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The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

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Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#141

Post by [deleted] »

dunpeal wrote: post #120
sykhic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a public employee. I don't cause the government to write its contract with me to be the way it is. It's negotiated between my union and the state Department of Education. It is then voted on by the legislative branch and signed by the governor. It's a long process. At no point am I or my fellow workers the ones making the promises. It costs money to run government. Employees need to be paid. We have had lay offs…

> I don't cause the government to write its contract with me to be the way it is. It's negotiated between my union and the state Department of Education. Exactly. So one group of state government employees (your state's DoE) meets another group of state government employees (your union) and decide to give each other an incredible defined-benefit pension deal that nobody outside of government can even dream of . State…

[deleted]

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#142

Post by betterunix2 »

ngngngng wrote: post #136
betterunix2 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the answer is simpler and more immediate than that. The government made a promise. If the government does not keep that promise, can it be trusted with other obligations? In fact, this problem of unfunded pensions has impacted municipal credit ratings and wound up costing taxpayers more in higher interest rates than they would have had to pay in higher taxes to stabilize the pension funds.

But why does the government get to make a promise with the money of someone that wasn't even born at the time (me)?

It makes no difference, because the promise was already made and now you have to choose between (a) destroying your government's credit rating or (b) making good on the promise. Complain all you want, but that's just the situation we find ourselves in.

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#143

Post by listenallyall »

safgasCVS wrote: post #12

If I paid for WSJ and this is the low quality journalism I got I'd be peeved. This article barely touches on how it got to be so bad. Excuse me but no - a single paragraph stating the obvious 'benefits promised were too rich' doesn't cover it. How is it possible that a solvency ratio can drop from 100% to 75% in 18 years? This doesn't just happen because eh seemingly every pension administrator just decided. How much…

If you subscribed to the WSJ you wouldn't be reading one article in isolation, and you'd already be well-informed about this issue, because the paper has regularly covered it (due to its massive impact) in various forms for decades.

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#144

Post by gred »

sykhic wrote: post #33

Overal taxation in the U.S. is low compared to other OECD countries [1]. We, as a nation, decided that low taxes was the goal. As a result infrastructure is poor, toll roads are increasing, privatization of prisons, intelligence gathering, war, etc. are rising too. Yet Americans falsely believe they are overtaxed. The situation is easy to fix in economic terms but not in political terms. The road to an Ayn Randian pa…

> Corporations have largely shunted the responsibility for retirement savings onto individual workers. Now said workers have no pensions and have uncertain retirements. Instead of asking why they have no pensions they seek to equalize status by falsely believing we can't afford any sort of pension.

Aren't you ignoring Social Security? For example, average Social Security monthly payments appear to be around $1400/month [1]. Spain, as an example of a high-tax, cradle-to-grave care system, provides pensions that appear to average a little under 800 euros/month ($940/month) [2]. And that's ignoring all of the Roth and 401(k) extras available out there. Am I missing something?

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102814/what-maximum...

[2] https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3287811/0/cuanto-cobra-medi...

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#145

Post by dragonwriter »

dunpeal wrote: post #139
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people doing the promising are the same as those receiving the benefits. That's the key point. Budget broken so we can't pay for something? Let's talk about putting money in. Systemic problem where the people making decisions about spending the money are the same people receiving benefits? You can't write a check to fix that. This isn't a traditional "how much do we tax and what do we spend our money on?" public…

Indeed. Also notice that some of the worst problems are in locations that already have very high local and state taxes, such as California. There's simply no reason to believe that throwing more money at these systemic problems will fix them. In fact, it may well exacerbate them instead.

> Also notice that some of the worst problems are in locations that already have very high local and state taxes, such as California.

California has, along the US states, a fairly moderate pension issue measured per capita or per GDP. It has big absolute numbers, as with nearly every other issue, because it's a very big state.

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#146

Post by dragonwriter »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #102
dunpeal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is public sector employees are promised pensions higher than county/city can afford. Precisely. But in fact, it's worse: The people doing the promising and those receiving the benefits are in fact the same. Who makes the promises? Local and state government employees. Who receives the benefits? Local and state government employees. Who pays for them? Us ordinary taxpayers who can only dream of such swee…

The people doing the promising are the same as those receiving the benefits. That's the key point. Budget broken so we can't pay for something? Let's talk about putting money in. Systemic problem where the people making decisions about spending the money are the same people receiving benefits? You can't write a check to fix that. This isn't a traditional "how much do we tax and what do we spend our money on?" public…

> They deserve and require non-partisan attention and discussion.

There is no such thing on significt public policy issues; if it matters, and there are different opinions, it will become partisan.

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#147

Post by sheepmullet »

sykhic wrote: post #126
dunpeal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't cause the government to write its contract with me to be the way it is. It's negotiated between my union and the state Department of Education. Exactly. So one group of state government employees (your state's DoE) meets another group of state government employees (your union) and decide to give each other an incredible defined-benefit pension deal that nobody outside of government can even dream of . State…

Pensions are not inherently unsustainable. They exist in the private sector in other countries and there are still some well funded private sector pensions in the U.S. They don't work well if they are not properly funded. Corporations got rid of pensions not because the concept is inherently unsustainable but because it's more profitable to do away with them. My pension plan is not a good one. You characterization of…

> If pensions are inherently unsustainable then you must conclude that it is unsustainable for a society to care for itself.

How do you figure?

It is unsustainable for us to support all people over e.g. 60. But we can support the 5% over 60 who really need the support and can't look after themselves.

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#148

Post by gok »

chris_mc wrote: post #115
gok wrote: post #53

> It is increasingly likely that retirees, as well as new workers, will be forced to take deeper benefit cuts. Boohoo. Public service union members should have thought about that before pursuing a pyramid scheme retirement plan instead of a defined contribution pension like the rest of us.

Why in the ever loving fuck are you blaming the _workers_ for this shortsightedness instead of the government organizations who are about to fuck those people over when they're 70? Maybe the administrators of the pension accounts and financial planners for these organizations should have done better by the people who are busting their (collective) asses to provide services for you, the taxpayer?

The flip-side of collective bargaining is collective responsibility, I'm afraid.

The federal government saw this coming 30 years ago, moved to a hybrid, mostly-defined-contribution system and (surprise!) is doing fine. Most state and municipal unions fought to keep their defined-benefit plans and now are going to suffer for it.

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#149

Post by sheepmullet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #145
dunpeal wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Also notice that some of the worst problems are in locations that already have very high local and state taxes, such as California. There's simply no reason to believe that throwing more money at these systemic problems will fix them. In fact, it may well exacerbate them instead.

> Also notice that some of the worst problems are in locations that already have very high local and state taxes, such as California. California has, along the US states, a fairly moderate pension issue measured per capita or per GDP. It has big absolute numbers, as with nearly every other issue, because it's a very big state.

> California has, along the US states, a fairly moderate pension issue measured per capita or per GDP.

A more important question is how much room to manoeuvre does California have?

If California increases taxes by 5% to fix the issue how many businesses and highly paid employees will leave?

Re: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy

#150

Post by mistermann »

sykhic wrote: post #33

Overal taxation in the U.S. is low compared to other OECD countries [1]. We, as a nation, decided that low taxes was the goal. As a result infrastructure is poor, toll roads are increasing, privatization of prisons, intelligence gathering, war, etc. are rising too. Yet Americans falsely believe they are overtaxed. The situation is easy to fix in economic terms but not in political terms. The road to an Ayn Randian pa…

> The road to an Ayn Randian paradise in which everyone fends for themselves will lead us to ruin.

It always depresses me to read comments like this. Rand's central themes were about corrupt relationships between pseudo-capitalists and government, the immorality of a desire for the unearned, and the consequences of what will happen to a society that can't be bothered to concern themselves with ethics.

Well, one of these days these chickens are going to come home to roost, and instead of people hanging their heads in shame and regret because they ignored her supremely confident warnings, instead they're going to charge her with the crime. The irony.

"The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash - that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value."

As a cherry on top, while there's still time to recover from mistakes of the past (there is a great deal of ruin in a nation, as they say), rather than eating a little humble pie, listening for a change to those who said "I told you so", and getting our affairs in order, we will actually choose to blaze straight ahead at full throttle on the exact same trajectory. And in the end, we'll end up selling off infrastructure, piecemeal, for pennies on the dollar, some to the very criminals we were warned about, and the rest to other nations who were smart enough to crack a book.

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