The fiscal cliff

[RonG]

That girl needs to learn how she can really get a raise.

Fucking priceless!

Maybe because I just watched a video with a group of jackasses bragging about rape, or maybe because I have a daughter or just maybe because this shit gets old...what ever it is I don't think this shit is funny, I don't think it belongs in this thread and I think its fucking childish not priceless.

Grow up this isn't EAYOR this is/was a real conversation.

[bcort]

So can we change the title of this thread to the Debt Ceiling. It's looking like it's going to be an even worse battle than the fiscal cliff.

[KI4MVP]

Average price of gas in 2008 - $3.25
Average price of gas in 2012 - $3.60

Source AAA

The difference isoughly what you would expect from inflation.

For comparison

Down Jones Average the day Bush took office in 2001: 10,588
Down Jones Average the day Bush left office in 2009: 7,949
Down Jones Average today: 13,412

the shape of the oil price chart and the DOW chart over that period are virtually identical.

to followup my own post

the AAA expect 2013 gas to average less than $3.60 a gallon.

Last year's prices were impacted by both global oil prices and limited refinery capacity. Refinery shutdowns and reduced production in California, Washington and Illinois caused both regional and national wholesale prices to surge before seasonal demand slumped in the fall.

[JiggleIt]

Rapp Soda is Toby from Office Space.

[Notorious]

Touche', although I was off work at that time (I like to get in before 7 and out just after 4). I'm just telling you what I've learned throughout college/work. Also, a dozen people sounds like my Aunt's business, which is more of a family atmosphere and having <50 employees give you a lot more latitude with your employment limits. Sometimes reality checks are necessary for people, we're just not the ones who should be giving it to them (it can come back to bite me in my org).



On the contrary. I happen to know more than I would care to about employment law. It is my job, though. Like I said, though, an office with a dozen employees can be a lot more "casual" about their adherence to employment law. Perhaps, I could have asked if you had a bigger company



Mentors can be both a blessing and a pain at times. I'm glad you're able to balance the boss/peer see-saw. Not many people can, thus making my department necessary. Also, mentors are great, but they don't trump good-old experience. I can say that and I'm sure I've had less experience than you.



Not really true at all. Unions are like built in NAACP. HR stands in the middle of Unions, who are looking for the next slip, and management that often times doesn't have time to be consciously thinking about all of the little intricacies that they're held to by Unions (and consequently their Union employees/reps).



I generally can't take a shot at you because you bring up shit that nobody has enough time to look into, but you're just ill-informed here, Mar. First off, I'm an HR professional and for as much shit as we take, we're the people that fix all of the problems ignorant folk create.

So, HR is only there for people to air their grievances? Do you know anything about employment law? Do you know what goes on in a day of HR? Do you know the reason that HR is in place? I didn't think so.

The reasons HR is needed is because:

- Most employers have enough employees (most kick in after 50 employees) that they're held to laws such as COBRA, ADA, FMLA, Affirmative Action, etc.
- When the NAACP comes knocking at the front door asking about how many minorities are present in the workplace and how people are promoted, "assholes" like me have to come back to them demonstrating how HR went about getting to those "quotas". We can't be wrong.
- Do you know the cost of turnover? HR must do what they can to limit needless turnover because it is costly to search for, hire and train a new employee.
- Do you know the cost of training that goes into an employee? Enough to make a sizable difference in the bottom line of a company's profitability.
- Do you know the appropriate bonus levels that keep employees motivated and feeling like they have stake in the company? This is tricky. Based upon position and levels at which bonuses are handed out, a lot of feeling of hopelessness permeates a workforce if this is done improperly. Study CHEP Global Pooling's bonus system in 2007-2009, if the information isn't private. You'll find a workforce that experienced a ton of turnover and decreased productivity because of a botched bonus plan that left many employees without anything due to circumstances out of their control.
- Are you aware that most large public employers have to deal with 15 or more Unions? I know municipalities have like 30+ Unions to maintain relationships with.
- Have you heard of an employee filing with the NLRB because she felt she had too much work only to come back later and file again saying too much work was taken from her?
- Have you ever trained someone in a workplace or have had to be trained?

These are things that HR needs to come up with metrics to measure and, yes, we do show a $$ amount that affects the bottom line of an organization. So spare me with the idea of replacing HR with an "idea box".

What should have been is that Unions shouldn't be necessary. Management should be learning that a key to a good workforce is just being generally sympathetic and not completely greedy when it comes to the workforce, theoretically. Greed got in the way of treating people humane long ago, which is why employment laws are in place and Unions exist.

It's amazing the world even turned for 100's of thousands of years without smart HR people like you controlling engineers and skilled labor employees.

Imagine if we didn't have all of those BS laws that in reality just hold businesses back. That money might actually go into something productive. Instead of metrics about unemployment rates and other nonsense.

I'm laughing at the turnover and training expenses comments. I've never met an HR person in my life yet who understood what any of the productive employees (Producers) actually do.

Would love to hear you get all technical and explain what your company actually produces. I'm sure you can't. I'll bet you can tell me all kinds of nifty things like how many GBU's your company has and sell me on a lot of buzzwords like synergy, continuous improvement, and lean. All of which I'm sure you don't have the foggiest of how to correlate them to the actual business side of making and selling.

[RappSoda]

It's amazing the world even turned for 100's of thousands of years without smart HR people like you controlling engineers and skilled labor employees.

Imagine if we didn't have all of those BS laws that in reality just hold businesses back. That money might actually go into something productive. Instead of metrics about unemployment rates and other nonsense.

I'm laughing at the turnover and training expenses comments. I've never met an HR person in my life yet who understood what any of the productive employees (Producers) actually do.

Would love to hear you get all technical and explain what your company actually produces. I'm sure you can't. I'll bet you can tell me all kinds of nifty things like how many GBU's your company has and sell me on a lot of buzzwords like synergy, continuous improvement, and lean. All of which I'm sure you don't have the foggiest of how to correlate them to the actual business side of making and selling.

This is EXACTLY why I posted you in the ban suggestion thread. Personal attack on my intelligence with ZERO reason or info.

Enjoy guessing some more, though. I am not going to further explain what I already explained because you're skeptical. As if there wouldn't be another attack on that explanation. My business's metrics works in Fortune 500 companies and has for years. Look up Human Capital Metrics if you're interested in expanding your mind. Enjoy playing Aristotle behind your keyboard until then.

Carry on.

[Notorious]

This is EXACTLY why I posted you in the ban suggestion thread. Personal attack on my intelligence with ZERO reason or info.

Enjoy guessing some more, though. I am not going to further explain what I already explained because you're skeptical. As if there wouldn't be another attack on that explanation. My business's metrics works in Fortune 500 companies and has for years. Look up Human Capital Metrics if you're interested in expanding your mind. Enjoy playing Aristotle behind your keyboard until then.

Carry on.

Did you not attack Max's personal views? I also work for a fortune 500 company. I am a producer though. Believe me none of the upper management who get it, have any idea why the HR people have so much control.

[RappSoda]

Did you not attack Max's personal views? I also work for a fortune 500 company. I am a producer though. Believe me none of the upper management who get it, have any idea why the HR people have so much control.

You saying HR doesn't produce just tells me how little you understand/care about the department or what it does. Thats fine though, you don't need to understand, but if you're going to go on the offensive, do your homework or read the things I told you to. If you don't "believe" it, our conversation is over.

Your company puts a lot of money into the department for a reason, I don't need to delve into it more than I already have. Plenty of "upper management" doesn't care to acknowledge it, either. A good employee focuses on what they do and who they work with directly, so some people just spouting about how they hate HR isn't enough for me to consider it relevant or credible, but rather typical.

I'm not very interested in getting into a position where I'm trying to justify the career to you. A contrarian is a contrarian. If you don't buy it, do more research.

[Notorious]

You saying HR doesn't produce just tells me how little you understand/care about the department or what it does. Thats fine though, you don't need to understand, but if you're going to go on the offensive, do your homework or read the things I told you to. If you don't "believe" it, our conversation is over.

Your company puts a lot of money into the department for a reason, I don't need to delve into it more than I already have. Plenty of "upper management" doesn't care to acknowledge it, either. A good employee focuses on what they do and who they work with directly, so some people just spouting about how they hate HR isn't enough for me to consider it relevant or credible, but rather typical.

I'm not very interested in getting into a position where I'm trying to justify the career to you. A contrarian is a contrarian. If you don't buy it, do more research.

I'm not even going to read this whole thing, but the reason companies have these positions is because of the bible sized book of employment law they now need to follow. The ones who actually innovate don't have time to get a degree in employment law. I can assure you this position is basically created from laws that hold business back. Talk to any business owner they feel the same.

[DJTJ]

I'm not even going to read this whole thing, but the reason companies have these positions is because of the bible sized book of employment law they now need to follow. The ones who actually innovate don't have time to get a degree in employment law. I can assure you this position is basically created from laws that hold business back. Talk to any business owner they feel the same.

Just would like to point out that this is completely erroneous.

[bcort]

Pretty informative article on SS without the political bias.

OPINION
Social Security: It’s Worse Than You Think
By GARY KING and SAMIR S. SONEJI
Published: January 5, 2013

CONGRESS and President Obama have pushed through a relatively modest stopgap measure to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” but over the coming years, the United States will confront another huge cliff: Social Security.

In the first presidential debate, Mr. Obama described Social Security as “structurally sound,” and Mitt Romney said that “neither the president nor I are proposing any changes” to the program. It was a rare issue on which both men agreed — and both were utterly wrong.

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, Social Security ran a deficit in 2010: It spent $49 billion dollars more in benefits than it received in revenues, and drew from its trust funds to cover the shortfall. Those funds — a $2.7 trillion buffer built in anticipation of retiring baby boomers — will be exhausted by 2033, the government currently projects.

Those facts are widely known. What’s not is that the Social Security Administration underestimates how long Americans will live and how much the trust funds will need to pay out — to the tune of $800 billion by 2031, more than the current annual defense budget — and that the trust funds will run out, if nothing is done, two years earlier than the government has predicted.

We reached these conclusions, and presented them in an article in the journal Demography, after finding that the government’s methods for forecasting Americans’ longevity were outdated and omitted crucial health and demographic factors. Historic declines in smoking and improvements in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease are adding years of life that the government hasn’t accounted for. (While obesity has rapidly increased, it is not likely, at this point, to offset these public health and medical successes.) More retirees will receive benefits for longer than predicted, supported by the payroll taxes of relatively fewer working adults than projected.

Remarkably, since Social Security was created in 1935, the government’s forecasting methods have barely changed, even as a revolution in big data and statistics has transformed everything from baseball to retailing.

This omission can be explained by the fact that the Office of the Chief Actuary, the branch of the Social Security Administration that is responsible for the forecasts, is almost exclusively composed of, well, actuaries — without any serious representation of statisticians or social science methodologists. While these actuaries are highly responsible and careful and do excellent work curating and describing the data that go into the forecasts, their job is not to make statistical predictions. Yet the agency badly needs such expertise.

With considerable help from the actuaries and other officials at the Social Security Administration, we unearthed how the agency makes mortality forecasts and uses them to predict the program’s solvency. We learned that the methods are antiquated, subjective and needlessly complicated — and, as a result, are prone to error and to potential interference from political appointees. This may explain why the agency’s forecasts have, at times, changed significantly from year to year, even when there was little change in the underlying data.

We have made our methods, calculations and software available online at j.mp/SSecurity so that others can replicate or improve our forecasts. The implications of our findings go beyond social science. As the wave of retirement by the baby boomers continues, doing nothing to shore up Social Security’s solvency is irresponsible. If the amount of money coming in through payroll taxes does not increase and if the amount of money going out as benefits remains the same, the trust funds will become insolvent less than 20 years from now.

To save Social Security, which has lifted generations of elderly people out of poverty, tough choices have to be made. One option is to continue raising the retirement age, perhaps to as high as 69 or 70. While the full retirement age is gradually increasing to 67 (for people born in 1960 or later) from 65, this increase is not enough to counterbalance the gains in longevity.

A second option is to increase payroll taxes, for example by taxing wages over $113,700, the current earnings limit. A third is to limit the annual cost-of-living adjustments, possibly by changing how those adjustments are calculated. A fourth is to reduce benefits — for example, by lowering the initial benefits for workers whose lifetime wages are above the national average (currently $43,000 a year). Other choices, in numerous combinations, are possible, too.

One factor that might be considered is new research suggesting that retirement itself, although popular, may reduce life expectancy by breaking lifelong routines and disrupting deep social connections. One might question how much government policy should actively encourage retirement, as opposed to merely making it an option.

Americans need to discuss these difficult choices — and the Social Security Administration needs the ability to improve its forecasting technology by adding statisticians and social science methodologists to help its actuaries institute more formalized quantitative and statistical procedures.

In 1983, after the last time the trust funds ran a deficit, the National Commission on Social Security Reform, led by Alan Greenspan and with members appointed by President Ronald Reagan and Congressional leaders, produced a report that led to changes in payroll taxes. But in the quarter-century since, there have been only modest changes in the program.

We know much more now about mortality and demography, and so an open debate today about Social Security’s future could be even more productive than it was then. The high levels of partisan strife may not make the present seem like the best time to reach a bipartisan agreement. But few issues are more important to more Americans, of both parties, and the longer we ignore the problem, the more disruptive any change will need to be to keep Social Security alive.

Gary King is a professor of government and director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. Samir S. Soneji, a demographer, is an assistant professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

[Frank Reynolds]

CONGRESS and President Obama have pushed through a relatively modest stopgap measure to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” but over the coming years, the United States will confront another huge cliff: Social Security.

In the first presidential debate, Mr. Obama described Social Security as “structurally sound,” and Mitt Romney said that “neither the president nor I are proposing any changes” to the program. It was a rare issue on which both men agreed — and both were utterly wrong.

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, Social Security ran a deficit in 2010: It spent $49 billion dollars more in benefits than it received in revenues, and drew from its trust funds to cover the shortfall. Those funds — a $2.7 trillion buffer built in anticipation of retiring baby boomers — will be exhausted by 2033, the government currently projects.

Those facts are widely known. What’s not is that the Social Security Administration underestimates how long Americans will live and how much the trust funds will need to pay out — to the tune of $800 billion by 2031, more than the current annual defense budget — and that the trust funds will run out, if nothing is done, two years earlier than the government has predicted.

We reached these conclusions, and presented them in an article in the journal Demography, after finding that the government’s methods for forecasting Americans’ longevity were outdated and omitted crucial health and demographic factors. Historic declines in smoking and improvements in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease are adding years of life that the government hasn’t accounted for. (While obesity has rapidly increased, it is not likely, at this point, to offset these public health and medical successes.) More retirees will receive benefits for longer than predicted, supported by the payroll taxes of relatively fewer working adults than projected.

Remarkably, since Social Security was created in 1935, the government’s forecasting methods have barely changed, even as a revolution in big data and statistics has transformed everything from baseball to retailing.

This omission can be explained by the fact that the Office of the Chief Actuary, the branch of the Social Security Administration that is responsible for the forecasts, is almost exclusively composed of, well, actuaries — without any serious representation of statisticians or social science methodologists. While these actuaries are highly responsible and careful and do excellent work curating and describing the data that go into the forecasts, their job is not to make statistical predictions. Yet the agency badly needs such expertise.

With considerable help from the actuaries and other officials at the Social Security Administration, we unearthed how the agency makes mortality forecasts and uses them to predict the program’s solvency. We learned that the methods are antiquated, subjective and needlessly complicated — and, as a result, are prone to error and to potential interference from political appointees. This may explain why the agency’s forecasts have, at times, changed significantly from year to year, even when there was little change in the underlying data.

We have made our methods, calculations and software available online at j.mp/SSecurity so that others can replicate or improve our forecasts. The implications of our findings go beyond social science. As the wave of retirement by the baby boomers continues, doing nothing to shore up Social Security’s solvency is irresponsible. If the amount of money coming in through payroll taxes does not increase and if the amount of money going out as benefits remains the same, the trust funds will become insolvent less than 20 years from now.

To save Social Security, which has lifted generations of elderly people out of poverty, tough choices have to be made. One option is to continue raising the retirement age, perhaps to as high as 69 or 70. While the full retirement age is gradually increasing to 67 (for people born in 1960 or later) from 65, this increase is not enough to counterbalance the gains in longevity.

A second option is to increase payroll taxes, for example by taxing wages over $113,700, the current earnings limit. A third is to limit the annual cost-of-living adjustments, possibly by changing how those adjustments are calculated. A fourth is to reduce benefits — for example, by lowering the initial benefits for workers whose lifetime wages are above the national average (currently $43,000 a year). Other choices, in numerous combinations, are possible, too.

One factor that might be considered is new research suggesting that retirement itself, although popular, may reduce life expectancy by breaking lifelong routines and disrupting deep social connections. One might question how much government policy should actively encourage retirement, as opposed to merely making it an option.

Americans need to discuss these difficult choices — and the Social Security Administration needs the ability to improve its forecasting technology by adding statisticians and social science methodologists to help its actuaries institute more formalized quantitative and statistical procedures.









Perhaps the government just feels that people will die off anyways. I believe that people as a whole, on average, will live longer because we vaccinate against things that used to kill people like Tuburculosis, Polio, Mumps, Measles, Rubella, Smallpox, etc.

However, the combination of breathing in all these toxins, eating all this genetically modified, subsidized frankenfood experiments that we call "fast food" will eventually kill people. I think there will be more cancer than has ever been seen in the future. Still, we are provided this data stating that: as a whole, we live longer, but I don't think that's the whole truth to the story.

I don't think it's ever just one thing that kills you, unless you worked with lead or aesbestos or something toxic your whole life, it's usually a case of multiple factors combining for a cumulative effect we call disease.

I just think as a whole, people in our society are very prone to making multiple detrimental decisions that become behavioral patterns.

My teacher used to have a sign:

A thought > thought patterns > Actions > Action Patterns > Thoughts, Action Patterns become > Habits, Habits become your character or what you continually do and your character and the decisions you make > ultimately becomes your destiny, or fate.


So I think we just make too many health errors primarily because we are ignorant of the truth, undisciplined, or a combination of both. Fast food is delicious, it's cheap, and it's most importantly very easy and readily available, affordable and marketed to us to the death. Bah bah dah dap bap im loving it. No I'm fucking hating it, and if you play it again, I might take a club to my television or radio.


We don't do enough pro-active shit. You've all sat and watched that informercial for the power juicer, don't lie you bastard you'd slug down a glass of that shit, you're probably just too lazy to cut up the fruit.

If you drank that juice every day, did that P90X or Insanity workout..... read books, occupied the body and mind...... odds are, you'd be a lot healthier. Get 4,5,6 of those good habits under your belt, and you'll be one healthy mother fucker. It's really not complicated, it really isn't.


Anyways, should we pay our fucking taxes and work til 70? Fuck that, the old saying is "no taxation without representation" and I know I'm probably not using it in the correct light, but Do you really feel represented by these assholes in Washington?

These people don't know shit! Yet they want me to work til I'm 70, pay assloads of taxes, and I'm probably not even going to collect social security? Fuck them. But it's a free society! and McDonalds commercials ring 50 times in the background as I'm typing this. Alcohol, spirits and sex are sold on television but Frank Reynolds can't smoke marijuana in the privacy of his own home because he's got arthritis in his soul from working his ass off his whole life?

Yet they advertise experimental drugs that people have died being Guinea pigs from? Side effects include death? How you about to throw that so casually in there?

"If you or a loved one died, or experienced cerebral hemorrhaging from taking __________ call Elk and Elk, serious lawyers for serious injury.

Fuck that! I'm calling Tim Misny and he's gonna put the Hammer Driver to your fucking skull and make you pay!

[The Voice]

Make smokers pay a small portion more, much like insurance companies already do.

[southernflyer]

Make smokers pay a small portion more, much like insurance companies already do.

What rate extra would you have smokers pay? Is it the $1.25 per pack in Ohio enough, or the $2.00 in Michigan or the $4.35 in New York? Do you also have a tax on pop, on ice cream, on products with high carbohydrate content, high fructose corn syrup?

How about higher rates for people who don't exercise? How about people who do extreme sports have waivers that their insurance doesn't have to pay or higher rates if they get injured, or even those who enjoy CrossFit classes or ToughMudder runs? Joggers should know that running on concrete is dangerous for joints.

How about a waiver for people who blast music in their earbuds so they don't get hearing services later in life?

There are limitless subsets for where people could get charged more.

[RappSoda]

What rate extra would you have smokers pay? Is it the $1.25 per pack in Ohio enough, or the $2.00 in Michigan or the $4.35 in New York? Do you also have a tax on pop, on ice cream, on products with high carbohydrate content, high fructose corn syrup?

How about higher rates for people who don't exercise? How about people who do extreme sports have waivers that their insurance doesn't have to pay or higher rates if they get injured, or even those who enjoy CrossFit classes or ToughMudder runs? Joggers should know that running on concrete is dangerous for joints.

How about a waiver for people who blast music in their earbuds so they don't get hearing services later in life?

There are limitless subsets for where people could get charged more.

We're getting far off the fiscal cliff topic here...

I can't believe that you equate the danger accompanied by smoking with the harm that could be done to your ears from loud music..

Your last line has merit and I understand the point you're driving home, but c'mon man... Cigarettes/tobacco have a cancer and death warning on the package..

I think the tax should do the double service of being a source of revenue as well as a deterrent... I mean, you want to tax people for working out? Seems counter-productive to the point... Taxing cigs serves as a deterrent for idiots who willingly contribute to killing themselves on a daily basis. I can live with that.