Posted on 03/28/2015 7:22:38 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
A shocking chart released this week shows that nine of the top ten cities have more retirees collecting pensions than current employees contributing to the fund. It’s happening in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton, and Harrisburg.
“It’s a major problem,” said Representative Seth Grove (R-York). “We have local governments that are on the verge of bankruptcy.”
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has been raising alarms across the state about the fiscal frailty of municipal pensions.
“One-quarter of all the municipal pensions in the United States are in Pennsylvania,” DePasquale said.
That’s a lot of little communities managing pension plans and DePasquale says nearly half of them are underfunded.
Statewide, the unfunded liability is $8 billion. DePasquale says it’s inefficient for all those localities to have their own pension plans. He’d like to see the state bring them into one plan or at least merge many of them.
“Try to get economies of scale on the administrative side to get waste out of the system,” he said.
DePasquale would also like to see a consolidation of Wall Street investment fees. He says there also needs to be reform that would limit employees, nearing retirement, from gouging on overtime to increase their final salaries and the pensions that are bumped as a result.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc27.com ...
My game plan is to divest myself of real estate that I fully paid for, but for some "unknown reason" continue to pay The King's Rent on.
I'll minimize my taxable footprint, and then begin to relentlessly mock the clueless buffoons who continue to support the system to their faces, all while making sure the younger set knows they're being financially raped.
I've actually implemented most of the plan. :)
A contract is a contract.
I do not blame the retirees for wanting what was ageed upon.
I have had the terms of my pensions changed numerous times over the course of 30 years.
Time to cash in, before they swindle it all away.
A contract is a contract, but the bottom line is money talks an BS walks
Ahhhh the American dream...
Home ownership.
A home you do not own.
Stop paying taxes and see who owns what... /s
“Our public servants are now our masters.”
Maybe it’s time to reverse that.
I agree. I just don’t want the, to have any available out, they should sacrifice their assets if they can’t meet the terms of the contract.
We all agree on FR that the terms were not sustainable, but I think if they made a contractual promise they have should make good on the agreement.
Why should the liars walk away unscathed?
I have issues with public employees bleeding taxpayers dry to politically advocate for politicians that will hold the taxpayers down while the “workers” fiscally sodomize them. Here in NJ our public employees are our upper middle class, and drive the tax burden that has cost us innumerable jobs, homes through foreclosures, etc.
I’ve heard good things about Chile’s system, so your post inspired me to look at it in some detail. I’m not well-enough versed in things financial to summarize it fairly, but it looks like most current wage-earners invest in “AFP’s”, which look to me like standard investment mixes, from which they ultimately draw their retirement funds.
But there are government guarantees (which I guess correspond to “defined benefits”), although I’m not sure how much of those are being phased out, some as part of the previous “PAYG” public pension system Chile used:
“Government Guarantees
“Account holders who switched from the public PAYG to the individual account system receive a recognition bond at retirement that represents the value of their accrued rights under the old public system. The value of the bond is adjusted annually to changes in the consumer price index and provides 4 percent interest per year beginning on the date the worker enrolled in the new system. The bond is redeemed and added to the mandatory individual account when the worker retires, becomes permanently disabled, or dies. The bond cannot be redeemed at any other time. To date, almost no one has retired with a benefit entirely from an individual account. In addition, the government guarantees retirees a pension up to 45 UFs per month (US$1,813) if their annuity provider goes bankrupt.
“The two types of government-guaranteed benefits are gradually being replaced under the new law: the guaranteed minimum pension (MPG) under the capitalization system and means-tested (PASIS) benefits. The MPG has been paid to men aged 65 and women aged 60 with 20 years of contributions to an individual account and whose total income—pension from an individual account plus other sources of income—is below the minimum level set by the government.4 The MPG is a top-up subsidy that, combined with the retiree’s income, reaches the minimum level. For those who have exhausted their funds, the government has provided the entire amount. Retirees who chose the programmed withdrawals option and exhausted their funds by outliving their actuarial life expectancy could also be eligible for the MPG. Disabled workers must have had 10 years of contributions to qualify for the MPG.5 PASIS benefits were paid to low-income individuals who were either disabled or over the age of 65 and did not qualify for any other type of pension. The recognition bond, MPG, and PASIS have been funded by general revenues.”
For those interested, more details at:
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v68n2/v68n2p69.html
An acquaintance retired as a cop in town at 46; he had 25 years in, and will ride the gravy train for decades to come.
We can blame the retirees for buying into a pig in a poke, but I think we should hold the doers if misdeeds to task.
Lots of blame to go around.
We all know Obamacare is a lie, and the people ate up the lie.
Still, it is the liars that should be persecuted.
Public workers?
You mean the Mafia.
The lenders already HAVE their money. The loans, even (especially) the ones that won't be paid back, are carried on the books as assets.
As long as they stay there, they represent wealth without effort, wealth without production.
The whole system of replacing money with debt is going to crash.
The lenders cannot "demand their money", because there IS no money.
There is only paper.
Because it is a bedrock principle of popular sovereignty through representative government that one legislature cannot bind its successors.
Suckers beware?
That’s right; we were fortunate enough to have Chris Christie open enough peoples’ eyes to the problem years ago. Multi-generational grifters draining their hosts...
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people.. must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live.. We have not time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers. Our landholders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile.. private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.
This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in it’s train wretchedness and oppression.”
Thomas Jefferson on Taxation and Public Debt
Hey. I grew up in “little Chicago”
East coast is bigtime rackets
It is being reversed here in NJ as taxpayers (people and companies) flee leaving bankrupt municipalities filled with welfare populations, illegal aliens, and public employees...
Where is “Little Chicago”?
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