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 ...
Bump.....
This is complete bullsh1t.
The “deferred compensation” is money paid by the taxpayers. It is a complete “bennie” (benefit).
Also they can get paid their benefit when they “retire” at 55, and go teach somewhere else at the same time they collect their pension.
They’ve got it real rough.
Do you have a title for the NonUnion vs Union article on Forbes? Please.
>> Who pays their compensation?
Are you serious? You didn’t know they pay their own compensation.
Your total salary includes pay and benefits (pension, 401k, health and dental, life insurance, AD&D, etc). It’s a total package. By deferring all of it but the actual paycheck they receive, they can get to a lower tax bracket and save additional money. What Government does is give people a paycheck and the rest becomes a bookkeeping entry, which the State may put money towards or not (depending if they have the taxes to cover it). If not, then you have a big underfunded hole. A bunch of Democrat run states (Wisconsin at the time) used stimulus funds to plug holes. I heard the previous Governor used $600M of the $700M stimulus funds Wisconsin got to plug holes in Public sector pensions and benefits.
You shouldn’t smoke crack and post, that’s what I say...
How do we boil the response down to something simple, that even the most brain-dead liberal can understand?
________________________________________________________
We don’t need to; Governor Walker already did. They understand perfectly well; that’s why they’re so pi$$ed. They realize that this Governor has exposed them.
This really isn’t that complicated. The majority of average Americans now understands the scam that is collective bargaining!
Worse than that... It's sophomoric sophistry!!!
Fanny and Freddie were only there to "guarantee" mortgages with the full faith and credit of the US government. State and local governments can't even print the money to guarantee a defined pension benefit. The ONLY thing they can do is levy more taxes to cover any shortfall!!!
Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2010
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?type=A
Salary, benefits, deferred compensation, blah, blah, blah - it doesn't matter what you call it; the bottom line is that the union "negotiated" the transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to their members via the politicians that they bought with the taxpayers money.
Forbes’s Wisconsin Pension Myth
February 25, 2011 5:52 P.M. By Christian Schneider
Add another one to the list of Wisconsin myths: Over at Forbes.com, Rick Ungar has posted a piece that purports to show that Gov. Scott Walker is lying about how government-employee pensions are funded in Wisconsin. His thesis, drawing on this piece by David Cay Johnston, is that Wisconsin state employees participate in a deferred-compensation program, whereby they set aside their own money and the government matches it:
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.
His conclusion, therefore, is that 100 percent of the pension benefits currently received by state- and local-government employees is borne by the employees themselves:
If the Wisconsin governor and state legislature were to be honest, they would correctly frame this issue. They are not, in fact, asking state employees to make a larger contribution to their pension and benefits programs as that would not be possible — the employees are already paying 100% of the contributions.
What they are actually asking is that the employees take a pay cut.
Unfortunately, his “smoking gun” is not true. Not even close.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/260785/forbess-wisconsin-pension-myth-christian-schneider
What a stupid premise even from the start. Every nickel paid to the state employees whether to their pocket or the pension fund comes from the tax payers. The only line that counts is the bottom line, salary plus benefits, and the WI state employees and teachers make out like bandits.
This is perhaps the dumbest article I’ve seen yet on how public unions get their money.
The entire point of this collective bargaining debate is the the public unions can just negotiate changes to their benefits. I personally think it’s crazy that they are allowed to negotiate wages, but that’s just me.
One is Retirement the other is deferred income.
See:
PUBLIC EMPLOYEE TRUST FUND 40.85
40.81 Deferred compensation plan authorization.
(1) An employer other than the state or the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority may provide for its employees the deferred compensation plan established under s. 40.80. Any employer, including this state and the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority, who makes the plan under s. 40.80 available to any of its employees shall make it available to all of its employees under procedures established by the department under this subchapter.
(2) Any local government employer, or 2 or more employers acting jointly, may also elect under procedures established by the employer or employers to contract directly with a deferred compensation plan provider to administer a deferred compensation plan or to manage any compensation deferred under the plan and may also provide a plan under section 403 (b) of the internal revenue code under procedures established by the local government employer or employers.
(3) Any action taken under this section shall apply to employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement under subch. IV, V, or VI of ch. 111.
History: 1981 c. 187, 391; 1983 a. 290; 1991 a. 39; 1995 a. 27; 2009 a. 28.
So then pay the employees their full salary and no health care contribution and no defied benefit retirement. Give the employees the current values of their retirement funds up to the limit of funds available to be sure but no future liability. Then layoff and rehire employees as the economy dictates.
If this "expert" is correct then this should be agreeable to all parties.
Forbes is either swamped right now or has shut down their site. Rick Ungar is a fool who has no business writing about this topic, or any topic relating to business or politics.
Oh yeah, the unions never applied political pressure to get increased benefits. What a load, they and the dem politicians and any spineless RINOs that didn't go against this corrupt quid pro quo, was complicit in this scheme that will fall on all of the taxpayers.
Wow, what total proof that Forbes and libdolts really are economically illiterate. Just wow.
BTW, IBTZ, if not on this thread, then soon, because anyone who buys the utter garbage isn’t remotely a conservative...
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