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while it is true that it is state employees’ own money that funds the pension plan, when the pension plan comes up short it is up to the taxpayer to make up the difference.

can you say ponzi ??? i knew ya could...

this is a ponzi scheme on roids, simply streamlined to eliminate the 'employer' from actually having to install real $$$ into the system, since the system IS the employer...

mrs g doesnt belong to the union, and her 'pay' that is pocketed is the established wage, minus the retirement 'contribution' and medical...numbers in a ledger, nothing more, nothing less...

when and if there is still a system when she is eligible [just as i with SS] then the next wave of payors will hafta install the dollars [or euros or rubbles] to cover her salary...

even better is the fact that none of this is optional...the allotment [on paper] for her bargain basement 'health' policy would easily cover the entire family *IF* she could have that money in cash, but the accounting gimmick requires all of the bennies to be merely shuffling numbers on a ledger, not actual money to be invested...

the bottom line in the states general fund [ie the taxpayers contributions] is the pit that all these electrons are dumped into, and the results are that the taxpayers are fully funding all of it...

RE :”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. “

Did you read this above ? See, 100% of the taxpayers money suddenly becomes 100% of the public workers money by slight of hand. All the money in the economy becomes the governments. My Mises post explained the same thing clearly:

The enormous power of government-employee unions effectively transfers the power to tax from voters to the unions. Because government-employee unions can so easily force elected officials to raise taxes to meet their “demands,” it is they, not the voters, who control the rate of taxation within a political jurisdiction. ...

Politicians are caught in a political bind by government-employee unions: if they cave in to their wage demands and raise taxes to finance them, then they increase the chances of being kicked out of office themselves in the next election. The “solution” to this dilemma has been to offer government-employee unions moderate wage increases but spectacular pension promises. This allows politicians to pander to the unions but defer the costs to the future, long after the panderers are retired from politics.