Trimess

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

MACFARLANE QUOTES

Macfarlane says that our benefits took 12% of payroll tax in 2000, in 2011 its 29% of the payroll tax, and 42% in 2017!
We need some independent verification of these numbers!
ACTUALLY THESE NUMBERS CANNOT BE CORRECT BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN PAYING FOR OUR HEALTH INSURANCE FOR THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's easy to make the numbers look larger by only including the payroll tax. As a per cent of the entire budget they would be smaller. Besides revenues will increase eventually.

Anonymous said...

The only numbers on the number line that lie are statistics.

Max said...

Yes I agree, this "% of payroll tax" rhetoric (which was also used with the budget tool) is BS. The payroll tax represents 55% of the operating budget.

Michael, Portland Afoot said...

True enough, seems to me. But operators haven't been paying full health costs, have they? Just the difference by which the premium increased?

Al M said...

Yes. We are paying increases which means trimets health care cost has not increased since that was imposed.

Michael, Portland Afoot said...

Oh right, got it. Well, that's not inconsistent with their claim (2009-2011 could be about the same share of payroll tax, right?) but yeah, I'll see if I can track this down.