9 ms·

If you want a maddening read, Google for "Transparent California salaries" + your city name (I won't link it because they have some of anti-adblock thing going

• crdoconnor 10y ago
  The private sector has a strong incentive to drive down compensation (wages and pensions) in the public sector since it drives down the cost of labor for them too. >it can steal the money it needs today from future generations. 1) Future generations aren't buying our T bills. People are. Future generations will be receiving as well as paying interest. 2) Trying to make a moral case for stealing money from pensioners and giving it to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts is hard, but you gave it your best shot.
  • brandur 10y ago
    > 1) Future generations aren't buying our T bills. People are. Right. Future generations are the ones paying the interest on them (and other government-issued debt). > 2) Trying to make a moral case for stealing money from pensioners and giving it to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts is hard, but you tried your best. I imagine you already know it, but I didn't say anything to this effect at all.
  • AJ007 10y ago
    Given current interest rates and expected investment returns, someone receiving even $50,000 a year in pension benefits is a millionaire or better.
  • Pyxl101 10y ago
    > 2) Trying to make a moral case for stealing money from pensioners and giving it to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts is hard, but you gave it your best shot. He did not say that, as you know. The usual argument in these cases is not to take away pensions from people who have earned them, but rather to cease offering this benefit going forward to new city employees.
• Avshalom 10y ago
  Yes I for one am maddened that Crystal Hubble is making almost 12000 dollars.
• retube 10y ago
  There are police forces in the UK where 50% of their annual budgets is going to people who no longer work there. This is _insane_. Pensions should be funded from savings / investments made during working life, not taken from future tax recipes. Furthermore these pensions are gold plate: linked to inflation and guaranteed for life. We have 100s of thousands of middle tier public sector workers like teachers and council workers retiring every yesr with a guaranteed income stream that would cost millions if you were to buy the equivalent annuity. How anyone thought this was sustainable or sensible blows my mind. It needs to stop.
  • clort 10y ago
    > This is _insane_. Pensions should be funded from savings / investments made during working life you might think that the people responsible for providing the pensions would have taken the contributions that the workers made during their working life and invested that money for the future! Unfortunately, that didn't happen. The UK government (who was the responsible party) made the decision to pay pensions out of future income rather than saving anything. It looked great on the balance sheet, since they could reduce taxes today and let somebody else look bad in the future.
    • mrslave 10y ago
      It appears the majority of people don't understand that the national debt, and other unfunded liabilities, are future taxes. The socialist workers party is very popular in my country too despite eating the future in order to play Santa Claus in the present.
    • makomk 10y ago
      Invested the money in what exactly? This essentially requires the government to decide what investments they think will be winners and losers, whilst influencing the rules that help decide who wins and loses. That would be politically controversial to say the least.
      • airza 10y ago
        so like... a sovereign wealth fund?
• Camillo 10y ago
  I had been wondering what exactly California was doing with 10% of my income...
  • Taniwha 10y ago
    Paying for roads, teachers, police, freeways etc. ... Stuff you actually use ... The real question is what do the feds do with 30% of your money? Apart from dragging you into endless wars of course
    • Camillo 10y ago
      Washington has no state income tax, and still has all of those things.
      • folli 10y ago
        As a non-US-citizen: how do they do it?
        • grzm 10y ago
          WA has high sales tax, for one.
          • DrScump 10y ago
            WA basic sales tax is 6.5%. CA basic rate is 7.5%, with many local add-ons (making San Jose 9% and San Leandro 10%, for two Bay Area examples)
            • grzm 10y ago
              Are you arguing that WA doesn't have high sales taxes? Many municipalities in WA also have additional taxes as well. Seattle and Tacoma, for example, has 9.6% sales tax. Bellevue, 9.5%. Spokane, 8.7%. Vancouver, 8.4%. 'folly asked how Washington state raises revenue without income tax. 'redx00 and I answered. Do you disagree that sales (and real estate, and other taxes and fees other than income taxes) are how Washington state raises revenue?
• caspercrf 10y ago
  I checked for my city and there are a couple fire fighters with salaries of $45k-$75k a year but made $140k-$180k in just overtime and overall total comp of $220+. How does that even happen?
  • carsongross 10y ago
    In general I am trying to avoid snark, but your comment brings to mind this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTlMLeEHjw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTlMLeEHjw8
  • dimdum 10y ago
    Guess it happens for the same reasons that company hires consultants (easy to get rid of) but does fire fighter consultants exist? Ergo understaff and pay overtime rather than adequately staff the station. easy to cut down on overtime.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • areyousure 10y ago
    My understanding is that overtime scams are common in parts of the public sector. The usual scheme is that you are not punished for not showing up to work, but are paid overtime for taking someone else's shift. As a result, swapping shifts with someone results in a 50% pay increase for both of you. Together with other scams, the result may be even greater.
• JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > It's pretty obvious that cities and states should start eliminating pensions, but the beneficiaries of those same pensions are the people that need to do that. There's an easy way around that. "All existing pension-holders will continue receiving benefits as defined. All new public employees will receive investment-based retirement plans funded during their employment." Then existing pension-holders have no reason to vote against it. This also seems far more ethical, as it retains the guarantees given to existing recipients. The company I worked for phased out its guaranteed-minimum-benefit retirement program, in favor of its standard investment-based retirement program, by doing exactly this: limiting eligibility based on initial hire date.
  • w8rbt 10y ago
    I believe several states in the USA have taken this approach already. Some states made the switch soon after the 2008 real-estate crash and market meltdown. They have the old plans for older employees and new hybrid/stock market based defined-contribution plans for newer employees. Also, many state pensions aren't that great compared to California, etc. Employees only get 40 to 50 percent of their former salaries under a lot of pensions. I've never understood how California can do 80% pensions. The Federal pensions have some very high percentage too (not sure what it is).
  • CountSessine 10y ago
    The article says that El Monte did this - they abolished the supplemental top-up pension in 2008; but paying just those few who qualified for it from 2000-2008 is devastatingly expensive. I agree though - cancelling plum benefits while grandfathering existing recipients is the only politically tractable approach.
    • candiodari 10y ago
      > I agree though - cancelling plum benefits while grandfathering existing recipients is the only politically tractable approach. How about the approach that was used in the 80s ? 20% year-on-year inflation for a while with the government lying about it saying it's 5% ? That "reduces" liabilities by 15% per year.
• soperj 10y ago
  Or instead of eliminating Pensions, start actually collecting the money properly. I work at for a government pension plan (in Canada). We make more money every year than is paid out, and are more than covered for future years at this point.
  • merpnderp 10y ago
    No reason pensions don't work. But it requires a responsible government. And if you could give the rest of the world some of that responsible government, we'd all appreciate it.
  • jpiasetz 10y ago
    The Canadian federal government just bailed out a bunch of underwater pensions by increasing CPP (which itself is under fund if you look at it the way non-CPP pensions report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#Unfunded_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Pension_Plan#Unfunded_l...)
    • toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Sounds ripe for funding with a tax on property purchases by foreign nationals.
      • mtanski 10y ago
        They might get lucky once. I wouldn't count on another windfall when the pension plans get in trouble in the future.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • soperj 10y ago
      CPP isn't for government employees, it's for everyone. The government doesn't run the pension plan for it's employees, they have corporations that do that, so they're independent of the government, and won't allow them to play shenanigans with being underfunded.
• Spooky23 10y ago
  The issues with pensions in most of these states is that they don't fund the pensions. Lavish benefits are given, especially in public safety settings, and are not funded. States that don't steal from the future (New York, Wisconsin, Oregon, the dakotas, Idaho, Tennessee) fund their pensions. States like Illinois, California and Massachusetts do not. Pensions aren't a problem, bad governance is. It's easy to say that it is "obvious". But the obvious solutions come with non-obvious blowback. What do you do when a 50 year old fireman throws out his back dragging a hose and ends up on disability for 15 years? What do you do when a burned out policeman shoots someone accidentally or has a heart attack and gets a fellow Officer killed.
  • cmdkeen 10y ago
    Retirement at 50 is not the way to solve the risk of ageing bodies on physically demanding jobs. 30 years of fire/policing experience is perfect for training, fire prevention, home / business security advice, more administrative roles and generally being the mentor for the newbies. Alternatively if there are too many physically demanding posts make it more like the armed forces and get rid of most people between the 10-20 year mark with a smaller pension and assistance with finding new work. 50 is a terrible time to push people into a new career.
• bitJericho 10y ago
  It used to be that private companies paid a heck of a lot more than they do now. The public sector won't let social welfare programs pick up the slack so that company heads can make billions.
• wdr1 10y ago
  How do we use that data to understand pensions?
• rabboRubble 10y ago
  These local government employees are normally not covered by social security insurance. This allows the local governments to pay very little. So while, yes, their pensions are now out of the norm, those employees would need to be paid more in the near term to make up for the deduction of social security insurance out of their paycheck. Furthermore, this would only address current employees and not the prior employees who never paid into social security and have nothing but their local pension to fund their elder years.