Does public service mean never taking a pay cut? Tim Cavanaugh on the strange case of Gil Cedillo

Reason senior editor Tim Cavanaugh appeared on Fox Business' Varney & Co. today to discuss how California politicians and government employees are rejecting every attempt by the state to put some emergency restraints on their benefits. Here is the video:

Comments

[Aresen]

Reason seniore editor Tim Cavanaugh

Cavanaugh doesn't sound Italian to me.

[Holly Martens]

Cavaway, not Cavanaugh. He's English, not Irish.

[Episiarch]

It used to be Tony Cannoli but he got tired of people asking him for spicy meat-a-balls.

[Mo Money]

Don't people understand the unions created the great middle class and thus all unions should only get more and more forever and ever? Every union and their members only want what's best for the country. Right? Right?

[MNG]

It's cold in the Southeast tonight, can I use some of that straw for my dog's house?

[MNG]

Libertarian obsession with public employee pay, perks and benefits is starting to remind me a lot of liberal obsession with CEO pay, perks and benefits.

[BakedPenguin]

If you don't want to pay a CEO, don't buy his company's stuff. What do you do if you don't want to pay the city comptroller?

[MNG]

Vote for another administration.
Move.

[BakedPenguin]

Moving? That's a lot easier than not buying a company's product.

[MNG]

People do it all the time. And voting is pretty easy, those chad's are not too tough to punch these days.

And it's not so easy as just not buying his company's stuff. Maybe you have a retirement account that invests in his company. And do you know every subsidary of the company?

[FleeingCali]

Hmm, hard to move in CA unless you walk away from your mortgage.

[MNG]

And oc course maybe the CEO has a fat defense contract or government bailout...

[BakedPenguin]

Looking up the companies in a mutual fund or the subsidiaries of a corporation you particularly dislike is at least achievable. The best you can hope for as far as government is concerned is to live in the sticks, and pay a small amount of property tax.

As far as the fat defense contract or bailout, you're right, they shouldn't happen. And they wouldn't, absent a government that's out of control.

[MNG]

I think voting is the easiest of the choices I mentioned.

I'm not sure you get away so easily on the rent-seekers. What if libertarian policies lead to concentrations of wealth which then inevitably use whatever government is available to make themselves richer (and they do so with an ease related to how much wealth they have)?

[MNG]

I'm thinking of the railroad barons back in the day of much smaller, less intrusive government.

[anonymous coward]

SO we have to have bigger government because smaller government will make the government bigger?

[BakedPenguin]

If you're talking about the California rail monopoly rates granted by the CA legislature, that is one of the reasons we fight to limit government's control of economics.

Ultimately, if the government could not grant special dispensations, there would be no bartering for their favors.

[QuietDesperation]

How about we find a better balance?

[Yonemoto]

Your flawed assumption is that voting gets rid of the bureaucrat. Empirically speaking, how often does that happen?

"What if libertarian policies lead to concentrations of wealth which then inevitably use whatever government is available to make themselves richer (and they do so with an ease related to how much wealth they have)?"
Oh, poor MNG, you are confusing libertarian policies with liberal policies. Like inflation (redistribution of wealth to the wealthiest), social welfare (redistribution of wealth to the poorest, but not after giving a huge chunk to the politically connected).

[a]

When I vote no, they stop using my tax dollars?! Thanks for letting me know. I had no idea.

Also, what if you are a permanent resident? You can't vote, but they still get to collect half your pay.

[skr]

where is this mythical local where I don't have to pay the city comptroller or equivalent?

[QuietDesperation]

Tried that. The Gerrymander monster had other plans. Life is not as simple as a quip.

[a]

Can I borrow that line the next time you complain about the Republicans?

[hmm]

Racist thread jack in blackface!!

JESUS FUCKIN' CHRIST THEY ARE CUPCAKES SINGING YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS.

[DeSigisha Freud]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but usually it's a Big Black DICK!!

[Mr. FIFY]

The stupid... it burns:

This issue is that Duncan Hines' good intentions does not absolve them from the racist impact of the video. When people who know racism tell you that your video is racist, believe them.

HOW LONG AGO was "minstrelsy", again? Get the fuck over it.

[Mr. FIFY]

More stoopid from Mother Jones' commenters:

The taco bell Chihuahua was just a cute dog with a Mexican accent and insatiable desire for tacos, but he was still racist.

Uh... yeah. Sure. Whatever, man. Just put down the gluten-free bread, we're not here to hurt you.

[Ice Nine]

If only they had had the sensitivity to use blue frosting faces instead of brown on their little hip hop-singing (logically, Negro) cupcakes, everything would have been fine. And it would have made so much sense.

[heller]

So you hate Smurfs, you fucking racist?

[Fucking Racist]

Who doesn't hate those fucking land-snorks?

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Perhaps the classic quote from Theodore Dalrymple is called for here:

"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."

[tote-road]

Were there cupcakes in that commercial? All I saw was a fine female torso of indeterminate race.

[R C Dean]

Libertarian obsession with public employee pay, perks and benefits is starting to remind me a lot of liberal obsession with CEO pay, perks and benefits.

Well, there's a difference of scale, of course. The unfunded liabilities of pubsec union retirement benefits alone are likely in excess of a trillion dollars. I haven't seen an analysis of the global difference in pay between pubsec union members and their private sector counterparts, but if its less than 12 figures a year, nationwide, I'd be shocked.

And then, there's also the question of who bears the burden for excessive pay. Pubsec excesses are paid for out of taxes. Overpaid CEOs are a burden borne mainly, if not solely, by shareholders.

And finally, of course, the root of our obsession is that CEO pay is voluntary, at least nominally a function of market forces. Pubsec union pay is driven by a corrupted and broken political system.

So, yeah, except for that, they're exactly the same.

[MNG]

"Overpaid CEOs are a burden borne mainly, if not solely, by shareholders."

I think that is naive. I bet money you have a stake in firms that you can't even name.

"CEO pay is voluntary, at least nominally a function of market forces. Pubsec union pay is driven by a corrupted and broken political system."

Yeah, the political system is broken and corrupt but the corporate governance system is made up entirely of informed, consensual rational exchanges....

[hmm]

Um, you it isn't necessary to know what you have a stake in to be a shareholder? What was said is correct, the pay and capital structure is a burden of those with a right to future profits. Regardless of their knowledge of their own involvement.

Are you saying that there is more asymmetric information in governance systems of publicly traded firms than there is in government? If so you are fucking insane.

[Chad]

Generally, state constitutions forbid reneging on promised pensions. However, I have never understood why we can't have a special pension tax. We tax different forms of income differently all the time.

Heavy taxes paid on any pension collected before age 62 would solve most of the abusive pensions out there.

[Mr. FIFY]

Yeah, that's what we fucking need... ANOTHER tax. Especially, as you put it, "heavy" taxes.

You are so fucking stupid, Chad.

[Mr. FIFY]

BUT, since we're talking about pensions... howzabout we stop paying Congressmen for life if they serve X number of terms?

You quit, or get unelected... that's it. You're fucking done. No more checks from the taxpayer trough, Senator.

[Little Chad]

B-B-B-BUT.. EXTERNALITIES.. SOMALIA!!!

[Tanya]

Tim Cavanaugh's a cutie.