Rubber, meet road.
Kinda makes ya feel all warm and fuzzy dosen't it /s
yah...California has the 8th largest economy in the world, and yet 80% of every dime they spend is on salaries, benefits, and pensions.
These public employee unions will bring all of the States down eventually.
>> dump the current retirement system and replace it with something taxpayers can afford.
Like what? Social security? Do you really want 67 year old firefighters responding to your burning home?
What is the solution?
NY needs to file bankruptcy and negotiate new pension agreements. In no case should they get a bailout.
Politicians have underfunded the pensions for many years in most cases. They diverted the money to pet projects to get reelected.
Public sector unions should be eliminated. Politicians need the union endorsements to win election at the local, state and federal levels. The unions can turn out the vote. Then the unions negotiate across the table from the very people they just elected. Talk about conflict of interest. Of course, now some 75 year old retired building inspector is everybody’s villain. This is a gross simplification of the problem. It is a systemic problem: BAN PUBLIC UNIONS, then elected oficials might be able to be more responsive to the common good. At least a little more anyway.
Congress in the new secession will create a legal mechanism for states to go bankrupt. This will make it possible for them to restructure their debt. We aren’t gonna have a situation where we close schools, open prisons, and shut down everything else so public employee pensioners can play golf 5 days a week. Not gonna happen.
the unions couldn't care less about the taxpayers or where the money would come from to pay for their extortion, so... i now couldn't care less it their pensions go unpaidWhat do you want me to say?
New York contains some of the bluest areas on the voting map. Nothing there is going to change.
California’s $500-billion pension time bomb
The staggering amount of unfunded debt stands to crowd out funding for many popular programs. Reform will take something sadly lacking in the Legislature: political courage.
Opinion
Los Angeles Times
April 06, 2010|By David Crane
The state of California’s real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.
That’s the finding from a study released Monday by Stanford University’s public policy program, confirming a recent report with similar, stunning findings from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
To put that number in perspective, it’s almost seven times greater than all the outstanding voter-approved state general obligation bonds in California.
Why should Californians care? Because this year’s unfunded pension liability is next year’s budget cut to important programs. For a glimpse of California’s budgetary future, look no further than the $5.5 billion diverted this year from higher education, transit, parks and other programs in order to pay just a tiny bit toward current unfunded pension and healthcare promises. That figure is set to triple within 10 years and — absent reform — to continue to grow, crowding out funding for many programs vital to the overwhelming majority of Californians.
How did we get here? The answer is simple: For decades — and without voter consent — state leaders have been issuing billions of dollars of debt in the form of unfunded pension and healthcare promises, then gaming accounting rules in order to understate the size of those promises.
BUMP
Here is a calculator for the Pennsylvania Public School employees. https://www.psers.state.pa.us/Estimator/questions.aspx
When you are playing around with it, “Class T-D Service” means how many years you have put in. Contributions means how much money have you put in, and interest means how much has that money earned in interest. You are allowed to put up to 7.5% of your check into the retirement system.
Basically, if I worked as a Pennsylvania school teacher out of college, I could retire at 55, making $63,000 a year, until I die. That’s right, I would be earned $63,000 possibly for the next 40 years, in addition to pulling down social security. One more thing, your school pension is exempt from Pennsylvania state taxes.
The bottom line up front is the tax payers will have to support three non-working people for every person on the street (cleaning, protecting, maintaining, fire preventing).
If pensions are given at 25 years of service and the recipient lives for 35 - 45 years you end up with at least two retirees for every worker. Add in the possibility of early retirement due to on the job injuries and that number can double to four or more. Add in the cost of living adjustments and you can easily end up spending over $ 100,000 per street sweeper (the worker gets $ 30K and the retirees split the rest).
We need half the cops in this country. When communities start letting the cops go, short Krispy Kreeme and Dunkin Doughnuts. Finally, get some of that money back.
A Version of the 12 Days of Christmas from the NEA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_zasAMvuy18