Please secede.
We need a Calexit ASAP
Oh look.
Stanford is just discovering something which was a common news topic in the 1960s when it began to happen.
Typical of the level of academic rigor in the American university system
Yes,I know...there are many fine,respectable Californians.
VIVA la welfare...
Please just let them secede.
Defined benefit retirement plans should be outlawed. Everyone should have a personal retirement account and health care account. Our household servants in Singapore had accounts that we were obligated to pay 10% of their pay into and the employee matched that. They ended up rich and owning their own apartment. The system works
While I feel sorry for the people who expected to retire with huge monthly checks, I worked for 30 years and every company I worked for except two, folded leaving nothing for retirees. Mostly, this was due to Bernie Schwartz, who used the pension funds as collateral to buy the companies. He then paid his debts with the pension funds, leaving nothing for the people. This was made illegal by Bill Clinton after Schwartz notified Clinton he was done. Schwartz spent as much time in the Lincoln bedroom as Mrs. Lincoln.
Politicians made this mess and it isn’t as if the taxpayers and the future retirees didn’t know as it happened. I certainly knew. It’s time for a few massive pension fund haircuts. Perhaps a few politicians should be shaved too.
Not a problem. The dotcom billionaires can pay.
Fifty states want California to secede; only Washington, D.C. wants California to stay in.
Don’t forget the $2.7T share of the US debt. We’ll want that paid off before CA secedes.
California needs bankruptcy. Easy money is enabling and funding their insane politics
Count Dallas amongst a growing number of cities forced to privatize police and fire and EMT’s because of corrupt politicians.
No bailout!
About that Calexit... Let’s roll
So some idiots in California make obscene retirement pension promises they know they can’t keep. So years later the Gov’t comes to MY state, that had no say in the deal, and puts a gun to every head of every taxpayer and says “You have to make good on California’s deal”?
Nope. This is a state matter, not a Federal matter
Here’s a primer. I’m medically retired in the state of california peace officer/fire fighter system. 28 years in CYA institutions. I met my wife in prison, she did 17 years and is a retied parole agent. I also paid into a deferred comp system to supplement my retirement. Most state peace officer don’t get social security, but I had enough quoters and I am receiving social security. My wife does not qualify until I die, she can take widows benefits.
When I retired the formula was 2.5% at age 55. But I had had a heart attack at 52 (in Cal if you are a peace officer heart attacks are presumed by law to be job related) and started retirement then.
When Gay davis was governor (he was a recipient of many bribes from state employee unions and nurses and teachers.) He raised the formula to 3% at 50 with the justification that the funds investments would continue growing at the rate it had grown in the early oughts. Of course that didn’t happen.
There is a whipsawing impact when a department or the state raises benefits say for peace officer. If the CHP gets something, the correctional officer want parity and then LAPD and so forth around the state. That’s what happened to the 3.0 at 50. Most departments not use that formula.
You can go back and criticize the system and rightly so, but it has been known for about 10 years that the amount encumbered will bankrupt the state. BTW the pensions are guaranteed by the state constitution. Swartznegger got beat over the head by the teachers union when he proposed economic austerity and he just have up. Of course Brown hasn’t changed the system. One thing you may not know about Brown is that when he runs he goes after the endorsement of law enforcement and has been successful in those efforts. You can’t change the pension system and et those votes.
It will take courage to do anything reasonable and necessary, but the dems and many republicans, do not want to pick up the hot potato. I will be 70 next month. My hope is if they make changes it will impact current employees or younger retirees. I have lived my life on the basis of this income for the last 18 years and i also work our own business. As long as i can think I will work. So we will survive, but something needs to change and now.
If they can’t function as a state, they need to revert to territory status and a military governor needs to be appointed— and he’ll be appointing the state’s judges until they really for statehood.
But, not to worry, Gov. Moonbeam has averted a strike by California's largest state employee Unions (yes, there's more than one) so look for this problem to disappear. From the headlines.
Depressing.