Could people living in cities simply say, no more. Let’s just have the city (county?/state?) file for bankruptcy and then, we can renegotiate and toss out these obscene pension contracts?
You keep reading that this or that pension can’t be changed no matter what and when push comes to shove, if you’re bankrupt, I don’t think there should be much choice in keeping some of these things where the folks involved were simply ripping off the community.
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Would it be simpler just to institute a very high local or state pension tax (whichever applies) to all local and state government pensions above a certain amount, and direct those tax dollars back to the municipality in question? That way, the municipality gets a bunch of revenue returned to it from its pensioners and there’s no need to file BK. Kind of an end run around the problem, although I don’t know if it’s practical. I’m betting that folks would vote for it if it went straight to the ballot.
