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How many of these cutbacks SHOULD have been done before hand and are now forced to happen because of the recession. Laying off police officers.. Good idea - Th

How many of these cutbacks SHOULD have been done before hand and are now forced to happen because of the recession. Laying off police officers.. Good idea - They probably don't provide enough to be worth their pay over a certain point. Maybe being forced to fill less pot holes will encourage us to come up with cheaper ways to do the job. Perhaps if we cut back on teachers and educational spending we'll be able to do more with less... Money isn't the problem in education... if it was then we wouldn't have this data mashup: http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/spent-student-and-sat-scores http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/spent-student-and-sat-sco... - It looks like spending more money per student isn't working. Thinking that cutting back = massive failure is why most American's have massive amounts of personal debt that they will never get out of.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
It's also not even clear they need to cut back on services. Take Flint, for example. Instead of cutting 23 of 88 firefighters, why not keep them all but reduce their compensation by 26%? It's Flint Michigan, they don't exactly have other employment options. Besides, it's unlikely Flint even needs that many firefighters - their population dropped by about 10% since 2000. The same could be done for teachers - NYC pays entry level teachers roughly the same salary as entry level engineers (total comp per month worked, not per calendar year). Rather than laying them off, why not cut their comp down to liberal arts grad entry level? [edit: replaced word "pay" in second paragraph with "compensation". Thanks chrisbolt.]
- natrius 16y ago
  The answer to your rhetorical questions is politically powerful public employee unions. Only a small minority of the members of the union got laid off, so they'd have to be okay with making the sacrifice to keep those people employed. They could fill those jobs at significantly lower salaries, but that factor never enters the equation.
- chrisbolt 16y ago
  Employees cost a company more than just pay, such as insurance, etc. You'd have to take into account the full cost of an employee.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
nanairo 16y ago
Lol... ok so... at what point---oh wise one---do police pay become worth? Because the article speak of basically few officers and no detectives. And what happens if we don't find a better way to fill the holes? The reason why USA has no money is because you keep cutting the taxes for the richest people and going to wars that you've got no money for... and when finally the shit hit the fan you had to throw money after bankers and companies. This process usually takes two phases: phase 1, during a boom: "We've got plenty of money, let's cut some taxes" phase 2, during the crisis: "We've got no money left, let's cut some services"
- tseabrooks 16y ago
  I don't think you get the point. We haven't even experimented or tried to do more with less. The U.S. philosophy has been so based around throwing money at a problem that we never consider whether we are spending to much until now. When we have some states and local governments getting tot he point where they must shut down nearly all services the problem isn't money. The problem is they didn't reduce expenditures sooner. The problem is they run fiscally irresponsibly budgets with massive debts. Bailing out banks and companies - A terrible idea. Cutting taxes - I'm pretty much in favor of this for everyone - especially since those top 5% of earners end up paying 70+ % of the total income tax. But that's not the point here. The point is that we HAVE to figure out how to spend less. Spending the same amount of money when you make half isn't an acceptable strategy.
  - nanairo 16y ago
    Obviously it's not a good idea. But I would imagine that the answer if you can't fill your pot holes is to raise taxes, not hope that the future will bring something better. If during a boom you've cut taxes, why now that money is needed shouldn't you raise them again? Didn't Clinton leave office with a surplus? So if at that time you had a balanced budget, and now you can't even pay to fill your pot holes, and one of the reason is because of your massive cuts in taxes... wouldn't that suggest that to fix you books you need to raise them again?
    - 16y ago
roc 16y ago
I've been thinking along these same lines for years now. Much of America's civic and business institutions are/were built and financed assuming eternal growth economics to support them. It isn't the recession itself destroying these budgets. It's the recession causing an honest assessment of recent and future growth and calling into question the feasibility of old debts, old promises, ways of life taken for granted, assumptions that drive the very basis of our society. (growth=success, bigger=better) Granted, I live in Michigan, where we've been given a free preview of waking up to the cold realities of sprawl economics juxtaposed with a debt load based on eternal-growth expectations. So I can understand why most people will experience a few years of denial, cherry-picking 'evidence' from an ever-shrinking number of still-growing cities to prop up their pre-existing world view. I did the same thing. I get it. But when the evidence is finally at your door-step, utterly unavoidable, you'll realize it isn't a left vs right issue, or a government vs business issue. But an American lifestyle vs reality issue.
- keeptrying 16y ago
  Waking up to this is going to be painful.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

It's also not even clear they need to cut back on services. Take Flint, for example. Instead of cutting 23 of 88 firefighters, why not keep them all but reduce their compensation by 26%? It's Flint Michigan, they don't exactly have other employment options. Besides, it's unlikely Flint even needs that many firefighters - their population dropped by about 10% since 2000. The same could be done for teachers - NYC pays entry level teachers roughly the same salary as entry level engineers (total comp per month worked, not per calendar year). Rather than laying them off, why not cut their comp down to liberal arts grad entry level? [edit: replaced word "pay" in second paragraph with "compensation". Thanks chrisbolt.]

natrius 16y ago
The answer to your rhetorical questions is politically powerful public employee unions. Only a small minority of the members of the union got laid off, so they'd have to be okay with making the sacrifice to keep those people employed. They could fill those jobs at significantly lower salaries, but that factor never enters the equation.
chrisbolt 16y ago
Employees cost a company more than just pay, such as insurance, etc. You'd have to take into account the full cost of an employee.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

nanairo 16y ago

Lol... ok so... at what point---oh wise one---do police pay become worth? Because the article speak of basically few officers and no detectives. And what happens if we don't find a better way to fill the holes? The reason why USA has no money is because you keep cutting the taxes for the richest people and going to wars that you've got no money for... and when finally the shit hit the fan you had to throw money after bankers and companies. This process usually takes two phases: phase 1, during a boom: "We've got plenty of money, let's cut some taxes" phase 2, during the crisis: "We've got no money left, let's cut some services"

tseabrooks 16y ago
I don't think you get the point. We haven't even experimented or tried to do more with less. The U.S. philosophy has been so based around throwing money at a problem that we never consider whether we are spending to much until now. When we have some states and local governments getting tot he point where they must shut down nearly all services the problem isn't money. The problem is they didn't reduce expenditures sooner. The problem is they run fiscally irresponsibly budgets with massive debts. Bailing out banks and companies - A terrible idea. Cutting taxes - I'm pretty much in favor of this for everyone - especially since those top 5% of earners end up paying 70+ % of the total income tax. But that's not the point here. The point is that we HAVE to figure out how to spend less. Spending the same amount of money when you make half isn't an acceptable strategy.
- nanairo 16y ago
  Obviously it's not a good idea. But I would imagine that the answer if you can't fill your pot holes is to raise taxes, not hope that the future will bring something better. If during a boom you've cut taxes, why now that money is needed shouldn't you raise them again? Didn't Clinton leave office with a surplus? So if at that time you had a balanced budget, and now you can't even pay to fill your pot holes, and one of the reason is because of your massive cuts in taxes... wouldn't that suggest that to fix you books you need to raise them again?
  - 16y ago

roc 16y ago

I've been thinking along these same lines for years now. Much of America's civic and business institutions are/were built and financed assuming eternal growth economics to support them. It isn't the recession itself destroying these budgets. It's the recession causing an honest assessment of recent and future growth and calling into question the feasibility of old debts, old promises, ways of life taken for granted, assumptions that drive the very basis of our society. (growth=success, bigger=better) Granted, I live in Michigan, where we've been given a free preview of waking up to the cold realities of sprawl economics juxtaposed with a debt load based on eternal-growth expectations. So I can understand why most people will experience a few years of denial, cherry-picking 'evidence' from an ever-shrinking number of still-growing cities to prop up their pre-existing world view. I did the same thing. I get it. But when the evidence is finally at your door-step, utterly unavoidable, you'll realize it isn't a left vs right issue, or a government vs business issue. But an American lifestyle vs reality issue.

keeptrying 16y ago
Waking up to this is going to be painful.