Government used to work for Americans.
Now Americans are slaves for their government.
The NYS pension is bankrupting the state as well.
“That money comes out of taxes and fees collected by the state and is part of the compensation promised to state workers.”
Campers has $363 billion. As long as the market doesn’t tank they are sound.
A promise to the employees made to be broken. But at the time,those making the promise knew they would not be around to see it happen and reap the consequence.
“Yes, we’ve hit an iceberg, but we meant to do that. Go back to sleep.”
The true main reason for all this is that pensions from the Calpers system are all defined-benefit pensions. Such pensions make a promise of a certain benefit at retirement, based on idiot formulas that have nothing to do with whether contributions come in as projected, or whether investment earnings are ever what is projected, or whether individuals lifetimes will only last as long as projected. All those things are basic actuarial matters, but they have nothing to do with what the pension plan promises.
A defined benefit PROMISES a CERTAIN benefit using only things like years of service and some use of the individuals salaries, or last salaries for a certain number of years. And, what do any of those things have to do with (a) how well investment markets will perform, or whether or projected contributions needed will be sufficient to produce the defined-benefits promised, or that contributions will, or that the fund’s mortality experience (will beneficiaries live longer than or greater than their expected lifetimes) will be as projected? NOTHING.
What is needed - how much is needed - for a defined-benefit pension plan is backed into AFTER looking at (calculating) what all the promises will come to (making it a secondary consideration) and then it must also try to assume what rates of return the investments will have. THEN it must go and demand, that no matter what employers already figured and budgeted for pensions, and even though NOTHING about the defined-benefits themselves have changed, the employers may have to pay more if the promises are to be met.
So no one can predict future economic conditions, a defined-benefit pension plan cares not what might happen, employers must make up for any bad economic circumstances so, no matter how costly that is, employees will get every dime “promised”.
The economy and full time workers can be going to hell in a hand basket, but retirees will be THE ONE protected class. Why? Is there some particular morality in that? No there is not.
If all public pensions were real defined-contribution pension plans (NOT 401k plans but real defined-contribution pensions), what is happening with calpers would not be happening.
All that is promised with a defined-contribution pension plan is a promise of what rate of contributions the employer and employer will make to the pension plan up to the last dy of work; after which there will have been a sum of accumulated contributions and the investment earnings they received, amounting to a sum from which (with future projected investment earnings) a monthly/annual benefit can be afforded to be paid until the recipient is deceased. It is a promise of a prudent investment process from which to provide a benefit resulting directly from what was put in and what it earned. No one can say exactly, until the final retirement calculation, exactly what that benefit will be. It is NOT a promise of certain benefit. It is a promise of the best and most stable way of providing for a retirement benefit, without having to jig the system every year due to the vagaries of the investment markets or anything else.
With a defined-contribution pension system there is no annual guessing about what the public pension costs are going to be for the government employers - its a stated level of contributions per employee, no matter what the stock market or anything else has done recently.
So what is really wrong with Calpers? It’s the wrong type of pension system.
In California the public servants became the masters after looting the tax payers for many decades. And now they want the tax paying peons taxed even more to pay for their lucrative tax paid benefits and gold plated pensions.
Tax tax tax....
21 bill a year in Cal for services to illegals
Too bad some of that money couldn’t be spent on the roads.
The heavy rains have made a mess of roads statewide.
SillyCon Valley is a giant pothole under construction, obviously not how you’d like to present yourself to the world when you claim to be the place to be technology-wise.. yet, at best you see some sputtered gravel filler, some scabs of asphalt and car parts from cars shaken apart from hitting the roads.
It’s enough to make pensioners want to move too... like the high mucky mucks of Big Gubamint care.