The State Worker: Are public pensions the root of all evil?

SacBee: State Worker ^ | 7/14/10 | Jon Ortiz

[SmithL]

The nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission meets today to hear testimony about public pensions, aiming to dispassionately analyze the impact of retirement costs on governments and then, if needed, suggest changes.

Heaven knows we need a dose of level-headed analysis, given the wide-open rhetoric that "pension reform" provokes.

Unions see such efforts as a call to arms, "an attack on public employees," union lobbyist Dave Low once told The State Worker.

Last year when it looked like an initiative might make the ballot to cut benefits for future government hires, Low warned it would provoke a "nuclear response" from labor.

Context and moderation don't score political points on either side.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made rolling back state retirement benefits a top priority and has adroitly linked pensions to just about everything that ails the state.

Welfare? Kids' health care getting whacked? State aid for seniors? All on the chopping block all because ... of ... PENSIONS!!

[Poundstone]

California has a real public pension mess on its hands.

Thank God I’m a former federal employee! And a current federal retiree.

[Wallop the Cat]

So long as you got yours.

[misharu]

So long as you got yours.

Yeah, no shti, eh, Wallop?

[loveliberty2]

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the 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, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

Note Jefferson's very last thought here. He declares that when government taxing and debt have reached certain levels, in order for individuals to survive, then their chosen "employment" becomes "hiring ourselves to rivet their (the government's) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."

Consider: in 2009, where are America's levels of employment highest? Is it in the once-thriving private sector which produces all wealth, or in the ever-increasing government sector, where the only money is either coercively "taken" from our fellow citizens, or borrowed from out great-grandchildren's future?

Have we reached that final phase of what Jefferson described as a logical end to what begins as letting "our rulers load us with perpetual debt"--a state where we actually become participants by "hiring ourselves," or demanding so much "payment" as to make slaves of our fellow citizens?

[all the best]

public pensions?

Does this mean that they are paying the public a pension? Why do they find it so hard to say “government”? Government employee/retiree pensions are the issue.

[usurper]

Thank God I’m a former federal employee! And a current federal retiree.

You must be under CSRS because my FERS is going to suck when I pull the plug. When I read about the California system all I can say is wow.

[omega4412]

Are public pensions the root of all evil?

Of course not. Public employee unions are the root of much evil in state government. Public pension abuse is the evil fruit.

[randog]

...dispassionately analyze the impact of retirement costs on governments and then, if needed, suggest changes.

Suggest changes to whom? Oh yeah, people that get a state pension.

[oyez]

The local politicians like aldermen, city councilmen, county commissioners and the similar flock never had the cajoenes to tell the unions to pack off. They just vote to extract tax money from the public.

In the private sector, companies and plants fold or move someplace else if the labor becomes too expensive. Governments don't get to do that.

[JerseyHighlander]

the government worker pension is not the root of evil.

Government accounting (non-) standards in the United States is the problem.

If all pensions were written up as current liabilities in the yearly budgets, and all government entities had to cover their budgets with a balanced budget law, there would be no pension account deficits. And the system would be sustainable for a thousand years, just as the Eastern Roman Empire.

The United States took a step backwards, the Eastern EMpire had a sustainable system of pensions and bribery that worked for a millenia, the US collapsed after less than 100 years of widespread gov employee pensions.

[Poundstone]

No, I’m FERS.

But I also have a nice post-retirement position with a major international corporation. The FERS pension basically pays my mortgage and all housing-associated expenses, as well as stuff like my car payment and groceries.

And of course I’ve got a nice-size TSP account which I don’t plan to touch until I’m 70.

[usurper]

I have two years to go and hope to be able to pay off my mortgage at that time. I should be able to live with a 50% drop in income.

And of course I’ve got a nice-size TSP account which I don’t plan to touch until I’m 70.

My TSP took a bad hit last year and like an idiot I pulled out of C into G and missed the big recovery.

[gogogodzilla]

My TSP took a bad hit last year and like an idiot I pulled out of C into G and missed the big recovery.

I did the opposite and moved everything into stocks as soon as I saw the market pick up.

[ripley]

If you all want to change pension systems because the funds aren’t there, then go right ahead. Do it lawfully, legally, by due process and make it apply equally across the board, without prejudice to any group or individual in particular.

After that, let’s see if there’s enough chutzpah out there to go after the people who have abused disability benefits, unemployment benefits, medicare and medicaid benefits, welfare benefits, aid to dependent children benefits, etcetera, ad nauseum. (Is there enough chutzpah to go after men who turn women into baby factories for profit?
Enough chutzpah to go after people who are “disabled” and who nevertheless play sports, enjoy vacations and jump around like star athletes?)

It’s easy to villify those who have worked hard and legally. It’s another thing to go after an entrenched entitlement system that has wild dogs guarding the gates.

Just saying.

IMHO

[cherry]

so hope you’re using your ill gotten gains to buy a home in another country....this country won’t be liveable with the likes of the govt workers living like communists while the rest of us suffer and pay....what goes around, will come around, one way or another...sad to say.....

[cynwoody]

Hey! All I get is a 401K. That's all they should get!

And if it goes bust because the state goes bankrupt, well that's how the cookie crumbled. Just like investing your 401K imprudently and without considering diversification.

[Poundstone]

“ill gotten gains”?

????

[Oceander]