Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–109 of 109 posts

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#101

Post by kasey_junk »

IshKebab wrote: post #99
kasey_junk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colloquially in the US pension fund == defined benefit plan managed by your employer. A public pension would be managed by the government for governmental employees & a private pension would be managed by a private company for its employees. Defined benefit pensions largely only exist in the public sector in the US because they are phenomenally expensive. The reason public employees don’t want to switch is that these…

By private pension I mean a self-invested one. Essentially a trading account that you control. In the UK they're called Self Invested Private Pensions.

401k, IRA, 403b etc in the states

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#102

Post by rtkwe »

kamaal wrote: post #81
rtkwe wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing the galls me the most about that article is it doesn't once stop to try to say or find out how much the guy is working to bring in that much, spoiler it's going to be a lot of hours given it's overtime and his base compensation is only 50k. Pensions are a fine tool but they have to be funded responsibly, states liked to use them as an incentive but then refused to properly fund them banking instead on large…

I don't think the problem is compensation. The problem is awarding overtime only in the last year, so that your pay and benefits can go up forever till you are entitled to pensions. This creates a situation where your pension + benefits can be in the ballpark of half a million dollars all life. No one, no investment, no taxation can pay for something like that. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1638926…

> And who is going to fund them? As of now California tax payers are paying for pensions. Surely this is not a sustainable way of running things?

Why not the rest of public sector employees compensation comes out of tax revenues. The only reason pensions are unsustainable now is because in order to hide the cost of pensions the budgets underfuneded pensions years ago and the funds they did allocate they assumed extremely high returns on.

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#103

Post by leereeves »

w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #98
alistairSH wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they don't. To most of Kentucky's ruling class, public schools are evil. They'd love to see them all fail, so they can shift school funds to vouchers for Christian schools.[1][2] 1 - https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/joseph-gert... 2 - https://www.mattbevin.com/issues

Belgium here. That story is one more issue that makes me literally think : "America is so broken". And most of the time republicans seem to have a big stake in it.

I thought Belgium had the equivalent of school vouchers: public funding that can be used for any school of the parent's choice. That's what Republicans want here.

Instead, in America, public school students are told which school they will attend. Usually, but not always, the closest. The Democrats are responsible for that.

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#104

Post by rabboRubble »

leetrout wrote: post #26

My mom is retired and part of the Kentucky Retirement System. Fun fact most people don't know about some of these- you forfeit your social security benefits when you participate. Because of this my mom cannot draw my dead fathers benefits. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/education/2018/03...

I've read stories of retired employees in your mom's situation who starved to death when their city pension went bankrupt. This is a thing... I've had to correct a lot of people's notions that when people bitch about public pensions, the people who worked under those public pensions have no fallback. At this point, the person says "what about SS?" Me, "um no, they aren't eligible."

I'll try to find the story and post. I came across the story shortly after the 2008 crisis.

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#105

Post by alistairSH »

leereeves wrote: post #103
w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgium here. That story is one more issue that makes me literally think : "America is so broken". And most of the time republicans seem to have a big stake in it.

I thought Belgium had the equivalent of school vouchers: public funding that can be used for any school of the parent's choice. That's what Republicans want here. Instead, in America, public school students are told which school they will attend. Usually, but not always, the closest. The Democrats are responsible for that.

You sure about that? Grant and Blaine were Republicans.[1] Blaine Amendments were created as anti-Catholic measures. Protestant Americans are all for religious freedom, as long as it's their own flavor of Christianity.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_Amendment

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#106

Post by leereeves »

alistairSH wrote: post #105
leereeves wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Belgium had the equivalent of school vouchers: public funding that can be used for any school of the parent's choice. That's what Republicans want here. Instead, in America, public school students are told which school they will attend. Usually, but not always, the closest. The Democrats are responsible for that.

You sure about that? Grant and Blaine were Republicans.[1] Blaine Amendments were created as anti-Catholic measures. Protestant Americans are all for religious freedom, as long as it's their own flavor of Christianity. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_Amendment

Have anything more recent than 150 years ago?

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#107

Post by alistairSH »

leereeves wrote: post #106
alistairSH wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure about that? Grant and Blaine were Republicans.[1] Blaine Amendments were created as anti-Catholic measures. Protestant Americans are all for religious freedom, as long as it's their own flavor of Christianity. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_Amendment

Have anything more recent than 150 years ago?

The laws that control funding parochial schools were implemented 150 years ago, so no.

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#108

Post by Mvandenbergh »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #44
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #6

So there's a lot going wrong here, pay-to-play, investment in hedge funds that no-one had ever heard of, investment in funds that ended up performing poorly, etc. However that isn't the real problem here - the real issue is decades of under-contribution to these funds by the state government.

This article isn't really about under-contribution. It's about corruption. If your response to an article about corruption is to change the subject, then it's unlikely that we'll see improvements.

The corruption is appalling but also easy to fix. The threat to people's retirement is not happening because of the corruption though - if this was a fully funded scheme and the board was taking kick-backs to steer business from one fund to another one it would still be appalling but it wouldn't risk tens of thousands of people spending their old age in dire poverty.

Re: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions

#109

Post by leereeves »

alistairSH wrote: post #107
leereeves wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have anything more recent than 150 years ago?

The laws that control funding parochial schools were implemented 150 years ago, so no.

And Republicans would like to rewrite those laws and create school vouchers. It's the Democrats who oppose that now, whatever happened 150 years ago.
Post reply on HN