Comments on: The pension crisis: Promises unkept
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- Thank God that the gvt. has the solution. Even as we speak, the printing presses at the Dept. of Treasury are churning out all kinds of paper currency 24 hours a day, seven days a week, such as $100 bills, 50s, 20s etc. If we keep printing enough paper money, we can buy our way out of this hole.....in about a 14 trillion years....LOL
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- Usually when a party defies a court order, some penalty is assessed, including the possibility being placed in jail for contempt of court. It wouldn't bother me to see this happen to the city fathers. Perhaps an indeterminate amount of time in jail would persuade them to obey the law. There is also the possibility of selling city property or using the property as collateral or using bonds to do other city work, freeing up current expense money to be used for paying legally binding pensions. But, in the final analysis, if the city can't handle its obligations, which bankruptcy indicates, perhaps the city should be dissolved and all its assets be sold at auction, which in term could be invested for use for meeting its legally incurred debts, like pensions. The city took these people's money, made a contract with them, and now the city is obligated to fulfill that contract and meet its debts to these people. Or pay a price so onerous no other city would consider being such slackers. They should be given no quarter. It might even put the federal government on notice.
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- This is just sad. My father is a retired naval veteran who served during the Gulf War and now his pension is frozen, like so many others' have been. I find it truly disgusting that the fat cats in Washington keep raising their own salaries, but men and women who actually did something to serve our country are left out in the cold. Wake up America! I have a feeling that many people in future years will be saying, "They came for the unions and the veterans, and I said nothing because I didn't belong to a union and was not a veteran."
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- ADD: I do feel bad for the retirees who have health issues, I have congenital heart disease which is worsening. I have bills to pay and medication to buy also, why should I pay for theirs too?
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- GOODBYE UNIONS! You union people are way too greedy, you should be ashamed of yourselves. So much for the golden egg, perhaps you will have to go back and work until your ninety like the rest of us.
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- Today, Ruters article says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes. Does the Middle Class need to sacrifice the pension contracts they paid into and earned? www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/12/us-usa-taxes-corporations-idUSN1249465620080812
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- These pensions were promised to all public employee, not just union members. The failure of the government division to fund these accounts, at the same time they were deducting money from the employee to do so, is the real problem.
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- Billions in taxs breaks for millionaires who aren't in finanacial stress. Those breaks put the tax burden on future generations of the middle class. We are witnessing the failure of Capitalism. I wouldn't be surprised if you see Wisconsin type revolts nationwide. The hubris of the wealthy will be their downfall, and my guess is it will come with a large price.
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- the inability to pay for all the pensions is a huge part of the big-communist lie that is the base of the lib voting block.
libs have paid for their votes with our money plus lies of huge unsustainable benefits & pensions for life to their naive dependent union members. - Reply to this comment
- The big trick in America of the twentieth centry, was to redistribute the wealth and shift the burden of certain compensation programs to the future.
The big trick of the twentieth-first century will be to reconcile the balance sheet with those burdens intact. It's tough to make a viable, sustainable enconomy work well when it is based on promises. Especially when these vested promises are untenable.
If it first started in Wiscosin, you could have predicted that it would soon come to a critical situation based on a zero-sum game scenario. You cannot add extra spending for retirement, unemployment, or medical care without charging somebody for it. Right now, we promise it to the next generation--and the conventional wisdom is that it's better than taxing the wealthy which would hamper job creation. This game has beoome lose-lose as far as games go. - Reply to this comment
