Posted on 08/29/2016 2:48:12 PM PDT by Lorianne
Citizens of the developed world are watching Venezuela’s descent into financial and political chaos mostly, it seems, with amused detachment, safe in the assumption that we’ll never end up hunting our cats and dogs for food.
But – since Europe, Japan and the US are making essentially the same mistakes as Venezuela’s past and present governments – we might want to question that certainty. Consider what’s happening in the third biggest US city:
Chicago’s detective force dwindles as murder rate soars [see excerpt at source]
Why should a city as apparently affluent as Chicago have such a nightmarish crime situation? Because it’s not really that affluent. Like most of the rest of the formerly-rich world, Chicago ran out of money years ago and has been more-or-less secretly borrowing to cover the shortfall. Its public sector pensions, for instance, pay retired workers far more than the city can afford – but are legally uncuttable according to a recent court ruling. Here’s that story:
Pension ruling another blow to Chicago taxpayers — and Emanuel [see excerpt at source]
Now that this mess has become impossible to hide, new borrowing is getting harder and tax revenues aren’t sufficient to maintain previous levels of health, safety and livability. The result: a steady march down the affluence ladder towards a living standard that would be familiar to people in Brazil or India.
And it’s not just Chicago. Lots of other developed-world cities, states and countries are in similar predicaments, mostly because previous leaders over-promised on pensions that can’t be paid without skimping on everything else. See State pension fund gap approaching $1 trillion.
What does this mean? Over time – and not all that much time – life will get a lot harder for millions of people who are unprepared for it. Crime will metastasize, at-risk kids will go straight from school to prison, roads won’t be maintained, garbage won’t be picked up. It will, in short, become extremely unpleasant for the developed world’s former middle class. Then will come the civil unrest, and just like that your neighborhood looks like those Argentina videos.
The sad thing is that none of this is a surprise. As with so much else that’s going wrong, it traces directly back to the 1971 decision to hand the world’s governments an effectively unlimited monetary printing press. What has followed tracks perfectly with the view of human nature espoused by the Austrian school of economics, which is that we’re potentially brilliant but also corruptible. Since the ability to create money out of thin air is the ultimate temptation, of course nations, states and cities have all borrowed too much and made too many unsupportable promises.
SNIP
Why should a city as apparently affluent as Chicago have such a nightmarish crime situation? Because it’s not really that affluent.
What kind of pension do the politicians receive?
When these politicians award pension contracts to public employees, they put tax payers at risk. They should be sued to force sales of public owned buildings and lands and then set up tents in some parks for the politicians to do their jobs.
Bingo. Culture matters.
Yeah, conflating crime with unfunded pensions is apples and oranges. Correlation is not causation.
Strike 2
I was just amazed watching Mayor Rahm on national news complaining about the revolving door criminal justice system that allows repeat offenders back on the streets to commit these crimes. And the call for higher bail for those arrested seemed to me to fly in the face of the recent DOJ statement that all bail is racist. But none of this matters of course because we live in a 1984 world where the truth doesn’t matter.
Keep working on it. You’re getting close.
Yep,
Newark? It is the whole state of NJ; more and more current revenues are paying people who retired 20 years ago. Our high taxes don’t pay for much in current services; everything but teachers’ unions get cut (since they own a political party).
The “culture” is one where the government is the biggest employer - never mind the gibsmedats with their freebies, the pension obligations to the workfare recipients are what kills these places. Anyone considering moving or opening a business there now understands they are simply buying a piece of a huge IOU - and current services will be nil.
I was just thinking about that today. Our state is broke, they need to sell some state land.
It all comes down to simple math. A teacher in Chicago that has put in 30 years of service will receive a pension of $2.4 million. They will have contributed a total of $118,000 into that pension. For someone in the private sector to collect a $2.4 million pension they would have had to contribute $1.5 million to their pension fund. And their you have it folks. There’s not enough money going in to cover all the money going out.
they should stop hot lunch and breakfast and offer PB and Jelly sandwiches with a carton of milk...
lets really start living on reality...
hey, if teachers kids get screwed with no sports or art or music, so be it....THEY OWN THIS MONSTROSITY...
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