[quote=poorgradstudent]Econ 101 pretty much tells us that long term, in order to keep talent, if critical government jobs cut benefit plans, they’d have to raise salaries, basically making it a wash in terms of taxpayer benefit. I personally know several people who work for the State for wages lower than they could take elsewhere specifically because of the benefits.
There’s room for reform, and the Brown plan seems fairly reasonable. My understanding is a lot of new hires don’t enjoy nearly the same luxurious benefits some of the old timers qualified for, benefits that it would be illegal to strip now and the state pretty much just has to wait out and let those folks die. But reforming the public sector unions is not a silver bullet to California’s revenue problems. Prison reform would probably have a bigger, longer lasting effect.[/quote]
We can’t forget the burdens placed on the state by our illegal immigration mess. It’s supposed to be somewhere between $5 billion and $10+ billion per year, just in California. Numbers vary widely because many public agencies are not allowed to ask about a person’s immigration status (wonder why?), so these numbers are probably very low.
Mind you, when you hear about the pension shortfalls, they are talking about fully funding ALL pensions that will be owed into the future, those are not annual shortfalls. As a matter of fact, the costs of illegal immigration and the costs for public sector workers are intertwined. The #1 expense associated with illegal immigration is public education, so if we could eliminate the taxpayers’ obligation to pay for educating illegal immigrants and/or their children (yes, it’s complicated), a rather large portion of our state’s pension problem would be resolved as well because fewer teachers, etc. would be needed.
It’s not that I have a problem so much with the immigrants, but with the people who employ them. Let them pay for all the infrastructure burdens and benefit costs for their employees and all of their dependents. I’ll bet those “cheap” workers wouldn’t look so cheap if the **employers** had to pay the true costs of employing illegal immigrants, rather than shifting those costs onto taxpayers’ shoulders. Why aren’t we all up in arms over these parasites (the employers) instead of just ranting about public employees?
Again, why is the message that’s being directed at the public so skewed?
