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Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

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Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#141

Post by whatusername »

MaysonL wrote: post #91
pg wrote: post #20

I have a feeling these graphs do more to explain the problems that Berkeley professor wrote about ( http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/08/24/a-letter-to-my-students... ) than the explanations he proposed.

I have a feeling those graphs are more than a little fishy - the bottom one especially. Retirement costs went up ~5X from 2000 to 2010? And they'll go up by the same from 2010 to 2020? I call BS.

The label on the 2nd one is off. WSJ states that it is in Billions and then has 5000 on the left hand scale. I'm pretty sure California doesn't have $5 Trillion in Pension costs. Pretty sloppy fact checking.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#142

Post by mkramlich »

I don't think any employer should take on the role of providing pensions, as a part of the employment relationship. There is a lot of reasonable argument in favor of the value of something like Social Security, as a sort of minimum social safety net. And such a thing probably makes the most sense being provided by the government. But I'd love to see the day where employers just give cash to their employees, and it's up to them to decide what to do with that cash. It would make for so much less paperwork and reduced overhead costs, and increased simplicity, for business owners and management. Less distortion, greater focus on their core business.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#143

Post by mkramlich »

kenjackson wrote: post #65
mark_l_watson wrote: post #11

About 25 years ago in California, Orange Country went bankrupt and public employees had to do "give backs" of (if I remember correctly) about 1/2 of their retirement funds and other concessions. I think that this will be the model for the future, but a state levels. It may not seem fair to change the rules on public employees, but effectively the rules have changed for private employees because the economy at federal…

I knows probably more than 100 private tech employees that regularly make more than $1M/year (salary plus stock/bonus). I don't know any federal tech employees that make more than $150k/year. Either you only know private tech code monkeys or have found the highest paying federal agency that no one has ever heard of.

I'm curious, what sorts of roles do those 100+ people have, that you say make more than $1M/year? I have guesses but want to learn specifics.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#144

Post by houseabsolute »

aswanson wrote: post #109
ericb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a game theory problem. CEOs (looking at you, GM) and politicians up against tough unions have an easy out with no "cost" to themselves. They pass the buck by placating unions with pension concessions so all seems well during their tenure. Long after they've collected their bonuses or enjoyed reelection, someone else gets to deal with the unsustainable consequences.

One solution may be to have taxpayers directly vote on benefits for public servants...make the unions take on the people who will be paying for it rather than temporary placeholders with no real skin in the game.

Or to require that the value of the benefits start being paid down in a sustainable way immediately. Only if those who are benefitting from the delayed benefits are required to fund them will this problem really be solved. In the private lending market we call this a downpayment.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#145

Post by houseabsolute »

jbooth wrote: post #135
yummyfajitas wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union contracts are not negotiated in good faith. That's the problem. Our politicians do not get into negotiations with the union, driving as hard a bargain as possible and looking out for the taxpayers. Our politicians are in league with the unions hoping to get their support in the next election. In any case, no one wants unions to supply labor for free - all anyone is advocating is that the government pay it's sup…

Liberals don't claim that the government should renege on a contract that was lawfully entered into with a military contractor. In fact, nobody claims that, ever. Yet whenever local budgets are crunched, we always hear about how greedy the municipal workers are. You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? I've negotiated union deals from the government side. I negotiated fairly, in good faith, and nobody at…

> You know what policemen and highway workers get paid?

Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. (http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655). Personally I think an entry-level pay of $80k for someone with only a high-school diploma is pretty good. There are other areas in the Bay where pay is even higher, like Oakland.

I can't speak to highway workers.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#146

Post by recoil »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #108
MaysonL wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling those graphs are more than a little fishy - the bottom one especially. Retirement costs went up ~5X from 2000 to 2010? And they'll go up by the same from 2010 to 2020? I call BS.

It's a very reasonable number. Consider that there are three factors feeding this: 1. Increased promises to the public sector workforce. 2. The need to make up shortfall in the funding due to market declines. 3. The need to make up shortfall because the funding was insufficient to begin with, owing to accounting ... creativity.

You missed two other points:

4. The boomers are just now hitting retirement, so the number of people retiring in a given year is increasing (Actually, it'd be interesting if somebody could pull out some hard numbers on this - I've heard this spoken of anecdotally a lot lately).

5. Retirees are drawing on their pensions for longer because they have longer lives.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#147

Post by lionhearted »

_delirium wrote: post #92
akmiller wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, you don't thing that a State (especially California, the startup capital of the world) in a serious budget crisis has anything to do with entrepreneurs that may be attempting to start their own businesses in such a climate?

Although I've unfortunately added to it, I don't think on the whole HN discussions on the subject have been particularly enlightening, partly because, unlike with technical topics, HN posters don't generally have expertise or particularly unique insights into this area. We just have a mix of libertarian-leaning and social-democratic-leaning people arguing with each other (with a moderate majority for the libertarians…

> We just have a mix of libertarian-leaning and social-democratic-leaning people arguing with each other (with a moderate majority for the libertarians).

Indeed, I decided I'm going to bow out of politics conversations. It's relevant tangentially, but it adds noise and friction. I'd rather connect cooperatively with like-minded people in entrepreneurship and technology, I don't want to get into arguments, build bad will, etc. with people here. Like Delirium says, at this point the argument quality isn't even particularly insightful.

Re: Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future

#150

Post by kenjackson »

mkramlich wrote: post #143
kenjackson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knows probably more than 100 private tech employees that regularly make more than $1M/year (salary plus stock/bonus). I don't know any federal tech employees that make more than $150k/year. Either you only know private tech code monkeys or have found the highest paying federal agency that no one has ever heard of.

I'm curious, what sorts of roles do those 100+ people have, that you say make more than $1M/year? I have guesses but want to learn specifics.

Depends on the person.

Obviously Gates and Sergey have a visionary/uber-architect role. Others like Sweeney, Cutler and Carmack are hairy-chested devs who checkin just as much code, if not more, than your typical senior dev.

And of course there's the gamut in-between.

And for a lot of these people, they don't even consider it a lot of money. I had a friend who made $10M after an IPO. I asked how it felt and he said, "For what? To become Silicon Valley middle class?"

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