Central Perk: 1 ian. 2011

sâmbătă, 1 ianuarie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

In Praise of Volunteer Fire Departments (Do we really need paid union fire departments anywhere? What about police?)

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 12:33 PM PST

In response to "Crash Tax" Ripoff Expands in California and New York I received an email from "MB" a 20 year career police officer and firefighter who writes ...

Hello Mish

I have been an avid reader of your blog for the last. I place great value on your economic analysis particularly in regards to the dangers of unbridled debt accumulation. I am a police officer and firefighter with more than 20 years of service behind me. I am a member of a union though I am definitely not a union proponent. Our pension is entirely funded by member contributions. The city I work for has not contributed a dime to it in over 17 years.

There is no doubt that some police and fire unions are very insensitive to the strains they place on taxpayers. I for one do not believe in government taking from others to pay for my retirement. Considering that you read numerous accounts of greedy union bosses, I can understand some of your less than flattering characterizations of those in my profession.

Though I absolutely agree that charging accident victims for emergency response is double dipping the taxpayer, your comments insisting that anyone could competently do my job on whim to get out of property taxes is ludicrous. If one of your loved ones was trapped in a burning building or held by a violent criminal, would you be content have your neighbor the tax attorney try to save them?

Happy New Year
MB

Trapped Loved Ones

I expected a lot of flak over that post, yet that mild rebuttal was all that came in. Let's start with "MB's" final question: "If one of your loved ones was trapped in a burning building or held by a violent criminal, would you be content have your neighbor the tax attorney try to save them?"

Of course not. I never implied I would. That does not mean I want to pay union salaries or wages either. I certainly would not be opposed to having trained sheriffs respond to someone being held by a violent criminal. And I would not mind having someone from a volunteer fire department respond to an accident or fire.

73% of Firefighters are Volunteers Already

According to the National Volunteer Fire Council, 73 percent of firefighters in the United States are members of Volunteer Fire Fighters.

I fail to see why 95% or even 99% percent of them could not be. Perhaps some would not do it for property tax reductions. Perhaps it depends on what one's property taxes are. Perhaps not. Those 73% right now get nothing at all!

Let's look at it another way. How many would do it for tax rebates plus $500 a month tax free to both state and federal government?

With unemployment at 10% and underemployment at 20%, I bet I could fill every fire department in the country.

Would those people require training? Of course they would. Moreover, we would need a phase-in transition period to get to an all-volunteer state. I would not want all rookies, nor would anyone else. Thus, we could not get to 99% overnight. Could we get there in 5-7 years? Yes, we could.

Pensions

MB claimed "Our pension is entirely funded by member contributions".

No, it's not. It is 100% funded by taxpayers. Taxpayers pay 100% of police and firefighters' salary. Police and firefighters put some of their salary into a pension plan (percentage widely varies by city), but the source of the money is the taxpayer.

"MB's" particular case may be different, but most often the city (taxpayers) contribute the vast majority of what goes into these plans. Even in cases where the police and firefighter contributes 100%, it is important to recognize that money that comes from taxpayers who pay police and fire salaries.

Finally, if one took the typically paltry union-member contributions and totaled them up, it would come to far less than the untenable pension benefits that have been promised. That is exactly the source of the pension underfunding right now.

Certainly, not every plan is overly generous. Perhaps "MB's" plans is one of them. However, in cases where cities are in financial trouble, the very first place to look for reasons why is untenable wage and benefit packages of public union workers in general (not just police and fire).

My statements do not imply in any way, shape, or form, those police and fire officers are anything but dedicated, hard-working, employees. I suspect most of them are.

I only make the case the plans (in general), are far too generous and have bankrupted numerous cities.

Comments From My Blog

Docberg Writes ...

We had a volunteer department in my home town in its pre-yuppie invasion days, and they were highly trained and very effective. When I was a city administrator, I had both a volunteer fire department and a volunteer rescue squad. Both were staffed with some highly motivated and competent people. But, this was not in California.

Ron Writes ...

Ditto on the volunteer firefighters. We have had them in our community for years and I never felt like we were at a disadvantage. These people donate their time and money to serve their community. They go through extensive training.

I salute all of the volunteer firefighters in our country thank them for their service.

BB Writes ...

Mish - local volunteers are the best 1st responders out there!

When I was 16, my best bud from down the road was T-boned as he
turned into my driveway. The local farmer, volunteer, and 1st responder
was the first adult person on the scene. He ripped the door off the cracked
up Ford Ranger like tinfoil, and administered CPR/1st aid to my buddy.

These volunteers get no union, no pension, no pay.

When I was 29 I woke up at 3am writhing in pain with what I thought
was an appendix bursting. 1st responder? Volunteer EMT/firefighter from
the farm 1/4 mile to the north of me. We cut and split wood every year
together for the last 2 years, as well as hunting the same property together.

My point? know your neighbors because you will depend on them to survive.

Dedicated fire professionals do not want to hear they can be replaced by volunteers, but clearly they can.

Can police officers be replaced by volunteers? In some instances, quite easily. A prime example would be traffic direction duties at events and games. I bet many volunteers would gladly direct traffic for a couple of free tickets to games or concerts. There certainly is no reason to pay police to do those duties, often on overtime.

Can on-call volunteers replace police in a shootout? For the sake of argument let's assume no. However, I bet I could get many Libertarians to say "why not?" Either way, there is nothing that implies the need for unions or excessive pension benefits to the point cities are going bankrupt.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

New Year's Eve Celebration Images From Around The World

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 02:09 AM PST

Here are six of 30 New Year's Eve Celebration Images from around the world.

London

Sydney

Munich

Vienna

New York City

Rio de Janeiro city, Brasil

Happy New Year!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Your Weekly Address: The New Year

Your Daily Snapshot for
Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011

West Wing Week: Mailbag Day New Year's Edition

The President resolves to do all he can to get the economy growing and create jobs, and encourages Republicans to embrace their new responsibility to govern.

Watch the video.

SEOptimise

10 SEO and Web Predictions for 2011 That Will Most Likely Come True

Posted: 29 Dec 2010 11:57 PM PST

OK, for 2009 and 2010 I had made my huge 30 Web Trends lists. Some of them turned out be true others did not. No surprise here. This year I turned a bit lazy. I won’t offer you 30 predictions for 2011 I’m quite sure about I will predict only the things I’m almost absolutely sure about. OK, maybe some of them are a bit funny or over the top but who wants business as usual?

SEO won’t die in 2010. SEO has been pronounced dead even before the official terms has been coined. In 2011 SEO will be alive and kicking as ever. I don’t even need to get into details here. On the other hand I’m pretty sure that people who call SEO “dead” will again have a huge following.

Google will remain the king of search and it’s business model will also be still more than 90% advertising based. In spite of all the tool and feature creep and the frantic attempts by Google to earn money from other goods and services Google will remain an “advertising company” like Google CEO Eric Schmidt called it. They may remove the search feature altogether though in near future in favor of high quality results (ads).

There won’t be the next big thing in social media, the market is saturated. Even the rise of Foursquare or Tumblr won’t change much. People won’t ecstatically flock to new and more networks or social sites. People are fed up. They don’t want more of the same. I use Tumblr myself but it’s nothing revolutionary, it’s just blogging made simple (again). Still myriads of startups will keep on renaming things and reselling your relationships to yourself and advertisers.

Mobile phones, tablets or Google Chrome network computers won’t change the way we use the Internet much. Why? Do you remember the first portable TV sets from decades ago? Does everybody watch TV “on the go” today? Also is everybody using their mobile phones the surf the Web all the time? Most people want to use a phone as a phone. Some people will browse the Web on the go but mobile phones, tablets and other alternative devices won’t replace notebooks or something. The act of using the Web is not something you naturally do outside of your home or workplace most of time. So while some usage will shift to mobile you don’t have to assume that 2011 will make personal computers obsolete. So mobile and local SEO are important but solely as an addition. On the other hand you might want to throw away all your computers as I’m sure Apple will reinvent them again by taking away features like mouse support.

Search will become more social and social media more searchable. The two, search and social media will merge more and more but neither one will replace the other. In case you consider dropping SEO in favor of social media marketing or vice versa you better think holistically. Alternatively you can decide what you want to stop in 2011, eating or drinking?

SEO will still be considered black magic. Although SEO has gone mainstream a while ago most people will still not get it and thus want to “buy 500 PR5 links for $19″.

The SEO reputation problem will prevail as well and thus even more agencies will try to differentiate themselves by calling themselves search marketing, internet marketing, digital marketing, clean up companies or whatever while basically offering SEO services.

Matt Cutts will keep his job. Spam will still be around, sorry to disappoint you!

Google CEO Eric Schmidt will keep on entertaining us with his Orwellian newspeak on privacy and the likes: “Don’t like Streetview? Just move.”

While Eric Schmidt will entertain us, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook will keep on annoying us with new even more vexing features and privacy disasters. Advanced “Facebook Stalk” features are already on the way.

So you see 2011 will be quite similar to 2010. The Web is in a phase of slowing down. That’s my overall impression after following it since 1995 and participating since 1997. The above mentioned predictions will most likely come true as they describe processes that are taking place already.

Seth's Blog : Insurgents and incumbents

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Insurgents and incumbents

Incumbents compromise to please the committee and bend over backwards to defend the status quo.

Insurgents have the ability to work without a committee and to destroy the status quo.

The game is stacked in favor of the insurgents, except--

They're under pressure from boards, investors and neighbors to act like incumbents.

It takes guts to be an insurgent, and even though the asymmetrical nature of challenging the status quo is in their favor, often we find we're short on guts. ... and then the incumbents prevail.