For state workers, layoffs loom large

[harvey007]

Source: News Observer

Faced with a huge budget shortfall, there have been predictions of widespread state employee layoffs as the legislature moves to downsize state government. One estimate, by the NC. Budget and Tax Center, put the potential layoffs at 21,000.

"The State Health Plan is bankrupt, living on six to eight days of reserves" said Rep. Dale Folwell, the incoming speaker pro tem from Winston-Salem. "If the State Health Plan was an insurance company it would be shut down tomorrow."

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/01/23/938094/for-state-workers-layoffs-loom.html

[xchrom]

1. recommend -- wondering what all of this is going to do to the unemployment numbers. nt

[peacebird]

4. unemployment numbers will rise, but also remember that our infrastructure is already crumbling

bridges, roads, tunnels - all in need of repair and upkeep. We will have fewer police, firefighters, and fewer of the other public sector workers who do so much for all of us.

But the CEO's, CFO's, COO's and their uber rich buddies will all get to keep their bush tax cuts, and likely get HUGE bonuses as well! That's all that really matters, isn't it? <sarcasm>

[xchrom]

5. how many states will try to sell that crumbling infrastructure to private businesses

that seems to be the idea in quarters -- get rid of assets.

the world is upside down.

[dotymed]

2. Of course, the billionaires

now claim that public employees are, in effect, the new aristocracy in America. Because many of them earn a living wage AND benefits.
Divide and conquer....OMG, most of these state employees even belong to Unions. Fuck...what will it take for us to at least, have mass protests?

[Knight Hawk]

8. While you (and I ) were sleepng last night .............

Big Brother govt.was making plans to handle any problems the great unwashed might give them.They will look for the ringleaders of all such mass protests and neutralize them first..............

[sarcasmo]

3. Unions, the new target of destruction.

[Robbien]

6. Teachers, police and firemen the first to go. OTOH Overpaid patronage jobs, well maybe sometime

further down the road, if needed.

[Diclotican]

7. harvey007

harvey007

This is bad news for most pepole.. In the US, and maybe even to an extent for the rest of the world...

But as one my relavtives said last time US was in the wind... How long US have fallen, this was once one of the richest country on the faste of the planet. No country was even close to the wealth and prosperity that most americans had regular contact with... And she is an old womman now, who was grown up right after world war two, and was growing into a world where US was the "contrast" for everything else... US was the mighty ship the rest of the world was depended on, specially a poor country in the north of europe, who had been true a world war, where the germans had hit the country hard... And many parts of Norway was destroyed down to the waterline... Thanks to US, and of course her own population the small country in the north of europe had a chance to envolve to what Norway is today.. A rich country, who managed her wealth well, even tho it lived in the shadows of world war tree for 40 year or so under the cold war...

If US had starting priority right, then the mighty US might have came back to its old glory again.. Little less wars, and little more building home, then might, just might US had awaken from the nightmare... The wars US have today, is killing off US as the money who should have been going to welfare and pentions, are now going to the wastefullness of wars It is so tragic to se a trainwreck as US have been the last decade.... And it looks not an easy task to try to stop the trainwreck from falling down the steep incline, to the river either... Not when 50 percent of the population want the trainwreck to happen...

Diclotican

[IamK]

9. rumor is CA will cut / early retire in excess of 50,000

[Diclotican]

11. IamK

IamK

Dam another 50.000 withouth works... It looks really bleak for the working man in US this days.. As is does in the rest of the world.... how mutch do we manage to bear before it breaks, and a new "french revolution" is out in force... Or an revolution of 1917...

The revolution of 1917 scared a whole generation of "have's" so the rest of us got what we deserved in the end.. Even tho it was not a easy task and a long way to go, 20-30 year after 1917, the working man was in better shape to rise up and do better than their ancestors than ever before known in history...

Today it looks more and more like we need another 1917 to rembember that the working man do have power... And far outnumber the "Has" by many factores... If the working man get enough, no force can keep them under controll.. What the american working man need, are to go togheter, and work for a common goal... And if nessesary give the message clear to they who own your wealth... Shange or end up dead... It worked for Europe in 1917, and it is never been forgotten even tho 1917 is a long way ago now... Even the French Revolution are still not forgotten in most of Europe.. It shanged our old continent forever...


Diclotican

[jwirr]

10. Just above this post is an article about how long the waits for services

are in Denver. Layoffs are going to cause real problems with food stamp lines and other lines where we go for help. This is not the answer but I guess we are going to have to continue the trickle down economics theory until we actually have no one not on food stamps.