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This is why there is so much animosity toward police. Law enforcement doesn't advance the interests of the unionized elite that now runs society, including the

This is why there is so much animosity toward police. Law enforcement doesn't advance the interests of the unionized elite that now runs society, including the mainstream media, which is entirely unionized. The unions wanted Kenosha burned down (which is why CNN's unionized staff described the protests as "fiery but mostly peaceful" with a backdrop of burning buildings [1]) and no police or pesky militias protecting it, in order to demoralize the population and get more subservience from them. [1] https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-panned-for-on-air-graphic-reading-fiery-but-mostly-peaceful-protest-in-front-of-kenosha-fire https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-panned-for-on-air-graphic-...

Ar-Curunir 5y ago
What kind of cryptopunk sides with the police?
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Basic policing is a necessity for a free society, and it's precisely basic policing that the union-aligned left-wing political movements want defunded. These movements have no problem with their figureheads spending tens of thousands on their own private security attachments [1] or billions of dollars being spent to expand the number of tax enforcers [2] or to bolster policing to protect the political elite. [3] [1] https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/aoc-has-spent-thousands-on-personal-security-including-ex-blackwater-contractor/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/aoc-has-spent-thousands-on-per... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-seek-80-billion-to-bolster-irs-tax-enforcement-11619539465 https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-seek-80-billion-to-bol... [3] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-capitol-police-armed-with-2-billion https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-capitol-police-armed-wi...
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    "defunded" has unfortunately become a catch-all but with actually has a few different interpretations: At one end of the extreme it can mean that someone actually wants traditional police forces fully disbanded. At the other end it can mean someone simply wants much more aggressive police reform with funding contingent on that reform. Somewhere in the middle would be a person who wants some policing money diverted to specializing professional to respond to non-criminal calls, or to respond jointly with police to potentially dangerous calls that might be de-escalated with expert intervention. People make a mistake when they use "defund" without specifying such details.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  The kind that is more crypto currency than crypto punk, per their bio.
ashtonkem 5y ago
“Unionized elite”? CNN wanting Kenosha to burn down so people will serve them? You and I are not experiencing the same reality.
cloudfifty 5y ago
> the unionized elite? That's some really weird world view you got there.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  * The pay gap between public sector workers and private sector workers continues to grow. Many public sector workers are now in the top 10% of income earners, and they number in the millions. Their political power is also greater than the sum of their wealth, because of their numbers. Each one has enough financial interest in the unions' agenda succeeding to potentially engage in PR/lobbying for that cause. Thus they have the critical mass of supporters to shape narratives. Seeing kids talk about how much they hate Trump - something they learned from their unionized teachers - drives that home. * Pensions for public sector workers are bankrupting states, yet there is no political force capable of scaling them back. The kind of job security they gain through their collective bargaining agreement is also degrading the quality of the public service, in public education: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/111/3/671/1839935?login=true https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/111/3/671/1839935?login... And policing: https://academic.oup.com/jleo/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jleo/ewaa025/6054285 https://academic.oup.com/jleo/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jl... And every other public sector. The inexorable rise of social spending stems from the growing power of public sector unions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... The work forces of media outlets have their own guilds, e.g.: https://nytimesguild.org/ https://nytimesguild.org/ Which combined with left-wing labor laws, means they receive the benefit of barriers to competition from other workers who may want their jobs. Thus they have a financial conflict of interest in how they cover the news, to favor the left-wing political narratives over anything favorable to the concept of a free market and contract rights.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Public sector jobs on average pay over 10% less than comparable private sector jobs, and even unions don't fully eliminate that pay gap. [0] You're cherry picking specific jobs & unions to paint a false narrative: Police & teachers' unions don't tell the whole story. Barriers to competition is a separate topic and worthy of discussion, but on the issue of overall pay rates relative to private sector workers you are simply wrong. [0] https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-public-sector-pay-gap/#:~:text=Pay%20gap%20is%20the%20difference,and%20year%20using%20regression%20analysis https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-public-sector-pay-gap....
ineedasername 5y ago
I guess if you're not unionized and making $8 an hour minimum wage then a $20/hour union job might seem elite in comparison. But you don't even need to scratch the surface to see that no "elite", at least as it pertains to income, is a union member with the outlier exceptions of SAG members who get paid far above scale. So, roughly 0.0000009% of the unionized workforce. Everyone else in a union? Blue collar and mostly low level white collar workers.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  A significant fraction of public sector workers are in the top 10% by compensation, and with job security that has a market value hard to quantify. I would qualify that as elite. They are also not a tiny percentage of the population. They have the soft power that comes with being part of a bloc constituting millions of people.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    The lower edge of the top 10% is about $110,000. Not a lot of public sectors earn that much, so it's not a significant fraction. When they do earn that much, comparable jobs in the public sector almost always pay more, and only pay as much as they do because they require either a higher level of education, a specialized skill, a high level of personal danger, or some combination of these. Also you started by mentioning unionized workers as a whole, not just public sector. Let's be consistent about who you're talking about, because a large portion of public sector jobs are white collar jobs requiring higher education, while large portions of typical union labor is much less well paid and has lower salary accordingly https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Union_Laborer/Hourly_Rate https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Union_Laborer/Hourl...
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      >>Not a lot of public sectors earn that much, so it's not a significant fraction. Yes, a significant fraction earn that much. According to salary.com, the median compensation of a public school teacher in New York is $100,000: https://www.salary.com/tools/salary-calculator/public-school-teacher-benefits/new-york-ny https://www.salary.com/tools/salary-calculator/public-school... A significant fraction of those above the median would be receiving compensation above $110,000. salary.com may be undercounting pensions too, given a USA Today FOIA request found that 3,800 NYS teachers earn over $100,000 a year for their pension: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/albany/2020/01/27/database-school-teacher-pensions-in-new-york/4563615002/ https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/alb... >>Overall, 3,800 educators in New York got more than $100,000 a year in pensions in 2019, according to the data obtained from the state Teachers Retirement System through a Freedom of Information by the USA TODAY Network New York. And that the average pension for NYS public teachers is $44,859: >>the average pension for school officials was $44,859 last year for the 160,960 retirees in the system, the records showed. This is significant given NYS public school teachers can retire at 55, and that pensions for NYS teachers have increased since many of the current retirees were employed. Another report shows that a NYS teacher with 35 years of experience receives a pension of $87,945 on average: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/pensions-retired-nyc-educators-high-88g-article-1.2968845 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/pensions-retired-n... Now consider those pension payments, amortized over their career, are on top of all the other benefits, and an average base salary of $71,501 for public school teachers in NYS. And this doesn't capture the value of their job security. It's incredibly hard to fire New York state public school teachers: https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried-to-fire-154-teachers-for-incompetence-or-misconduct-75-were/ https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried... >>Also you started by mentioning unionized workers as a whole, not just public sector Approximately half of unionized workers are in the public sector: https://www.epi.org/publication/2019-union-membership-data/ https://www.epi.org/publication/2019-union-membership-data/ So whatever fraction of unionized public sector workers are in the top 10% by compensation, we can surmise that the proportion for unionized workers as a whole is at least half that.

Ar-Curunir 5y ago

What kind of cryptopunk sides with the police?

CryptoPunk 5y ago
Basic policing is a necessity for a free society, and it's precisely basic policing that the union-aligned left-wing political movements want defunded. These movements have no problem with their figureheads spending tens of thousands on their own private security attachments [1] or billions of dollars being spent to expand the number of tax enforcers [2] or to bolster policing to protect the political elite. [3] [1] https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/aoc-has-spent-thousands-on-personal-security-including-ex-blackwater-contractor/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/aoc-has-spent-thousands-on-per... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-seek-80-billion-to-bolster-irs-tax-enforcement-11619539465 https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-seek-80-billion-to-bol... [3] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-capitol-police-armed-with-2-billion https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-capitol-police-armed-wi...
- ineedasername 5y ago
  "defunded" has unfortunately become a catch-all but with actually has a few different interpretations: At one end of the extreme it can mean that someone actually wants traditional police forces fully disbanded. At the other end it can mean someone simply wants much more aggressive police reform with funding contingent on that reform. Somewhere in the middle would be a person who wants some policing money diverted to specializing professional to respond to non-criminal calls, or to respond jointly with police to potentially dangerous calls that might be de-escalated with expert intervention. People make a mistake when they use "defund" without specifying such details.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ashtonkem 5y ago
The kind that is more crypto currency than crypto punk, per their bio.

ashtonkem 5y ago

“Unionized elite”? CNN wanting Kenosha to burn down so people will serve them? You and I are not experiencing the same reality.

cloudfifty 5y ago

> the unionized elite? That's some really weird world view you got there.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
* The pay gap between public sector workers and private sector workers continues to grow. Many public sector workers are now in the top 10% of income earners, and they number in the millions. Their political power is also greater than the sum of their wealth, because of their numbers. Each one has enough financial interest in the unions' agenda succeeding to potentially engage in PR/lobbying for that cause. Thus they have the critical mass of supporters to shape narratives. Seeing kids talk about how much they hate Trump - something they learned from their unionized teachers - drives that home. * Pensions for public sector workers are bankrupting states, yet there is no political force capable of scaling them back. The kind of job security they gain through their collective bargaining agreement is also degrading the quality of the public service, in public education: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/111/3/671/1839935?login=true https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/111/3/671/1839935?login... And policing: https://academic.oup.com/jleo/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jleo/ewaa025/6054285 https://academic.oup.com/jleo/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jl... And every other public sector. The inexorable rise of social spending stems from the growing power of public sector unions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... The work forces of media outlets have their own guilds, e.g.: https://nytimesguild.org/ https://nytimesguild.org/ Which combined with left-wing labor laws, means they receive the benefit of barriers to competition from other workers who may want their jobs. Thus they have a financial conflict of interest in how they cover the news, to favor the left-wing political narratives over anything favorable to the concept of a free market and contract rights.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Public sector jobs on average pay over 10% less than comparable private sector jobs, and even unions don't fully eliminate that pay gap. [0] You're cherry picking specific jobs & unions to paint a false narrative: Police & teachers' unions don't tell the whole story. Barriers to competition is a separate topic and worthy of discussion, but on the issue of overall pay rates relative to private sector workers you are simply wrong. [0] https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-public-sector-pay-gap/#:~:text=Pay%20gap%20is%20the%20difference,and%20year%20using%20regression%20analysis https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-public-sector-pay-gap....

ineedasername 5y ago

I guess if you're not unionized and making $8 an hour minimum wage then a $20/hour union job might seem elite in comparison. But you don't even need to scratch the surface to see that no "elite", at least as it pertains to income, is a union member with the outlier exceptions of SAG members who get paid far above scale. So, roughly 0.0000009% of the unionized workforce. Everyone else in a union? Blue collar and mostly low level white collar workers.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
A significant fraction of public sector workers are in the top 10% by compensation, and with job security that has a market value hard to quantify. I would qualify that as elite. They are also not a tiny percentage of the population. They have the soft power that comes with being part of a bloc constituting millions of people.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  The lower edge of the top 10% is about $110,000. Not a lot of public sectors earn that much, so it's not a significant fraction. When they do earn that much, comparable jobs in the public sector almost always pay more, and only pay as much as they do because they require either a higher level of education, a specialized skill, a high level of personal danger, or some combination of these. Also you started by mentioning unionized workers as a whole, not just public sector. Let's be consistent about who you're talking about, because a large portion of public sector jobs are white collar jobs requiring higher education, while large portions of typical union labor is much less well paid and has lower salary accordingly https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Union_Laborer/Hourly_Rate https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Union_Laborer/Hourl...
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    >>Not a lot of public sectors earn that much, so it's not a significant fraction. Yes, a significant fraction earn that much. According to salary.com, the median compensation of a public school teacher in New York is $100,000: https://www.salary.com/tools/salary-calculator/public-school-teacher-benefits/new-york-ny https://www.salary.com/tools/salary-calculator/public-school... A significant fraction of those above the median would be receiving compensation above $110,000. salary.com may be undercounting pensions too, given a USA Today FOIA request found that 3,800 NYS teachers earn over $100,000 a year for their pension: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/albany/2020/01/27/database-school-teacher-pensions-in-new-york/4563615002/ https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/alb... >>Overall, 3,800 educators in New York got more than $100,000 a year in pensions in 2019, according to the data obtained from the state Teachers Retirement System through a Freedom of Information by the USA TODAY Network New York. And that the average pension for NYS public teachers is $44,859: >>the average pension for school officials was $44,859 last year for the 160,960 retirees in the system, the records showed. This is significant given NYS public school teachers can retire at 55, and that pensions for NYS teachers have increased since many of the current retirees were employed. Another report shows that a NYS teacher with 35 years of experience receives a pension of $87,945 on average: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/pensions-retired-nyc-educators-high-88g-article-1.2968845 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/pensions-retired-n... Now consider those pension payments, amortized over their career, are on top of all the other benefits, and an average base salary of $71,501 for public school teachers in NYS. And this doesn't capture the value of their job security. It's incredibly hard to fire New York state public school teachers: https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried-to-fire-154-teachers-for-incompetence-or-misconduct-75-were/ https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried... >>Also you started by mentioning unionized workers as a whole, not just public sector Approximately half of unionized workers are in the public sector: https://www.epi.org/publication/2019-union-membership-data/ https://www.epi.org/publication/2019-union-membership-data/ So whatever fraction of unionized public sector workers are in the top 10% by compensation, we can surmise that the proportion for unionized workers as a whole is at least half that.