“There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000.”
That statement right there from an eye-opening editorial in the Wall Street Journal is not getting enough attention. How about these figures:
1) Policemen, firefighters, and prison guards can retire at age 50 and receive 90% of their last year salary for life, with inflation guarentees.
2) Pension costs have increased 2000% in the last decade compared to the state’s revenue of only 24%.
3) California’s unfunded pension liability was pegged at $63.5 billion and that was before the market collapsed in 2008.
4) “$3 billion alone was diverted to pension costs from other programs.” -San Jose Mercury.
Of course this isn’t just a California problem, but also other states and cities have the same troubling pension issues.
The editorial can be read:WSJ Editorial on Public Unions
But even better is the book it is based on by the same author:
Aaron,
If you’re going to be doing affiliate marketing on this blog, why not do it for something that will give you a better payout than Amazon?
I’m just checking stuff out and seeing how it works. What do you recommend I do differently?
It’s a huge problem. And one that hasn’t received enough attention. I recently read, “While America Aged” by Roger Lowenstein, which addressed the same issues, and while it wasn’t as good as some of his other works, it did leave me wondering how much of our budget problems in California are the direct result of pension and related health care obligations.
The problem isn’t pensions themselves, but rather that they are not run by a third party, and because of that, they are not priced/funded appropriately.