[quote=ctr70]I’m fine with pensions as long as their is NO tax payer guarantee at all, they are 100% self-sustaining. If the investments tank, the difference should not be made up by tax payers, the recipients should get less. If they don’t get the 8-9% target return, tax payer money should not back these defined benefit pensions up.[/quote]
Here’s the problem:
You don’t want to pay for any portion of possible pension losses for public employees. That’s cool, but I don’t want my tax money to subsidize the profits of employers who hire low-wage or illegal immigrant workers (who use the majority of public welfare benefits and are very costly for the education system), nor do I want to pay to subsidize the profits of landlords, commercial building owners, owners of large tracts of land, etc. when they are not paying market-rate property taxes as a result of Prop 13. I also don’t want to pay for the enormous profits (and personal incomes) of private contractors who offer their services to the government. On a federal level, I HATE paying for totally unjustifiable wars that kill tens of thousands of innocent people, and I HATE paying for the spy infrastructure that is used to spy on American citizens in our own land. I also hate paying for “diplomatic missions” in foreign countries where we overturn popular and/or democratically-elected leaders.
I also HATE paying for the exorbitant incomes of C-suite executives and certain shareholders and investors, etc. not to mention celebrities, whenever I have to buy goods and services (and don’t kid yourself: all too often, we do NOT have a choice).
This is just my short list, BTW.
[edited to add]… My biggest pet peeve: the Wall Street bailouts where the bonuses were quickly flowing back to pre-recession levels and higher! You also have to add what savers are losing as a result of these artificially low interest rates that are forced on us by the Fed so that certain “preferred” entities can maintain their wealth via artificially inflated asset prices. Then, there are the home buyer tax credits, and govt-guaranteed loans, the public-private investment deals (where taxpayers take the losses and private, well-connected individuals get all the profits), loss sharing agreements, govt-backed loans for speculators (like having GSE and FHA loans for speculators and those who are not owner-occupiers), etc. I could go on and on…
Yep, we all have to pay for things that we don’t like in a civilized, democratic society. ALL of us. And I truly believe that police officers, firefighters, nurses, teachers, etc. are nowhere near the top of the list (if on the list at all) of things that taxpayers have to pay for in our current system, but shouldn’t be paying for.
So…what’s the answer? Should we only be able to allocate our money directly to the causes we’re willing to pay for? Not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but one has to wonder how that would work in the real world.
