It’s sad and we’re probably all guilty in some aspect of our lives, but society in the past 30 years seems all about people “getting theirs” and damn everyone else. One reason why exec pay is now 500x the avg worker vs 30x in the past.

This happened during the housing boom as well with many guilty parties and is happening with city governments/pensions.

Could people living in cities simply say, no more. Let’s just have the city (county?/state?) file for bankruptcy and then, we can renegotiate and toss out these obscene pension contracts?

You keep reading that this or that pension can’t be changed no matter what and when push comes to shove, if you’re bankrupt, I don’t think there should be much choice in keeping some of these things where the folks involved were simply ripping off the community.

Like the auto companies or the airlines, you either renegotiate or the whole company goes under and then, you get paid out cents on the dollar from the pension guarantee corp…

After that happens, maybe individual smaller communities can simply hire their own and start over without these bloated liabilities.