One word: public employees who have been making concessions over the past few years.
Which of your taxes have gone up specifically to pay for public employees’ pensions, and by how much? I’ll bet you $1,000, right now, that public employees have been paying more toward this than you have.[/quote]
Citizens are paying in cutbacks to current services so that the pensions funds can be made whole.
IMO, public employees need to make more concessions.
The reason there is a shortfall in pensions is because public employees and their employers did not contribute enough for the levels of risk in the funds’ portofolios.
Public employees are getting guaranteed/risk-free pensions. They need to contribute accordingly. There needs to be a commensurate matching of risk and returns.[/quote]
Money is fungible. You’re making assumptions about WHY government finances are in such trouble.
Again, pension funds are in trouble because of the market crash, not because of “greedy union thugs.”
How about public-private partnerships and give-aways to private developers and contractors (where the majority of fraud and abuse occurs)? What about all the idiotic bonds that taxpayers passed, even in the face of a major recession? What about all the interest payments we’re making because govt entities took on too much debt for various projects during the “good times”?
No…it’s much easier to blame the “union thugs” for the mess. Nevermind the fact that the propaganda is designed to turn ignorant “private sector” workers against their own so that the private corporations can take over the void left by unions. Think your taxes will go down as a result? Guess again. The purpose is to drive more money toward the top of the pyramid (corporations and capitalists who do not work for a living) while lowering wages for those who actually do the work and create the capital in the first place.
Think about it: over the past few decades, more and more of the work that was once done by unionized govt workers has been shifted to the private sector. Have your wages gone up or your taxes gone down as a result of this privatization?
People need to know WHO is behind the propaganda, and WHY. They also need to understand what the actual outcomes will be. The assault on public workers did NOT come about because of taxpayer advocates (beware of wolves in sheeps’ clothing), but because of private entities who want to take over public assets and cash flows.
Some of the many concessions being made by public employees:
“Recent collective bargaining agreements have reduced many of the benefit formulas in Table 1 to levels prior to 1999.18 For example, the 2 percent at 55 formula for State
Miscellaneous and State Industrial employees (First Tier) and for State Industrial (Tier 1) shifted to 2 percent at 60 for employees hired on or after January 15, 2011. Similarly, State Peace Officers/Firefighters hired on or after this date are subject to a 2.5 percent at 55 formula. Generally, these benefit formula changes either increased the full retirement age, decreased the benefit formula, or both. In addition, reforms now require retirement benefits for all new state employees to be based on their highest annual average salary over a 36-month period.
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More info on how it works:
“Member contribution rates are set by statute and/or collective bargaining agreements (Table 2).24 Recent collective bargaining agreements have increased employee contribution rates modestly.25 The 2011-2012 state agency employee average contribution rate is 7.4 percent. Neither public agency nor statewide average employee rates are available for the current year. The average systemwide employee contribution rate was 7.6 percent in 2009-2010, the most recent year available.
Employers accounted for 67.3 percent of total contributions for the year ending in 2010, the highest level since 1992. However, because average employer contributions were low in the late 1990s and early 2000s,26 and employee contributions were relatively constant, the amount contributed by each group over time is closer to parity. Since 1992, employers have contributed 59.5 percent of the total, with employees contributing the balance.”
