8 ms·

The amount of people who are wholly oblivious or simply don't care about the pension bombs that are going to rock most states in the USA is utterly insane to me

The amount of people who are wholly oblivious or simply don't care about the pension bombs that are going to rock most states in the USA is utterly insane to me, and its primarily the blue ones. We really need to get rid of these over-promising pensions and get public employees onto private accounts like most workers have with 401ks, and yet the cry from the left is always more "well paying unions and pensions" while they have no idea it is becoming a house of cards. I believe many places in California have already had to deal with shutting down public infrastructure and services due to pensions growing to be more and more of the local budgets.

i_am_nomad 8y ago
The problem in many California towns, including mine, is that the public employee unions (particularly the fire and police) give huge amounts of campaign contributions to city politicians, who then turn around and give those unions everything they ask for. We even had a consultant come in and tell us we could easily cut our fire department in half, but nope: they instead got a new emergency center. Median salary for them is about $150K.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  That seems to be a ubiquitous problem. I had a bit of a consciousness-raising moment when a friend of mine ran for public office a decade or so back, and shared his experiences with me. The calculus is simple: Nobody really wants to pay out of pocket for the campaign costs, if they can even afford to in the first place, and public donations alone aren't going to cut the mustard, either. So, if you want to play, apparently the very first thing you do is go and talk to the different interest groups in town. Labor unions are an option, but so are philanthropists with significant business interests. They'll happily scratch your back, but only if you promise to scratch theirs. So, that's not even really your first day at work in public office, it's more your first round job interview. The incorruptible need not apply. There have been various attempts at doing something about it over time, but there's a precedent in Constitutional law that money is effectively a form of speech, so serious efforts typically founder on the First Amendment.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    maybe political candidates should have gofundme campaigns..
  - i_am_nomad 8y ago
    I would recommend Larry Lessig's "Republic: Lost," which is an excellent dissection of the problem and proposes a few actual solutions. Unfortunately, one of the solutions at the federal level is a Constitutional convention. This is possibly the exact worst time in our nation's history to stage one of those.
    - kaibee 8y ago
      > This is possibly the exact worst time in our nation's history to stage one of those. It seems that that kind of comes with the territory, no? You don't have a Constitutional convention when everything's going great.
frankharv 8y ago
Well out in the real world we recently lost of health care insurance. It has been replaced with a scam called HSA. HSA is so bad they told us we needed supplemental insurance to cover our medical costs. So a common workplace benefit has been replaced with a scam. I don't hear any calls for HSA's for government workers. Considering the strength of public sector unions I am not surprised.. Unions that used to benefit craftsmen were killed off. Instead Teachers and Firefighters now make more money than people with an actual tradecraft. All thanks to their unions. So what was created to promote workplace safety for tradesman (Unions) has been distorted into a giant money sucking vortex. What a country (My best Yakov Smirnoff impression).
- frankharv 8y ago
  Sorry I forgot commenting about an article here is verbotten.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  Where do you live that teachers actually get paid worth a damn, geez.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    In populous cities, teachers make $100K/yr prorated for vacation and including value of benefits
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sjg007 8y ago
  If your company only offers an HSA, I would find another job and when you leave tell them that their health insurance plan was the reason.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    I’d rather be paid more cash and decide how I want to spend it.
dashundchen 8y ago
Well, then maybe the primarily blue states should spend less on subsidies for the red States, and more on their own residents. https://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-more-dependent-on-federal-government-2015-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-more-dependent-on...
- ericd 8y ago
  Not a great attitude if you want to maintain a union.

i_am_nomad 8y ago

The problem in many California towns, including mine, is that the public employee unions (particularly the fire and police) give huge amounts of campaign contributions to city politicians, who then turn around and give those unions everything they ask for. We even had a consultant come in and tell us we could easily cut our fire department in half, but nope: they instead got a new emergency center. Median salary for them is about $150K.

bunderbunder 8y ago
That seems to be a ubiquitous problem. I had a bit of a consciousness-raising moment when a friend of mine ran for public office a decade or so back, and shared his experiences with me. The calculus is simple: Nobody really wants to pay out of pocket for the campaign costs, if they can even afford to in the first place, and public donations alone aren't going to cut the mustard, either. So, if you want to play, apparently the very first thing you do is go and talk to the different interest groups in town. Labor unions are an option, but so are philanthropists with significant business interests. They'll happily scratch your back, but only if you promise to scratch theirs. So, that's not even really your first day at work in public office, it's more your first round job interview. The incorruptible need not apply. There have been various attempts at doing something about it over time, but there's a precedent in Constitutional law that money is effectively a form of speech, so serious efforts typically founder on the First Amendment.
- sjg007 8y ago
  maybe political candidates should have gofundme campaigns..
- i_am_nomad 8y ago
  I would recommend Larry Lessig's "Republic: Lost," which is an excellent dissection of the problem and proposes a few actual solutions. Unfortunately, one of the solutions at the federal level is a Constitutional convention. This is possibly the exact worst time in our nation's history to stage one of those.
  - kaibee 8y ago
    > This is possibly the exact worst time in our nation's history to stage one of those. It seems that that kind of comes with the territory, no? You don't have a Constitutional convention when everything's going great.

frankharv 8y ago

Well out in the real world we recently lost of health care insurance. It has been replaced with a scam called HSA. HSA is so bad they told us we needed supplemental insurance to cover our medical costs. So a common workplace benefit has been replaced with a scam. I don't hear any calls for HSA's for government workers. Considering the strength of public sector unions I am not surprised.. Unions that used to benefit craftsmen were killed off. Instead Teachers and Firefighters now make more money than people with an actual tradecraft. All thanks to their unions. So what was created to promote workplace safety for tradesman (Unions) has been distorted into a giant money sucking vortex. What a country (My best Yakov Smirnoff impression).

frankharv 8y ago
Sorry I forgot commenting about an article here is verbotten.
egypturnash 8y ago
Where do you live that teachers actually get paid worth a damn, geez.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  In populous cities, teachers make $100K/yr prorated for vacation and including value of benefits
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sjg007 8y ago
If your company only offers an HSA, I would find another job and when you leave tell them that their health insurance plan was the reason.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  I’d rather be paid more cash and decide how I want to spend it.

dashundchen 8y ago

Well, then maybe the primarily blue states should spend less on subsidies for the red States, and more on their own residents. https://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-more-dependent-on-federal-government-2015-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-more-dependent-on...

ericd 8y ago
Not a great attitude if you want to maintain a union.