
I am dismayed by the intellectual dishonesty (if I am ascribing motive) or lack of intellectual rigor (if I am ascribing laziness) on the part of the media and the chattering classes on both the RIGHT and the LEFT. I honestly don't know how we are going to solve the issues we face if no one will look at the issues truthfully, rather than arranging them to meet their preconceived notions of how things are.
Today's case in point are the WaPo and Daily Kos discussion about the Texas jobs situation. Kos goes to great lengths to compare incomes in NY to incomes in TX because they have similar unemployment rates. Really? Unemployment rates? So in this context, your average Texan earns less than your average New Yorker (shocker that) and NY incomes have inched up in the last 4 years while TX has stayed flat. Conclusion, Perry's TX economy actually sucks. WaPo compares it to Mexico North. Humm... and how about the relationship to income and cost of living? Texas is 25% cheaper to live in overall than the AVERAGE US cost of living, and NY is 25% more expensive to live in than the average US state. http://www.costoflivingbystate.org/ So would you rather earn $790/wk in TX, or $870/wk in NY, you tell me? I don't know much about Perry so have no personal dog in the personalities fight. I do have a dog in the economy - my family - and I truly wish SOMEONE would come along, call a spade a spade, and prescribe our medicine so we can move forward. Rant over, time to work. |
I totally agree, and I am a liberal.
You forgot to factor in that Texas does not have an income tax, so that $790/week really is $790/week, whereas its $870/week in New York is a lot closer to $800/week after taxes. The one that gets me is Bachmann (and others) that continue to spout how much money federal workers get since the recession started. "One employee at the federal Department of Transportation that made $170,000 a year at the beginning of the recession. We had the trillion-dollar stimulus, and 18 months into the recession, we had 1,690 employees making over $170,000..." She is deliberately misleading. The recession started in December 2007, 13 months before Obama became President. Yet she gives the impression that she is talking about something that Obama did, but in fact, the big increase in government pay started under Bush. The recession started in December 2007, 13 months before Obama became president. Under Bush, feds got 3 percent raise in January 2008 and 3.9 percent in January 2009. By contrast, Obama in 2010 recommended the smallest federal pay raise since 1975 — 2 percent — and then froze salaries in 2011. |
Correct me if I am wrong, but Fed. employee pay increases are tied to a COLA formula - like SS benefits - right? So to increase or not to increase is not at the whim of the executive?
|