RECENTLY ON TOL:
TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
AllanFolz's comments:
on What Are Workers Worth?
Also, many of our industrial giants of the 70's and 80's declared bankruptcy in order to cap and hand-off their unsustainable pensions. This will happen with the States eventually. Gen X and Gen Y are not going to put up with the tax levels necessary to keep these pensions properly funded.
posted 2 years, 10 months ago
view in context
on What Are Workers Worth?
It's the pensions! The private sector transitioned from defined benefit to defined contribution 20 years ago. The public sector has not only maintained defined benefits, but expanded them by guaranteeing returns far in excess of inflation and investment returns.
Services recipients, predominately our school children, tax payers, and new public employees are being treated unfairly as the boomers retire with pensions completely out of line with the rest of the economy.
posted 2 years, 10 months ago
view in context
on Keeping Track of Cows
That seems the obvious answer to me. A bunch of steers missing their ears would be pretty suspicious. No?
posted 3 years, 1 month ago
view in context
on Keeping Track of Cows
Maybe not a Piper Cub, but UAV's make sense. In fact the 2nd (3rd?) generation UAV's are being developed with commercial fishermen in mind. Free-range livestock seems not the far different from fishing.
posted 3 years, 1 month ago
view in context
on Keeping Track of Cows
Is cattle rustling still a capital offense? When was the last time a cattle rustler was actually caught? What was the punishment?
posted 3 years, 1 month ago
view in context
on RX: Health Care Costs
If you haven't heard of it yet, you may try googling "Paleo Diet". A lot of diabetics have had good results by all but eliminating the carbs they eat. No carbs, no insulin. Best wishes.
posted 3 years, 2 months ago
view in context
on RX: Health Care Costs
Well, I mentioned it. :-) I too suspect it is a huge vacuum of healthcare dollars, but without knowing any of the actual numbers, who can say?
You can bet the health insurance companies know, but they never share. I think it's because there is massive cost shifting going on, and if people knew the details there would be open revolt.
posted 3 years, 2 months ago
view in context
on RX: Health Care Costs
In each of my above items there is some one whose livelihood is dependent on the dysfunctional system the way it is now. These are the "special interests" we often refer to, and they are the barriers to real reform. The reason health reform has failed at the national level is because it has only concerned itself with addressing health insurance costs with various stop-gap band-aides. Instead we needed of a holistic look at what we are spending *for care*, how to build a system that most efficiently delivers care, and pays for the care in a socially equitable and individually responsible manner.
The hyper-active attention spans and biased, polarizing media and political system prevents a slow, deliberate, and rational discussion of holistic healthcare reform to the detriment of everyone not a special interest in the current dysfunctional system we now have. Everything we have today is all sound bite and anecdote. it doesn't help anyone make a decision as to what _ought_ to be.
posted 3 years, 2 months ago
view in context
on RX: Health Care Costs
Healthcare is the US is so dysfunctional it would take a week of shows to cover it properly.
1) Where are the *care* dollars spent? No one ever considers where the money goes. Before you can bring down cost, you have to know where you are spending the money. A household trying to cut back looks at how much they spend on the mortgage, dinners out, car payments, etc. Cutting 50% on $100/month in dinners out while your mortgage is $3000/month is not going to help your financial situation. Are most care dollars being spent on Herculean neonatal intervention, end of life, obese middle-agers? Some one knows, but it's never discussed in public discourse/debates such as these.
2) Many people, especially law makers, confuse health insurance with healthcare. The health insurers have inserted themselves into the system as middlemen skimming a percentage healthcare dollars. How much does it cost to have insurance companies with their high executive salaries and legions of claims processors? How much does it cost to have doctors offices and hospitals with their admin staffs to comply with the insurance billing requirements? Again no one knows. At best we get a dubious statistic like the insurance companies spend 9x% of every premium dollar on claims. Well if that includes salaries, IT and infrastructure, and lobbying, I am not impressed.
3) How much does Medicare & Medicaide cost-shifting add to the insured folks that are trying to play by the rules? Everyone agrees it exists, but again, no one wants to do the hard work to put a number to it.
4) How much does the broken malpractice and torts system cost us.
5) Doctors have huge overhead from school loans to foregone compensation for their many years of school to malpractice insurance to ridiculous billing overhead and rejected claims. They are the only profession which cannot charge for the *time* of their expertise, only for procedures. How does this bias to do procedures effect the healthcare delivery and drive up costs from unnecessary procedures?
6) Prescription drugs and drug companies have been a two edge sword. Drugs can save costs (and lives) tremendously in some cases, but seem to drive up costs overall from dubious look-a-like new drugs that replace perfectly good and cheap old drugs.
posted 3 years, 2 months ago
view in context
on Facebook Comes to Prineville
If Prineville is so great, ask yourself why aren't Facebook executives moving there themselves?
In fact, a number of companies are building data centers in random rural areas. It is only slightly less outrageous than outsourcing jobs overseas.
Data center jobs are near the bottom end of the IT skills spectrum. A data center does not draw top-notch talent. A data center will not incubate further tech industry the way a Tektronix or HP did. Remote data centers are all about exploiting labor to minimize costs. Few tech workers will want to relocate to an industry backwater that has only one employer for their field. If they do relocate those workers know they will have to move and uproot their families if they ever want to change jobs. That gives the employer huge bargaining power on wages. Further, companies use the fact few skilled workers would want to move to these rural areas to exploit the H1B visa program to bring in foreign workers at sub-par wages.
posted 3 years, 3 months ago
view in context
on Public Nudity
Concerning Portland's World Naked Bike Ride, it has roughly doubled in size every year since its inception, from about 100 in 2003 to over 5000 last year.
Can 5000 people freely choosing to ride nude really be an affront to the public? They are the public.
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
view in context
on Public Nudity
If the Mayor thinks nude people are weirdos we, the public, need protection from, what better way of identifying the weirdos than letting them run around naked?
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
view in context
on Measure 67
Well those business owners pay income taxes so what's the difference?
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
view in context
on Measure 67
I will probably be voting for the business tax, but I think a lot of people who know better are being disingenuous about it. If they were honest they'd call it the Walmart tax and admit it is to stop Walmart from gaming the energy tax credit loophole so well. The better solution, of course, is to close the loophole, but special interests, legislators, and the public like to feel good about being green... we just don't like the idea that Walmart is the prime beneficiary.
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
view in context
on Measure 66
I will probably be voting for the business tax, but I think a lot of people are being disingenuous about it. If we were honest we'd call it the Walmart tax and admit it is to stop them from gaming the energy tax credit loophole too well. The better solution, of course, is to close the loop hole, but special interests, legislators, and the public like to feel good about being green... we just don't like the idea that Walmart is the prime beneficiary.
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
view in context
on Measure 66
To those wondering about govt spending and waste, the waste is in the lavish defined-benefit plans for govt employees. Interestingly, lavish retirement benefits is what brought down the auto companies. I believe it will bring down our state and local govts next.
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
view in context
on Tax Referrals
$10 million in logs is not an extra $140 in tax. It is an extra $10,000 in tax at a 0.1% rate. Of course the 0.1% rate is not set in stone. A future legislature could raise it to 0.5% or 1.0% or 1.5%.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
view in context
on Tax Referrals
Agreed, $150 is nothing. Any real C-corp is spending 5 to 10 times that much just filing their returns. And an extra $140 to the state is not going to fix any billion dollar budget hole.
I think the ideological response is a two way street. There are people that HATE that some corporations might be paying only $10 in tax. Are they really going to be mollified over $150? For how long?
The problem is the legislature creates all kind of tax breaks, loop-holes and give-aways then gets upset when corporations make too well use of them. Actually closing the loop-holes is a non-starter, since those can be used to curry favor and donations from the special interests that lobby and benefit from them.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
view in context
on Tax Referrals
I don't remember mention of a business operations deduction. How's that work? If it works the way I think you are implying this sounds even more like a sales tax, albeit a really, really low one.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
view in context
on Tax Referrals
Never say never. ;-)
Here's something to consider: sell timber to mills in Oregon, pay the tax; sell timber to mills in Washington, don't pay the tax. This is how taxes can have a negative impact on employment in ways that may not seem obvious at first consideration.
posted 3 years, 8 months ago
view in context
