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Hi fellow Chicagoan (now live in Oakland). Thanks for the polite and civil response. Let's teach these Californians how to have a respectful across-the-aisle di

Hi fellow Chicagoan (now live in Oakland). Thanks for the polite and civil response. Let's teach these Californians how to have a respectful across-the-aisle dialog ;) It's funny, I'm on an HOA board and spent the entire day trying to figure out our reserve liability, and how to balance it. It's in fact EXACTLY identical to a pension, where you have to put money aside to offset future expenses today. The main thing is that I hate unfunded mandates. As a voter, I don't mind paying for things even if they're a little expensive. I just wish we'd get honest about the costs. Situations like we're in smack of expedience to the point of dishonesty, where the long-term math is impossibly broken. I'm seeing this on a micro scale on my HOA. We need to have more in reserves but people hardly even know how to think about the problem, let alone implement concrete policy solutions to fix it. It's softened my views a bit to see how something as colossally fucked as Illinois can happen on a small, person-to-person micro scale. So yeah nice chatting...my HOA is 1000 people, which is the size of a small city. I feel like a small-city mayor who everyone sort of hates but grudgingly admits does an ok job :)

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Great chat! My contact info is in my profile, and I'm always interested in solving macro problems such as these if you want to chat more. People get...optimistic, right? Pensions assumed an 8% return, which at the time, was realistic. And then the return curve declined. We're close to 5% returns into the future [1]. So what now? Where does the money come from to top up these pensions? Are we going to break our contract to pay these people because of poor forecasts? No, we're likely going to raise taxes (in a hopefully progressive manner). Same thing with Social Security. Why did Social Security "lend" its funds to the US government [2]? Because the US government is the safest, most reliable investment in the world. But then, politicians go and spend that money. They're not around to deal with the fallout from their shortsightedness (and arguably, greed). There is no accountability built into the system. That's a flaw in the system, that we don't account for those incentives and guard against them. A better system needs to be constructed that accounts for centuries of existence and benefit delivery. > So yeah, it seems a little unfair that one sector of the economy gets paid for being mediocre at best, and other fires people and demands performance. Yeah, I'm a little upset. Sidenote: I think the labor system in the US is seriously dysfunctional compared to the rest of the Western world and needs to be fixed as well (more labor protections). One election at a time. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/5-is-the-new-8-for-reliable-returns-for-pension-funds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/5-is-the-... [2] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Great chat! My contact info is in my profile, and I'm always interested in solving macro problems such as these if you want to chat more. People get...optimistic, right? Pensions assumed an 8% return, which at the time, was realistic. And then the return curve declined. We're close to 5% returns into the future [1]. So what now? Where does the money come from to top up these pensions? Are we going to break our contract to pay these people because of poor forecasts? No, we're likely going to raise taxes (in a hopefully progressive manner). Same thing with Social Security. Why did Social Security "lend" its funds to the US government [2]? Because the US government is the safest, most reliable investment in the world. But then, politicians go and spend that money. They're not around to deal with the fallout from their shortsightedness (and arguably, greed). There is no accountability built into the system. That's a flaw in the system, that we don't account for those incentives and guard against them. A better system needs to be constructed that accounts for centuries of existence and benefit delivery. > So yeah, it seems a little unfair that one sector of the economy gets paid for being mediocre at best, and other fires people and demands performance. Yeah, I'm a little upset. Sidenote: I think the labor system in the US is seriously dysfunctional compared to the rest of the Western world and needs to be fixed as well (more labor protections). One election at a time. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/5-is-the-new-8-for-reliable-returns-for-pension-funds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/5-is-the-... [2] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html