61–70 of 277 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You always borrow from the future.
This is a profound comment, even if off the cuff. Consider tens of trillions of fiat in worldwide liabilities, and how the entire world is relying on people yet to be born to carry the torch through taxes to pay for the debts we’ve amassed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a profound comment, even if off the cuff. Consider tens of trillions of fiat in worldwide liabilities, and how the entire world is relying on people yet to be born to carry the torch through taxes to pay for the debts we’ve amassed.
A fascinating digression. I conceptualize borrowing oppositely. When you borrow, you borrow from someone else's past/present labor and obligate your future labor. (Where 'you' can be an individual, organization, or society.) In my view, borrowing is always from the past. You cannot borrow that which has not yet been created.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In California "More than 200,000 civil servants became eligible to retire at 55 — and in many cases collect more than half their highest salary for life. California Highway Patrol officers could retire at 50 and receive as much as 90% of their peak pay for as long as they lived." http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-davis-d... This seems like a pretty big budget item, especially since most CA governme…
A 7.5% return seems irrationally optimistic for something like a pension fund. Is that really what they budgeted on?
"Davis, who was elected in 1998 with more than $5 million in campaign contributions from public employee unions, says that if he had it to do over, he would not support the pension improvements."
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-davis-d...
"... how in 1999 the California Public Employees’ Retirement System orchestrated the approval of a 50 percent retroactive pension increase for state employees amounts to an autopsy of a public-policy crime. It is literally incredible that CalPERS told the Legislature that such a huge gift of money would have little or no long-term cost to state taxpayers because the dot-com boom then driving the stock market sky-high would never end."
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/sd-calpers-menda...
[2009] Californians questioning why their state budget is in perpetual red ink need look no further than the California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s (CalPERS) implicit forecast in 1999 that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would reach 25,000 by 2009, 595,000 by 2049 and 28 million by 2099 and that its investment earnings would rise alongside.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-pensions-and-partyi...
What a pathetic ploy to divide the working class against each other. The reason states are short on cash is the race to the bottom we’ve all been participating in since the 1980s when government policy and general economic policy moved from focusing on keeping the middle class healthy to massive tax breaks and cuts for corporations and the wealthy. For the last nearly 40 years every state has been playing the game of…
I'm not sure why this is so heavily down-voted. Pensions are surely a problem, but they are clearly a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue that states miss out on when they let corporations pit them against each other in race to the bottom behavior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In California "More than 200,000 civil servants became eligible to retire at 55 — and in many cases collect more than half their highest salary for life. California Highway Patrol officers could retire at 50 and receive as much as 90% of their peak pay for as long as they lived." http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-davis-d... This seems like a pretty big budget item, especially since most CA governme…
A 7.5% return seems irrationally optimistic for something like a pension fund. Is that really what they budgeted on?
They made nowhere close to that and now state and local governments in California contribute over $50bn annually to CalPERS alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why this is so heavily down-voted. Pensions are surely a problem, but they are clearly a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue that states miss out on when they let corporations pit them against each other in race to the bottom behavior.
Not sure why it was downvoted, but my bet is this that you insist in: Pensions are surely a problem, but they are clearly a drop in the bucket Pensions are NOT a drop in the bucket by any measure. Maybe for the USA they're less important. But for the rest, safety net is most of a country expenses. Then you add that population in the first world tends to shrink and the model in most countries where current workers pay…
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It does seem reasonable that there would be a cap, but I wonder how much cutting the pensions of a few thousand highly paid retirees will impact the budget.
If we assume that the average pension of those with a pension over $100,000/year is $200,000 a year, and cut those down to a cap of $100,000/year it would be $200,000,000/year in pension reduction. With a $2.5 billion/year spend on PERS [0], that is not an insignificant amount on the entire burden of the pension system, even if it is off by an order of magnitude. [0] http://www.pers.ms.gov/Content/Supplemental/persfa…
$200k is a completely arbitrary assumption. And if your cost savings are off by an order of magnitude, it is basically insignificant, at If you can wave a wand and reduce benefits, targeting only the top 2000 is probably not the most effective use of your magic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a profound comment, even if off the cuff. Consider tens of trillions of fiat in worldwide liabilities, and how the entire world is relying on people yet to be born to carry the torch through taxes to pay for the debts we’ve amassed.
It's rather delayed bankruptcy in our case. The idea that these trillions are going to be paid back one day is preposterous and we all know it.
Our debt is around 1x GDP and 1/5th American households' and non-profits nominal wealth [1]. (This excludes public sector assets, corporate assets, and foreigners' assets in the United States.) All of that is subject to future taxation.
I don't like big deficits. (They imply future taxation, service cuts or inflation.) But our debt burden is easily manageable, particularly considering our suboptimal inflation attainment.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States
Pensions are going to become a hot political issue as they become more and more unsustainable. Even Illinois, one of the most liberal states in the US, elected a republican governor four years ago in large part because he promised to tackle the state's pension crisis.
It should be noted that Illinois’ republican govenor ran on pension reform, then to everyone’s shagrin, attempted to break unions. He made no headway on either issue, and is now running against a billionaire Democratic challenger who is expected to win.
He was going to be the next Chris Christie/Scott Walker and then would be a presidential contender for 2020-2024.
Fast forward 4 years and he's achieved none of his goals, further entrenched his opposition, almost lost the Republican primary to a far-right flank, and is now ranked the 2nd least popular governor in America.
Oh and he left the state without a budget for half of his first term because of a failed grudge match with the speaker of the house, which increased our cost of debt and messed up the financials for many colleges in the state... among other things.