[quote=jpinpb][quote=flu]
It depends how the rest of the economy is doing. I guarantee if the rest of the economy is in the tanks, despite newer folks grumbling for crappy compesnsation, they’re going to put up with the crap in order to pay for the bills….Plus there will be plenty of other people who probably would be looking for work.

Conversely, if the economy is doing well, there’s probably not a need to reduce pay to these people either, because in theory, more money will be coming in as tax dollars (more people spend more-> increased tax dollars).[/quote]

That would be fine if the City would actually give the money to the employees during the good times. But as is very obvious to me now, the pattern of government is to “Pay next Tuesday for a hamburger today” and when Tuesday comes around, cry about not having the money.

I know for a fact that there was a period of time when cops did not get a COL raise and instead they agreed to have the City put more money in the pension — at the time the City was making something like 18% ROI. So why didn’t the City just give them a raise instead, since they had the money?

Unfortunately, I think the cops got the bad end of the deal there b/c of course now the City doesn’t want to honor any contracts and is apparently successful in getting people to rally on their side against the cops.
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I think the cops have the unions to thank for the negotiating these things in terms of deferred comps. Cities/states new exactly what they were doing…IE. buying time and underfunding retirement benefits. We know from the private sector what happens when pensions get underfunded.

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That is why I brought up the bank contracts earlier. No difference. If a CEO or whoever can still get their ridiculously high bonus when taxpayers are footing the bill just b/c it was in the contract, well, certainly some guys putting his life on the line who has a contract for X should expect their end of the deal to be fulfilled.
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I don’t condone bailed out companies getting their bonuses…BUT….let’s remember a few things

1)Fed did force banks to take TARP, regardless if they needed it

2)All that money in theory is a loan..In theory, the bank(s) are suppose to pay them back…with interest…..which, sorry to say, in the banking industry is entirely feasible..

3)Companies like GM/Chrysler should have never been bailed out, because there no way they are ever going to be produce/sell enough to ever pay tax payers back. Ditto could be said by Fannie/Freddie, though tecnically they weren’t loaned money, but simply “federalized”…I guess housing being an inherent fabric of the U.S. economy I guess one could argue it needed to be federalized.

In the case of the public sector…We tax payers aren’t “loaning” any money..It’s gone, and it’s a perpetual “leak” for which money going out will continue to leak versus money coming in…Those pensions aren’t going to credit us back in case their rate of return is greater than expected. And worse, if there’s any sort of underfunding, we’re on the hook for it. And this “leak” is only going to get worse as more and more people retire and collect…You folks think social security and medicare is bad…just look at what’s happening at the city/local budgets….

All these entitlement programs are eventually going to blow up (or else, everyone else is going to be on the hook for huge taxes)…It’s a no brainer.. You have one of the largest baby boomer populations heading for retirement eligible to collecting all this deferred compensation at all levels…You have a much smaller younger generation that will be paying for these baby boomers, arguably with less opportunities and less “real” wealth versus previous generations that in addition to having to struggle with higher prices in terms of housing/inflation/etc are going to be footing the bill for all these entitlement programs….And you won’t ever get a vote to cut these entitlement programs unless you also somehow find a way to disenfranchise the baby boomers, because obviously they will be voting with their interest in mind…And generation y’s/millienium obviously don’t think about these things to vote against such things…Which leads us to the few generatio x’s that do care but nevertheless that are going to be outnumbered in the polls.

Short of allowing unlimited immigration to people that could produce an income that we can tax(and cutting welfare programs), we’re going to keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing until eventually this is all going to blow up sooner or later, though me thinks it’s going to blow up at the local/state level much sooner…

Personally, I’d say if the reset button is going to be reached eventually, we might as well do it sooner versus later…So, again, I don’t think these folks expecting a pension understand that the question of getting $0 versus something is a lot sooner than one thinks…

I think where there’s a disagreement on is that some folks here think that if we don’t give these older folks their entitled pensions, we won’t be able to get other people to work in these positions. Imho, we have the opposite problem…By actually paying these promised benefits, we won’t be able to afford to hire people to replace those that retire, even if there are people that want to work. Given the choices, I’d prefer the retiring folks get the partially shafted versus the people starting now, or the people that depend on these public services…Crappy? Yes…But what other choice is there?