Before anyone gets the wrong idea I essentially agree with Wisconsin's governor -- public employee costs must be curbed and the time to do that was yesterday. But today on Morning Joe, Cramer's comments were inane. He said that real estate taxes were so high he might have to sell his home in NJ. Then he said that public sector jobs were the best jobs to have and that he would take one in a minute. And then he said that since teachers started in NJ at $50,000 a year he was encouraging his kids to aim for that type of job. I feel so foolish. I thought managing a hedge fund and then going on to having your own TV show was better than most government jobs. I also did not know that guys who had done well on Wall Street aspired to have their children aim for the stars as high school teachers. SILLY ME! This nonsense of people of means pretending that their backs are against the wall needs to stop. It just makes all of us look foolish when there are actually people in need that do not have a trust fund to tide them over. I want to smack this imbecile but don't want to foot the legal costs that would follow.
I guess even Cramer realizes what a cush job government workers have. Even with the cuts that are being proposed government workers have it way better than private sector workers. Starting your own business and being successful, of course, is better but most people don't have the desire to put in the effort and risk that requires. They would rather have a cush job, work 20 years then retire on the taxpayer's dime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss "Wisconsin Power Play By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: February 20, 2011 Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsinâs new union-busting governor, Scott Walker â demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday â Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: âItâs like Cairo has moved to Madison.â It wasnât the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didnât mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did â after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it. In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For whatâs happening in Wisconsin isnât about the state budget, despite Mr. Walkerâs pretense that heâs just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin â and eventually, America â less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And thatâs why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstratorsâ side. Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away. In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions. But Mr. Walker isnât interested in making a deal. Partly thatâs because he doesnât want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workersâ ability to bargain. The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the stateâs workers, in effect busting public-employee unions. Tellingly, some workers â namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning â are exempted from the ban; itâs as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions. Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the stateâs budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so thereâs not much room for further pay squeezes. So itâs not about the budget; itâs about the power. In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, weâre a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, weâre more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate. Given this reality, itâs important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions. You donât have to love unions, you donât have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that theyâre among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years â which it has â thatâs to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions. And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too. Thereâs a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of Americaâs oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence. So will the attack on unions succeed? I donât know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesnât."
I don't watch Cramer's shows but he usually talks in general terms to his audience. I doubt that he is offering such advice to his own children unless he considers them dumber than he is.
Of course, what none of the liberal clowns will ever admit to is the fact that they too enjoyed the benefits....SSHHHH!!!! NiN
more leftist baloney from krugman. was he paid by a union to write that? Unions are the oligarchy on the left. they finance socialist candidates. They cause taxes to be raised and therefore create less competition for the entrenched businesses Krugman is rightly concerned about... but public employee Unions have destroyed state budgets, caused taxes to skyrocket and are responsible for irresponsible govt. the working class is being screwed into the ground by big organized groups who buy politicians.
Unions barely exist anymore, and just try to start a new one at an abusive company. Do you want links to the history of our unions? Links to anti-union violence? What's happening here is that cheap labor abroad is pulling the rug out from under our feet, and we're busy blaming each other.