4 ms·

>I wonder if a law that clawed back these government official's pensions if they were found to break from good accounting practices, would be a deterrent? Yes,

>I wonder if a law that clawed back these government official's pensions if they were found to break from good accounting practices, would be a deterrent? Yes, but the people who pass the laws are the people who would be affected. You'd have to find a simple majority of people moral enough to do it. I think today, that's a hard sell.

koolba 9y ago
The only way that'd happen would be via a direct ballot measure[1]. Even then it'd be a tough sell. More and more I'm thinking the only outcome for a lot of these States and municipalities is going to be bankruptcy. The long term austerity measures that are needed are too onerous and the entrenched powers are too corrupt to do anything about it until it's too late. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_measure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_measure
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  The states could raise property/land taxes and eliminate corporate tax cuts and tax loopholes. That wouldn't be a 1% friendly solution though - too much of their wealth is tied up in land and equities. It might mean that landlords in the Bay Area couldn't collect rents of $6,000 a month for doing nothing. Most of that unearned cash would flow in to state coffers instead. It's ironic, because the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer foundation (the group behind prop 13) tried to justify prop 13 by saying that raising property taxes would hurt the elderly. Californian voters believed them. Now that their actions created a massive hole in California budgets, they advocate for stripping California pensioners of their money as the "fiscally responsible" solution. People believe them now too. Edit: For those erroneously believing propaganda that hiking taxes leads to an automatic exodus: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-taxes-have-a-negligible-impact-on-americans-interstate-moves https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-tax...
  - jerf 9y ago
    The 1% are not equally distributed, or indeed necessarily distributed at all, in all the places with excessive pension obligations. Taxing them is not a general solution. The other problem is that we don't just need to come up with money; we need to find ways to convince/force governments to stop making these promises in the first place. A government promise about something it'll do 30 or 40 years in the future is not quite worthless, but it's just not an institution capable of reliably keeping it. (Whatever politics you think drives me to say that, I mean that and I mean lots of other things too. If nothing else, in the general case, a legislative body can not truly constrain future legislatures, who can always just vote to not keep their old promises, made by people who are mostly not here anymore, for constituencies that were growing in power 30-40 years ago but are now dying off and not very useful to the current 30-40-year-olds in the legislature. Looking to governments to keep promises so many decades in advance is far more risky that many people seem to account for on all kinds of levels. The history of the 20th century suggests that counting on your government to even exist in 40 years is, in general, not the safest bet!)
  - koolba 9y ago
    > The states could raise property/land taxes ... In CA specifically, I don't see the threat of bankruptcy being enough to overcome prop 13. Plus if it was in the cards there would be a massive exodus that would further erode the tax base which would be a vicious downward spiral. > ... and eliminate corporate tax cuts and tax loopholes. Referencing "eliminating tax loopholes" is like saying "We need to do something about guns". It's meaningless without specifics. > That wouldn't be a 1% friendly solution though - too much of their wealth is tied up in land and equities. Equities aren't taxed by States or municipalities, at least not from a "wealth tax" perspective. If such a wealth tax was passed I'd immediately invest in U-Haul and other mover services. Raising income taxes enough to cover these obligations would lead to an exodus of high earners as well. That doesn't address the municipal pensions either as they don't necessarily have income taxing ability nor high earners to tax. > Now that their actions created a massive hole in California budgets, they advocate for stripping California pensioners of their money as the "fiscally responsible" solution. The fiscally responsible thing to do would have been to not make promises to pensioners to buy their votes. Sadly that continues to this day. Try running as a politician that's going to address this problem with any form of austerity measures for the people involved and see what happens.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    >It might mean that landlords in the Bay Area couldn't collect rents of $6,000 a month for doing nothing. Other than provide housing in an extremely high demand area. Property taxes are an interesting solution. Of course people who don't own property will still pay them indirectly through rents.
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      If it were primarily about providing housing as opposed to monopoly access to land, there wouldn't be a burned out house on the market in the Bay Area currently going for $800k. The amount of free money yielded in real estate appreciation and rents in California is staggering. It could easily fill any state budget hole if the political will was there to take it from the people who did not earn it and give it to the people who did.
      - Clubber 9y ago
        >monopoly access to land Do you mean "ownership?" >The amount of free money yielded in real estate appreciation and rents in California is staggering. It could easily fill any state budget hole if the political will was there to take it from the people who did not earn it and give it to the people who did. People didn't earn the property they own? I hesitate to ask you the question, but if things are so expensive, and you don't currently own property, why live there in the first place? I'm all for decreasing the wealth gap and the wage gap, but what you seem to be asking for is free shit.
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        If you bought property in the 1980s that cost you $50k and sold it today for $900k what exactly did you do to earn that $850k? Are you actually saying that it is not free money? That's the effect that untaxing land (e.g. prop 13) has on property values. That's the money that would be going toward unfunded pension liabilities were the land not untaxed.
        Clubber 9y ago
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Looking at Michigan, the shortfall is less than 1 year of the state budget. It's not among the worst states, but it's in the bottom half. Fixing that doesn't require long term austerity, it requires a few years of collective willingness to pay moderately higher taxes.
  - WkndTriathlete 9y ago
    Convince me, as someone that wasn't even alive when these pensions were being granted, why I should pay for gold-plated pension plans far above and beyond what I'm expecting to get in my own retirement when I'm seeing less and less value from the services those would-be pensioners provide and in general contribute significantly less "value" to society than the work I do. ... Note that I'm not as anarchist or libertarian as the above makes me sound, but it does emphasize the point I'm trying to make: I don't think you'll ever convince the current generation to pay for the previous one so I don't think there will ever be a collective willingness to pay "moderately higher" taxes. My bet is on an ugly outcome where the old and young battle it out in the courts between haircuts to pension plans and higher taxes with politicians muddling their way to an ugly middle ground that no one likes.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      That's fine if you are angry about it, I wasn't making a moral argument about what should be done, I was making a point about the scope of the problem. An unwillingness to collectively pay taxes is also a major reason our infrastructure is falling apart. In the scheme of things it wouldn't take all that big an investment to dramatically improve things, it's just fallen out of fashion.
    - Pinckney 9y ago
      Do you own property in an affected jurisdiction? If you don't, you won't be compelled to pay. Pack up and move somewhere that's not fucked. If, OTOH, you bought property, you took on this risk in doing so. You should have priced in the pension shortfall, and the expected future tax repercussions, when you made your purchase, and the seller should have born the cost of their jurisdiction's mismanagement in the form of a reduced property value.

koolba 9y ago

The only way that'd happen would be via a direct ballot measure[1]. Even then it'd be a tough sell. More and more I'm thinking the only outcome for a lot of these States and municipalities is going to be bankruptcy. The long term austerity measures that are needed are too onerous and the entrenched powers are too corrupt to do anything about it until it's too late. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_measure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_measure

crdoconnor 9y ago
The states could raise property/land taxes and eliminate corporate tax cuts and tax loopholes. That wouldn't be a 1% friendly solution though - too much of their wealth is tied up in land and equities. It might mean that landlords in the Bay Area couldn't collect rents of $6,000 a month for doing nothing. Most of that unearned cash would flow in to state coffers instead. It's ironic, because the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer foundation (the group behind prop 13) tried to justify prop 13 by saying that raising property taxes would hurt the elderly. Californian voters believed them. Now that their actions created a massive hole in California budgets, they advocate for stripping California pensioners of their money as the "fiscally responsible" solution. People believe them now too. Edit: For those erroneously believing propaganda that hiking taxes leads to an automatic exodus: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-taxes-have-a-negligible-impact-on-americans-interstate-moves https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-tax...
- jerf 9y ago
  The 1% are not equally distributed, or indeed necessarily distributed at all, in all the places with excessive pension obligations. Taxing them is not a general solution. The other problem is that we don't just need to come up with money; we need to find ways to convince/force governments to stop making these promises in the first place. A government promise about something it'll do 30 or 40 years in the future is not quite worthless, but it's just not an institution capable of reliably keeping it. (Whatever politics you think drives me to say that, I mean that and I mean lots of other things too. If nothing else, in the general case, a legislative body can not truly constrain future legislatures, who can always just vote to not keep their old promises, made by people who are mostly not here anymore, for constituencies that were growing in power 30-40 years ago but are now dying off and not very useful to the current 30-40-year-olds in the legislature. Looking to governments to keep promises so many decades in advance is far more risky that many people seem to account for on all kinds of levels. The history of the 20th century suggests that counting on your government to even exist in 40 years is, in general, not the safest bet!)
- koolba 9y ago
  > The states could raise property/land taxes ... In CA specifically, I don't see the threat of bankruptcy being enough to overcome prop 13. Plus if it was in the cards there would be a massive exodus that would further erode the tax base which would be a vicious downward spiral. > ... and eliminate corporate tax cuts and tax loopholes. Referencing "eliminating tax loopholes" is like saying "We need to do something about guns". It's meaningless without specifics. > That wouldn't be a 1% friendly solution though - too much of their wealth is tied up in land and equities. Equities aren't taxed by States or municipalities, at least not from a "wealth tax" perspective. If such a wealth tax was passed I'd immediately invest in U-Haul and other mover services. Raising income taxes enough to cover these obligations would lead to an exodus of high earners as well. That doesn't address the municipal pensions either as they don't necessarily have income taxing ability nor high earners to tax. > Now that their actions created a massive hole in California budgets, they advocate for stripping California pensioners of their money as the "fiscally responsible" solution. The fiscally responsible thing to do would have been to not make promises to pensioners to buy their votes. Sadly that continues to this day. Try running as a politician that's going to address this problem with any form of austerity measures for the people involved and see what happens.
- Clubber 9y ago
  >It might mean that landlords in the Bay Area couldn't collect rents of $6,000 a month for doing nothing. Other than provide housing in an extremely high demand area. Property taxes are an interesting solution. Of course people who don't own property will still pay them indirectly through rents.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    If it were primarily about providing housing as opposed to monopoly access to land, there wouldn't be a burned out house on the market in the Bay Area currently going for $800k. The amount of free money yielded in real estate appreciation and rents in California is staggering. It could easily fill any state budget hole if the political will was there to take it from the people who did not earn it and give it to the people who did.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      >monopoly access to land Do you mean "ownership?" >The amount of free money yielded in real estate appreciation and rents in California is staggering. It could easily fill any state budget hole if the political will was there to take it from the people who did not earn it and give it to the people who did. People didn't earn the property they own? I hesitate to ask you the question, but if things are so expensive, and you don't currently own property, why live there in the first place? I'm all for decreasing the wealth gap and the wage gap, but what you seem to be asking for is free shit.
      - crdoconnor 9y ago
        If you bought property in the 1980s that cost you $50k and sold it today for $900k what exactly did you do to earn that $850k? Are you actually saying that it is not free money? That's the effect that untaxing land (e.g. prop 13) has on property values. That's the money that would be going toward unfunded pension liabilities were the land not untaxed.
        Clubber 9y ago
maxerickson 9y ago
Looking at Michigan, the shortfall is less than 1 year of the state budget. It's not among the worst states, but it's in the bottom half. Fixing that doesn't require long term austerity, it requires a few years of collective willingness to pay moderately higher taxes.
- WkndTriathlete 9y ago
  Convince me, as someone that wasn't even alive when these pensions were being granted, why I should pay for gold-plated pension plans far above and beyond what I'm expecting to get in my own retirement when I'm seeing less and less value from the services those would-be pensioners provide and in general contribute significantly less "value" to society than the work I do. ... Note that I'm not as anarchist or libertarian as the above makes me sound, but it does emphasize the point I'm trying to make: I don't think you'll ever convince the current generation to pay for the previous one so I don't think there will ever be a collective willingness to pay "moderately higher" taxes. My bet is on an ugly outcome where the old and young battle it out in the courts between haircuts to pension plans and higher taxes with politicians muddling their way to an ugly middle ground that no one likes.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    That's fine if you are angry about it, I wasn't making a moral argument about what should be done, I was making a point about the scope of the problem. An unwillingness to collectively pay taxes is also a major reason our infrastructure is falling apart. In the scheme of things it wouldn't take all that big an investment to dramatically improve things, it's just fallen out of fashion.
  - Pinckney 9y ago
    Do you own property in an affected jurisdiction? If you don't, you won't be compelled to pay. Pack up and move somewhere that's not fucked. If, OTOH, you bought property, you took on this risk in doing so. You should have priced in the pension shortfall, and the expected future tax repercussions, when you made your purchase, and the seller should have born the cost of their jurisdiction's mismanagement in the form of a reduced property value.