Pension Tsunami

[skyrider]

Pension Tsunami

Reporting from Sacramento

— Across California, state and local leaders are moving to confront the cost of public employee retirement packages — an escalating financial burden that threatens to choke off funding for other government services.

Legislation now being debated in Sacramento would curtail pension benefits to future state employees. Elsewhere, city and county governments are looking at a variety of measures, including raising property taxes to cover shortfalls and reducing payments to retirement funds.

On Thursday, pension consultant Girard Miller told California's Little Hoover Commission that state and local governments have $325 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, which he said amounts to $22,000 for every working adult in the Golden State.

"In California we had the Internet bubble, we had the housing bubble, and I see in the very near future the public pension bubble," Gov. Schwarzenegger said this week. Confronting the pension crisis, he said, should be the state's No. 1 policy priority."

Hmmmmmmmmm.

[Jim]

Yup, it's a big deal. We have middle level state and local employees retiring with $100k+/year pensions.

Prop 13, passed in 1978, requires a 2/3 majority to increase taxes. Despite that, local and state politicians gave huge wage and benefit increases to public sector employees in exchange for support. Now we are screwed, with massive pension and health care obligations to these employees.

The good thing is that there's always the option of moving out of California, which I will probably do in the next 2-3 years.

[skyrider]

Yup, it's a big deal. We have middle level state and local employees retiring with $100k+/year pensions.

Prop 13, passed in 1978, requires a 2/3 majority to increase taxes. Despite that, local and state politicians gave huge wage and benefit increases to public sector employees in exchange for support. Now we are screwed, with massive pension and health care obligations to these employees.

The good thing is that there's always the option of moving out of California, which I will probably do in the next 2-3 years.

Jim..........yes, a BFD.

This is NOT exclusive to California, but is popping up in many states. The link below details the public sector employees and the MASSIVE pensions that are given to bleed the U.S. taxpayers.

pensiontsunami.com -- tracks the ongoing abuse of pensions.