Writer's Guild Going on Strike

[CharlesPapert]

It seems there is no sympathy or understanding of what this means for writers on this forum Charles. I assume it's because many of the contributors on this forum don't work in narrative or are working in areas that don't work with WGA writers. Those of us that are directly affected by production stoppage and income loss of those WGA members bizarrely seem to understand and empathise with them. How strange hey?

I'm onboard with the effort, I just wish IA had struck two years ago and it would have been interesting to see what flavor of support we would have seen from the other guilds then (given that, I feel like we are unlikely to ever see that happen in the future). And yes, being completely dead in the water for months to come is a sad state of affairs. I do agree with you on the DGA (like you, I'm 600 and DGA) and curious to see how SAG plays it.

 

[ahalpert]

An economist friend posted a couple of days ago, "we're going to have to tax the lower and the middle class". To which I replied, "this is what they do in Europe" - they start high and then go higher.

Whether it can be done in the US or not is open to a debate.

I'd rather the state goes first.

Where did your economist friend get his degree? Trump University? We already tax the lower and middle class to fund social security. You pay payroll taxes on every dollar you earn up until the cap. As for where additional funding can come from, we could remove the cap. We could tax corporations. There's no reason it has to come from lower class people. That's like going out to dinner with someone and saying, "well you're just going to have to pay the bill, I don't see any alternative."

 

[Doug Bee]

As for where additional funding can come from, we could remove the cap. We could tax corporations. There's no reason it has to come from lower class people. That's like going out to dinner with someone and saying, "well you're just going to have to pay the bill, I don't see any alternative."

Especially the super wealthy.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

 

[DLD]

Where did your economist friend get his degree? Trump University? ...

He's far to the right of Trump, who's a little more than a modern Amerigo Bonasera. And you'd be well served to skip on your confirmation bias the next time ... or any time.

 

[ahalpert]

He's far to the right of Trump, who's a little more than a modern Amerigo Bonasera. And you'd be well served to skip on your confirmation bias the next time ... or any time.

referencing Trump University was meant to indicate that your friend had no idea what he was talking about, not that he was ideologically aligned with Trump. as far as Republicans go, Trump is a relatively strong defender of social security anyway

 

[DLD]

referencing Trump University was meant to indicate that your friend had no idea what he was talking about, not that he was ideologically aligned with Trump. as far as Republicans go, Trump is a relatively strong defender of social security anyway

My friend knows everything he says. You don't. Not about him, not about politics, not about economics. Or European tax schemes, which is easily available online. In many a language.

 

[ahalpert]

My friend knows everything he says. You don't. Not about him, not about politics, not about economics. Or European tax schemes, which is easily available online. In many a language.

You're once again dodging the substance of what I said and trying to argue by authority. Your friend said that we MUST tax the lower and middle classes to save social security. But they are currently the people who pay for social security. And if we want to raise revenue for it, we can easily do it another way. You could finance the shortfall just by ending no-bid military contracts.

 

[Paul F]

I never understood the SS cap. When I would hit it and my paycheck got bigger, it would make me smile, but I always wondered "What the fudge? Who came up with this?".

No one is paying their "fair share". If you compare tax brackets to what people actually pay after all of their loopholes (child tax credits, standard deduction etc), people are paying less than half of their tax bracket. One of the oddest credits is the child tax credit.

 

[Paul F]

Especially the super wealthy.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Why do we always pick on the wealthy? The wealthy (and I forgot what income that is) contribute 84% of the federal revenue. We plebians contribute (well, you plebians, I don't pay tax for some reason) contribute 16% to the federal budget. I don't know why we pick on the wealthy. Sure, they should kick in more as they pay on average, 8.4%, but the rest of us are equally slacking as far as I can tell. When half the income earners (like me) pay no tax, well, that's a problem. How come no one picks on me? I don't pay any tax on my IRA distribution or my SS, which were both earned income that I never paid tax on.

Even with taking only the standard deduction, a married couple with $100,000 of income will pay 10% tax. So sure, let's kick up the wealthy tax another 1.6% and we should be good.

 

[DLD]

You're once again dodging the substance of what I said and trying to argue by authority.

Here's authority -

View attachment ...jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg&_nc_cat=102&cb=99be929b-3346023f&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=LT-ncSyWn10AX

 

[ahalpert]

Here's authority -

There are numerous issues here. In no particular order:

1. This is a ratio of tax rates of the wealthy to the poor. I think you're putting it forth to prove that rich Americans are paying their fair share. But it could just as easily reflect massive income disparity. If poor people are earning nothing, they're paying no taxes. At the extreme, the tax ratio here will go to infinity. Serbia, for example, has a much better inequality measure than the US.

https://www.worldeconomics.com/Inequ...ed%20in%202020.

2. This chart seems off to me because I know that countries like the UK have state-adminstered Healthcare that is paid for by taxes. I would expect to see that reflected in the blue line segment, which appears about the same for the UK and US. The mere fact that healthcare is paid via taxes and not via private employer/employee arrangements should factor into this chart but I don't see that anywhere. It really makes me doubt the accuracy of these figures.

3. In the paper that you drew this table from, the authors acknowledge that the tax ratio in the US reflects that the lower class is paid much lower wages in the US than in other countries: https://conversableeconomist.com/202...edistribution/

4. "However, the US does transfer a smaller share of GDP to those below, especially in the area of pension benefits (green bars) and unemployment/disability payments (blue bars)."



5. Clark Medal winner Gabriel Zucman has shown through exhaustive research that US effective tax rates are only slightly progressive and that the very highest earners actually pay a lower tax rate than the lowest earners.



6. Even if your point were true, that would not preclude raising taxes on the rich to bolster social security. That's truly just a political decision.

7. You accuse me of confirmation bias, but you've been predicting Putin's imminent ouster for over a year. Any day now, right?

 

[Paul F]

You could finance the shortfall just by ending no-bid military contracts.

Like the rich, why do we always pick on the military budget? It is one of the smallest percentages in the budget. Health (15%) and income security (14%) spending individually are more than the military (12%) spending. Medicare and SS are 32% of the budget. Meanwhile, we waste 8% of the budget on interest payments for the federal debt. How about a balanced budget that pays off the debt so no one has to pay more tax. We spend $500 billion on interest payments. Talk about waste.

No, I'm not saying we shouldn't cut military spending. I expect we can easily cut 10% in each department without an issue.......... Oh, except this - 25% of the US GDP is the federal government. Imagine the impact on employment across the board if we cut back on spending in any department. The federal government is sort of a work for welfare economy. Those of us not getting paid by the feds are propping up a full 25% of the country.

[edit] speaking of military spending, the US armory located in Nevada consists of 147,000 acres (226 sq. mi.) in the desert. I drove out there one time just as an excuse to get out in the desert. Nothing to see of course, unless you like ammo bunkers. But part of the drive from the Sierras to the armory consists of a 30 mile drive on a dead flat, straight road with no traffic. It's kinda cool. It boggles the mind; 147,000 acres of ammo, shells, missiles.

 

[ahalpert]

Like the rich, why do we always pick on the military budget? It is one of the smallest percentages in the budget. Health (15%) and income security (14%) spending individually are more than the military (12%) spending. Medicare and SS are 32% of the budget. Meanwhile, we waste 8% of the budget on interest payments for the federal debt. How about a balanced budget that pays off the debt so no one has to pay more tax. We spend $500 billion on interest payments. Talk about waste.

No, I'm not saying we shouldn't cut military spending. I expect we can easily cut 10% in each department without an issue.......... Oh, except this - 25% of the US GDP is the federal government. Imagine the impact on employment across the board if we cut back on spending in any department. The federal government is sort of a work for welfare economy. Those of us not getting paid by the feds are propping up a full 25% of the country.

[edit] speaking of military spending, the US armory located in Nevada consists of 147,000 acres (226 sq. mi.) in the desert. I drove out there one time just as an excuse to get out in the desert. Nothing to see of course, unless you like ammo bunkers. But part of the drive from the Sierras to the armory consists of a 30 mile drive on a dead flat, straight road with no traffic. It's kinda cool. It boggles the mind; 147,000 acres of ammo, shells, missiles.

I've been hearing all my life about the price gouging tolerated by the defense department. It's blatant corruption. 60 minutes recently did a special on it.

For example, "the government will pay TransDigm $119 million for parts that should cost $28 million."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbs...inutes-report/

And we pay defense contractors nearly half a trillion dollars per year. So, we could probably save at least a couple hundred billion there without shrinking our military.

But "The United States spends more on national defense than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine — combined." Why? I mean, we ended the occupation of Afghanistan and then increased our military budget. Madness.





I think your figures for federal workforce employment are off. (Also, a quarter of the federal workforce is military and postal workers.)

I have from 2017, "the federal government collectively paid 1.97 million federal employees $136.3 billion" when the GDP was 19.38 trillion. Ergo the federal workforce was paid 0.7% of GDP.

https://www.fedsmith.com/2017/12/28/...on%20per%20day.

Edit: apparently that study excluded the department of defense. "Employees excluded from the data are the 742,000 civilian employees at the Department of Defense and the 1.3 million active duty military members."

 

[DLD]

OMG, the US spends money on defense! ... How disadvantageous for Vladimir Putin.

PS. I am not a Marxist. I've read the same arguments in Pravda back in the 1970's. Glad Mikhail Suslov still have the fellow travelers in the US.

 

[Paul F]

Yes, that's a kick in the butt about military spending isn't it? The problem we are straddled with is we became the 'world's peacekeeper' after WWII. So while China protects China, the US protects the world (ok, a bit corny, but that's how it is set up). We have bases all over the world. Congress loves defense spending. It's good for their local contractors. The present administration and Congress has been sold the idea of protection against China, so of all things, the budget went up. Crazy, right? After Covid and Afghanistan spending, I was so hopeful to get back to a balanced budget. Everyone is friends with us because we do all the spending. Look at NATO spending. We are the suckers that provide $808 Billion vs $303 from the rest of the countries.

I didn't mean that the federal workforce was that high. It's the whole complex of spending. The fed spending is 25% of the GDP, ergo, it supports 25% of the economy.

As to corruption, you bet. I mean, what's a government for if you can't take advantage of it. The stealing probably happens in every department. Look at Medicare, until recently, Medicare was not allowed to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers. Crazy. Imagine the corruption regarding school books. I mean, who is going to give K-12 books to the States at a discount? "That'll be full list price New York". I couldn't find anything on that. I wonder.

 

[Paul F]

Now we could have talked about how the IRS is getting screwed by phony tax returns or that Social Security is getting screwed by fake disability claims or that Transportation is getting screwed by overpriced contracts or that Medicare is getting screwed by phony claims or that Education is getting screwed by overpriced books or that our representatives are screwing everyone with their pork projects. But you picked military contract corruption. That's what I mean. People like to go to the military first even though it is not the department that spends the most. Does the military waste the most? Maybe. They all suck. They are all getting screwed and they are all screwing us. We should be more fair in our disgust with the gubment.

 

[Paul F]

...... and speaking of the WGA...... I apologize for drifting off topic.

 

[DLD]

Yes, that's a kick in the butt about military spending isn't it? ...

In 1935 or so, Heinz Guderian (mostly accepted as the father of the modern armored warfare) went to his boss (the guy with a thin mustache) and asked for 10,000 tanks. The Boss's reply as, "I'd need to hire 100,000 workers for it. So, no". Guderian then noted that there was no alternative offered. He said he may have settled for 6,000 or so The Germans opened Barbarossa with 3,300 tanks, with fewer than 1,000 of them being modern.

Of course, having 900 bombers was even worse.

The Soviets had 25,000 tanks and 25.000 aircraft.

 

[Paul F]

I just wish IA had struck two years ago and it would have been interesting to see what flavor of support we would have seen from the other guilds then (given that, I feel like we are unlikely to ever see that happen in the future).

It's unfortunate how IATSE is structured. Having theatrical, broadcast, film, post, .... everything in one union seems to weaken the vote for any one group. The last action, with so much approval to strike and then to sign off on the agreement, it seems a split of the different disciplines into separate unions would help everyone get more of what they want.

 

[briandrys1]

I don't think any unions work that way these days, they may have in the days of guilds of say goldsmiths, but everything is now much more integrated, with say DPs working as colourists. Having everything split will also add to running costs, in the UK BECTU covers film, television, theatre, plus live events. It's part of a larger union called Prospect, which includes telecommunications and nuclear engineers, the larger size keeps the administration costs per member down, while allowing more regional representation.