Outrageous public pensions could bankrupt states of NY IL KS AZ

What a title. Yahoo knew exactly what to write to bait your easily-gained attention.

Pensions don't bankrupt governments, politicians bankrupt governments.

Politicians don't call each other out when instead of giving reasonable raises, now, they vote for unreasonable pension bumps in the future.

*&BUIlansjkd wrote:

Pensions don't bankrupt governments, politicians bankrupt governments.

Politicians don't call each other out when instead of giving reasonable raises, now, they vote for unreasonable pension bumps in the future.

Well, that's an odd statement. Are you simply trying to say that pensions are not inherently bad? I would agree with that conceptually. However, in many places (such as those listed in the linked article + several other states around the country) having to pay pensions as they are currently structured WILL bankrupt city and state governments. Thus, your statement is false.

If you're trying to get at the root cause, well yeah politicians and their budgeting shenanigans are largely to blame. Stupid / greedy voters who seemingly over the past two to three decades have voted to keep taxes artificially low (or pensions / entitlement payments too high) creating a situation where politicians then raid pension funds to pay for all the crap they promise voters...it's a vicious cycle really.

It's interetng to note that this problem seems to effect both deep blue (IL, NY) and deep red (AZ, KS) states. I don't think the problem is Dem. vs. Rep or Lib vs. Con. The problem is a lack of leadership and stupid voters for the last 20-30 years. And what generation are these idiot politicians (regardless of party) and voters from? Yup, the generation that will do illogical crap to ensure their entitlements (thusly named the "entitlement generation")...the boomers. A truly pathetic lot they are, I think we can all agree on that.

Is the same guy starting these public pension threads?

Wonder why he suddenly got such a bug up his @ss about public pensions?

Any way.. the politicians and public are to blame. They do not like public employees making higher salaries, so they chose to compensate them with generous vacation, sick leave, retirement and pension benefits. They chose to kick the can down the road, rather than pay better wages NOW.

At some point you actually DO have to pay firefighters, police, public works employees, etc.. It's just a matter of how you chose to do it.

Public safety & politicians have different (and way more generous) pension packages (including zero contribution & free healthcare) than regular state employees. Not all public pensions are the same.

Disturbed about politicians raiding pension funds for IOU's.

And this is with stock/bond/real estate markets at QE-driven artificially high levels... yowsers!

This list triples and half file when the market comes back to reality.

With that understanding you'd have to think that the fed will be unable to stop mettling n the markets without significant repercussions.

States and municipalities are making plans to weather the future storm right... ...

The subprime RE market was a small slice of the overall market but once it began failing other speculative, leveraged segments of the market/society were exposed. I've listed these risks in numerous other posts.

Foolish liberal fiscal policies are more or less building gasoline-soaked piles of kindling throughout society.

I'd like to say these things will become clear after it is too late but when I talk to people about the recent financial crisis, they still don't get it.

Puerto Rico is going to find this out the hard way this summer.