[quote=briansd1]From a local taxpayer standpoint here’s a simple way of looking at the pension issue.
For example, I’m used to my taxes paying for 2 libraries, 5 cops and 2 firemen. Now, the same level of taxes only get me 1 library, 4 cops and 1 fireman. There’s something drastically wrong here.
I don’t care about the retirees. I want the services that I’m used to. If you want to raise my taxes, then give me more services, not less.[/quote]
Brian,
If you want to use that argument, then why am I constantly paying more for less from the private sector? Groceries, utilities, housing, healthcare, gas (remember when full service and a full tank cost less than half of what we’re paying today just for a tank of gas?), etc. ALL of this — and a whole lot more — now costs more for less. Blame it on the Fed, the banking/financial system, insatiable corporate greed…not local workers.
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As far as the assumed rate of return on investments…you’re preaching to the choir. Of course, I blame it on the Fed and the Greenspan/Bernanke put, in addition to inflation targeting, suppression of interest rates, encouraging risk-taking by forcing investors out on the yield curve, inept/corrupt regulators, tax policies that encourage speculation over productive work, etc…and then there are the serial bubbles which falsely lull people into believing that trees grow to the sky and [insert asset category here] prices **always go up…in the long run.**
Yes, the current assumed rates of return are overly-optimistic based on today’s market, but these returns were the norm for many decades. I believe that employees should contribute more and that benefits should be reduced going forward in some cases; but public sector workers have NOTHING to do with the financial crisis, and they have NOTHING to do with how their pensions have been managed. You keep blaming the wrong people.
