Posted on 04/04/2018 2:34:57 PM PDT by Beave Meister
Can the pensions be touched by math?
These disasters are not unique to Chicago and Illinois. Similar situations exist in many cities and states. Louisiana is one with huge unfunded pension liabilities. If you work for the State of Louisiana for 35 years you can retire with 90% of your last three year average salary. This is usually the highest three in a career. This is unsustainable. For most retirees they enjoy a significant increase in take home pay following retirement.
I worked in private industry and the maximum available under our retirement system was 40 years credit and 60% of the average of your highest five year average salary. You could not retire prior to age 55. If you retired prior to age 65 you were penalized 1.5% per year for every year you retired prior to age 65. So if you retired at 55 you got 45% instead of 60%. I retired in 1997 and there have been no COLAs. The only way there will be any is if the board of directors elects to put money into the fund to provide for this good fortune. This is not about to happen. About four or five years ago the company eliminated the pension plan for all new hires. The employees in the plan were grandfathered, but the newbies are on a 401K only.
Just about every government pension plan is a ponzi scheme including the granddaddy of them all—Social Security. It requires all or most all of the current contributions from workers to pay the benefits of the current retirees, and nothing is being put away for the current workers. They are in for a real awakening some day. The cities and states are expecting the federal government to keep everyone whole. There ain’t that much money in the whole world.
The fired workers would no longer accrue benefits. The saved salary could be used to pay retiree pensions.
“Can the pensions be touched by math?”
That they can. And they will be.
L
“The fired workers would no longer accrue benefits. The saved salary could be used to pay retiree pensions.”
Fire a municipal worker in the city of Chicago? You’re not from around here are you?
L
Soon, that will be the choice, pay current employees or pay the retirees.
I've heard some interesting stories in California.
That is NJ in a nutshell - and why young Americans have no interest in buying homes here. They flee to greener pastures, and we import Third Worlders who will put five generations under one roof - with cousins, baby-mamas, etc. included. The school costs skyrocket as a state officially losing population sees the student ranks swell, and fewer and fewer Americans are paying for it.
NJ is doing the same; we already pay among the highest taxes in the nation, and elected a Dem governor who pledged to raise taxes.
In a nutshell, people who either 1) pay not taxes, or 2) are PAID BY taxes, are outvoting the rest of us. They are a significant portion of the 47% Romney mentioned that starts out in the Dem column each presidential election; Republicans are fighting to swing that last 3% away from them...
Immediately stop sports and band,debate, etc...blame it on the teachers if they don’t renegotiate. l8tr
“Editorial: Chicago’s pension precipice: It’s worse than you thought.”
Everything about Chicago is worse than we think.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Their Constitution forbids it.
</sarcasm>
A few years back there were news stories where blacks in dead and dying cities were ranting about the drain on current revenues by pensions to primarily white retirees. A photo showed an old white guy at a mic facing an inquisition panel of younger elected (and scowling) blacks. These cities (and here in NJ, it is spreading state-wide) can no longer repair roads or maintain anything - great reasons NOT to move or start a business there.
Early in Obama’s reign, he tried to hoodwink municipalities into accepting federal money to hire teachers, with the stipulation that after a couple of years those places would be on the hook for the associated costs. The problem was they could be tenured at that point, and the municipalities (read: taxpayers) would be stuck - so I don’t believe they had many takers. Zuckerberg’s $100 million “donation” to the Newark NJ public schools had a similar ulterior motive: It delayed layoffs, “tenuring” more teachers, with no appreciable results other than funneling contributions to Democrats through the teachers’ unions. There was some growth of charter schools, which causes problems for Dems; they aren’t unionized, and shame the regular public schools with their results. In the end, the money quickly disappeared and Newark is still a dangerous sh!thole filled with semi-literate graduates.
Public employees at this point are parasites that chase out business and taxpayers, nothing more; “service” isn’t even part of the equation anymore.
Just borrow money from Puerto Rico.
Does a person need billions of dollars to live rich?
Millions will do......over time.
That’s why Democrats love moving billions of dollars around.
A million stolen here. A million stolen there.
Nobody notices and they buy that condo in Kauai.
It’s going to be easier to change the state constitution than to pay off all the bills. Cullerton and Madigan better get cracking.
If I owned property in NJ, I would sell ASAP. And get the heck out
Another recent court decision will put taxpayers on the hook for additional city pension debts. Yes, even more than before. A circuit court judge in March struck down a 2014 state law that... had increased Park District employees’ own contributions to the fund, increased their retirement-eligible age, reduced their annual cost-of-living increases and reduced duty disability benefits. But those changes will be rolled back, due to the ruling.
Thanks Beave Meister.
Many are doing so; public employees are probably the only “workers” still buying homes here. A recent trend is even more disturbing; whereas Jerseyans used to leave upon retirement, many are leaving earlier - either when their children finish school or if a breadwinner loses one of the remaining “good” jobs here. Some are also here to stay near ageing family members, but the hostile tax climate is chasing retirees out anyway.
The state is rapidly becoming unrecognizable, and I’ve posted on other threads that the demographic changes in this country are happening MUCH faster than people realize. the 2050 date for the transition to a white minority is nonsense; the current birthrate disparities/immigration patterns ensure it will be much sooner. This country will see first Hispanics, then Asians, outnumber whites very quickly; blacks, with their lower birthrate since the 1996 welfare reform, aren’t growing beyond their current proportion of the population. Many cities are already visibly changing, with Hispanics increasingly pushing blacks into smaller and smaller urban cores.
I see that happening now, not because of the costs of the programs but because the remaining teachers only get rich if the finite funds go to them - and retiring teachers aren’t replaced. I see more and more high school athletes fundraising for their programs; that was rare only a few years ago.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.