231–240 of 277 posts
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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.
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.
The numbers I found: Oregon population: 4,000,000 Pension deficit 2017: $25,000,000,000 Per-capita share: $6,250 Assuming a large portion of the pensions will get spent on goods, services, and donations in state, it doesn't seem like a huge disaster, depending on how it grows.
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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…
Raising a tax on someone to pay the public benefit of another is also wage theft. Please remember the State doesnt have assets of its own, everything it has it takes from someone else. So if you find it reasonable to pay a special tax on minimum wage jobs to pay a 55-old retired man 70 grand a month of a benefit, you can volunteer your wage and your salary to achieve such a nice ideal.
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How is it possible that they can retire on 90% of their peak pay? It seems that it's based off of years of service instead of quality of service... Since the longer you work I assume the higher you get paid.
Even worse, it includes overtime comp, so they can do a year of crazy OT, earn a lot extra that year, then retire with that year as a basis.
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Changing the Constituion...or Bankruptcy.
A state can’t go bankrupt. The pensions will end up being paid by the federal government.
A Federal bailout of state pension obligations becomes a political (not financial) problem. Why would states that are 80%+ funded agree to bail out states that are only 50% funded? Do the states that are 100% funded receive a credit to use in other ways? There's also substantial moral hazard; if the Feds backstop state pensions as-is, they would be rewarding numerous instances of local self-dealing. This would be an order of magnitude more expensive and more contentious than TARP, which barely passed even as the economy was (supposedly) near death.
I think it's more likely that we see what happened in Greece: significant property tax hikes. You can siphon a huge amount of value out of the real estate markets through gradual but steady increases in taxes and fees, if you're willing to sacrifice appreciation (see Chicago). Ironically this may be a great way to promote affordable housing too, as residential real estate becomes a less attractive investment.
Re the ongoing debate here about government pay (and whether it's high or low): I'm not super familiar with city and state government jobs, but I do know something about military and federal compensation. They frequently pay less in salary, but have better benefits. This makes it an apples to oranges comparison when trying to talk about what they pay in comparison to non government jobs. I was a military wife for a l…
My problem is that the pensions give the government a way of paying employees low and kicking the can down the road where later taxpayers bare the brunt of obligations that they had no say in. Just pay government employees more so taxpayers, the government, and potential employees can all go in knowing the trade offs and let the employees manage their own retirement like everyone else. Of course I don't have a proble…
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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.
So, presumably there is a surplus.
Except no.
When people ask "where is the money?" the 1% respond "not enough money. Not enough surplus. You need to work until you are 68 now".
This contradiction is, oddly enough, rarely addressed.
Perhaps the problem isn't not enough work or not enough money. Perhaps they are both scapegoats for the real problem: wealth inequality driven by (among other things), tax evasion.
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Because unless you can figure out how to get the government to count tax twice that's where the money is going to come from... disposable income now going to tax. Otherwise now the government now has less money to spend. Aka the "no fuel for trucks" you mention.
>Because unless you can figure out how to get the government to count tax twice that's where the money is going to come from... disposable income now going to tax. State tax is deductible from federal taxes up to $10,000. So you can pay that $300 without it all coming out of after tax income. Most people may not go over standard deduction, but dollar wise state tax is probably paid by high earners who will, since the…
I don't see how the extra expense won't ultimately result in additional taxes.
My mom is a PERS retiree. Not one of the rich ones, though she did retire at the perfect moment and she has a livable retirement income. One thing a lot of people (who do not work in gov't) don't recall is that while the economy was roaring back then, Oregonians working for the gov't went for years without so much as a cost of living adjustment. Some of the perks they got from PERS were in lieu of getting a raise. So…
Part of the blame lies with GASB (Governmental Accounting Standards Board). Prior to around 2006, GASB allowed governments to avoid reporting pension liabilities on the balance sheet. Instead, pension liabilities were reported in the footnotes. From 2006 onward, GASB started to tighten-up requirements, and eventually brought governmental accounting in-line with private sector accounting (aka liabilities are reported…
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Here's the other option. Pay the promised pensions and inflate them away. Since this is a growing national problem, I'm guessing that solution has at least been considered.
Not politically feasible. Older citizens tend to both have a lot of savings, and vote. They would not allow this to happen.