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A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

nytimes.com

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Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#161

Post by closeparen »

jakelarkin wrote: post #135
jaggederest wrote: post #58

I mean, the obvious solution is to move to purely defined-contribution plans and haircut the existing people down to actual returns on invested balance for them. But I have to imagine in a lot of cases that would lead to people being impoverished later in life, which is not especially humane.

is it humane or an entitlement? most people in the private sector work their whole life never get anything remotely close to a pension secondly, its just an intergenerational wealth transfer. another excess of the selfishness of the boomer generation. Who will pay the price ... the school kids getting a crap education in 35 student classrooms in crumbling buildings in a towns who's infrastructure is going to literall…

>an entitlement

It's compensation earned in exchange for labor under a negotiated agreement. The fact that the check is separated from the labor by years rather than days doesn't suddenly make it "an entitlement."

The time to complain about entitlement, selfishness, and intergenerational wealth transfer was when we were promising those pensions, not now that the bills are due.

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#162

Post by skookumchuck »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #159
fludlight wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do most blue collar jobs at 50, much less 65. Shoveling asphalt, laying track, climbing on top or under heavy machinery, or chasing criminals is backbreaking work. The bodies of these people are permanently worn out by the time they hit 55. Some are promoted into management, but most org charts are naturally pyramids, so there aren't enough of those jobs for everyone. So what to do with someone who is now t…

Meh, I've known cops retiring at 55 they are in better shape than your typical 55 year old programmer, same with other blue collar workers. They may not be able to run down a 25 year old perp but physically they are above average.

With regular activity, your strength doesn't really start to decline until you're over 60.

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#163

Post by conanbatt »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #153
conanbatt wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be plain unconstitutional to raise a tax on someone to pay a benefit to another. Whatever the court rules on the state not defaulting on its debts, pending that cost to someone that does not get, or want, the same benefit, should be equally pernicious for the law.

That can't work of course and will just lead to endless lawsuits that everything is a "benefit". Need more funds for education? Can't do it because you need to raise taxes on the people who aren't in middle school. Need funds for a new roads and their maintenance? Can't raise taxes because some people might never drive on that road or heck, don't even have a drivers license.

The impracticality of house the state mismanages its afairs should take a second seat to the fundamental rights of poeple. The people that pay a tax today to fund benefits are being robbed of money today, and of benefits in the future.

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#164

Post by closeparen »

colemannugent wrote: post #106
bannedaccount wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a cap on private sector workers income would save more money, there are many more of them and many of them have unimportant jobs. If the government just capped their incomes at 100K a month we could pay off all national debt in months.

>If the government just capped their incomes at 100K a month we could pay off all national debt in months. The government would be quickly replaced with one who would undo this change. Nobody would support it. This is so ridiculous I think you're trolling.

That may be true, but if the .1% of households making more than $1m/year can obviously and unquestionably overthrow the government, we may as well dispense with any pretense of democracy.

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#165

Post by danmaz74 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #148
rebuilder wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a standard measure of disposable income after taxes and necessities like food, housing, education, healthcare? It seems comparing how much people have available for discretionary spending would be useful in many cases.

I'm not aware of one and your question touches on some of the hidden forms of compensation that can be hard to measure (and can vary over time for the same person -- for example, we were sometimes in housing on base and sometimes not). The below examples are off the top of my head from memory as a military spouse and may be very out of date. The military will cover 75% of tuition for active duty members. Most states…

> military spouses have high unemployment rates because locals don't want to hire them

May I ask why? Because they know you're going to move soon, or any other reasons?

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#166

Post by mirimir »

dasil003 wrote: post #4

Without actually showing some statistics on the pension payments and how the overall budget breaks down, I can't help but feel manipulated. Yes it's easy to paint an ugly picture of the privileged outliers, but I suspect the correlation between school and infrastructure cuts and money going straight into rich pensioners pockets is not quite as cut and dried as NYT would have us believe.

Yeah, the focus on a few outliers is strange.

The bigger issue, from what I've read, is that governments agreed to huge pensions in contracts with public employee unions. In exchange for lower salaries. Because pensions were deferred costs.

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#167

Post by DoreenMichele »

danmaz74 wrote: post #165
DoreenMichele wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of one and your question touches on some of the hidden forms of compensation that can be hard to measure (and can vary over time for the same person -- for example, we were sometimes in housing on base and sometimes not). The below examples are off the top of my head from memory as a military spouse and may be very out of date. The military will cover 75% of tuition for active duty members. Most states…

> military spouses have high unemployment rates because locals don't want to hire them May I ask why? Because they know you're going to move soon, or any other reasons?

Yes, they know you are highly likely to move again soon. But really it should say in part because... The benefits package makes living on one income viable. This contributes to spouses being less motivated to job hunt.

Another factor is that frequent moves make it nigh impossible to develop a real career. If you have a serious education and want a professional career, this is largely out of reach for most military spouses. Nursing is just about the only exception that I know of. Nursing pays fairly well and there is typically a shortage of nurses just about anywhere you go. If you want any other kind of serious career, being a military spouse is a huge obstacle to working that out.

If you are content to deliver papers or wait tables, you can probably get those kinds of jobs. But better jobs mostly don't want you (edit: and just may not have openings when you need them or may not exist at all in some locations).

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#168

Post by dragonwriter »

closeparen wrote: post #156
cc439 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dollar can only change hands so many times before it's worthless unless it's going towards actual value-adding goods/services. Considering how deprived the general population is for funds to spend on value-added goods, I don't think taking $6,250 from every person in the state just to support a tiny, tiny fraction of the population is doing much good. That and a large portion of pensioners flee to states without an…

>I don't think taking $6,250 from every person in the state just to support a tiny, tiny fraction of the population is doing much good. The government paying its debts and not committing wage theft is a public good. It's a pivotal decision point in whether we are a functioning civilization with a rule of law or a third-world regime on its way down. It may be convenient in this one isolated instance to renege, but the…

> It may be convenient in this one isolated instance to renege, but the knock-on effects of the message it sends - that public servants will be paid only when convenient - will be huge. Although that may be just as well, if you hope to minimize the role of government going forward.

If you want to reduce the role of government to only a narrow core of tasks for which there is no alternative, you probably still don't want to send the message that workers in government will be arbitrarily deprived of the compensation for which they've agreed to labor, since presumably in that case it's even more essential that the set of tasks to which government is reduced is done by people who are competent and motivated.

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#169

Post by DrScump »

MaysonL wrote: post #141
adventured wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see how they abused the dotcom bubble to push up their bogus projections: "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 orchest…

2018 – Dow 25,000, California budget surplus.

What surplus?

Re: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash

#170

Post by PeterStuer »

skookumchuck wrote: post #157
PeterStuer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how in a world where about 10% of the work goes into actually producing nescessities, and all the rest goes into 'make work' or even worse producing things that are health hazards or nearly straight to landfill junk, we still think we need to 'work more/longer/harder'! Our 'productivity' has gone up by at least 2% per year. If you understand compounding you realize how significant that impact is. We're in…

The point of the article is there isn't enough surplus in the economy to pay these people for 40 years of retirement doing nothing.

My point was there is masses of surplus, even too much, and it is just a distribution/allocation problem.
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