Posted on 05/08/2006 5:57:46 PM PDT by george76
Enhanced pension deals are county's albatross...
The county has the distinction of carrying more retirees (6,050) than active employees (4,631) on county health insurance.
Add in 3,100 spouses and dependents of retirees, and the county is insuring more than 9,000 individuals on the retiree side.
The county now pays out more in health care for retirees than for active employees.
In addition to her monthly check, she was promised, and cherishes, free health insurance for the rest of her life.
It is the sum of such promises to Schumann and 6,000-plus other retirees that is a major stumbling block as the county seeks to right its economic ship.
County retirees with at least 15 years of service who were hired before 1994 qualify for the lifetime health insurance program.
Even if it were to make drastic cuts in services - closing parks, slashing the transit system, ending patrol of freeways and getting the state to pay for courts - the cost of promises made to Schumann and her cohort would remain.
The policies have helped push Milwaukee County's health insurance budget over $125 million a year, more than doubled since 2000. Budget officials project it to increase nearly 20% a year.
The county's 2006 property tax levy, by comparison, was $232 million.
Because retirees pay no premiums, and active employees pay $75 to $150 a month, the county's health insurance commitment actually increases when people retire.
The rule of 75 has been phased out, but it still applies to many current employees.
The full retirement age is now 60.
But union members "would be adamant against taking that (free retiree health care) away,"
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
The pyramid scheme of liberalism begins to crumble.
Friedman calls Social Security, created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, a Ponzi game.
Charles Ponzi was the 1920s Boston swindler who collected money from "investors" to whom he paid out large "profits" from the proceeds of later investors. The scheme inevitably collapses when there are not enough new entrants to pay earlier ones.
That Social Security operates on a similar basis is not really in dispute.
The biggest misconception about the program, he argues, is that workers believe it works like insurance, with the government depositing taxes in a trust fund.
"I've always thought it disgraceful that the government should be essentially lying about what it was doing," he said.
He calls himself an innate optimist, despite the unpopularity of many of his ideas.
When he moved to San Francisco in the 1970s, the city was debating rent control, he recalled. So he wrote a letter to The Chronicle saying, "Anybody who has examined the evidence about the effects of rent control, and still votes for it, is either a knave or a fool."
What happened? "They immediately passed it," he laughed.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/05/ING9QD1E5Q1.DTL&sn=156&sc=587
people will be so angry at the GM's of the world, but the biggest catastrophe is the ongoing civil pension system that rewards people at a relatively young age obscenely beyond any private pensions....
but, SS is so easy to hit on... SS seems to provoke more angst than the civil pensions
SS is so easy to take away .....
the answer is of course, changing the pension system for all employess, starting with the civil ones...teachers, and cops, and mailmen, and the rest ...and when that is done, public pensions will also be in line( they actually are now almost a rarity)
Milton Friedman sounds as sharp as ever. He says it better than I can :
"Everybody goes around talking about the problems created by the declining number of workers per retiree," he said. "How come life insurance companies aren't in any problem?"
The question is quintessential Friedman: simple, accessible and formidable.
Life insurance companies take premium payments and invest them in factories and buildings and other income-producing assets, Friedman said. These accumulate in a growing fund that can then pay benefits.
Social Security, by contrast, operates pay-as-you-go, collecting payroll taxes from workers that immediately go to pay retirees.
In the end, retirement will be out of reach to most people. You will work until you are unable to work, like most of the world. There is no such thing as a free lunch, but those who depend on SS and pensions seem to think that there is.
And SS is what...67 now?
That government union has 60 as retirement age.
Full pension, full benefits, full health care...
I mean full...no co-pay...free.
Unless you are the tax payer, then look out.
That state is off my list.
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