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AllezAllez510
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 12, 2009 - 09:14am PT
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District's not charging them, the camp is. Even if the law were read like you say, I'm sure it would be interpreted as "if everyone can't go, then no one can go." Remember, this is California. Anyhow, the kids who couldn't afford to go but really wanted to go were able to fundraise (bake sale, coupon books etc.), so I'm not shedding a tear for many of them.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Feb 12, 2009 - 09:26am PT
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My wife works as a teacher's aide in a third grade class here in Seattle. She's been seeing kids come into class who break down periodically throughout the day, because they fear that their parents will find out today that they lost their jobs. Lots of folks employed by Microsoft, Boeing, etc. Pretty sad to see this heavy anxiety that the kids are feeling from their parents, and taking on themselves.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Feb 12, 2009 - 09:28am PT
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Allez
It's sad to see public education, one of the best bargains
available, get shorted the way it is.
I still love that old bumper sticker
"It'll be a great day when schools are funded fully and
the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to get a bomber".
It's a shame it's not true.
Best of luck
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Nick
climber
portland, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2009 - 09:32am PT
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I am a teacher in the Beaverton Schools. Oregon is in a bad way, 9.2% unemployment. They are estimating a 17.3 million dollar shortfall this year. At the moment the two most likely scenarios are closing schools three weeks early or staff reduction. We will find out in the next week or so. My bet is school closure.
What does it say about a society so myopic and short sighted that it would sacrifice it's future to pay less tax.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Feb 12, 2009 - 09:44am PT
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Geez Mooser - If I were a journalist, your post would be the spark for my next project. That's a perspective I hadn't even thought about but - wow.
Those poor kids, maybe overhearing a parent discussing specifics on their fears. And any parent with a fear of losing a job that will almost assuredly not be replaced with anything remotely similar has got to have stresses I can't begin to understand.
Moof wrote:
"I thought we'd done it right, conventional loan, zero late payments, pay a little extra every month, but none of that matters one bit. We are numbers on a balance sheet, nothing more. "
Credit is a scam; always has been. The reason, we were told, that it's important to "do it right" was always because of the threat of what they'd do if you didn't(shackle us with shame and financial immobility).
If one is wont to take bible stories with any credence at all - it's no f'in wonder Jesus was angered with the moneylenders. I believe the Muslin teachings list it as a wrong to charge interest.....
Interesting.
Anyone having trouble making the payments on credit - Debtors Anonymous is a great program that can help empower you. Most of what media tells us on how to deal with creditors is done to protect the creditor, not us. (Except communication - that's the key). But if you don't know your rights, and you fall for their bullsh#t, it's very difficult to create a deal that is manageable. They don't CARE if you agree to something that won't work if any part of your financial equation changes. They don't CARE if you are going to pay them BEFORE paying for your groceries.....
Debtors Anonymous teaches us how to take care of ourselves AND repay our debt. It does NOT suggest bankruptcy....
If someone is considering going to one of those debt counselors/debt consolidators - GO TO DA(Debtors Anonymous) FIRST! The counselors/consolidators are preditors, feeding off your vulnerable state. DO NOT FEED THE VULTURES!!!!
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yossarian
climber
WA
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Feb 12, 2009 - 11:36am PT
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School districts in Utah are likewise shedding positions and it looks like a pay cut is in the works. Hard to imagine as the state has some of the lowest salaries to begin with.
Any insights into how districts around Sacramento/Folsom/Placerville are doing would be appreciated.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Feb 12, 2009 - 11:48am PT
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Yeah, happiegirrl, it breaks my wife's heart. She works with kids across the socio-economic spectrum, and in a very multi-ethnic school, and this "downturn/slump/hiccup/recession/depression" shows no discrimination. It has been quite the leveling experience for many.
One of the biggest areas of help--in my humble opinion--needs to be in the area of relationships. They always say that sex and money are the two biggest reasons for divorce, but my own take on that is that it's how people communicate about those subjects that makes the biggest difference. And when it comes to this economic crisis, a little help in the communication department--not just with each other, but with one's children (assuming there are children involved)--can go a long way to weathering this storm differently.
I appreciate Allez-Allez's having started this thread, as it can't hurt to "de-isolate" folks from feeling like they are alone in their struggle. Hang in there, folks! We're all in this together!
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Feb 12, 2009 - 12:31pm PT
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I'm trying to figure out how to avoid laying a few people off. There have been times in the past where I've had to lay people off due to unforeseen circumstances but those were times when the economy was generally good and so I knew they could go out and get another job. Of course this was upsetting for them but not ruinous so it was unfortunate but not catastrophic.
Now if I lay someone off to try to meet my own financial obligations, those let go won't be able to get another job, and unemployment doesn't even begin to cut it. These people have mortgages to pay, kids to feed, and medical insurance is part of their benefit package.
So no climbing for me. Instead, I'm working to sell more work, trying to keep everyone going.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Feb 12, 2009 - 02:23pm PT
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Dropline - That kind of compassion will be rewarded by the universe - No doubt your employees really appreciate your efforts.
This is a luxury sign of the recession - I just started looking at flights for my trip to JTree this spring. I always took a really early flight, leaving at like 7am. Several airlines would offer departures to Vegas at that time.
No longer. Now there is ONE flight offered, by ONE airline, at 8am, two hours later.
The returns are cut just as much. used to be 4 flights a day coming back(and out, I guess). Now there is one in the afternoon, and the other is at 11:55pm.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Feb 12, 2009 - 02:30pm PT
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You impress me, Dropline. May your tribe increase.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 12, 2009 - 03:29pm PT
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Allez, Allez,
Very sorry to hear of your situation. It particularly saddens me to see this happening to a teacher and a climber. My thoughts on the Legislature are the same as yours. The problem is that a neutron bombing of the capitol building in Sacramento probably won't change anything. The pols have drawn districts that make voters irrelevant.
I hope your situation is extremely temporary. If you need some free advice later on in dealing with creditors, e-mail me. I'd gladly help in any way I can.
John
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Dick_Lugar
Trad climber
Indiana (the other Mideast)
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Feb 12, 2009 - 03:34pm PT
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In tough times, I find humor helps...
Q: "Evidence of the recession?"
A: When you go to a used car dealership and they counter-offer your initial low-ball offer with even a LOWER offer?!
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Jingy
Social climber
Flatland, Ca
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Feb 12, 2009 - 03:44pm PT
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Sorry to hear of your job-loss......
tell us how you realy feel about the legislature!!!! LOL
Sack of D_S!!!!
Same here!!
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Indianclimber
Trad climber
Lost Wages
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Feb 12, 2009 - 03:46pm PT
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Dropline,maybe you could go to 4 days a week?
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jstan
climber
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Feb 12, 2009 - 03:48pm PT
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Not actually off topic. All hitched together, as Master Muir used to say.
“They” did not get this 2.5 trillion! But not to worry. Next time around “They” will be back for it.
http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/la-fi-hiltzik12-2009feb12,0,34736,print.column
Social Security isn't broken; don't 'fix' it
The government program looks so solid and reliable compared with every other source of retirement income that people ought to respond well to the idea of expanding it.
Michael Hiltzik
February 12, 2009
They say that even the worst tragedies harbor the seed of something good. So here's something positive in the stock market's gruesome behavior over the last year: It may finally have driven a stake through the heart of the campaign to "fix" Social Security.
Let's be plain about one thing: This campaign, cooked up mostly by Wall Street investment houses and conservative Republicans,was always about “fixing” Social Security the way one "fixes" a cat.
The perpetrators employed what might charitably be labeled flapdoodle to scare soft-headed politicians, inattentive journalists and innocent citizens into thinking there's something fiscally out of whack with Social Security.
They proposed that the program be "privatized" instead. Rather than pay payroll taxes into a government fund in return for an inflation-indexed monthly retirement stipend guaranteed to the end of your days, they said, you should hold on to your own money and put it in the stock market.
One would have expected the bear market of 2000-02, which shaved roughly 50% from the value of stock portfolios, to have buried the idea of replacing Social Security with personal retirement accounts forever.
Yet it rose to walk among us again, the way Rasputin clambered out of the frozen River Neva with a dozen bullet holes in his body. In 2005, President Bush tried to make it a centerpiece of White House policy.
With any luck, the 2008 stock market crash will permanently restore Social Security's luster. Indeed, the program looks so solid and reliable compared with every other source of retirement income -- your pension, your portfolio, your house -- that people ought to respond well to the idea of expanding it, in part by permitting them to put more money into their Social Security accounts to obtain better benefits.
Before we get to that, let's lay some of the slanders about Social Security to rest.
The privateers claimed that the program was doomed to bankruptcy. They talked about how its surplus, currently $2.4 trillion, is invested in nothing but U.S. government IOUs. They didn't mention that those IOUs are U.S. Treasury bonds, which are the safest securities in the world.
They said that the program was going to run out of money in or around 2042. They didn't say that they were relying on a single estimate (among many flawed and contradictory projections produced by the program's trustees) forecasting that the Social Security trust fund would be spent down to zero by that date, or that even according to that projection the program would still have plenty of funds to pay benefits thereafter.
Their point was that if we're going to "fix" Social Security, we need to start now, because we only have (at this writing) 33 years to get it right.
Of course that only exposes the folly of basing important decisions on long-term projections. If we were to project conditions today from the vantage point of 33 years ago -- 1976 -- we would be doing so in ignorance of personal computers, the Internet, cellphones, cholesterol drugs, the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, the tech boom, the dot-com crash and the financial meltdown of 2008, all of which have had a profound effect on the U.S. economy.
You still want to tamper with a crucial program because of something you think might be true 33 years from now?
Social Security has never been touched by scandal. It pays benefits promptly and dependably. Its administrative costs are rock-bottom. When I move, the Social Security people always seem to learn my forwarding address without being told, sometimes before my mother does.
Contrast that with the history of personal retirement accounts. Traditional pension plans that make guaranteed monthly payments are going extinct in the private sector, supplanted almost everywhere by self-managed 401(k) accounts, which offer the opportunity to risk your retirement nest egg in the stock market.
But if you do the math, you can see that the difference between the balance in a lifelong retirement account of someone who cashed out in, say, 2004 and someone trying to retire today, post-crash, might be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So perhaps the time has come to put Social Security to even greater use.
One intriguing idea comes from David Langer, an 81-year-old professional actuary who has been a thorn in the side of the program's critics for years. (He exposed the flaws in the long-term financial projections in a series of actuarial journal articles in the 1990s.)
Langer observes that with termites eating away at two of the three traditional pillars of retirement security -- employer pensions and personal investments -- Social Security deserves a bigger role in most people's retirement.
He proposes a standard by which the program would supply up to 70% of a worker's average pre-retirement income, up from today's maximum of about 57%, which applies to the lowest-earning workers. He would finance the expansion partially from the program's existing surplus and partially by raising the ceiling on the payroll tax, which this year applies to earnings up to $106,800. He hasn't worked out how high the ceiling would have to be raised.
Langer also proposes allowing individuals to fatten their Social Security fund by paying in additional resources, such as their 401(k) balances. The program would set a conversion rate -- for every $10,000 transferred, say, you get a certain additional monthly benefit upon retirement or a discount on your future payroll tax. Employers could transfer their pension fund balances on similar terms.
"The virtues of expanding Social Security are legion," Langer told me recently. "It's a national plan. It is not dependent on the survival of a worker's employer. It is not dependent on anyone's investment acumen. Protection against inflation is built in. The effect of investment market and corporate financial chicanery is greatly limited."
Implementing Langer's proposal would involve manifold legal questions, not to mention actuarial issues to make your head spin. But he has his finger on a key point, which is that by establishing Social Security in 1935 the U.S. government created something greater than it knew. Since then this grand old program has been battered around by enemies and profiteers. Yet it's still standing, and today all the fancy alternatives that have been proposed over the years look pathetic by comparison.
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Mondays and Thursdays. You can reach him at michael.hiltzik@latimes .com and read his previous columns at www.latimes.com /hiltzik.
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dave goodwin
climber
carson city, nv
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Feb 12, 2009 - 03:49pm PT
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It is real hard out there for employees. I know because I have had to lay off 3 of my 5 employees in the last several months. Things do not show any signs of improving either.
As an owner I have had to take a 25% pay cut and I now work 6-7 days a week to make up for laying people off. If things don't start improving it is inevitable that I will close my business (which was started in 1988), and I will loose my home that I used as collateral when I bought the business 4 years ago.
On top of that my wife teaches at the University in Reno and if voted for she will also loose her job. Scary times especially since my boy turns 1 this week and I worry about his future and how I will provide for him.
Sorry for the bummer post, but these are the times we live in!
Hope everyone takes care,
dave
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Feb 12, 2009 - 04:52pm PT
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Indianclimber.
Rolling back to a four day week is one possibility but money must flow to several things in addition to payroll: rent, insurance, debt service (like loans on equipment), and other fixed expenses. Rolling back payroll one day a week won't be enough if we have a 30% drop in revenue, hence the frenzied, creative, dilligent attempt to make up for lost clients with new ones.
At some point though it may become necessary to lay off one or more people so the whole company doesn't collapse, cutting off a part in an attempt to save the rest. Then perhaps cutting off another part, and then yet another. Eventually the sum of the parts won't be enough to function though....
The whole scenario reminds me of the Stephen King short story Survivor Type.
From Wiki....
Determined to hold out for rescue, he goes to horrifying lengths to survive, using his surgical training to amputate his own limbs to use as a food source, ingesting the heroin for anesthesia during the operations. His last few diary entries, barely comprehensible, indicate he has cut off and eaten everything below his waist, as well as his ears, and drools uncontrollably as he ponders which body part to consume next. The diary entries end when he cuts off his left hand to eat. ("lady fingers they taste like lady fingers").
I'm not exactly waiting for a rescue though.
Even, I'm off to call on a prospective client.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 12, 2009 - 05:26pm PT
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"This is the worst economic event in my lifetime." I wish I could say the same, klk. It really doesn't matter, though, whether it's the worst, or merely bad. What this really says is that we've been extremely fortunate in the U.S. since the early '80s, and particularly from about 1994-2007, to have had such a sustained period of prosperity.
Losing your job hurts, whether in good times or bad. Although I no longer practice law, I can offer friendly, free advice to any who are having problems dealing with their creditors. I've advised borrowers and lenders professionally for almost 30 years. Just send me a private message -- but I must give you this caveat. I gave up my bar membership three years ago, so the attorney-client privilege won't apply.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Feb 12, 2009 - 05:32pm PT
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jstan,
Social Security remains insolvent. It just hasn't hit its day of reckoning yet. When my generation retires, there will simply be too few active workers trying to pay for us. Unless they modify the law to have benefits kick in later (which, as someone who would have to wait, I'm more than willing to do), its insolvency is certain and massive.
I know people will tell me that Social Security is not a retirement plan, but since the article you've posteed makes the comparison, I'll reiterate what I said on an earlier thread. If I had invested the money involuntarily taken from me for FICA (employer and employee portions, since both come from my pocket) in common stocks represented by the D-J Industrials, I still would have more than enough saved to retire right now. After all, when I first started paying in, we considered the Dow over 800 to be a bull market.
John
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