[quote=Aecetia]That is outrageous. Did you ask where they were?[/quote]

Don’t you know? For awhile, 911 dispatchers were short staffed because, well, there wasn’t enough funding…

CA Renter. The problem with these generous pension isn’t by itself that they people are insanely compensated in itself. The issue is that doing these things really screws the public sector, especially all the folks who are new entering the public sector, and also screws the level of service that can be provided to the public.

Unlike a for profit company where to spend more, it has ways to make more (or go out of business), the public sector is entirely dependent on taxes, and the only way to spend more is through higher taxes. I think we’ve reached a point in which more of the public dollars are being diverted to give older public works people insane compensation while the rest of the public services and the public workers deal with having less. In a normal employment arrangement, once someone leaves a company, the company is off the hook for continuing to pay that person indefinitely, so the same funds can be used to pay for either new people that costs less or improved services. However, in the public sector, these old people never go away, so they drain the system, and without significantly raising taxes, more money goes out than come in…When budgets get cut, it’s never these pensions, but instead services. It’s ridiculous. You say firemen are important. Well UT just did an article about how they have to layoff firemen (probably the younger people), because the budgets are wacked, and yet these older folks still get to keep collecting their full pensions… Please tell me you don’t
think this is screwed up and not sustainable.

And I bring up that 911 issue I encountered as a point: paying more taxes, weren’t not getting any better public service. More likely it’s going to funding all the retirees…This problem is going to get heck of a lot worse when baby boomers retire.

For good examples of pensions not sustainable, look no further than airline companies. Eventually, airline companies could no longer afford the pensions and also to be profitable, a lot of them went bankrupt (UAL in particular). And only after bankruptcy, were they able to redo some of the pension benefits. Problem is in the public sector, it’s not so simple as filing chapter 11. And even if a city declares bankruptcy, it seems like some of those pensions still need to be paid…