NYTimes on Snyder

[kenp]

It seems like a racket that mostly benefits the financial services industry at the expense of regular folks who don't have the first clue about investing.

We are shifting gears quite a bit on this, I'm not sure what I am even debating anymore.
The above comment is so very true though. Here is what really pisses me off. The Financial group who handles my IRA gets a a monthly fee based on the amount I have invested. So they make money at the end of the month even if I lost money for that month. Its quite a racket.
If somebody has a pension your fortunate, be happy

[Wesley Mouch]

Thank You. That's the point I'm trying to make. Everyone is taxed the same regardless of how much their pensions are, which sucks and isn't fair at all.

Everyone taxed the 'same' is rather fair. That's incredibly fair.

You can argue that it sucks, and that people with lower income 'deserve' to pay less of their income as tax -- and I'm quite OK with that. But whether you get your money as pension, income, or theft -- it should all be treated the same. And you should be taxed under the same rules. Now that's fair.

I had forgotten that Michigan isn't very generous with exemptions and decutions. But I thought I did get some 'exemption' from tax. And I did on my return. I looked up the rules [[state website)

For tax year 2011, the personal exemption allowance increases to $3,700 and the special exemptions allowance increases to $2,400....

And it goes on to talk about pension exemptions

For tax year 2011, pension benefits included in AGI from a private pension system or an Individual Retirement Account [[IRA) are deductible to a maximum of $45,842 for a single filer or $91,684 for joint filers.
Senior citizens age 65 or older may be able to deduct
part of their interest, dividends, and capital gains that are
included in AGI. For 2011, the deduction is limited to a
maximum of $10,218 for single filers and $20,437 for joint
filers. See Schedule 1 instructions beginning on page 12
for further details regarding pension benefits and senior
citizen interest deductions.

The exemptions on the Form MI-1040 include
Yourself
Spouse
Senior [[65+) or Disabled

At $3,700 each, these do add up to a reasonable exemption. If you think its not enough, I could agree.

[Wesley Mouch]

I don't think anyone should "have to earn their own retirement using an IRA." That's a stupid way for us, as a society, to fund retirement. The efficient thing to do would be to expand Social Security so that people can easily live off it in retirement, and then index that level of revenue and expenditure to inflation. I just don't see the policy rationale for requiring individuals, with their wildly varying areas of expertise, to figure out for themselves how to save and invest for retirement throughout their lives. It seems like a racket that mostly benefits the financial services industry at the expense of regular folks who don't have the first clue about investing.

I think we are just starting to see the problem with self-directed retirement. Its apparently a very small percentage of the population that has managed to accumulate enough for even a paltry retirement.

Today's market is part of the problem, to be sure. Most of the problem is lack of contributions.

I agree this is 'stupid'. But we've chosen to endow certain parts of our economy [[banks, municipal workers, education for example) with disproportionate benefits. In some cases, they've been negotiated and earned. That doesn't change the fact that the benefits are not evenly/fairly distributed. Add on that the transfer to many senior citizens that occured via real estate gains over the last 20 years. The crash has now adjusted a lot of that -- but a lot of retirees made huge gains in the market that their children will never see.

There are many reasons -- and the problem is large. The solution will be difficult.

Snyder seems to be doing a better of job of looking out for all Michiganders that we've seen for a while. [[End of rant.)

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Explain how he's looking out for EVERYBODY? That's not in a republicans DNA or any politician for that matter. "I've got mine, you better get yours"

[Shollin]

Wow bank employees get disproportionate benefits? Paying 25% of healthcare and employer matched 3% 401k is disproportionate?

[Wesley Mouch]

Wow bank employees get disproportionate benefits? Paying 25% of healthcare and employer matched 3% 401k is disproportionate?

Bankers, not bank employees. I did not intend to include the poor tellers stuffed inside the ATMs.

[antongast]

Bankers, not bank employees. I did not intend to include the poor tellers stuffed inside the ATMs.

*snrk*....

[brizee]

I thought this might be at least tangentially related.

A lot of talk about bipartisanship but what does the result actually say?

[Wesley Mouch]

I thought this might be at least tangentially related.

A lot of talk about bipartisanship but what does the result actually say?

We'll see if there's room for bipartisanship in the middle. The fringes are on the fringe. The middle is where its at.

[Locke09]

Everyone taxed the 'same' is rather fair. That's incredibly fair.

You can argue that it sucks, and that people with lower income 'deserve' to pay less of their income as tax -- and I'm quite OK with that. But whether you get your money as pension, income, or theft -- it should all be treated the same. And you should be taxed under the same rules. Now that's fair.

I had forgotten that Michigan isn't very generous with exemptions and decutions. But I thought I did get some 'exemption' from tax. And I did on my return. I looked up the rules [[state website)

And it goes on to talk about pension exemptions

For tax year 2012, no amount of the pension or 401K is exempted, unless you were born before a certain year. If we want to talk about being fair, that is not fair. When current retirees under the age of 65 eventually turn 65, they still will not get the exemption that those currently 65 are getting. Most, if not all states that tax pensions have an amount that is exempt for everyone.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

For tax year 2012, no amount of the pension or 401K is exempted, unless you were born before a certain year. If we want to talk about being fair, that is not fair. When current retirees under the age of 65 eventually turn 65, they still will not get the exemption that those currently 65 are getting. Most, if not all states that tax pensions have an amount that is exempt for everyone.

Thank you, try telling that to Mr Mouch, he think's everything is fair game.

[Shollin]

Bankers, not bank employees. I did not intend to include the poor tellers stuffed inside the ATMs.

Who is a "banker"? what does a banker do?

[313WX]

Who is a "banker"? what does a banker do?

They bank, of course.

[Scottathew]

Here's another one. What has he done that's been so good, besides trying to force a bridge down our throats?

You've been watching too much television.

[Locke09]

I thought this might be at least tangentially related.

A lot of talk about bipartisanship but what does the result actually say?

It says that the only things Mr. Snyder is successful with, are those things that he can use the Republican majority to force through. This says absolutely nothing positive about his leadership skills or ability to forge bi-partisan agreements.

He did veto the voter id bill. He couldn't stop his party from passing it, and the only reason his veto will stand is because there are not enough Republicans to override the veto.

He couldn't get the bridge stuff passed. He had to go around the legislature. Canada had to bail him out and say they would pay for it.

No bi-partisanship and no real leadership to-date.

[Wesley Mouch]

It says that the only things Mr. Snyder is successful with, are those things that he can use the Republican majority to force through. This says absolutely nothing positive about his leadership skills or ability to forge bi-partisan agreements.

He did veto the voter id bill. He couldn't stop his party from passing it, and the only reason his veto will stand is because there are not enough Republicans to override the veto.

He couldn't get the bridge stuff passed. He had to go around the legislature. Canada had to bail him out and say they would pay for it.

No bi-partisanship and no real leadership to-date.

So tell us about the great successes of Granholm, then.

[Locke09]

So tell us about the great successes of Granholm, then.

I don't need to. I feel no compulsion to defend Granholm, make her appear to be superior to Snyder, or even discuss her at all. The topic of discussion is Snyder. Each person stands or falls on their own merit.

I typically reject the notion that I have to accept something because it is better than something else.

[rooms222]

I think Michigan is on the cutting edge, yet again, where a new type of "good government" Republican, our Governor, seems to be doing a good job with his apparantly fair and scientifically based changes that are harder to object to, but ultimately their effects can be punishingly detrimental to the black middle class. Ignoring this effect is the reason many seem surprised by the resistance to the emergency manager type legislation, even by Mayor Bing.


Excerpt from Magazine Essay by Walter Russell Mead:

Now, however, urban demographics are changing, and the politics of urban employment will change with it. In cities like Los Angeles, New York and even Washington, DC, black political power has begun to decline. Spanish-speaking immigrants and immigrants from Asia are exerting more power in local elections, and the patronage networks that have served blacks well in recent decades will now increasingly serve other client groups. An influx of affluent whites, who dislike machine politics and want to improve services like schools while cutting costs, puts additional pressure on the patronage networks. Add the squeeze on state and municipal government hiring together with a decline in relative black political power, and the future is not particularly hard to calculate.

One of the tragedies of black history in America is that blacks often only get to the gravy train when the locomotive is coming to the end of its run. Blacks are qualifying in large numbers for civil service pensions just as those pensions are looking shaky. Blacks have moved into professional, middle-class government employment just as state and local governments are heading over the financial cliff. In the same way, blacks came relatively late to the other pillar of 20th- century American middle class prosperity: manufacturing jobs. For the European migrants to American cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as productivity rose [[and as immigration restrictions cut off the supply of low-wage competition), rising manufacturing wages and employment opened the door to mass prosperity. The children and grandchildren of immigrant factory workers would go to college, enter the professions and also build new businesses, but that factory employment gave the economic stability that underwrote the economic integration of whole waves of immigrants into the American system. Blacks, drawn to the urban North after European immigration was curtailed by World War I and the draconian restrictions passed in its aftermath, came late to the factory economy as well. Many labor unions refused to accept black apprentices into skilled trades until the 1960s. Formal and informal systems of discrimination kept blacks from competing on equal terms for many factory jobs in the North and South until well into the 1970s.

In the 21st century, access has not disappeared as an issue. Poor black kids in a chaotic, crime-ridden neighborhood with no option but to attend lousy schools can hardly be said to enjoy equal access to the opportunities of American life. But for the growing number of middle-class blacks, the problem today is less one of access than it is that the social model on which the progress of the past half-century depended is disintegrating. It’s no good having equal access to factory jobs if those jobs are disappearing. It’s no good having equal access to municipal government jobs if the city is laying off rather than hiring, and if wages and benefits for the jobs that remain are being cut. It’s no good having a pipeline into the healthcare sector if that sector faces an immense financial crisis and is skidding along on an unsustainable path. For blacks, as for all Americans, the central problem today isn’t how to get access to blue model [[good, stable)jobs. It’s what to do next. This is not a racial problem, of course, but given the special circumstances and unique history of black America, those who want to get past blue are going to have to reckon with black. And in the reckoning we must recognize that we have no guarantees that the generally positive trajectory of the past half-century in race relations will persist if the underlying supports for it in the political economy fall away. That will surely affect the contours of the next great compromise, whenever it forms and whatever its terms.

From:
http://www.the-american-interest.com...cfm?piece=1300
This is a very long essay, of which I have attached the three most relevant paragraphs.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

You've been watching too much television.

And you need to come out from under that rock. Snyder, Romney and their republican cohorts could care less what happens to the mainstream and underclass in Michigan or anywhere else in America. You can keep believing it though.

[Locke09]

I think Michigan is on the cutting edge, yet again, where a new type of "good government" Republican, our Governor, seems to be doing a good job with his apparantly fair and scientifically based changes that are harder to object to, but ultimately their effects can be punishingly detrimental to the black middle class. Ignoring this effect is the reason many seem surprised by the resistance to the emergency manager type legislation, even by Mayor Bing.

"apparently fair?" "scientifically based?" "detrimental to the black middle class?"

I'll take the last one first. I don't perceive that Snyder is doing anything that is detrimental to the black middle class in particular. I think some of his "changes" are detrimental to the poor and middle class in general. The pension tax change, earned income credit change and other such changes funded the business tax reduction and the current surplus. I don't view that as "good government", "fair" or "scientific". The EM law disenfranchises voters and tramples on the agreements made with employees in general, not middle class blacks in particular.

How about "apparently fair?" Well, it's not "apparently fair" for government to pass a law that allows government to break contracts and default on agreements without declaring bankruptcy first, when regular citizens cannot do so. I've already said what I see as blatantly unfair about the pension tax. Not just the tax itself, but how it was implemented with its "tiered" system based on when you were born.

As for "scientifically based", I can't imagine what science is being employed in his decisions.