The Great Union-Busting Thread

[Barrister]

For the record, lawyers for the government of Alberta are NOT unionized.  And so if anyone wants to bitch about my non-union government pension they can kiss my ass.

Of course I have to contribute right up until I retire.

Can you direct your investments?

Why would I want to do that?

It's a defined benefit plan.

[Habbaku]

The Kocheads are the left's version of George Soros.  Just like the right-wingers who carp on about him, I've learned to zone out mention of the Kochs.

Whatever. They're number 83.

I think you may have misunderstood my point.

[Neil]

For the record, lawyers for the government of Alberta are NOT unionized.  And so if anyone wants to bitch about my non-union government pension they can kiss my ass.

Of course I have to contribute right up until I retire.

Can you direct your investments?

That defeats the purpose of having a pension, doesn't it?

[Admiral Yi]

That defeats the purpose of having a pension, doesn't it?

In the US we call both defined benefit and defined contribution plans "pensions."

[Neil]

That defeats the purpose of having a pension, doesn't it?

In the US we call both defined benefit and defined contribution plans "pensions."

Same here.  I'm just saying that directing your pension investments at our age is pointless, given the financial Armageddon to come.  If you're not rich, you should just kill yourself instead of retiring, for the good of the world.

[Admiral Yi]

Same here.  I'm just saying that directing your pension investments at our age is pointless, given the financial Armageddon to come.  If you're not rich, you should just kill yourself instead of retiring, for the good of the world.

Ah, gotcha.  Just that when most people say that defeats the purpose of a pension they have a purpose in mind.

[Neil]

Same here.  I'm just saying that directing your pension investments at our age is pointless, given the financial Armageddon to come.  If you're not rich, you should just kill yourself instead of retiring, for the good of the world.

Ah, gotcha.  Just that when most people say that defeats the purpose of a pension they have a purpose in mind.

I really didn't, apart from spreading my message that The End Is Near.

Internet > Sandwich board and cowbell.

[CountDeMoney]

Anyone (besides Mongers) know the details of the corporate tax cut?

Whose?  Walker's in Wisconsin?

[CountDeMoney]

Koch is such a minor issue anyway. Who gives a fuck about them? Why did they suddenly become so bloody important?

Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010)

[Admiral Yi]

Whose?  Walker's in Wisconsin?

Yeah.

[CountDeMoney]

From February.

Wisconsin governor signs bill granting tax cuts
Gov. Walker signs bill granting Wisconsin companies small tax break for each job added

Friday February 4, 2011

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin companies will get a small tax break for every new job they add under a bill signed Friday by Gov. Scott Walker.

The deductions will be worth between $92 and $316 per job depending on the size of the company and its tax bracket, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The Republican-authored plan will cost $67 million over the next two-year budget, contributing to the state's projected $3.2 billion shortfall.

Walker promised tax cuts for businesses on the campaign trail and introduced the bill as part of his jobs-creation agenda. He hasn't said how he plans to make up the lost revenue, and Democrats have blasted the cuts as too insignificant to stimulate job creation.

Walker said the bill was one step in his agenda, and when businesses consider his plan as a whole they'll see his administration and Republican lawmakers are serious about helping them and reviving the state's economy.

"This is part of changing the climate," Walker said before he signed the bill in front of manufacturing equipment at Saris Cycling Group, a Madison factory that produces bike racks. "For us, it's a state of mind. There's no one bill that will make or break the business climate. (But) we want to show ... Wisconsin government gets it."

Walker, who has been in office for about a month, has been pushing his agenda forward at breakneck speed.

He signed two other tax cut bills in January. One wipes out corporate and personal income taxes for companies that relocate to Wisconsin and would cost the state about $1 million. The other eliminated state income taxes on contributions to health savings accounts and will cost the state $49 million.

His fellow Republicans in control of both houses of the Legislature.

[CountDeMoney]

And while we're at it, let's stick it to the poor.

Walker's budget slashes tax credits that aid poor

Low-income taxpayers in Wisconsin would lose hundreds of dollars in tax credits a year under Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget — at the same time the governor wants tax cuts for businesses and investors to boost jobs.

Walker proposes cutting about $16 million a year from the program, which in 2009 paid 273,939 low-income Wisconsin residents a total of $133 million.

Under Walker's proposed biennial budget, a single mother with two children earning about minimum wage — $15,000 a year — would lose $302 of her $704 Earned Income Tax Credit next year, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. A two-parent household with two children earning $30,000 a year would see its tax credit cut by $194 to $258, the alliance said.

"Gov. Walker's raid on the Earned Income Tax Credit is the most egregious example of Walker's war on Wisconsin families," said Rep. Tamara Grigsby, D-Milwaukee. "At a time when Wisconsin is supposed to be putting people to work, Gov. Walker is actually stealing from working families in order to give big payouts to special interests."

The program gives rebates to qualifying taxpayers earning $48,362 a year or less. Many pay no state income taxes because their wages are so low, said Jon Peacock, research director at the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. The credit is seen as an anti-poverty tool that helps offset federal Social Security taxes and encourages work among the lowest-wage earners.

In an interview Friday, the Republican governor called the tax credit a "redistribution program" that involves "taking money from other taxpayers and giving it to individuals who have a limited tax liability."

"This is reducing how much money other taxpayers have to give to those individuals," Walker said.

The governor also proposes cutting $9 million in tax rebates to low-income homeowners under the Homestead Tax Credit. That credit is designed to offset the cost of property taxes for residents earning no more than $24,500 a year, many of them elderly.

The budget proposal would freeze the Homestead credit at the current level rather than allowing it to rise with inflation. Last year, 247,011 taxpayers claimed the credit, costing the state $128 million, according to the Department of Revenue.

Revenue Secretary Rick Chandler said about half of the states do not have an earned-income tax credit, and among those that do, Wisconsin's is one of the most generous. Chandler said the proposed changes to the Homestead credit would return Wisconsin to the system it had before 2009, when the tax credit remained unchanged for 20 years.

A family earning $20,000 a year that qualified for a $332 tax credit would see that drop to $300 next year under the proposal, the taxpayers alliance said.

"We're strongly opposed to both changes," Peacock said. "We think it's very disappointing that the governor's proposing changes that amount to tax increases for low-income families at the same time he's proposing tax breaks for multistate corporations and the wealthy."

Laura Dresser, associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, echoed Peacock's concerns. Combined with Walker's proposals to cuts millions from health care, child care and other social support programs, cutting the tax credits would be a double whammy for poor families, said Dresser, whose group advocates economic development based on good-paying jobs.

Todd Berry, president of taxpayers alliance, said the Homestead and Earned Income tax credits generally are seen as effective and efficient ways to combat poverty.

"Together, Homestead and EITC do work as sort of a low-cost form of income maintenance, and they certainly make the tax system more fair in the sense that the folks on the bottom end are not only not paying increased taxes, they're getting tax rebates," Berry said.

Chandler said cutting tax credits for the poor while increasing tax incentives for businesses and individuals that invest and add jobs to Wisconsin are not in conflict.

"The best thing for people at the lower end of the income scale is to get more Wisconsin jobs," he said.

But state Rep. Donna Seidel, D-Wausau, sees hypocrisy in the governor's approach.

"The main thing we have heard over and over (from Walker) about shared sacrifice and no tax increases, as details of the budget unfold, we see that there are in fact tax increases, and the people bearing the burden of balancing our budget are the middle- and low-income — the people who can least afford it."

[Admiral Yi]

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin companies will get a small tax break for every new job they add under a bill signed Friday by Gov. Scott Walker.

The deductions will be worth between $92 and $316 per job depending on the size of the company and its tax bracket, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The Republican-authored plan will cost $67 million over the next two-year budget, contributing to the state's projected $3.2 billion shortfall.

Oh Christ!  It's a fucking jobs bill!  Of all the stories I've read on Wisconsin you'd think at least one would have bothered to mention that. 

[CountDeMoney]

Oh Christ!  It's a fucking jobs bill!  Of all the stories I've read on Wisconsin you'd think at least one would have bothered to mention that. 

For a state that claims it's red-lining so bad it has to go after the evil teachers and public sector workers who landed us in this entire mortage derivatives-fueled mess in 2008, is going after revenue streams first and THEN bitching about state-funded benefits really all that smart?

[DGuller]

Unions and oligarchs don't just involve themselves in economic matters directly, they also involve themselves in political matters to help themselves economically.  Whichever side wins the political battle gets the economic windfall, even if indirectly.

I would think the vast bulk of the economic windfall would accrue to future Wisconsin taxpayers and possibly current bond holders.

I understand that the Koch brothers have a vested interest in maintaining their factories union-free (more power to 'em).  But I think an honest person has to admit that the chain of causality between breaking the power of the Wisconsin state employees and preventing Koch Industries from unionizing is a very tenuous one at best.

It is tenuous, so I'm not sure why you even brought it up.  I sure didn't, and I fail to see anything that I said that might cause you to put these words in my mouth.

What oligarchs want is free reign for their businesses and low personal taxes.  That means no taxes and no regulation, more or less.  With unions destroyed, Democrats would lose their deep pockets, and Republicans aided by the free speech of the oligarchs' deep pockets would come out on top.