Free Republic

Abstract: Policymakers at every level of government are confronting the cost of fringe benefits for public-sector workers. The difficulty of placing an economic value on public employees’ pensions, however, means that policymakers rarely know whether benefits are excessive, especially as interest groups take advantage of the confusion by advancing misleading arguments. This paper discusses how to properly calculate the cost of public defined-benefit pension benefits, compares the cost of these benefits to private-sector retirement plans, and refutes two of the most common arguments that public pension benefits are somehow modest. The generosity of public-sector pension benefits has come under increased...

I just do not know how much more it will take to convince Americans that our president is a Socialist, maybe even a communist. His entire 2008 campaign was based on socialist dogma and his administration is rock solid socialist. Obama even had a self-described communist serving, openly, in his administration until some Americans raised enough hell that it became intolerable and he quietly left the administration. He has consistently advocated the redistribution of the nations wealth, which is the hallmark of socialism. All the talk of “fair” and “fairness” is nothing more than code words for socialism. But, the...