Everyone seems to to be missing a serious problem with not taxing tips.
It will cut your Social Security payments when you retire.
My dad died 21 years ago, but he drove a cab for 40 years & when he retired, his SSA monthly payments were almost the maximum you could get & he told me that he only reported about half of his tips.
So all those people falling for this pandering by the politicians on this are just fooling themselves & not thinking long term.
As for our appallingly incompetent mayor, Brandon Johnson is determined to bankrupt the city, the schools & cause taxes to go insane, due to his total fealty to the rotten & totally corrupt, power mad teachers union!
Ever since the pandemic started and workers started sitting it out, I have been questioning the future of workers with little or no income. I assume most of them plan on getting old. Social Security has been on my mind. They are not contributing to any kind of pension plan. Many of them whine about not being able to pay their bills now. What do they think will happen when they get old and encounter senior living and medical costs, not to mention no income? And how much will I and others be taxed to support them? Living on tip money has never been a strong long term strategy for most. The idea was not a good one for Trump, who was pondering to a Vegas crowd. Who in the Harris camp thought it was a good idea to copy a bad Trump idea?
It's an interesting thought if true. Since when does a Democrat want to reduce taxes? How does fund all the social services that Democrats want without taxes? But then I remember that it's not as if government was expecting scars of money from those depending on tips. How many on tips report them, despite what the IRS rules might say? Just how much in taxes does it produce? We're not talking about Warren Buffet or Elon Musk income. This whole story started with Burger Boy making promises to Vegas casino workers. Tip workers could also include your barber or hair stylist. Or how about your waitress at the local pancake house. How many tip workers have income so low that they don't pay taxes? I have heard the word pandering used a lot. Actually I call it what comes out of the back end of a male cow. Politicians say things totally inane and many of us have heart palpitations because of it. Trying to think for ourselves outside the words of politicians and the media seems to be a mind numbing exercise.
You quote Agent Orange as saying "Kamala Harris. You know, it's interesting. Nobody really knows her last name. If you ask people, do you know what her last name is? Nobody has any idea what it is. Harris. It’s like Harris. I don’t know. How the hell did this happen?" This raises the age old question about the Agent--is he deranged, pig-ignorant (sorry, pigs), or both? VP Harris's father was Jamaican. Many Jamaicans have ordinary, standard British surnames. Only a moron would not know how that came about. Hint to those: colonialism, exploitation, rape, slavery, etc.
Yeah, not quite. The Harris name comes from a post slavery Irish immigrant that was a produce exporter. Her father is half Irish and is a distinguished emeritus professor of economics. But she is directly descended from another Irishman, named Hamilton Brown, that owned at least 1100 slaves, in addition to importing hundreds of Irish indentured servants after the end of slavery. Kamala Harris great-great-great grandmother was married to Hamilton Brown. Hamilton Brown received the modern equivalent of 11 million pounds for his slaves when slavery was outlawed. So, should she claim to be a victim or beneficiary of slavery? Should she apologize for her ancestor? Does she have an opinion on reparations? Or is this just interesting family history that has nothing to do with her?
I stand corrected. Professor Harris a Black man has that name because some of his ancestors were slaves and the subjects of colonialist crimes. What your exegesis has to do with Agent Orange's burblings escapes me, as does the point of your questions.
I think that the race, ethnicity, and the actions of ancestors are completely irrelevant with respect to candidate qualifications. But given the importance of these traits to many progressive activists, which I believe include Harris, I am curious what she and others might think.
So you are guessing what Vice-President Harris might think about a hypothetical question? Waste of time, in my opinion.
It seems to me that it is the MAGA types who are more obessed by "race" than those who think otherwise. By the way, what did Trump mean by his statement? That a mixed-race American should not have a "white" surname?
So if I understand the argument correctly, on the one hand there are only an insignificant number of tax paying tip earners and, on the other hand, not taxing tips would be a terrific hit to federal revenues. Huh?
The 'huge hit' story was part of the media response when Trump made the proposal. They claimed that any commission-based earner could recharacterize their income as tips, so hedge fund managers, et al were the real intended beneficiaries. The same media said Harris cared about low- and middle-income people and did not repeat the warning about evil rich people. Also, no one mentioned that the IRS believes tips are significantly under-reported. Which is why they require restaurants to allocate at least 8% of sales as tips on tipped worker W-2s.
The problem with inflation, not always just in perception, is that even if inflation goes to zero, prices aren’t going to go down, just remain steady. Yes, on average, wages have caught up, but “on average” doesn’t apply to everyone. The price of eggs is higher for everyone, but not everyone’s wages have kept pace. People, reasonably or not, remember what prices for particular items were back when. For example, 40 or so years ago, I got the price of a bottle of salad dressing pegged at 47 cents. I know it’s unreasonable, but I still get sticker shock every time I buy salad dressing. It just takes a long time for new prices to feel normal, and a lot of prosperity for people to feel they’ve caught up.
I have admitted to being soft of economics knowledge. A few weeks ago, someone here tried to educate me on the causes of inflation. Their explanation left me as knowledgeable as I was previously. So I did some online checking. Top economists could not agree, especially when discussing how much Biden had to do with it. My life experience is that prices don't go down. That part is not difficult. For various reasons, when prices go up, so do the costs of doing business such as salaries and materials costs. These are things that don't go down even if a business owner tries to lower prices which is rare. I notice Burger Boy was at a rally the other day when he promised to lower prices. As usual, he offered no specifics and his deluded followers took him at his word. How would do that? Order grocers to lower prices? Order manufacturers to lower costs? Obviously he can't do it. But I gave up hoping his followers would actually give thought to what he says. But, once again, in my experience prices don't go down. I don't need a degree in economics to know that. They just don't. The rises might slow down and they might stay the same for awhile. But who here thinks they are ever again going to see $.50 for a gallon of gas? How about $.25 for a loaf of bread? How many of you plan to buy that brand new car for $10,000? Or how about that ranch home for $50,000? I can't give you all the economic whys. But it ain't gonna happen.
The one exception is technology, which does get cheaper. I remember the first color printer my company bought about 30 years ago. $10K and two minutes per page. My first laser printer from HP cost $1600 and could only print Courier type. Laptop prices stay about the same, but get bigger and faster on the inside. TVs keep getting bigger and cheaper. Wish eggs could do that!
Okay you got me. My only question is that if stores can afford to lower prices that much, why were they so high in the first place? The obvious answers are that the prices were set at what people were willing to pay and there is always PR value in lowering prices. What else am I missing?
Technology genuinely gets cheaper: better production methods, higher volumes, true advances in technology that allow you, for example, to get 128 GB of storage on a thumbnail-sized SD card. Think how much cheaper LEDs are than in years past. But still not eggs.
If I understand you, it's not about deflation. We can purchase more efficient tech that is cheaper to make. Okay, I get that. I'm a cheapskate anyway. I can live without most of the bells and whistles on the more expensive phones and computers. For me, it's less about prices going down than buying only what I need in the first place and not going out of my way to load up credit cards. Naturally, most of the students where I teach have more expensive and fancier toys than I do. That might sound like idle chit chat. But it's important to marketers, sales reps, and manufacturers. It also demonstrates what an.old fart I am.
You're missing economies of scale, which apply to all businesses. When you can produce products at a larger scale, your per-unit costs are lower and so your price is lower. Why? Efficiencies of production that come with higher volumes: spreading of fixed costs and capital over more units, more streamlined production as with automated manufacturing or packaging and other such technological improvements as companies seek to improve their productivity, and bulk orders of supplies. For this reason, products that are new to the market generally start out very expensive but, if they're popular (indicating unmet demand), multiple companies will invest in more efficient production, and seek to innovate to make production more efficient, to meet that demand. Overall costs of production thus increase dramatically, but per-unit costs come way down, increasing revenue even more dramatically and thus leading to greater per-unit profits.
You might think, well, that makes it cheaper to produce the product but that doesn't actually push the price down. Why not just take the extra profit? Two reasons: competition will force the price to come down. Someone else comes along, offers a similar thing for less (which they can do because of all those efficiencies), and consumers buy that instead. In addition, even if competition is slow to work that magic or barriers to entry keep competitors out at least for a time, a company may well want to bring prices down to sell more units which would be more profitable. A monopolist has maximum power to set prices, but it doesn't have the power to change the prices consumers are willing to pay. Thus, they want to figure out the price and quantity that will result in maximum profits, where marginal revenue no longer exceeds marginal cost. This may well mean increasing production and lowering prices even without competition (though not to the level of a competitive market).
In the tech world, there is an additional specific element involved, a sort of economy of scale, that supercharges declining prices in tech -- the rapid innovation in microprocessors that enable vastly increased computing power at a similar per-chip price. We know it costs a shit-ton to manufacture chips. But once you're doing it, experience has shown that it's very cheap to implement improvements once you figure out how to make those improvements. Moore's law refers to the innovation that transistor density on a chip has doubled (i.e., increased exponentially) roughly every couple of years since the 1960's while chip prices stay low. That's huge! It's akin to the productivity gains most manufacturers seek to exploit as competition incentivizes productivity gains, but the payoff is bigger and faster than in most manufacturing contexts.
As I explained, I am not an economist. What you say makes sense, in theory. What it leaves out is human behavior, which is more my field and modern times. Changing times means theory needs to adjust. When I was kid on the south side, we bought very little from chain stores or large corporations. The competition came from smaller stores, mostly locally and family owned that competed with each other for the same local crowd. That was Chicago. One rarely needed to leave the neighborhood to shop and there was a good chance one knew the owner by sight and name. Now my groceries come from Walmart or some other large outlet. So does my clothing. Where service might need to come to my home, it's local. But chances are that I am using a corporate service like Comcast or Verizon and service is done by computer. IfI am upset with Walmart, I can shop at one of the other corporate grocers. But I doubt Walmart is very worried about losing me unless others are upset with the same things. And if enough people were ever upset with Walmart, they would simply shutter the store. Actually that happened in my area to Eagle and Festival Foods. Kmart went away in my area, as well as Sears, Penny's, and others. So competition is going away in my area. I can't match you in economic theory. This is observation and personal experience. Yes, Walmart can sell things cheaper than a small local grocer, due to scale. And if that local grocer goes away?
Hey, to be clear, I'm not saying that these effects are necessarily and always good. I'm just purporting to describe what's happening and why based on a sort of Econ 101 education (not much beyond that, which may be the curse of a little knowledge, not sure).
Both theory and the real world seem to agree: Broadly speaking, big companies will tend to outcompete smaller competitors due to economies of scale. That, after all, is just what you've observed happening with Walmart and so on. Indeed, Sears did the same thing in its heyday.
For all the talk about how economic models don't reflect real-world human behavior, they often do. People have not revealed themselves to be as sentimental about the local store as we might like. They take the deals at Walmart and Amazon. They're mercenary! They might even shop at the store to see the goods but then order them on Amazon because it's cheaper. They whine about the hassles of flying or extra charges but, at the same time, tend to shop strictly on price, and so airlines, low-margin businesses, are forced to squeeze and don't widely offer the cool, deluxe experience of yore, when the industry was comprehensively regulated but prices were much higher.
I hear your point about a lower number of options leading to a lack of competition in your area. But I'm not sure that consolidation of the grocery business is hurting consumers on price nor that it quashes competition. I read somewhere that grocery margins are in the 2% area, which is quite low. In my area, I've got a Pete's, two Jewel-Oscos, a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe's, and, further out, a big Target, a big Walmart, a couple of discount grocery stores, plus a Costco -- all within a short drive. I think there may be an Aldi on the horizon. Federal law is worried about a lack of competition and will, at least under Biden and Harris, hold up mergers that significantly reduce that variety on antitrust grounds.
That doesn't make the world nicer necessarily, and I like small businesses and make a point to patronize the ones I like, but, of all the problems facing the country, lack of cheap groceries or grocery competition is actually not really one of them. From 10,000 feet, food prices seem silly low.
Most economists agree that Biden's stimulus was a significant contributor to price increases in this country that would not have otherwise been as large, though they disagree as to how much it contributed. The basic idea is that the stimulus pumped too much money into the economy at once -- too much money chasing too few goods and services, leading to price increases. At the same time, the Covid disruption to supply chains and other Covid-related factors also played a big role. I think most economists think the excessive stimulus contributed to less than half of the inflation we saw.
I tend to think that "gouging" is a temporary phenomenon. Amid increased costs, producers all increase prices and consumers then get accustomed to those increasing prices, giving producers cover to keep prices high or engage in other experiments like "shrinkflation" without having to stick their necks out in normal times, even after costs come down again. They may sort of quasi-collude, saying stuff publicly that signals to other producers that we're not going to engage in a price war and instead take the dough, because that's in all of our interests. Consumers, however, have an ace up their sleeve, which is the ability to just say no -- by becoming more price-conscious, seeking more deals, buying cheaper versions, etc. We're seeing that happen now, finally. PepsiCo, a chief offender here, has probably reached the limit of its gouging spree. Starbucks is reeling from declining sales. McDonald's is offering a very affordable $5 meal (McDouble, 4-piece McNuggets, small fry, and a small drink).
Asking the government to regulate prices is a prescription for shortages, which is pretty much always what happens when governments set price ceilings below the market equilibrium price/quantity, in theory and fact. Most think Harris's proposal is just talk. I hope it is. I don't think any mainstream economist would really love the idea, though maybe I'm wrong.
Your broader point about nominal prices increasing over the long term is a bigger macroeconomic issue. We actually want a little inflation, and governments see to it by regulating interest rates. Why? One important thing to realize is that inflation, so long is it covers everything at the same time, is only nominal and not real. You could add a zero at the end of every dollar figure tomorrow, thus increasing the nominal amount of dollars by ten, but it would make no real difference. That McDonald's meal would now suddenly cost $50 but that $5 in your wallet would also suddenly become $50.
But that doesn't explain why it's actually good to have some inflation. Three reasons:
1. If prices stop rising or go down (deflation), it reduces the incentive to spend today and increases the incentive to hold out for a better deal, which slows the economy.
2. If prices stop rising or go down, income will likely come down, making it harder to pay back loans taken when prices were higher, leading to an inability to pay back loans, and additionally disincentivize further borrowing, which is the life-blood of the economy.
3. If prices stop rising or go down, the price of borrowing lowers to near nothing, which hampers the ability of national banks to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates, because there's nowhere to go.
Thus, moderate inflation nicely goes along with a growing economy. Can we have infinite economic growth? I don't know, but we're probably a long way from having to deal with a scenario of global economic stasis.
The only downside of moderate inflation is when you're living on fixed income as prices rise. One can ameliorate this ahead of time by not keeping one's money in a mattress, but put it somewhere where it grows, which inflation allows. In addition, Social Security does by law increase with inflation.
whenever a discussion involving tipping comes along, people inevitably say let's get rid of it. I follow pages like The Angry Bartender where service people share their tales. The overall consensus is they like tipping (but not the tippers because lets be honest, we are A-holes) and I suspect they like the ability to underreport their tips.
I have to disagree with your take on the Bronze medal issue, specifically your point that "even stupid and arbitrary rules have to be enforced until they are officially changed." You can test this view with a thought experiment by lowering and raising the stakes involved in hypothetical cases. On one end of the scale, there is a plethora of laws around the country that are just plain silly and are not enforced, like one law on the books in Vermont where a woman needs written permission from her husband in order to obtain dentures (last one in this link: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/vermont/crazy-vt-laws/ ) Should this law be enforced?
At the other extreme, imagine a convicted murderer slated to be executed, and the night before the execution indisputable DNA evidence of his innocence comes to light. His appeals processes have all been exhausted, there is no legal process to introduce this new evidence. Should he still be executed? Laws are sometimes unjust and what is right is sometimes not legal. Sometimes it's impossible and wrong to wait until a rule is changed when it is clear it is not on the right side. It's clear Chiles earned her medal, she should keep it.
Yes they do. Alito and Thomas seem almost ghoulish in their desire to allow executions to continue (for "finality" reasons) even in the face of overwhelming evidence of innocence. EZ has long been an opponent of the Death Penalty, so I presume that he exempts the death penalty from his "blanket statement" about allowing dumb laws to be enforced until changed.
"But even stupid and arbitrary rules have to be enforced until they are officially changed. So stripping Chiles of her bronze was a terrible, unfair outcome, but the correct one. Do you agree?"
No. Not when it effects the outcome. There are lots of stupid and arbitrary rules in sports but teams and individuals can usually overcome them. The stupid fumble into the endzone is a touchback for the other team no matter who recovers is one example.
But this rule that they didn't appeal in enough time (correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the American team provide video evidence that they did?) seems like the kind of argument you make when you have lost an argument. You start measuring the margins and checking the font size to see if some irrelevant minutiae of the code of bureaucratic requirements has been violated. You pull out the dictionary and parse every word according to the most obtuse reading of its literal meaning.
and as time moved forward, we learn more sketchy details aka the conflict of interest. The solution would be to award both of them the bronze medal (there is precedence) and close this chapter with a modification of the rules that improves the contest and prevents this sort of thing from happening again.
Joy, courage, strength, stamina, and humility all appeared in countless images from the 2024 Summer Games, but the one I'll always remember is the one showing Brazil's Rebeca Andrade getting props atop the medal stand, where she's beaming with joy, from Simone Biles and Jordan Childs of the U.S. team (winner of the team competition), bowing down with wide smiles of appreciation and respect. Good humor and grace and mutual admiration: couldn't get better than that. It took Biles and Child's together to create that moment. So I voted Yes, let both contenders for the bronze get, and keep their medals.
I have friends who attend the conventions (delegates) but the point seems to be to catch up with old friends and party, not get any actual business done. I'll follow my friends' adventures at the conventions on IG or FB but that's all I find interesting. (Side note: the Democrats Abroad crew appear to have the BEST parties. My friend who represents Democrats Abroad- France has a lot of fun.)
The Chicago Public Schools should take a look at the solution of those small towns in the Midwest who lost population, their school attendance numbers were shrinking and they were threatened with higher taxes. They consolidated schools - especially high schools which had dropped to under 100 students - with the nearby towns. Kids had to ride buses where before they walked. No one suffered. It made a lot of sense for many reasons. CPS could follow their lead and consolidate high schools with less than 100 students as a start. Close the excess buildings, reassign the teachers/staff to schools currently shorthanded. Just getting rid of the upkeep of the almost vacant schools would be a start to smart financial steps. Two examples are: Douglass High School has 33 students, Simpson Academy has 27. Why would anyone keep a high school with 33 students open when the schools can be merged for a much better high school experience all around.
Because Rahm got so much s--- for closing schools, no mayor wants to bring it up. CTU would rather have 1 teacher covering history for 15 students at Douglass and 1 teacher covering history for 150 students at another school than have 1 teacher teach them all. Anything that would cost teacher jobs will be vociferously opposed by Johnson's puppet masters at CTU.
The feeling that all neighborhood schools are the best schools did in Rahm. They haven't been for a long time in many neighborhoods, but it's hard to prove otherwise when its been the norm for so many years.
There is also the media accepted nonsense that the school is an institutional anchor and gathering spot of the community even when there are very few students. They also define a community as hyper-local, as when Dyett high school was kept open using that argument in spite of the 6 other high schools within one mile of Dyett.
“Don't try to tell me MAGA Republicans care about “protecting children” when page 302 of Trump's Project 2025 playbook calls for eliminating safety regulations on baby formula. — Robert Reich”
I’m an independent who’s definitely not supporting Trump or Harris. When I read a deliberate distortion (Trump’s Project 2025, which I will bet he hasn’t read and didn’t know about until it showed up in the news.), my opinion of Reich as a hack is reinforced. But clearly @ericzorn and others read this and agree with both the sentiment and the expression of it. What’s your interpretation of calling it Trump’s Project 2025? A deliberate misnomer being used knowingly as an effective taunt? A fair-game misrepresentation in a dirty game? An amusing counter-factual insult of the type Trump is famous for?
It is Trump's in that the creators are mostly former Trump staffers and it is written specifically for a Trump presidency. Of course he hasn't read it, it's longer than a tweet! He has surely been made aware of the basic outline and approved - "I get to control the women and let business regulations die? All good!"
Voting for the lesser evil may make sense in swing states (I voted for Obama in 2008 since I was an Indiana resident at the time), but it’s pointless in states that are already in the bag. There is less certainty that the sun will set in the west this evening than there is that Illinois will vote blue in November, so unless you REALLY like either Harris or Trump, you really are just throwing away your vote (and selling a little bit of your soul) by casting for either one of them since the outcome is preordained. Vote your conscience.
Page 302: “Re-evaluate excessive regulation. As for baby formula regulations generally, labeling regulations and regulations that unnecessarily delay the manufacture and sale of baby formula should be re-evaluated. During the Biden Administration, there have been devastating baby formula shortages.”
What does Reich have to say about Biden? The article claims that the Biden Admin has undermined public health by opposing baby formula regulation in other countries, at the behest of the industry. So, I am guessing that Reich has covered his eyes.
It might be useful to note that there are only 4 US manufacturers, and that the FDA had blocked import of baby formula until the shortage, when they decided that some of the regulations really weren't that necessary.
Pete - Don't kid yourself. You know don't you, that although he claims (during campaign season) not to know anything about Project 2025 because it contains so much toxic stuff, if he is elected he will implement 2025 enthusiastically (or at least his minions will); and when his opponents complain he will say "Hey, Project 2025 was out there - it was written by my people, so this is what the people voted for when they elected me."
ALWAYs (or almost always) appeal your real estate tax Assessment. With all of the information you need available online, it's really pretty easy to do research and file.
When I lived in Lake County, I appealed almost every year, and received some type of reduction (even if it was a "courtesy reduction" - i.e. a nominal reduction that essentially recognizes that you took the time to actually appeal) virtually every year. Over time, that adds up compared to your neighbors.
However, my best result occurred in the years after the Global recession of 2007-2009. Housing values were going down especially AFTER the assessment had been determined by the Assessor's office. I cited several comparable home sales in my neighborhood that had occurred in the 12 month period AFTER that year's assessment date of my home. The local Township Assessment Board disallowed these comps because they occurred AFTER the assessment date. The statute that speaks of valid comps only states that the comps have to occur "within" 12 months of the assessment date - it doesn't say anything about comp sales must be during the 12 months BEFORE the assessment date. I appealed on this basis to the County-wide Assessment Board. I was rejected again, despite my new argument. My recourse was to Appeal to the Lake County Circuit Court - which I did. I heard nothing back from the Lake County Board until a couple of days before the court hearing I was going to represent myself in front of the Lake County Judge who heard these appeals. (Such appeals rarely get to this stage.) (It took so long for this process to occur that I had paid 2 years of RE taxes based on a valuation that I believed to be WAY too high. I had also appealed the intervening assessment.) Also, I'm an attorney (albeit a commercial/transactional attorney with very little courtroom experience), so I was willing to make my statutory argument (which I thought to be quite valid) before the judge. The County Attorney assigned to argue assessment appeals at the County District level called and wanted to settle. He agreed to my original assessment figure for the original year in question and the following year. He - in not so many words - acknowledged that Lake County was settling with me (and with others who made the same argument, I presume) because the County was so concerned that my argument had merit that it did not want to have a precedential case sitting out in the public to give other RE taxpayers a decision to cite. Lake County actually cut a check to me for RE tax overpayments for 2 years that, in the aggregate, amounted to a high four-figure number. (I have to say, it was sweet getting a check FROM the Assessor's Office.)
Think about your personal situation. Your home needs a new roof. Your washer does a subpar job and probably needs replacing. Your living room carpet offends even your dog. Your salary barely allows you to pay the mortgage. What are you thinking? Take a second job? Hold off on new purchases? Buy cheap whenever possible? Cut somewhere else in your budget? Did you buy more house than you could afford in the first place? I ask you this because of the CPS- CTU new. The CTU is basically saying "GD! We need it so SOMEONE is going to pay for it!" CPS is saying "Are you kidding? We ain't got it and we're not going deeper into hock to get it." And Mayor Unions is saying to to CPS "How dare you show any fiscal sense! What the union wants, it gets. You're fired!" Are we surprised? Richard J Daley used to do the same thing. But he had a little more pull in Springfield and Washington than Mayor Unions, who has already been told no by JB. So the real question is that if the union gets their way, who pays the resulting bills? Those of you living in the city had better keep a firm grasp on your wallets, those of you that haven't already had forced open by Mayor Unions. How many of you would walk into Jewel-Osco and say "Give it to me! I want it and need it! I can't pay. But that's irrelevant!"
Everyone seems to to be missing a serious problem with not taxing tips.
It will cut your Social Security payments when you retire.
My dad died 21 years ago, but he drove a cab for 40 years & when he retired, his SSA monthly payments were almost the maximum you could get & he told me that he only reported about half of his tips.
So all those people falling for this pandering by the politicians on this are just fooling themselves & not thinking long term.
As for our appallingly incompetent mayor, Brandon Johnson is determined to bankrupt the city, the schools & cause taxes to go insane, due to his total fealty to the rotten & totally corrupt, power mad teachers union!
Ever since the pandemic started and workers started sitting it out, I have been questioning the future of workers with little or no income. I assume most of them plan on getting old. Social Security has been on my mind. They are not contributing to any kind of pension plan. Many of them whine about not being able to pay their bills now. What do they think will happen when they get old and encounter senior living and medical costs, not to mention no income? And how much will I and others be taxed to support them? Living on tip money has never been a strong long term strategy for most. The idea was not a good one for Trump, who was pondering to a Vegas crowd. Who in the Harris camp thought it was a good idea to copy a bad Trump idea?
I saw an article that said she came up with that on her own and in fact surprised the campaign with her remarks.
It's an interesting thought if true. Since when does a Democrat want to reduce taxes? How does fund all the social services that Democrats want without taxes? But then I remember that it's not as if government was expecting scars of money from those depending on tips. How many on tips report them, despite what the IRS rules might say? Just how much in taxes does it produce? We're not talking about Warren Buffet or Elon Musk income. This whole story started with Burger Boy making promises to Vegas casino workers. Tip workers could also include your barber or hair stylist. Or how about your waitress at the local pancake house. How many tip workers have income so low that they don't pay taxes? I have heard the word pandering used a lot. Actually I call it what comes out of the back end of a male cow. Politicians say things totally inane and many of us have heart palpitations because of it. Trying to think for ourselves outside the words of politicians and the media seems to be a mind numbing exercise.
You quote Agent Orange as saying "Kamala Harris. You know, it's interesting. Nobody really knows her last name. If you ask people, do you know what her last name is? Nobody has any idea what it is. Harris. It’s like Harris. I don’t know. How the hell did this happen?" This raises the age old question about the Agent--is he deranged, pig-ignorant (sorry, pigs), or both? VP Harris's father was Jamaican. Many Jamaicans have ordinary, standard British surnames. Only a moron would not know how that came about. Hint to those: colonialism, exploitation, rape, slavery, etc.
Yeah, not quite. The Harris name comes from a post slavery Irish immigrant that was a produce exporter. Her father is half Irish and is a distinguished emeritus professor of economics. But she is directly descended from another Irishman, named Hamilton Brown, that owned at least 1100 slaves, in addition to importing hundreds of Irish indentured servants after the end of slavery. Kamala Harris great-great-great grandmother was married to Hamilton Brown. Hamilton Brown received the modern equivalent of 11 million pounds for his slaves when slavery was outlawed. So, should she claim to be a victim or beneficiary of slavery? Should she apologize for her ancestor? Does she have an opinion on reparations? Or is this just interesting family history that has nothing to do with her?
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/07/23/kamala-harris-is-a-descendant-of-an-irish-slave-owner-in-jamaica/
I stand corrected. Professor Harris a Black man has that name because some of his ancestors were slaves and the subjects of colonialist crimes. What your exegesis has to do with Agent Orange's burblings escapes me, as does the point of your questions.
“Exegesis”, good one! Had to look it up.
I think that the race, ethnicity, and the actions of ancestors are completely irrelevant with respect to candidate qualifications. But given the importance of these traits to many progressive activists, which I believe include Harris, I am curious what she and others might think.
So you are guessing what Vice-President Harris might think about a hypothetical question? Waste of time, in my opinion.
It seems to me that it is the MAGA types who are more obessed by "race" than those who think otherwise. By the way, what did Trump mean by his statement? That a mixed-race American should not have a "white" surname?
So if I understand the argument correctly, on the one hand there are only an insignificant number of tax paying tip earners and, on the other hand, not taxing tips would be a terrific hit to federal revenues. Huh?
The 'huge hit' story was part of the media response when Trump made the proposal. They claimed that any commission-based earner could recharacterize their income as tips, so hedge fund managers, et al were the real intended beneficiaries. The same media said Harris cared about low- and middle-income people and did not repeat the warning about evil rich people. Also, no one mentioned that the IRS believes tips are significantly under-reported. Which is why they require restaurants to allocate at least 8% of sales as tips on tipped worker W-2s.
In any case, I think it is a bad idea.
The problem with inflation, not always just in perception, is that even if inflation goes to zero, prices aren’t going to go down, just remain steady. Yes, on average, wages have caught up, but “on average” doesn’t apply to everyone. The price of eggs is higher for everyone, but not everyone’s wages have kept pace. People, reasonably or not, remember what prices for particular items were back when. For example, 40 or so years ago, I got the price of a bottle of salad dressing pegged at 47 cents. I know it’s unreasonable, but I still get sticker shock every time I buy salad dressing. It just takes a long time for new prices to feel normal, and a lot of prosperity for people to feel they’ve caught up.
I have admitted to being soft of economics knowledge. A few weeks ago, someone here tried to educate me on the causes of inflation. Their explanation left me as knowledgeable as I was previously. So I did some online checking. Top economists could not agree, especially when discussing how much Biden had to do with it. My life experience is that prices don't go down. That part is not difficult. For various reasons, when prices go up, so do the costs of doing business such as salaries and materials costs. These are things that don't go down even if a business owner tries to lower prices which is rare. I notice Burger Boy was at a rally the other day when he promised to lower prices. As usual, he offered no specifics and his deluded followers took him at his word. How would do that? Order grocers to lower prices? Order manufacturers to lower costs? Obviously he can't do it. But I gave up hoping his followers would actually give thought to what he says. But, once again, in my experience prices don't go down. I don't need a degree in economics to know that. They just don't. The rises might slow down and they might stay the same for awhile. But who here thinks they are ever again going to see $.50 for a gallon of gas? How about $.25 for a loaf of bread? How many of you plan to buy that brand new car for $10,000? Or how about that ranch home for $50,000? I can't give you all the economic whys. But it ain't gonna happen.
The one exception is technology, which does get cheaper. I remember the first color printer my company bought about 30 years ago. $10K and two minutes per page. My first laser printer from HP cost $1600 and could only print Courier type. Laptop prices stay about the same, but get bigger and faster on the inside. TVs keep getting bigger and cheaper. Wish eggs could do that!
Okay you got me. My only question is that if stores can afford to lower prices that much, why were they so high in the first place? The obvious answers are that the prices were set at what people were willing to pay and there is always PR value in lowering prices. What else am I missing?
Technology genuinely gets cheaper: better production methods, higher volumes, true advances in technology that allow you, for example, to get 128 GB of storage on a thumbnail-sized SD card. Think how much cheaper LEDs are than in years past. But still not eggs.
If I understand you, it's not about deflation. We can purchase more efficient tech that is cheaper to make. Okay, I get that. I'm a cheapskate anyway. I can live without most of the bells and whistles on the more expensive phones and computers. For me, it's less about prices going down than buying only what I need in the first place and not going out of my way to load up credit cards. Naturally, most of the students where I teach have more expensive and fancier toys than I do. That might sound like idle chit chat. But it's important to marketers, sales reps, and manufacturers. It also demonstrates what an.old fart I am.
You're missing economies of scale, which apply to all businesses. When you can produce products at a larger scale, your per-unit costs are lower and so your price is lower. Why? Efficiencies of production that come with higher volumes: spreading of fixed costs and capital over more units, more streamlined production as with automated manufacturing or packaging and other such technological improvements as companies seek to improve their productivity, and bulk orders of supplies. For this reason, products that are new to the market generally start out very expensive but, if they're popular (indicating unmet demand), multiple companies will invest in more efficient production, and seek to innovate to make production more efficient, to meet that demand. Overall costs of production thus increase dramatically, but per-unit costs come way down, increasing revenue even more dramatically and thus leading to greater per-unit profits.
You might think, well, that makes it cheaper to produce the product but that doesn't actually push the price down. Why not just take the extra profit? Two reasons: competition will force the price to come down. Someone else comes along, offers a similar thing for less (which they can do because of all those efficiencies), and consumers buy that instead. In addition, even if competition is slow to work that magic or barriers to entry keep competitors out at least for a time, a company may well want to bring prices down to sell more units which would be more profitable. A monopolist has maximum power to set prices, but it doesn't have the power to change the prices consumers are willing to pay. Thus, they want to figure out the price and quantity that will result in maximum profits, where marginal revenue no longer exceeds marginal cost. This may well mean increasing production and lowering prices even without competition (though not to the level of a competitive market).
In the tech world, there is an additional specific element involved, a sort of economy of scale, that supercharges declining prices in tech -- the rapid innovation in microprocessors that enable vastly increased computing power at a similar per-chip price. We know it costs a shit-ton to manufacture chips. But once you're doing it, experience has shown that it's very cheap to implement improvements once you figure out how to make those improvements. Moore's law refers to the innovation that transistor density on a chip has doubled (i.e., increased exponentially) roughly every couple of years since the 1960's while chip prices stay low. That's huge! It's akin to the productivity gains most manufacturers seek to exploit as competition incentivizes productivity gains, but the payoff is bigger and faster than in most manufacturing contexts.
As I explained, I am not an economist. What you say makes sense, in theory. What it leaves out is human behavior, which is more my field and modern times. Changing times means theory needs to adjust. When I was kid on the south side, we bought very little from chain stores or large corporations. The competition came from smaller stores, mostly locally and family owned that competed with each other for the same local crowd. That was Chicago. One rarely needed to leave the neighborhood to shop and there was a good chance one knew the owner by sight and name. Now my groceries come from Walmart or some other large outlet. So does my clothing. Where service might need to come to my home, it's local. But chances are that I am using a corporate service like Comcast or Verizon and service is done by computer. IfI am upset with Walmart, I can shop at one of the other corporate grocers. But I doubt Walmart is very worried about losing me unless others are upset with the same things. And if enough people were ever upset with Walmart, they would simply shutter the store. Actually that happened in my area to Eagle and Festival Foods. Kmart went away in my area, as well as Sears, Penny's, and others. So competition is going away in my area. I can't match you in economic theory. This is observation and personal experience. Yes, Walmart can sell things cheaper than a small local grocer, due to scale. And if that local grocer goes away?
Hey, to be clear, I'm not saying that these effects are necessarily and always good. I'm just purporting to describe what's happening and why based on a sort of Econ 101 education (not much beyond that, which may be the curse of a little knowledge, not sure).
Both theory and the real world seem to agree: Broadly speaking, big companies will tend to outcompete smaller competitors due to economies of scale. That, after all, is just what you've observed happening with Walmart and so on. Indeed, Sears did the same thing in its heyday.
For all the talk about how economic models don't reflect real-world human behavior, they often do. People have not revealed themselves to be as sentimental about the local store as we might like. They take the deals at Walmart and Amazon. They're mercenary! They might even shop at the store to see the goods but then order them on Amazon because it's cheaper. They whine about the hassles of flying or extra charges but, at the same time, tend to shop strictly on price, and so airlines, low-margin businesses, are forced to squeeze and don't widely offer the cool, deluxe experience of yore, when the industry was comprehensively regulated but prices were much higher.
I hear your point about a lower number of options leading to a lack of competition in your area. But I'm not sure that consolidation of the grocery business is hurting consumers on price nor that it quashes competition. I read somewhere that grocery margins are in the 2% area, which is quite low. In my area, I've got a Pete's, two Jewel-Oscos, a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe's, and, further out, a big Target, a big Walmart, a couple of discount grocery stores, plus a Costco -- all within a short drive. I think there may be an Aldi on the horizon. Federal law is worried about a lack of competition and will, at least under Biden and Harris, hold up mergers that significantly reduce that variety on antitrust grounds.
That doesn't make the world nicer necessarily, and I like small businesses and make a point to patronize the ones I like, but, of all the problems facing the country, lack of cheap groceries or grocery competition is actually not really one of them. From 10,000 feet, food prices seem silly low.
Most economists agree that Biden's stimulus was a significant contributor to price increases in this country that would not have otherwise been as large, though they disagree as to how much it contributed. The basic idea is that the stimulus pumped too much money into the economy at once -- too much money chasing too few goods and services, leading to price increases. At the same time, the Covid disruption to supply chains and other Covid-related factors also played a big role. I think most economists think the excessive stimulus contributed to less than half of the inflation we saw.
I tend to think that "gouging" is a temporary phenomenon. Amid increased costs, producers all increase prices and consumers then get accustomed to those increasing prices, giving producers cover to keep prices high or engage in other experiments like "shrinkflation" without having to stick their necks out in normal times, even after costs come down again. They may sort of quasi-collude, saying stuff publicly that signals to other producers that we're not going to engage in a price war and instead take the dough, because that's in all of our interests. Consumers, however, have an ace up their sleeve, which is the ability to just say no -- by becoming more price-conscious, seeking more deals, buying cheaper versions, etc. We're seeing that happen now, finally. PepsiCo, a chief offender here, has probably reached the limit of its gouging spree. Starbucks is reeling from declining sales. McDonald's is offering a very affordable $5 meal (McDouble, 4-piece McNuggets, small fry, and a small drink).
Asking the government to regulate prices is a prescription for shortages, which is pretty much always what happens when governments set price ceilings below the market equilibrium price/quantity, in theory and fact. Most think Harris's proposal is just talk. I hope it is. I don't think any mainstream economist would really love the idea, though maybe I'm wrong.
Your broader point about nominal prices increasing over the long term is a bigger macroeconomic issue. We actually want a little inflation, and governments see to it by regulating interest rates. Why? One important thing to realize is that inflation, so long is it covers everything at the same time, is only nominal and not real. You could add a zero at the end of every dollar figure tomorrow, thus increasing the nominal amount of dollars by ten, but it would make no real difference. That McDonald's meal would now suddenly cost $50 but that $5 in your wallet would also suddenly become $50.
But that doesn't explain why it's actually good to have some inflation. Three reasons:
1. If prices stop rising or go down (deflation), it reduces the incentive to spend today and increases the incentive to hold out for a better deal, which slows the economy.
2. If prices stop rising or go down, income will likely come down, making it harder to pay back loans taken when prices were higher, leading to an inability to pay back loans, and additionally disincentivize further borrowing, which is the life-blood of the economy.
3. If prices stop rising or go down, the price of borrowing lowers to near nothing, which hampers the ability of national banks to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates, because there's nowhere to go.
Thus, moderate inflation nicely goes along with a growing economy. Can we have infinite economic growth? I don't know, but we're probably a long way from having to deal with a scenario of global economic stasis.
The only downside of moderate inflation is when you're living on fixed income as prices rise. One can ameliorate this ahead of time by not keeping one's money in a mattress, but put it somewhere where it grows, which inflation allows. In addition, Social Security does by law increase with inflation.
whenever a discussion involving tipping comes along, people inevitably say let's get rid of it. I follow pages like The Angry Bartender where service people share their tales. The overall consensus is they like tipping (but not the tippers because lets be honest, we are A-holes) and I suspect they like the ability to underreport their tips.
this is a feature, not a bug!
I have to disagree with your take on the Bronze medal issue, specifically your point that "even stupid and arbitrary rules have to be enforced until they are officially changed." You can test this view with a thought experiment by lowering and raising the stakes involved in hypothetical cases. On one end of the scale, there is a plethora of laws around the country that are just plain silly and are not enforced, like one law on the books in Vermont where a woman needs written permission from her husband in order to obtain dentures (last one in this link: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/vermont/crazy-vt-laws/ ) Should this law be enforced?
At the other extreme, imagine a convicted murderer slated to be executed, and the night before the execution indisputable DNA evidence of his innocence comes to light. His appeals processes have all been exhausted, there is no legal process to introduce this new evidence. Should he still be executed? Laws are sometimes unjust and what is right is sometimes not legal. Sometimes it's impossible and wrong to wait until a rule is changed when it is clear it is not on the right side. It's clear Chiles earned her medal, she should keep it.
didn't the SUPREMES essentially do that?
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-prioritizes-expedience-not-justice-wrongful-convictions-2022-05-25/
Wow, I hadn't heard of that. Another example of how extreme this court is.
Yes they do. Alito and Thomas seem almost ghoulish in their desire to allow executions to continue (for "finality" reasons) even in the face of overwhelming evidence of innocence. EZ has long been an opponent of the Death Penalty, so I presume that he exempts the death penalty from his "blanket statement" about allowing dumb laws to be enforced until changed.
Sally Jenkins in the WaPo really destroys the IOC & the bizarre sports court.https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2024/08/13/jordan-chiles-medal-cas/
"But even stupid and arbitrary rules have to be enforced until they are officially changed. So stripping Chiles of her bronze was a terrible, unfair outcome, but the correct one. Do you agree?"
No. Not when it effects the outcome. There are lots of stupid and arbitrary rules in sports but teams and individuals can usually overcome them. The stupid fumble into the endzone is a touchback for the other team no matter who recovers is one example.
But this rule that they didn't appeal in enough time (correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the American team provide video evidence that they did?) seems like the kind of argument you make when you have lost an argument. You start measuring the margins and checking the font size to see if some irrelevant minutiae of the code of bureaucratic requirements has been violated. You pull out the dictionary and parse every word according to the most obtuse reading of its literal meaning.
and as time moved forward, we learn more sketchy details aka the conflict of interest. The solution would be to award both of them the bronze medal (there is precedence) and close this chapter with a modification of the rules that improves the contest and prevents this sort of thing from happening again.
Agree with you. Does the Olympic Committee take nominations for judge?
If so, I would like to nominate you as an Olympic Judge.🙂
So we’re offering asylum to Maduro and T**** is threatening to flee to Venezuela. Sounds like a good deal swap for both countries.
Fairly limp collection of quips this week.
Joy, courage, strength, stamina, and humility all appeared in countless images from the 2024 Summer Games, but the one I'll always remember is the one showing Brazil's Rebeca Andrade getting props atop the medal stand, where she's beaming with joy, from Simone Biles and Jordan Childs of the U.S. team (winner of the team competition), bowing down with wide smiles of appreciation and respect. Good humor and grace and mutual admiration: couldn't get better than that. It took Biles and Child's together to create that moment. So I voted Yes, let both contenders for the bronze get, and keep their medals.
Conventions and debates have become redundant. I no longer watch either. I'm not going to waste my time listening to lies and bogus promises.
Well, you gotta admit that the last presidential debate was awfully consequential
I'll watch debates, but conventions are duller than watching soccer or golf.
Garry, I bet you don’t watch poker either.
Not possible, as I don't have cable & of the poker tournaments are on cable. But I wouldn't watch them, I'm sure they are deadly dull!
I have friends who attend the conventions (delegates) but the point seems to be to catch up with old friends and party, not get any actual business done. I'll follow my friends' adventures at the conventions on IG or FB but that's all I find interesting. (Side note: the Democrats Abroad crew appear to have the BEST parties. My friend who represents Democrats Abroad- France has a lot of fun.)
The Chicago Public Schools should take a look at the solution of those small towns in the Midwest who lost population, their school attendance numbers were shrinking and they were threatened with higher taxes. They consolidated schools - especially high schools which had dropped to under 100 students - with the nearby towns. Kids had to ride buses where before they walked. No one suffered. It made a lot of sense for many reasons. CPS could follow their lead and consolidate high schools with less than 100 students as a start. Close the excess buildings, reassign the teachers/staff to schools currently shorthanded. Just getting rid of the upkeep of the almost vacant schools would be a start to smart financial steps. Two examples are: Douglass High School has 33 students, Simpson Academy has 27. Why would anyone keep a high school with 33 students open when the schools can be merged for a much better high school experience all around.
Because Rahm got so much s--- for closing schools, no mayor wants to bring it up. CTU would rather have 1 teacher covering history for 15 students at Douglass and 1 teacher covering history for 150 students at another school than have 1 teacher teach them all. Anything that would cost teacher jobs will be vociferously opposed by Johnson's puppet masters at CTU.
The feeling that all neighborhood schools are the best schools did in Rahm. They haven't been for a long time in many neighborhoods, but it's hard to prove otherwise when its been the norm for so many years.
There is also the media accepted nonsense that the school is an institutional anchor and gathering spot of the community even when there are very few students. They also define a community as hyper-local, as when Dyett high school was kept open using that argument in spite of the 6 other high schools within one mile of Dyett.
“Don't try to tell me MAGA Republicans care about “protecting children” when page 302 of Trump's Project 2025 playbook calls for eliminating safety regulations on baby formula. — Robert Reich”
I’m an independent who’s definitely not supporting Trump or Harris. When I read a deliberate distortion (Trump’s Project 2025, which I will bet he hasn’t read and didn’t know about until it showed up in the news.), my opinion of Reich as a hack is reinforced. But clearly @ericzorn and others read this and agree with both the sentiment and the expression of it. What’s your interpretation of calling it Trump’s Project 2025? A deliberate misnomer being used knowingly as an effective taunt? A fair-game misrepresentation in a dirty game? An amusing counter-factual insult of the type Trump is famous for?
It is Trump's in that the creators are mostly former Trump staffers and it is written specifically for a Trump presidency. Of course he hasn't read it, it's longer than a tweet! He has surely been made aware of the basic outline and approved - "I get to control the women and let business regulations die? All good!"
So who are you going to support? RFK Jr.? The Easter Bunny? At worst, pick the lesser evil of the two actual candidates.
Voting for the lesser evil may make sense in swing states (I voted for Obama in 2008 since I was an Indiana resident at the time), but it’s pointless in states that are already in the bag. There is less certainty that the sun will set in the west this evening than there is that Illinois will vote blue in November, so unless you REALLY like either Harris or Trump, you really are just throwing away your vote (and selling a little bit of your soul) by casting for either one of them since the outcome is preordained. Vote your conscience.
Exactly! No soul selling here! Voted for Theo Epstein in 2016, an obvious pick for me!
Page 302: “Re-evaluate excessive regulation. As for baby formula regulations generally, labeling regulations and regulations that unnecessarily delay the manufacture and sale of baby formula should be re-evaluated. During the Biden Administration, there have been devastating baby formula shortages.”
What does Reich have to say about Biden? The article claims that the Biden Admin has undermined public health by opposing baby formula regulation in other countries, at the behest of the industry. So, I am guessing that Reich has covered his eyes.
https://www.propublica.org/article/baby-formula-regulation-biden-administration-europe-taiwan
It might be useful to note that there are only 4 US manufacturers, and that the FDA had blocked import of baby formula until the shortage, when they decided that some of the regulations really weren't that necessary.
Pete - Don't kid yourself. You know don't you, that although he claims (during campaign season) not to know anything about Project 2025 because it contains so much toxic stuff, if he is elected he will implement 2025 enthusiastically (or at least his minions will); and when his opponents complain he will say "Hey, Project 2025 was out there - it was written by my people, so this is what the people voted for when they elected me."
I'm with Mary Schmich on the texts - OMG, so many every. single. day. My own family doesn't text me like the candidate and surrogates.
Not to mention emails.
And the campaigns happily sell their mailing lists.
Great crop of TotWs this week.
ALWAYs (or almost always) appeal your real estate tax Assessment. With all of the information you need available online, it's really pretty easy to do research and file.
When I lived in Lake County, I appealed almost every year, and received some type of reduction (even if it was a "courtesy reduction" - i.e. a nominal reduction that essentially recognizes that you took the time to actually appeal) virtually every year. Over time, that adds up compared to your neighbors.
However, my best result occurred in the years after the Global recession of 2007-2009. Housing values were going down especially AFTER the assessment had been determined by the Assessor's office. I cited several comparable home sales in my neighborhood that had occurred in the 12 month period AFTER that year's assessment date of my home. The local Township Assessment Board disallowed these comps because they occurred AFTER the assessment date. The statute that speaks of valid comps only states that the comps have to occur "within" 12 months of the assessment date - it doesn't say anything about comp sales must be during the 12 months BEFORE the assessment date. I appealed on this basis to the County-wide Assessment Board. I was rejected again, despite my new argument. My recourse was to Appeal to the Lake County Circuit Court - which I did. I heard nothing back from the Lake County Board until a couple of days before the court hearing I was going to represent myself in front of the Lake County Judge who heard these appeals. (Such appeals rarely get to this stage.) (It took so long for this process to occur that I had paid 2 years of RE taxes based on a valuation that I believed to be WAY too high. I had also appealed the intervening assessment.) Also, I'm an attorney (albeit a commercial/transactional attorney with very little courtroom experience), so I was willing to make my statutory argument (which I thought to be quite valid) before the judge. The County Attorney assigned to argue assessment appeals at the County District level called and wanted to settle. He agreed to my original assessment figure for the original year in question and the following year. He - in not so many words - acknowledged that Lake County was settling with me (and with others who made the same argument, I presume) because the County was so concerned that my argument had merit that it did not want to have a precedential case sitting out in the public to give other RE taxpayers a decision to cite. Lake County actually cut a check to me for RE tax overpayments for 2 years that, in the aggregate, amounted to a high four-figure number. (I have to say, it was sweet getting a check FROM the Assessor's Office.)
Think about your personal situation. Your home needs a new roof. Your washer does a subpar job and probably needs replacing. Your living room carpet offends even your dog. Your salary barely allows you to pay the mortgage. What are you thinking? Take a second job? Hold off on new purchases? Buy cheap whenever possible? Cut somewhere else in your budget? Did you buy more house than you could afford in the first place? I ask you this because of the CPS- CTU new. The CTU is basically saying "GD! We need it so SOMEONE is going to pay for it!" CPS is saying "Are you kidding? We ain't got it and we're not going deeper into hock to get it." And Mayor Unions is saying to to CPS "How dare you show any fiscal sense! What the union wants, it gets. You're fired!" Are we surprised? Richard J Daley used to do the same thing. But he had a little more pull in Springfield and Washington than Mayor Unions, who has already been told no by JB. So the real question is that if the union gets their way, who pays the resulting bills? Those of you living in the city had better keep a firm grasp on your wallets, those of you that haven't already had forced open by Mayor Unions. How many of you would walk into Jewel-Osco and say "Give it to me! I want it and need it! I can't pay. But that's irrelevant!"