Posted on 02/25/2011 8:10:46 PM PST by tcrlaf
Pulitzer Prize winning tax reporter, David Cay Johnston, has written a brilliant piece for tax.com exposing the truth about who really pays for the pension and benefits for public employees in Wisconsin. Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to “contribute more” to their pension and health insurance plans.
Accepting Gov. Walker’ s assertions as fact, and failing to check, creates the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not. Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
How can this be possible? Simple. The pension plan is the direct result of deferred compensation- money that employees would have been paid as cash salary but choose, instead, to have placed in the state operated pension fund where the money can be professionally invested (at a lower cost of management) for the future.
Many of us are familiar with the concept of deferred compensation from reading about the latest multi-million dollar deal with some professional athlete.
A review of the state’s collective bargaining agreements – many of which are available for review at the Wisconsin Office of State Employees web site - bears out that it is no different for state employees. The numbers are just lower.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
And two plus two equals five, we all know that.
The writer keeps saying this over and over in the comments section: “characterizing the contribution to the state pension fund as some additional ‘gift’ is false.”
I have yet to see anyone besides him refer to the non-salary compensation as a gift.
This guy is just trying to find an angle to push his position; he’s not looking at the facts and coming to a conclusion, but trying to make facts support his already-arrived at conclusion.
Other than his own article, I have NEVER seen these benefits called a ‘gift’ as he keeps saying.
And this writer believes SS Benes are totally funded by employees contributions. (I mean forced contributions)
Taxpayers don't pay for Public Employees?
I.Did.Not.Know.That.
Learn a new thing everyday - well, slap me silly......
I think reading FORBES may be on the defer list too...
“Who pays their compensation?
Taxpayers, now or later.”
I agree....
“Walker’s refusal to accept it) they are taking on much - and possibly all – of the obligation out of their own pockets.”
What difference does it make if the benefits are being paid
from the workers pocket, when it is the taxpayer filling the pocket?
“the taxpayers must stand behind it”?
Au contraire mon ami. What government promiseth, government can taketh away. And guess what you bunch of overpaid government slackers, take it away we will.
L
What we have is widespread lack of knowledge about how companies, and governments, and individuals, arrive at what we all call "pension plans".
Right now I'm retired ~ I benefit from 5, or maybe 6, different pension plans. A couple of them were established by Congress ~ but even there you find only superficial similarities. The way they work is dramatically different.
Fur Shur, along the way toward retirement Congress changed the terms several times, and even changed the contribution requirements.
The Wisconsin system bears only the slightest similarity to any of the plans that pay me, but ALL of them have one definite rule ~ if a benefit was promised the court requires that it be paid.
Essentially Walker is proposing a NEW SYSTEM, not really a revision to the existing system. He'll win. And the union won't know what hit them.
They why are the union members so mad at Walker if taxpayers pay nothing? What a bunch of croc.
states should just require workers to stay at their jobs longer before their pensions are fully vested.
“Which is why I am wondering why you’re posting this bullcrap here?”
So that leftist crap propaganda can be countered by intelligent minds???
For the same reason we post anything else--so we can be informed as to what the other side is doing. I for one am glad this was posted. Otherwise when some lefty brought it up I wouldn't know what he was talking about, and would assume it was the meds talking, because this is ludicrous.
When I first saw the headline I thought it was another chain e-mail someone saw.
It just illustrates why Governor Walker is right to reform public unions bargaining rights to limit them to wages only. So that no more “deferred compensation” punting can occur.
Lets not pretend that union leadership wasn’t sitting on both sides of the bargaining table, buying politicians with fat campaign contributions to get these golden parachutes worth far more than the compensation they were giving up in exchange.
We’re broke, the party is over.
100% of simple servants wages are extracted from the taxpayers!
what happens here is that the market went south or the funds lose money then the workers lost a lot of their money and they want the tax payers to make up the difference.
Just like all that free, clean electricity that's in our homes' walls to power all our electric cars!
The article is not true:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/260785/forbess-wisconsin-pension-myth-christian-schneider
My 401k dropped by huge amounts over the past few years. I expect Wisconsin government employees to send me checks to make up the shortfall.
We must know what the other side, even our enemies are saying so that we don’t get caught by surprise and end up with egg or shit on our faces.
What the article left out was “WHO” was in charge of Wisconsin - Governors, State Legislature, etc when the terms of the public employees contracts were written (i.e into law).
It has fallen to the Republicans to at least call attention to the fiscal disasters their predecessors have left for the state and new Governor/Legislature to try and fix.
Another issue the article avoided is the use of union dues to pay off Democratic politicans in return for jobs and perks. THIS IS WHERE THE SCANDAL LIES.
Seems that FORBES missed a couple of important things. WHY?
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