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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

#21

Post by bob_theslob646 »

bartart wrote: post #10
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.

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…

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.

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

#22

Post by rayiner »

rootusrootus wrote: post #3

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…

For the most part, government work does not pay poorly.[1] For example federal employees without advanced degrees earn a lot more in government than in the private sector: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...

[1] I’m willing to entertain the idea our economic system as a whole undercompensates secretaries and overcompensates executives. That’s a different issue.

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

#23

Post by TheGeminon »

qmalzp wrote: post #7
megaman22 wrote: post #5

Well, cutting the top out of this seems like the obvious solution. Pants-on-head to give an Oregon coach who's been funded by Nike to collect a multimillion pension.

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/persfacts_figure...

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

#24

Post by travoc »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #13
bartart wrote: post #8

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.

It’s impossible to reform pensions without reducing government union power in states like California and Illinois.

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

#25

Post by bannedaccount »

jinfiesto wrote: post #16
ebbv wrote: post #6

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.

Because this is a conservative site where dissenting opinions are not tolerated.

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

#26

Post by Eridrus »

rootusrootus wrote: post #3

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…

Yes, this is an absolutely backwards way to pay people. When times are tough we end up tightening our belts on a whole host of services, but cannot adjust pensions because we have promised them. We should just pay people market rates and avoid saddling ourselves with a bunch of debt when times are good.

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

#27

Post by acdha »

bartart wrote: post #10
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.

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…

> This seems like a pretty big budget item, especially since most CA government pension funds haven't achieved their expected 7.5% return consistently for years if not decades.

That seems like the big story: making plans assuming such a high average is simply malpractice. There are employee behaviors worth changing (e.g. the common problem of juicing final salary using overtime) but most of the blame should go to the people who signed off on that plan.

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

#28

Post by MrMember »

travoc wrote: post #24
toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s impossible to reform pensions without reducing government union power in states like California and Illinois.

Illinois is also a special case in that pensions are written into the state Constitution. Pension reform requires changing the Constitution.

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

#29

Post by cma »

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.

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.

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

#30

Post by DoreenMichele »

jinfiesto wrote: post #16
ebbv wrote: post #6

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.

HN tends to react negatively to inflammatory language, such as What a pathetic ploy.

I sometimes have mixed feelings about that, but generally agree that inflammatory language does not foster reasoned, meaty discussion.

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