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Jewish World Review
March 19, 2012/ 25 Adar, 5772
Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
By
Jay Ambrose
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
City and state officials have been as accomplished as Washington squanderers in lavishing money they don't have and never considering that the days of sunshine and plentiful revenues might end. They thus set us up for a mighty fall. My prime example for this thesis is highly publicized Stockton, Calif., which is getting ready to treat us to what could be one of the nation's most memorable bankruptcies.
There was once nary a cloud in the Stockton sky. Press reports tell us how the housing market was booming, property taxes were zooming and the City Council was building a minor-league baseball stadium over here, a convention center over there and an entertainment complex on its waterfront. It was also doling out unbelievable retirement benefits for city employees, not the least of the generosity being free health care.
Excuse me bondholders, excuse me city retirees, excuse me citizens without necessary services, but housing prices collapsed, meaning taxes produced pennies in a 300.000-population city with extravagant commitments. It is already so bad that officials are firing unaffordable cops as murders tragically go up.
Stockton is not alone in its misery. Most of the states and hundreds of cities have put themselves in similar trouble, and we know a primary source of their excessive obligations. It is government of, by and for politicians and public employees working in mutually advantageous collusion. The unions provide votes and campaign contributions and the politicians provide good pay, pensions to die for and health and other benefits that let employees live like kings.
The pension liberality has been the real killer. It might have done political damage to the office holders if they had then taxed enough to pay for what would be due, but many cheated through surreptitious underfunding. It did not help that the stock market took a dive in 2008, rendering many invested pension funds even more hopelessly incapable of fulfilling the promises made. The national gap, according to students of the subject, is a whopping $3 trillion.
A consequence could be a generation of hurt and an America unlike the one we have known, and here are some proposed answers that won't work.
Experts I trust have looked and said an improved stock market will not solve the problem. And if the federal government coughed up the money, you could well get a credit ratings drop and less eagerness by foreign countries to lend us money except at rates that would be ruinous.
Reform is the answer, and there are glimmers of hope, as found in a Heritage Foundation piece noting that some 41 states have restructured pension plans to make them more workable. In some cases, union members have shown themselves ready to contribute more to their benefits.
But some of the most valiant fighters for the most meaningful change have faced hooligan opposition. Wisconsin unions threatened a boycott of any business failing to support them in their fight against Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to save the state and, of course, are trying to remove him from office.
My guess is that it is going to take the Stockton bankruptcy and still many other drastic occurrences for the public to see the truth and politicians to forge a real rescue. It would help if some in the news business would understand that collective bargaining with a sovereign government is not a "right," and it would be nice if Obamacare were rescinded to save states from crushing Medicaid costs it would impose on them.
It won't happen over night, but if our leaders take nothing but half measures, fearful of union retaliation, even the union members will be worse off, and the rest of us will be telling tales of what a great place America used to be before some of them helped ruin it.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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