to help them rot) or sitting homeless on the street (oh yeah, let’s arrest them and put them in jail… see previous parenthetical comment), my life isn’t going to be anywhere near as good as it could have been if I had invested in their education instead of investing in a day at Disneyland.
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It’s hard to believe people as smart as Professor O’Hare can say things suc as this with so little thought put into them.
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Public transit (at least here in California) is nothing but a massive money pit that no one uses.
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By “no one” did you mean the people using 4 of the top 10 most used light rail systems in the U.S.?
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems_by_ridership )
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Decreased spending in California Public Schools? What are you smoking?
More like spending with no purpose and completely out of control is the real cheat.
Berkeley, my alma mater, so predictable. It would be nice to have professors that actually lived in the real world rather than the world of their own propaganda.
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I was directed to this statement by CTA as a “must read”. well, after reading I must also apologize to those students who are being taught such progressive nonsense. As a public educator, I want to tell you the students and those others who are trying to “start the discussion” you have been betrayed by those in your professor’s generation and liberal idealism. Unfortunately we have all walked way in some way shape or form from fiscal conservatism. CA spends more money on welfare and other social give away programs than any other state in the union! We have given more services and money to ILLEGAL ALIENS than any other state! You can’t keep spending more money than you take in without consequences…do you know that state revenues have consistently grown over the last 5 years but state spending has far outgrown the revenues?!? Has anyone taken economics 101 and discussed how governments make money??!! That’s right taxes…oh I’m sorry in California we sometimes call them fees to disregard the State Constitution but that’s a discussion for another time. Back to taxes…Professors and teachers like myself as well as all firefighters, police officers, and all other government workers are PAID through tax dollars. So when I or other gov’t workers pay taxes we aren’t really paying taxes that increase revenues ONLY private business does that! Where am I going with this? Well, the truth is when you create a climate in which business (private sector) can not thrive, you destroy the tax base and therefore government does not have enough money to waste. And by the way, education is NOT a right! You must earn it like everything else that is worth anything (except salvation) in this world. The “man”, California,or some other s”oppressor” does not owe you your existence, education, free rent, free health care, or any other material good you need to earn it by YOUR INDIVIDUAL MERIT! I am sick and tired of the CTA, NEA, and academics such as this professor setting and talking about agendas that are disastrous for education, students, families, and the greatest Nation to exist on planet earth, AMERICA.
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Joseph D
Actually, when you look more closely at the facts, you will see that per student, California teachers are paid among the worst. It looks great on paper that we get the dollar amounts we do, but when union contracts are ignored and 58 students sit down in class on the first day of school, you just start teaching. So, sure, I may get a thousand more dollars than a teacher in some other state, but I am literally handling double the number of students. Per student, California’s teacher wages are extremely low.
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Good for you, Prof. O’Hare! You got the discussion going again…
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Acess, Acess, Acess. And no responcility, no responcibility, no responcibility. You should only have acess if you bust your butt and really care seriously about what you are doing. That is why we have the Community College System. Back up for people that can’t get their stuff together. And the drop rate here is horrible. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.
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Spelling, spelling, spelling. Grammar, grammar, grammar. Perhaps learn these things first before posting – if you would like to be taken seriously.
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California ranks in the bottom 10 of the 50 states in education funding. Yet ranks in the upper 3rd in income burden. Your beef may be with Sacramento Professor.
Also, you fail to note that California teachers have the highest salary in the nation at $65,000. You lament the lack of basic skills of your incoming students, yet you fail to fact check your own bold statements. And in doing so you expose your letter as one big plea for more money, probably for your own salary perhaps.
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Joseph, I have been teaching at a Title 1 high school for 7 years (it’s a second career for me) and I have yet to make $65,000 a year (I am not even close). It takes, on average, 10 years and a Master’s Degree to make that salary and with the current work load 50% of beginning teachers do not see year 10.
While reading the Professor’s letter I could not help but think of my seniors who have not had access to music or art and the new batch of 9th graders, too many reading way below grade level. This letter hits the mark and Cal gets the cream of the crop. Can you imagine the same type of letter from an urban Community College teacher? I shudder.
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Wow, it’s good to see that readers got the point of this…Unfortunately, this was another failed attempt to spark discussion and reform and to kindle in our young little hearts a spirit of kinship with our fellow Americans. I’ve never considered myself patriotic, but come on! Once again proving that united we stand, divided we fall.
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Thank you, sir, for putting so well what a lot of us powerless folk are feeling.
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Most of the comments here miss the point entirely. That’s not really surpring, though, since it’s this same selfish mentality that got us into this mess in the first place. We have an OBLIGATION to provide free public education to our children and our children’s children. This is fundamental to a representative democracy, and we are failing in this obligation. The state of California’s public education is far below where it ought to be, and it just gets worse every year. This is a matter of public record.
Professor O’Hare doesn’t say anything about raising taxes, but he does encourage this generation to renew the social contract and ensure that we meet our obligations to the future by providing high quality education to all. Those of you who equate this with socialism or communism ought to spend a little less time listening to Rush Limbaugh and a little more time actually studying democracy.
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Jake, how do you think we get money into the education system in the first place? I’ll give you a hint: it starts with ‘t’, and ends with ‘axes’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about public education as well, but we’re no longer going to spend the unreasonable sums that the education system (and government in general) receives to get it. There’s a happy medium somewhere, but our current system goes to extremes.
However the facts remain: we’re spending more than ever on education, but our students are still not actually getting educated. Test scores, graduation rates, and even literacy itself continues to dwindle, even as spending increases. Perhaps throwing money at the problem isn’t the answer? Perhaps all of us being “selfish” and not putting money into the system isn’t a correct statement? I would say so…
But perhaps you should spend a little less time worrying about who listens to Rush Limbaugh, and a little more time studying and getting educated yourself, because if you did in fact know what you were talking about, you would know that socialism and communism are completely independent concepts than that of democracy.
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That’s a great theory you have, but growing up in Berkeley (BHS year of 2002) I can tell you that every school I attended was grossly under-staffed and under funded. Teachers had to buy classroom supplies out of pocket, textbooks were out of date, and classes were disgustingly overcrowded. Less than 2% of Berkeley High students attend UC Berkeley after high school even though it’s literally across the fucking street.
You’re right, money can’t solve everything, but it can make a huge difference. Hiring a new teachers can cut down class sizes dramatically, and multiply the time teachers have to give attention to each student. Personal attention is exactly what students need to succeed. 15-year-olds cannot learn effectively if they are ignored.
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Hmmmm…..it always amuses me when those who consider themselves educated compare terms like “socialism” and “democracy”.
Ok, let’s see it one more time:
Communism, socialism, capitalism – the “big three” of economic systems. ECONOMIC – not systems of law. We do not have, and have not had in our history as a sovereign nation, a purely capitalist system. The reason for this is clear; pure systems are inflexible and always, always, ALWAYS fail if unsupported by elements of the other two. We have capitalism, with a bit of socialism employed at the service of keeping the capitalist economy smooth. We even have bits of communism, though god forbid anyone would ever admit it – but of course we have places where everyone puts in and everyone takes out. This always supports the capitalist economy – it does not supplant it.
Democracy, Monarchy, Feudalism, Aristocracy, the list goes on – these are forms of government. Our government CANNOT be “socialism”, because socialism is not a form of government. It can be employed by a government of any type, and is in this country today to some degree, but it is not a type of government.
Now that our terms are straight, let’s acknowledge one thing – it is purely selfish in the extreme to think only of one’s self. Are we agreed on this? I’m going to assume that we are, and then I’m going to make an assertion – anyone who refuses to put anything that might save a dying system into that systems despite reaping the benefits of that system embodies selfishness. What that person is saying is simple: “I want all the benefit of the best government we could possibly have, but I will not pay for it.”
Selfishness is the reason the system is failing. Taxes are odious – but if you agree to pay taxes to remove your state’s debt and to fix some very base-level problems, and then take an active role in making sure that happens (the part where most people fail – laziness is as common as selfishness; they are part and parcel), then the system will improve, and (here’s the best part) EVERYONE benefits. Not just the poor, not just the rich – everyone.
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What is remarkably missing from this discussion (although alluded to in Sam Cramer’s comment) is the fact that a lot of the expense of 21st century government is eaten up in internal reporting. Those on the political right mistakenly confuse this with regulation. For example, I sit on the Planning Commission of a California jurisdiction. Our staff is required to produce documents and reports of various sorts to comply with state reporting requirements, many of which are, in theory, good ideas. But those requirements quickly become ends in themselves. These are not regulatory. They are things like: your area is projected to grow in population by 5% over the next five years. How are you going to house them? However the reporting rules associated with the way the state asks that question of the jurisdiction are set up to pretend like there isn’t a market factor in housing development, that housing is related to job growth in an entirely local way, etc., etc. So we have several man years of staff resources eaten up in every five year cycle with a mirror image on the state side (and that is duplicated for the thousand or so jurisdictions throughout the state), and in the end the reports have no real effect one way or the other — because housing is, in fact, market driven.
We cannot afford to keep doing this kind of thing.
The trouble is it would take a lot of political capital to change things in this way, in large measure because so much of 21st century government is arcane. I may be well to the left of the political spectrum, but I agree we need to shrink government, just not with the machete that hacks off state services. Instead we need a scalpel that cuts away the deeply hidden fat of unproductivity. Simply cutting taxes won’t do it. We have to change the laws that require reporting and change the expectations of the public about what can and can’t be effectively reported.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to reduce such a nuanced approach to the kind of sound bites that will garner the necessary political traction (in spite of the fact that the savings/improvement in productivity could be enormous).
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Oh, ranting from the left coast… and how misguided.
Let me tell you where the real swindle is coming from: it’s right under your nose, in your beloved public sector. You want to know why people won’t pay the ever increasing taxes to fund those wonderful things that we actually all want? It’s because we refuse to pay the exuberant costs of unionized public workers. Here’s an interesting fact, and perhaps you can explain to me why my taxes should increase even more than their current level for this: the average public sector worker today makes four times that of the salary and the benefits of the average private sector worker. It’s no question of why costs are through the roof. So please, tell me why as a hard a working American, I should pour even more of my hard earned money into people that are making four times my salary, and who won’t even do something as simple as to take a pay cut when economic times are tough?
We just had this very problem here in NJ. The teacher’s union refused to take a pay freeze when NJ couldn’t meet its budget (despite the 115 tax increases that we’ve experienced in the last 9 years). NJ is the highest taxed state in the US for property taxes (which have been raised by 56% since 2001), and we are scheduled to have another increase this year, even with the new conservative governor. Guess what: people can’t afford it. Even with all of the people who love NJ (and yes, we do in fact love NJ), they are moving out in droves. So now, despite your big taxing, big spending liberals (and I mean liberals in the contemporary sense), we’re short on our budget because there is nobody left to pay the taxes.
You say that the heart of the problem is greed, and I have to agree with you on that one. But it’s not the greed of the people you are referring to (i.e. the ones who are paying the taxes), it’s the greed of the people receiving those taxes. Here in NJ (and all over the country), we have government workers, school administrators, and all kinds of other public sector workers who are making the most lavish of salaries (some $200,000+ per year), and that is not even including their added benefits. Just *firing* a superintendent of schools last year here in NJ cost the tax payers $700,000 in severance pay. “Greed” is right, but you’re not seeing past the initial knee-jerk reaction, and to the root cause of the problem. People in general have no problem paying reasonable taxes. And it’s not that we don’t want to have wonderful parks, to have great services, to help the homeless and those in need, and to have top notch education (because we do); it’s that we can’t afford the enormity of the costs that, for some reason in this modern era, we now have to pay for them. If you want to direct your anger at this loss of society towards somebody, at least point it in the right direction. Find out why we can’t seem to reduce the skyrocketing costs of the public worker, which accounts for the majority of state budgets. You might just find unions and some corrupt government officials as the culprits. (And by “might,” I mean “will.”) The governor of NJ couldn’t even get the teacher’s union to accept a simple pay freeze (instead of their 3% increase), and to pay a mere 1.5% into their benefits for ONE YEAR. Instead, hundreds of teachers had to be let go. Interesting how teachers (who voted within the union) had no problem taking their pay increase, all while hurting students, increasing classroom sizes, and causing hundreds of their co-workers (namely newer teachers) to lose their jobs. Greed… what a concept.
Now to your theory of “if only people would spend more.” Well you see, that’s interesting, because that’s what they do in Europe. Their tax rates are anywhere between two and three times higher than ours, and they have vast public sector workforces (60% or more of the workforce in some countries). But oh look! Three European states are broke, while others have deficits anywhere between 75% and 100% of their GDP. People in Greece are rioting in the streets (those public sector workers that may now not receive their pension benefits; can’t say that I blame them), and only a few months ago, the EU warned of the possibility of democracy ending in Spain, Greece, and Portugal. (Hmm, remind you of any other depressions that you may have heard of? You do claim to be a student of history, after all…) It’s also interesting with how despite their enormous taxes on the “rich” (i.e. everyone who isn’t poor), they still have to ration both their “free” healthcare, and “free” education…
But going back, take a look at all of the things that you’re talking about in your post. Oakland police not taking 911 calls anymore? Well that’s really interesting that they can’t afford to do that, being that the starting salary for an Oakland police officer is $70,000, PLUS benefits. Go take a look at your state’s budget. Take a look at what the costs are to run these facilities, and what the average worker makes. You might find out why people “won’t” (i.e. “can’t”) afford these things any longer. But since you are on the receiving end of all of this madness, you may just not understand it like the “common folk” do, when they see the ridiculous sums of money taken out of their paychecks because your wonderful public sector has voted to pay themselves even more, to continue their lavish lifestyles.
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Here’s an interesting fact, and perhaps you can explain to me why my taxes should increase even more than their current level for this: the average public sector worker today makes four times that of the salary and the benefits of the average private sector worker. How about statistics that mean something, like comparison of public and private sector by job type and responsibilities. Because I know that anyone working for the private sector who does the kind of work that a public sector lineman or construction worker does is going to make a pretty decent living. I know that anyone in the public sector who puts in the kinds of hours that teachers put in is going to have a lot more than 30,000 a year and a modest pension to show for it. Averages mean… nothing. The average annual income of Donald Trump and a homeless man who panhandles in Times Square is about 20 million dollars.
Just *firing* a superintendent of schools last year here in NJ cost the tax payers $700,000 in severance pay.
Right, as opposed to, say William Wise, CEO of El Paso Corp, who sued when his severance pay was a measly 9.4 million dollars or Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli who pocketed $82 million in severance. But that doesn’t cost anyone anything, right? It just comes out of thin air. No wait, it comes out of “earnings,” right? Just chew on that for a second: how much would it cost in severance to fire a superintendent of a privatized school system the size of New Jersey’s public school system?
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Home Depot doesn’t put a gun to the heads of customers and demand more money to pay Nardelli that $82M.
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Averages are averages because we’re talking about the MAJORITY. Sure, you know of a few millionaires. Wow… And do you live in NJ? Because if you don’t, then you wouldn’t know that teacher’s starting salaries for a brand new teacher in NJ are almost $50,000 in most places (which can go up past $90,000 with experience), and then they get benefits and a pension ON TOP of that, which they don’t have to pay for. The benefits package and free pension fund brings their actual salaries to almost $70,000, to START. They make well over $100,000 total with a little experience. Oh, did I mention that we have over 600 school districts in this tiny state?
Every private sector employee has to pay their own way for benefits and pensions, unless their non-tax-payer-funded company does so instead. I’m not saying that teachers shouldn’t make a good salary, because they should. I’m saying that teachers and administrators shouldn’t make ridiculous salaries and get benefits that they don’t have to pay for, when people in the state can’t afford the continual rise in taxes that are required to pay those luxury salaries. These are taxes that are literally bringing this state (and apparently others as well) to its knees, and like I mentioned before, people are fleeing from it. It is estimated that the state has lost $70 billion dollars (oh yes, with a ‘B’) in revenue during the past 5 years from the “rich” moving out. Now if only we had that ~$14 billion per year to fund our $10 billion dollar education system (the highest in the country).
Right, as opposed to, say William Wise, CEO of El Paso Corp, who sued when his severance pay was a measly 9.4 million dollars or Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli who pocketed $82 million in severance. But that doesn’t cost anyone anything, right? It just comes out of thin air. No wait, it comes out of “earnings,” right? Just chew on that for a second: how much would it cost in severance to fire a superintendent of a privatized school system the size of New Jersey’s public school system?
Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that we were talking about private sector jobs. Oh right, we weren’t. We were talking about public sector jobs, and why American’s are supposedly just not “willing” to pay for them. I don’t care what kind of severance pay someone gets, as long as it’s not coming out of my tax dollars, and the tax dollars of others. Private schools are funded PRIVATELY. Private businesses are funded PRIVATELY. Make an argument now, or chew on your own stupidity.
Nobody has said capitalism is perfect, and anyone who knows anything about the world and history knows that there is no perfect system, and there never will be. But go look into the alternatives (socialism and communism), and you won’t be a happy camper. Study a little history, and see how those two have played out… Sounds great on paper–doesn’t work in the real world. Capitalism, with all of its flaws, is the best the world has to offer. It’s so easy to complain about the flaws of our current system when you haven’t experienced how the rest of the world lives. Do that, and you won’t have a thing to say.
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At the risk of further irritating Greg, I want to follow up on Alex’s point about comparing aggregate private sector and aggregate public sector jobs. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman addressed this in a recent blog entry, writing that “State and local employees are paid more, on average, than private-sector workers — about 13 percent more” but “that’s an apples and oranges comparison: state and local workers are much better educated and somewhat older than private-sector workers, and once you correct for that the comparison actually seems to go the other way.”
In other words, Greg, the real facts nationally are that those of us who work for the public interest earn less than we would, with our education and experience, if we pursued jobs in the private sector.
And what Professor O’Hare is arguing is not that every person in California should contribute more to fund his salary. He is arguing, and his examples are clear, that our state is cutting funding for basic services that benefit all of us, because of a corrosive change in commitment to sharing the benefits of progress. We here at UC, staff and faculty, took 8% or more pay cuts over the past year; and still, we have had to defer maintenance on over-crowded classrooms, we have had to see people– up to 20% of staff in many departments– who were the advisors for undergraduates and graduate students laid off.
I don’t know the facts on the ground in New Jersey, but I do know them in California. We suffer from a unique legal requirement, that no other state has, that requires a two-thirds majority to pass a budget or to raise taxes. That means even when far more than the majority of the state representatives are willing to address the deterioration being caused by the fall in income (with unemployment rising and home values and sales falling) the legislature cannot do it. A minority blocks progress.
And this, as Professor O’Hare notes, is not fair to the brilliant students we work to teach here at Berkeley. They are the top students of their high schools. They have an average Grade Point Average of 3.93 out of 4. Their preparation will fuel the California economy in the future. They deserve a campus that is not falling apart, they deserve classes that are not so large that students must sit on the floor, they deserve to be treated as what they are: our hope for the future.
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Absolutely Rosemary, I couldn’t agree more with your last statement. And I’d even agree that you are probably correct in that public sector employees are better educated, and could possibly earn even more if they were in the private sector.
But unfortunately the concept of fairness-of-pay doesn’t change much when the facts of the real world are this:
1) Somebody has to pay for it all. That “somebody” happens to be every taxpayer in the state. When those people can no longer afford to pay the high salaries of public employees, then you have a problem. No private sector business can continue to pay each of its employees $100,000+ salaries when there is not enough revenue to support it. Yet in the public sector, this is somehow different, as unions and government workers will never accept pay cuts (or at best, very rarely), regardless of the situation.
2) We are still paying more than we ever have for education, and getting less out of it. From what I understand, teachers in California are compensated with some of the highest salaries in the entire country. And you and I are paying some of the highest state level taxes that we have ever experienced (at least here in NJ, although I know that California’s taxes are also high). Yet we should pay more into the system, as the professor suggests?
So you see, it’s not even about if public sector workers are paid more because they deserve it. (I actually feel that in most cases, they do deserve it, especially you teachers. You have a tough job.) But what it’s really about is what can be done in the real world. We can chose to live in fairy tale land and continue to tax our country down to a point where we, our children, and our children’s children will never experience the same level of prosperity and opportunity that you and I did. Or we can start living in the real world, realize that this current situation is not sustainable, and attempt to do something about it. Unfortunately, at the very heart, the cause of the problem is spending, and public employees account for most of our states’ budgets, whether they are making what they deserve or not.
I honestly do feel for you though, as it really is terrible that you are experiencing cuts at your school. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to the students. (And as a fairly recent college graduate myself, I understand completely!) However, it is not as the professor suggests, that people have somehow decided that they no longer want to support government services (that they themselves most likely enjoy), and greedily want keep their money to themselves.
The obvious reason that you are experiencing cuts now is because of the economic recession, and people just don’t have the money that they used to. But even more than that, both of our states had taxed so much when the times were good, that we ended up taxing the money right out of them. Businesses can’t grow and end up leaving as tax burdens increase, the wealthy leave as tax burdens increase, and for all of the people who are left in the state, they just become less wealthy in general (assuming that they were even a taxpayer in the first place, as over 40% of Americans are not). But now that times are tough, there is nothing that can be done about this problem. A guy that I met recently actually put it best. His statement was, “if we had just been conservative all along and took note of our taxing and spending, we would only be clipping off a fingernail in this current recession, instead of what we have to do now, which is chop off an arm.” So you see, taxing more isn’t going to fix the problems, because it will just drive more businesses and individuals to leave the state. Sure, it will raise some money for a time, but it will just be a temporary band-aid while more and more leave. And then who is left to tax?
On another note, I see that you mentioned your state legislature, and how a minority “blocks progress.” I can only assume that you mean “progress” as increases in taxation to “fix” the problem. But again, this concept of “tax the rich” does not work. It never has worked, and it never will work. It’s one of those things that when you look at it on the most superficial levels, it sounds like a great idea. But if you really delve into the issue, and study it throughout history and how it functions in practice, you will see why it doesn’t work. Quite simply, it doesn’t account for human nature (and actually comes all the way down to simple punishment and reward behavior). This concept has brought entire nations to lower prosperity, lower standards of living, and quite frankly, gives those country’s citizens a reason to move to America. We all think that Europe is a great place that has these “wonderful” systems of socialized healthcare and “free” higher education. Yet the tax burdens are so high that the majority of Europeans live in tiny apartments, and most don’t own or drive a car because they can’t afford one. They come here and say, “Wow! You have so much here in America!” (actual quote from a group of German tourists that I met in NY). There is a reason that the United States became, and still is, the most prosperous nation on the planet. And trust me, it didn’t come to be that way with progressivism and higher taxes.
As a final note, I would not have become “irritated” by any civil message that you would have posted. Alex didn’t quite believe in that concept. But I actually welcome any and all spirited debate, and wish that I could have been in Professor O’Hare’s class to offer him that “push back” intellectually that he says to have been missing in his students
Otherwise, I hope that California wises up and appropriates some obviously misappropriated funds back into your university when times get better! Until then, and unfortunately, one has to live in the real world..
All the best,
Greg
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Hi all,
I just wanted to comment briefly on Greg’s note about Europe. I am an Austrian. More than 55% of my salary goes to taxes and social security. I work for a non-profit organization, and my husband is not rich, so I would consider ourselves normal middle class citizens – just to set the scene. I don’t live in a tiny apartment, because the cost of living in Vienna is not absurdly high. I have a car, but I wouldn’t really need one since public transportation is great. I received a PhD in Austria at no cost (except cost of living), and I’m going on a 14-month maternity leave in a few months, during which I’ll receive 80% of my net salary (paid by the government). I did my undergraduate studies in California, and although it was beautiful there and the people were wonderful, I’m quite happy here in Vienna. Socialist systems have their problems too, no doubt, but it’s not quite accurate to think that most Europeans are suffering and want to move to America. Austria has a lot of things to improve – unfriendly customer service and xenophobia, to name a few – but I have no problem paying my taxes!
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Since for some reason the Blog won’t let me directly reply to Greg’s reply to my comments, I am doing so this way.
(1) what it’s really about is what can be done in the real world. Indeed, that is precisely the point. As Professor O’Hare points out, the cost to close the entire budget gap here in California– not just the part dealing with education– would average $500 a person. That is not a fairy tale, impossible number. There have been several workable proposals on how to achieve this. And yes, they involve paying taxes. We pay taxes for public goods from which we benefit. Sometimes the benefit is direct (roads are built and we drive on them); sometimes they are indirect (public transportation may not be used by a driver, but the people taking public transportation are not on the road, so he or she experiences a better traffic flow). With public education, even if you have no direct benefit (you have no children or you and your children went to private schools), the education of others in your community means there will be educated people doing all the work that supports your community.
(2) I see that you mentioned your state legislature, and how a minority “blocks progress.” I can only assume that you mean “progress” as increases in taxation to “fix” the problem. But again, this concept of “tax the rich” does not work. It never has worked, and it never will work. The minority clout in our unique system means even passing a budget can be stalled by a minority. And yes, budgets include sources of revenue (taxes and fees) as well as outlines of what those revenues will be spent on.
According to the California Budget Project, “As a share of the state’s economy state spending is at its lowest levels since the early 1970s”; “Current year spending is $16.9 billion below 2007-08 levels and Proposed 2010-11 spending is $20.1 billion below 2007-08 levels”.
In the California budget, spending for schools at all levels– K-12, the California State University System, and the University of California– is 18% to 20% below the level originally expected.
Overall, California’s state spending is in the middle of US states (23rd out of 50); in some areas– notably education– it is low. Over 70% of state spending goes to local communities, where among other things, it helps fund police, firefighting, and other basic services.
Under the proposed state budget, funding for K-12 schools would actually be over $1500 per student less than in 2006-2007. We rank 45th out of 50 states in spending at this level.
(3) We are still paying more than we ever have for education, and getting less out of it. What is your evidence for either side of that proposition? public higher education– universities like Berkeley– have experienced a continually decreasing level (percentage of budget and/or dollars per student) of state support for decades. Yet public universities like Berkeley have not only continued to teach the same number of students with less resources; we have increased the number of students, even over the last few years, even when the number of instructors stayed the same. That means, current students probably will have larger classes across the board than their parents’ generation, and that means they are having a qualitatively different learning experience. But I don’t see how you are able to say students are getting less out of public education.
(4) you and I are paying some of the highest state level taxes that we have ever experienced. Not true. Sorry, not true here in California, and I suspect probably not in New Jersey either. The California Budget Project provides excellent analysis and reports for my state. Here’s the facts: “compare to those of other states, California is a moderate tax state. In 2008-09, California ranked 21st among the 50 states with respect to state taxes as a percentage of personal income. The state also ranked 19th with respect to total ‘own source’ revenues – the broadest measure of state and local revenues – raised by state and local governments in 2006-07, the most recent year for which data are available.”
(5) Businesses can’t grow and end up leaving as tax burdens increase, the wealthy leave as tax burdens increase, and for all of the people who are left in the state, they just become less wealthy in general (assuming that they were even a taxpayer in the first place, as over 40% of Americans are not). Again, the California Budget Project shows that here, “The poorest fifth of the state’s non-elderly families, with an average income of
$13,200, spent 11.1 percent of their income on state taxes. In comparison, the wealthiest 1 percent, with an average income of $2.2 million, spent 7.8 percent of their income on state taxes.” So, your belief that the rich are over-taxed and forced out of the state is unfounded. Nor are corporations subject to excessive taxation here: “in California small businesses pay a very small share of the corporate income tax. While 709,937 corporations filed tax returns, the 2.0 percent with taxable incomes of $1 million or more paid 87.2 percent of the 2007 corporate income tax”. Or in other words: the corporate tax burden falls on a small number of highly profitable businesses. In fact, “recent growth in corporate profits reported for California tax purposes far exceeds that of
income reported by individual taxpayers”.
As for who doesn’t pay taxes– the implication in your post is that this is primarily low wage earners. The facts in California: “In 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, 647,547 taxpayers reported incomes of $200,000 or more. However, 2,044 of these taxpayers paid no California personal income tax….
The number of high-income “no tax” returns more than tripled between 1997 and 2007, rising from 579 to 2,044.”
(6) Finally, while I appreciate that you, so distant from our shore, are interested enough to argue vigorously against a plea for the restoring of state support to higher education here, when you assume that New Jersey is a model for California, you ignore what is specific here, the history that Professor O’Hare is trying to get our students to think about. You write The obvious reason that you are experiencing cuts now is because of the economic recession, and people just don’t have the money that they used to. Sure, the reason for the economic crisis is the national and global economic crisis. But the reason it is so disproportionately affecting schools here are specific. Our population is growing, and the proportion of older residents is rising, so that we need more services for children (including education at all levels) while we also need to cover the health needs of older residents.
Tax cuts in California lowered revenues over the past two decades. We had a revenue problem even before the economic downturn. The California Budget Project estimates a total of more than $11 billion– that’s billion in tax revenues were lost due to cuts since 1993.
Again, quoting the California Budget Project:
“Over the past two decades, the cost of funding state services has shifted from corporate to personal income taxpayers. The Department of Finance estimates that personal income tax receipts will provide 53.2 percent of General Fund revenues in 2009-10, up from 35.4 percent in 1980-81. Corporate tax receipts are expected to provide 10.7 percent of General Fund revenues in 2009-10, down from 14.6 percent in 1980-81.”
California shifted too much of the burden of funding public services onto the backs of individuals. This is, by the way, not unique to this state, so you may want to explore what is happening in New Jersey. When legislators are obligated to corporate funding, is it any wonder they implement tax policies to favor corporations?
These are the lessons our students need to learn, and with any luck, the message they take away will be that investing in the future is good for the economy and good for their quality of life.
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Rosemary articulates with less pique the point I was making. You say that a brand new teacher in New Jersey makes $50,000 (that sounds a little high to me, my wife having been on the teacher job market in the last three years, but I’ll trust you I suppose). That’s a lot of money, right? Not if you consider that after at least four years of schooling (although I can’t imagine anyone getting $50,000 without a master’s degree, at least; so maybe 6 years of schooling), that’s their salary. For people coming out of a four-year finance degree, it’s more on the order of 80-100,000. Same goes for many of the sciences. A pharmacy assistant? 40-60,000. If you’re comparing it with McDonald’s or The Gap or being a temp, then yeah, teachers make a lot of money. But if you’re comparing it to other fields that require 4-6 years of schooling and demand 60 hour+ weeks in the on season (and at least 20 hours a week during the “vacation”), then I have no idea what you’re talking about.
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Refer to my reply to Rosemary.
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Alex: New Jersey’s average starting teacher salary is reported as $38,408; the overall average of $58,156, which factors in the longest-serving teachers and the beginners, ranks 36 in “comfort index”, which is not good– it means it is hard to meet the cost of living on this salary.
And yes– the 30% estimated gap between what someone with the same education would get in a private sector job requiring the same education means that public teachers are not gouging the public; they are contributing a share of potential earnings to the public good.
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And averages are not a remotely reliable way to look at incomes. If you’re going to use wildly generalized measurements, at least use median and average together. It gives us a picture that’s not completely nonsensical.
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The governor of NJ couldn’t even get the teacher’s union to accept a simple pay freeze
Who in the private sector would accept a pay freeze?
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How about I just ask you this: whose salary in the private sector is payed for by taxpayers?
But amidst your ridiculous argument, I’ll tell you who: the people who work for companies that aren’t doing well enough to keep paying their high salaries. When TWA wasn’t doing well before they went out of business, their employees took a pay CUT (not just a freeze, a cut) to not only keep their jobs, but to keep the company afloat. Not enough revenue in the private sector: you either take a pay cut, or you lose your job. It should be the same in the public sector, but we can’t seem to ever lower salaries once they’ve been raised. Higher public salaries are like an addiction, not unlike socialized healthcare, social security, or any other entitlement program that exists. Once you get on them, there’s no getting off of them. It doesn’t matter if the program is working well, or not so well. In this case: not so well.
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This is why I hate fiscal conservatives. They have no problem citing neoclassical postulates like “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” but when it actually comes to understanding this principle, they have no clue what they’re talking about. Do you think that just because no one sends you a form and says, “Pay this amount of money on your income” that you’re not paying? Yes, we absolutely can compare the private sector and the public sector, because, whether the money comes out of our taxes or if it’s taken away from us through more roundabout means, we still pay. If a CEO gets 80 million in severance, that comes out of company earnings. Those earnings may go to shareholders, they may go to employees in the form of wage increases, they may go to the state in the form of taxes. But if they go to the CEO, then they go to the CEO. It’s a zero sum game: he wins; somebody else loses. And that goes both ways. With school funding, the schools and America win, your yacht, hummer, and flat screen TV lose. Sorry if I don’t mourn their loss. To preempt one of the arguments that I know you’re going to try and raise, in both cases, one could make the argument that there are also hidden gains (with the CEO, maybe making them competitive means more ingenuity and a better economy yada yada yada; with the school, keeping schools active means more intelligent people who build stronger businesses and come up with better ideas yada yada yada).
Whose salary in the private sector is payed for by taxpayers?: well, how about everybody who works at Boeing; everybody who works at Northrup Grumman; everybody who works at Enron; everybody who works at DARPA… Would you like me to continue?
When TWA wasn’t doing well before they went out of business, their employess took a pay CUT (not just a freeze, a cut) Since when is a freeze better than a cut? If you lowered teachers salaries instead of freezing their paychecks, they’d be a lot more likely to agree.
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Alex, you have to realize something. The situation of private businesses is market driven. In all cases except for a few well defined situations, markets lead to efficiency. This is because every market transaction is a result of a mutually beneficial free will agreement. (I know there are counterexamples. For example, siphoning money out of a corporation for personal gain is fraudulent and deceitful, and thus does not constitute a mutually beneficial freewill agreement. [Know the difference between a salary/severance pay and siphoning money, and for that matter what a corporation is before attacking this.])
To address the ridiculous salaries of CEOs, understand it this way. Why does your boss often make a lot more money than you, but does less work? So you want to be the boss. This makes you work harder and thus be more productive. This leads to lower prices and higher production, which increases profits, and in the face of competition, is better for consumers.
So how is government different? Governments are so powerful, they can make rules that allow or force them to bypass free market interactions. For example, starting a new business. The government can make rules that say you need to pay a fee or be approved before you can do so. In a free economy, the demands of consumers, availability of resources and other factors would decide it. (Don’t mention things like environmental damage, because that’s an example of one of the well defined exceptions to free market efficiency.)
Monopolies are another example of a source of inefficiency in a market. A teachers’ or any other type of union is a monopoly by the way.
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Wow, just wow. You really need an education. A “pay freeze” means that the teachers did not get a raise. It doesn’t mean “freezing their paychecks!” I actually have to laugh in that you even thought that could be done. You’re hilarious. Stupid, but hilarious. But back on point, a pay cut would OBVIOUSLY be worse than a pay freeze.
And if you hate fiscal conservatives, then you can go right ahead and move to Europe! It’s an absolute disaster right now because of the lack of fiscal conservatives, but you are 100% welcome to live in a tiny apartment and pay $9 for a gallon of gas like most Europeans do. Oh, and you can even take part in the riots in Greece! (Honestly, your sheer lack of knowledge of the rest of the world is why you make ridiculous statements like that.)
Not to mention the fact that you somehow think that “yachts, flat screens, and hummers” are what people are going to be missing out on with higher taxes. Wow you are misguided. That is frankly the most stupid thing that I’ve ever heard. Guess what, that might be true for about 0.001% of the country. For MOST people (i.e. the rest of us, i.e. 99.999% of the country) we’re talking our standard of living, or even the ability to remain in a state at all. Out of the 6 houses around mine, 4 are currently for sale. We know 3 of the couples, and they are all moving out for tax reasons. Whatever made you believe that everyone in America who pays taxes have “yachts, hummers, and big flat screen TV’s” is just beyond me (and probably anyone else for that matter). You not only need to get your facts straight, but start using a little common sense.
To follow with your stupid statement (and yes I know that two “wrongs” don’t make a “right”), this is “why I hate you fiscal spenders:” your absolute lack of education and lack of knowledge of how the real world works. You live in fairy tale land, and just have no clue, nor have you even tried to educate yourself on the issues. You hear something stupid like, “conservatives don’t want to pay taxes,” or “conservatives are all greedy,” or “conservatives don’t care about the poor,” and you believe that nonsense, without even asking someone who is conservative about it, to find out if those statements have any validity (which they don’t). Learn to research things for yourself. And you have no problem forcing everyone else in the country pay for what you want. Well guess what, I’m a conservative, and I donated over $2,000 to charities last year (of the measly 30k that my new business earned, <22k of which I took home). Can you honestly tell me that you've donated even $50? Or anything? But again, no problem forcing everyone else to pay…
But I guess the worst of it all is that you liberals see superficial "problems," and want to implement "fixes" that have such far reaching and terrible consequences that only when it's too late do you realize "Oh, crap, I guess we shouldn't have done that. The old way really was better." You honestly just don't see past your own hand placed in front of your face. (Psst, there's a much bigger picture behind it.) Start studying the history and even the present of your "wonderful spending," healthcare, and all that other garbage that I'm sure you think sounds great. And if you still don't believe me, why don't you go ask the people of pretty much any nation in Europe, especially Greece, France, Belgium, or Italy, who now have debts of either coming up on 100% of their GDP, or far beyond that. While you're at it, why don't you ask how their healthcare system is working out (which I'm sure you think is wonderful, because you just don't know). I'd say to ask around anywhere else in the world, but nowhere else is even as close to as prosperous as we are here in America. And refer to my post in reply to Rosemary about why your "tax the rich" scheme has never, and will never work in the real world. Again, your complete lack of knowledge demonstrates it all.
As far as the CEO's go, sure, maybe some get taxpayer money. But the REAL question is, is why they have taxpayer money in the first place for a private industry. You can ask your wonderful big spending liberals, and "too big to fail" friends in congress about that one. However in MOST cases, CEO's are paid by the company's private earnings. You mention some of the defense industries that are payed for by the taxpayers (probably the only companies with CEO's that you even know of). Well OK, I agree with you for those. Those CEO's shouldn't be running off with millions. In fact, I agree with you for all of them, but if they are a private industry, then that is their business, and the people who buy from them. But let me tell you something: if CEO's wages are all that you have to cry about here in America, then you need to get some perspective on how the rest of the world works. You'd then say to yourself, "well hmm, that's bad, but honestly its peanuts next to the problems of other nations…" (those other nations being the ones whose very policies you want to implement here in America). Again, don't believe me? Move to the next best thing: Europe. Nobody is saying that you have to stay here in America. And honestly, I think you'd be doing the rest of us a favor by doing so.
Also, for your information, teachers in private schools here in NJ make less than half of what most public school teachers make.
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I mistakenly thought a pay freeze was something other than it was. Sorry.
You didn’t respond at all to my main point, though, which is that the money comes from somewhere, regardless of whether it’s the taxpayer or employees and shareholders or price increases. The fact that it’s the taxpayer paying is your big revelation and your main point, but I’m saying that that point is bunk.
I don’t particularly care about whether you pay charities or not. And I don’t particularly care if you’re a good person. (Although I do think, good or bad, conservatives tend to lie about their income. You said that your new business made 30,000. How much did you make in capital gains?) But that’s not what this argument is about. It’s about support for public social services.
And actually, CEO’s of defense companies receiving taxpayer money is not a liberal or conservative problem. The defense industry employs a lot of people, and the most anti-war liberals and the most anti-spending conservatives somehow always seem to come together to boost military funding.
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why don’t you ask how their healthcare system is working out
I’ve never met a single person from Canada or Europe who would trade the U.S. healthcare system for their own. Every European friend I’ve had who has lived in the U.S. has been incredibly disgusted with our healthcare system.
Actually, that’s not entirely true: the only people I’ve met who prefer the U.S. healthcare system are incredibly wealthy people like my uncle who lives in Canada and who loves the U.S. because he can get whatever treatments he wants and whatever drugs he wants, and cost isn’t much of an issue for him.
The debt crises in Europe have to do with a lot more than public spending. I would say that large amounts of public spending over a short period of time – Spain and Ireland, for example – have created precarious situations for the countries that have done it. But the countries that have long had large public sectors – Germany, Switzerland, Holland – are faring no worse than the U.S. right now.
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One last point: the only president to end his term with a budget surplus in the last 30 years has been Clinton. Bush deepened the deficit more than any of his predecessors (mostly through defense spending).
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Alex there was no surplus when Clinton left office and the only reason for any kind of fiscal restraint during the Clinton Administration was because the Republicans took over congress with Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America that forced Clinton to the center. Like Greg said you really need to educate yourself and learn to research and come to your own conclusions. Your second comment about Bush and driving up the deficit here is a good breakdown of the CBO numbers that show it was not the wars and defense spending.
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I don’t particularly care about whether you pay charities or not. And I don’t particularly care if you’re a good person. (Although I do think, good or bad, conservatives tend to lie about their income. You said that your new business made 30,000. How much did you make in capital gains?)
I’m wow’d yet again. I just love how you think that every business somehow has “capital gains.” That’s right along the lines of how you think that every taxpayer has “a yacht, a flat screen, and a hummer.” Being that it’s a software business, no, there were no “capital gains.” Man, you are something else. Again, you need some education, and common sense…
You didn’t respond at all to my main point, though, which is that the money comes from somewhere, regardless of whether it’s the taxpayer or employees and shareholders or price increases. The fact that it’s the taxpayer paying is your big revelation and your main point, but I’m saying that that point is bunk.
No, that’s exactly my point: the money has to come from somewhere. It doesn’t matter at all that you think people deserve the money that they make (even I do too in a lot of cases). It’s a matter of what is possible to pay in the real world. When you have out of control spending, and taxes are hiked to pay for that out of control spending, people either have to leave to escape the taxes, or go poor paying them. Like I said to Rosemary, no private business can afford to pay their employees $100,000+ salaries when revenues can’t support that. But for some reason, this is not the case in the public sector, where it’s apparently “unacceptable” for a government paid worker to take a pay freeze or a pay cut.
The problem with taxes are that they’re forced. If money is going into the private sector, it is because of the free will of the consumer. It’s quite simple: if people can’t afford something in the private sector, they won’t buy it. But tax laws say otherwise for public sector employees, who maintain their lavish salaries and benefits packages (taking up the majority of states’ budgets), regardless of the economic situation, and regardless of how much money they are quite literally forcing people to pay for them. I’m not saying that we don’t need these services, or that “all taxes are bad.” I’m saying that the out of control spending, and the excessive taxes are bad. There’s a happy medium somewhere.
The debt crises in Europe have to do with a lot more than public spending. I would say that large amounts of public spending over a short period of time – Spain and Ireland, for example – have created precarious situations for the countries that have done it. But the countries that have long had large public sectors – Germany, Switzerland, Holland – are faring no worse than the U.S. right now.
Actually the debt crisis has everything to do with spending. You don’t accumulate debt without spending. They taxed and spent when times were good, and when this recession hit, they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Now they have to make massive cuts, Greece’s bonds have been declared junk, etc etc. And sure, as countries as a whole, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland may not be faring any worse than the U.S. right now (I am not up on those particular countries’ current situation). But even if that were true, you are still making the mistake in thinking that Europeans live the same way that we do here in America. A family friend of my parents, making a decent salary in Germany (~45k) pays some 55% of what she makes in taxes. Consequently, at 40 years old, she lives in a small apartment, with a roommate, and barely has enough extra money on top of her living expenses to pay for some of the amenities that we would consider fairly basic here in America, like a tv and a coffee maker.
One last point: the only president to end his term with a budget surplus in the last 30 years has been Clinton. Bush deepened the deficit more than any of his predecessors (mostly through defense spending).
Not sure what your “last point” here really has to do with the discussion, but being that you mentioned it, you should know that you’re completely wrong, yet again. As Goldnsquid mentioned, there was no surplus when Clinton left office. Clinton only had a “fiscal surplus” for a couple of years, but still left office with a $5.8 trillion dollar debt (raising it some $1.5 trillion dollars over his presidency). And sure, Bush deepened the debt even more, but guess what: we’re not happy about that either. The distinction that you’re failing to make here (as liberals often do) is that although Bush was a Republican, he was not a conservative.
Goldnsquid is correct too in that the only reason that there was any fiscal restraint during the Clinton years is because he was forced to the center by congress after the very first midterm election of his presidency (and Clinton was a smart enough politician to know that he should move there). Otherwise, he and the Democrats in congress tried to pass all kinds of things before that midterm election, just like we’re seeing the Democrats do now. (However, we’re likely to see a quite different political climate come November.) They even tried to pass healthcare way back then too (which I would love to get into with you, but at this point, don’t have the time).
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El Gran Rolegio & Sam Cramer have it right. Case closed, we’re too ignorant, self-serving & myopic to invest in a common vision as basic as universal access to quality education for our children (dripping with sarcasm). They’re right, the poor taxpayer should keep all their hard-earned $$. They should also build their own roads, defend the nation with their militias, and conduct the affairs of state. Right? None of us enjoy giving up our earnings, but several trillion dollars in wars have sapped our treasury. For what? I continue to be amazed, disappointed & disheartened by the short-sighted politically driven conservative “right-wing” who appear concerned only with their own wealth and status.
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This quote comes to mind: “The great problem with socialism is that, eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”
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“And the great problem with zero-based capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people’s forebearance.”
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…and you learn to not make stupid deals, like loaning a quarter million dollars to someone who cant pay it back. It’s not like you can just cover the shortfall by further raiding the pockets of future taxpayers (my kids aren’t even 3 yo yet but they are already inheriting six-figure government debts).
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Californians do NOT have the highest tax burden in the country, much less the world. Let’s all resolve to get rid of this myth and work off facts (e.g. on the Public Policy Institute of California website).
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It’s interesting that Prof. O’Hare seems to assume that all income (or at least a very substantial portion thereof) produced by private citizens belongs to the state, and that people who disagree are greedy. I would argue instead that the greedy parties are folks like Prof. O’Hare, who proposes to confiscate by force of arms even more money from the already-overburdened tax-payer in order to benefit himself and his colleagues.
One rather suspects that we would be better off if we had fewer professors of “Public Policy” (which appears to be the fine art of determining how to spend money expropriated from other people) and more people engaged in actually creating valuable goods for others to consume voluntarily.
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What’s more interesting is that’s not at all what he said, but that you didn’t bother to decipher what he was actually saying, which is that the very institutions that the older generations used to get educated, trained, and to ultimately earn money were funded by higher taxation rates. Prop 13 was one of the stupidest, most shortsighted ideas in the history of state governance.
And you also need to learn the difference between progressive taxation and regressive taxation.
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What the prof failed to mention was: along with these laudable public investments was a boatload of corruption which is what is really sinking this ship of state.
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Sam I’m confused. Where in this letter does Prof O’Hare say anything about taking by force? I see where he says “have a tough talk” but certainly not taking from others. A good metaphor I can think of is that of a public restroom. Just because it is a public restroom doesn’t mean you should piss on the seat.
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Taxation is taking property by force. As anyone who took Sociology 101 can attest, the state enjoys the legitimate monopoly on force. Lunatic tax resisters find this out when they end up in the slammer as the result of their illegal actions.
Taxes are of course necessary for the proper functioning of the state. However, we should be careful to ensure that we do not implement the cynics definition of democracy: “two guys deciding to rob the third.”
In other words, we should understand that the money belonging to those O’Hare’s castigates as “greedy” is properly theirs, and that it should only be taken away from them for very good reason.
O’Hare claims that those who don’t want their money taken away in order to pay his salary are greedy. The truth is the exact opposite: O’Hare wants to take money from people so that he can benefit and can realize the societal structure he prefers. So, tell me again: who is greedy here?
As for public restrooms, I’m not 100% sure what you’re getting at, but I suspect it is the assertion of your right to restock that restroom by breaking into my car in the Costco parking lot and ripping off the bale of toilet paper in the back seat.
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Alright. You’ve gotten to the crux of the matter. If you think that taxes, which pay for things like roads, police, food safety, oversight of weights and measures, etc., etc., is the government stealing from you, then move somewhere else. (You will no doubt be furious at this point.) “But,” you will say, “there isn’t anywhere where participants in a society DON’T pay taxes.”
That should give you a clue.
It costs to maintain a basic societal infrastructure. We fight tooth and nail about the places where government is visibly expensive and often inefficient and take for granted all the things government provides that work well, Bureau of Weights and Measures, NTSB, FAA, FCC, and (with some glitches) FDA, roads, bridges, police, etc.
The problem is that too many Americans think that their taxes are still theirs. If you go into a store and buy something, you let go of that money mentally — even if some of it goes to support things you may not want to support. (About 10% of many retail businesses is slippage — shoplifting.) That 10% is paid for by honest customers. But we scream bloody murder over the (mostly non-existent) “welfare queens” — the social security equivalent of a shoplifter, not realizing that there is a tipping point at which the cost of preventing all stealing from the government exceeds the cost of letting it some of it just happen.
If you want to take a real lesson in government from business, that is it. There is an unpleasant cost to doing business, get over it. Hide the ugly parts and get on with life.
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I would like to respond to the fantasy that we might simply refuse to support the stupid/uneducated/failures among us. Although it may seem injust and repugnant to support them with the sweat our brows, we are bound to–one way or another. Since they do not spontaneous combust in shame from our disapproval, they will support themselves however they can– by robbing us, mugging us, selling drugs to our children, and generally causing us to spend more of our hard earned dollars on home security alarms, neighborhood rent-a-cops, and “second amendment remedies.” And when these stupid/uneducated/failures end up as part of the prison economy, guess whose tax dollars support them there? All of us brilliant/educated/successes know the answer is our precious tax dollars do. So, short of a state-sponsored murder spree of stupid/uneducated/failures, we only have this one choice: proactively offer whatever preventive assistance we can to reduce their numbers or reactively fund a vigilante state/prison economy to defend ourselves while they flourish. I know which I prefer. And when you’re done holding your breath because life isn’t fair, you can think about how, even with the burden of being your brothers’ keepers, it’s still much better to be one of the brilliant/educated/successes in this world. Also, great letter.
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Amen.
California had the greatest public education system in America before Prop 13.
Now primary and secondary education are #47 in the US. It’s shameful.
People who want to destroy democracy start with public education because public education is “socialism.” Suddenly the solution is the privitization of education. That’s brilliant: decimate institutions by defunding them and then decry their failure and declare that making them for profit is the only solution. Funny how that works.
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Katherine – I think you may have misread that statement. It isn’t that you get to choose to support the “failures, the stupid, or the uneducated” as you put it; but rather you WILL. Just as in any society. . You support them in prison with 3 hots and a cot, or on welfare or whatever. This is reality. These are the people that the system can’t accomodate. It is pretty Randian to assume that all of these folks have failed the world due to a lack of effort also. Get off your high horse and recognize some of the priveleges you’ve recieved that weren’t available to everyone.
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Right on, Prof.
You’ve got it right, the haters will hate. Ignore them.
Cheers!
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I wonder what the Professor would write in a similar letter to Administrators.
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Clearly, Prof. O’Hare never has considered the idea that throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them! Exhibit A: Kansas City MO public schools in the years after a court-imposed income tax against all those living and working in KCMO. What a debacle, much as the situation in the state budget of CA, which has some of the highest total tax and fee burdens in the nation. Still, I have a challenge for Prof. O’Hare and all who agree with him. Nobody — not one person that I’ve ever known — has dared to meet this challenge: remit a yearly check for at least the amount you wish taxes to be raised to that governmental entity. They’ll gladly accept the donation. Come on…put your money where your mouth is and do it! Or are you going to be selfish and keep demanding that OTHERS be taxed too? [Crickets chirp as big talkers go silent in the face of being called out on their hypocrisy.]. Anyone writing that check yet? I thought not. Case closed.
S
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I actually do this on a routine basis, they’re called donations, and you’re correct, those public institutions such as my local school district and my favorite public university gladly accept them…
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How much is enough? More than a full third of what I make goes to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. From January through April, I work for the government as all of the money I make goes to taxes.
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In the house that Jack built, the money hidden offshore by those who bought the politicians who wrote the laws that protect the rich from helping the poor, well, that money could help rebuild this state. No individual “makes money.” They are part of a food chain that says if we screw enough little people by overcharging for Microsoft Office or for eBay, we can get the billions we want to buy more politicians. And they think that is moral.
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I propose we have Google run the show or at least hire them as consultants. Seriously. They’ve done a pretty good job on just about everything else.
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Civilization usually flourishes during periods of growth, as people enjoy creating new things, i.e., infrastructure. However, they came at a price that many have since forgotten, e.g., Hetch Hetchy, Chinese railroad workers. Once those ‘new things’ become ‘dependents’ (infrastructure maintenance), the enthusiasm wanes. As those things decline due to lack of support, dissention grows. Eventually, key infrastructure fails and the society dependent upon it either adapts to repairing and maintaining it or moves on. The important point, during all phases of civilization, many of the people pay a price for its progress. Hence, these blogs of people who tend to remember the good and forget the price that was paid for it.
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It is not only California, it is the United States of America.
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Comrade O’Hare would do better to reexamine his understanding of how “businesses and government actually work” in his ridiculous and impossible quest to make education a political right. It would save him a lot of disappointment in the mushy collective he seems so dependent on to give-give-give. Producers (such as the quality teachers he so rightly reveres) will not be coerced with government force. A political right is not the same as a moral right, you don’t have political right to things made by other people. If you don’t educate your kids, that’s morally bad, and you’re an irresponsible parent. However your kids are not my responsibility, (and nor do I have any authority) to educate, or feed, or house, or medicate them. Were you to insist otherwise, your only recourse is violence.
Berkeley IS one of the greatest universities in the world, and it’s because it was allowed to exist (de facto, but not de jury) for it’s own sake. O’Hare’s thoughts would only deserve consideration if he could exercise his credo of sacrifice, selflessness and altruism without initiating violent government force (taxes enforced with guns) against people who would rather NOT give their lives and property away. This is of course impossible. The betrayal he senses however IS real. It’s just that he doesn’t have any inkling of the actual agents or predicates.
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Political right? That’s whatever the politicians I buy say it is. That may be how they work, but it is not the democracy we were told about in school. And as for “people who would rather NOT give their lives and property away,” just wait till they can’t get Medicare, social security, police or ambulance response, potholes filled on the streets, or a shorter line at the DMV. They want government services, but not for other people.
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I didn’t attend UC Berkeley, and I probably won’t meet the stringent GPA requirement for attending law school there, but I wanted to say that this was extremely inspiring and nearly brought me to tears.
I’m one of this generation that does intend to give back, and who will try to rebuild the public sector that we lost over the last couple of decades. Thank you for reminding me again what that can mean to future generations.
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Special pleading, pure and simple. Someone who benefits from increased spending on his pet cause complains that mean-spirited tax-cutters won’t go along with his wishes. In the interim, productive citizens are leaving the state in droves due to the absurd tax and regulatory environment; a situation that leads CEOs to avoid further investment and job creation in the state.
Example: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20014563-38.html
The rub: Ninety percent of that additional cost of a $4 billion factory is not labor but the cost to comply with taxes and regulations that other nations don’t impose. (Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers elaborated on this in an interview with CNET, saying the problem is not higher U.S. wages but anti-business laws: “The killer factor in California for a manufacturer to create, say, a thousand blue-collar jobs is a hostile government that doesn’t want you there and demonstrates it in thousands of ways.”)
By the way, if Prof. O’Hare’s fact-free blog entry is indicative of the quality of the education that’s offered at UCB, it’s quite clear that standards there have declined.
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Michael O’Hare, you are openly asking for a license for boundless spending. Things cannot wrecklessly go in the direction of spending unbounded quantities of money and there needs to be a clear distinction drawn between what is necessary and what is not, a distinction which you fail to make.
Furthermore, your department represents neither a science nor an art. Its existence siphons resources from real academic scholarship. Someone who claims concern about people’s future should have no association with such a department.
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Great idea! Go raise taxes while the state has the lowest unemployment in the country! Stick it to those people that still have jobs! Bravo! I feel for your students that have a whole semester to listen to you drone about the evils of using the money they earn to provide for themselves instead of the government.
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It is not only tax limits. California’s politicians have failed the state. The growth of population and the growth of public employment and retirement benefits have contributed to the problems. There is no fiscal restraint in California. Too many consumers of tax dollars compared to actual taxpayers. What percentage of Californians actually pay no taxes? California lawmakers cannot resist demands for more spending. In a surplus year, they spend everything they take in. Tom Campbell made some fiscally sound recommendations for California tax and spending policy and they were largely ignored. The more money California collects in tax money the more it spends. Those who actually pay taxes have had enough. High taxes are killing the job market in California
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I agree with all of this except THIS:
I will NOT support failures, the stupid, or the uneducated.
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You will support them whether you like it or not. To think you won’t is delusional.
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@Katharine:
Assuming you support yourself, I find your statement paradoxical.
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You may not WANT to, but unfortunately you will be, or possibly are currently through your tax money.
This is exactly the point that was being made. If we allow policy trends to continue as they are we will be paying more to people who gave up their chance at an education while we give less to our dwindling education system… this thought is rather unsettling to me.
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Those of us who are aware of who and what we are as individuals, are doing everything we can.
“genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive. It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.” – Chris Hedges
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Shameful. The first lesson you’re teaching these kids is someone did them wrong, they are entitled to something they don’t have (and didn’t earn themselves) and they should go take it from someone else.
What you’re teaching them to be is a mooch.
And the fact that you’ve been doing this twenty years make you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Like the word contract is some stone tablet that can never be changed. Don’t you realize the word contract start with the word “con”.
Quit now, before you do any more damage to these kids.
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Ah Chris…
As someone who has clearly never been to university (and possibly not school), I doubt you would be in position to make judgements on academia. The fundamental principle of higher education is to give people the ability to think for themselves. As part of that, people will have differing opinions. Some you may agree with, and some you may disagree with.
This variation in opinion allows for debate, and from debate we can derive beneficial outcome. Unfortunately, when the signal-to-noise bandwidth narrows due to illiterate parrots harping on about Randian ideals, then the debate becomes more difficult. This is the reason that education is so important. And, maybe if education had not been so expensive in the USA, you might have been able to afford some yourself.
However; you do have an excellent point on the prefix ‘con’ being in both the words ‘contract’ as well as ‘con’ (which comes from ‘confidence’). The etymology of ‘contract’ is from the Latin ‘contractus’, and the prefix ‘con’ (or originally, ‘com’) means ‘together’. So, togetherness is, as YOU SO RIGHTLY SAY, at the very heart and notion of what a contract is. This is a most excellent point.
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Professor O’Hare thank you for your thoughtful letter. I could not agree with you more that we should be ashamed of allowing the state’s commitment to education to wither.
A few questions though. Do curbing lavish pension plan benefits for public sector unions have any roll to play? Should public employees be able to retire at the age of 55 with full benefits, with the taxpayer picking up the tab for on average another twenty years? Is the answer simply to have CA residents pay an average of $500 more a year, when the state income tax is already over 9% for the middle class, far above virtually every other state in the union? Doesn’t this high tax rate place us at a competitive disadvantage and drive capital and in turn jobs out of the state and in turn make our state budget crisis worse?
I’m not being dogmatic and saying that the answer is all curbing public sector expenses and no new taxes. I think it is a balance between the two. I just wish your eloquent argument made some mention of pension reform, which is so need.
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