by vision-master » Wed 29 Dec 2010, 10:36:56
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', 'C')heck out this new site. "Ill. is Broke" If you click on the spread sheets for pensions for Public employees, you will see why they are broke. Policeman, Firefighters, Labour can retire at 50 and be paid out over $1M in pension benefits for each retiree. Meanwhile the tax revenue is collapsing and the Gov. Wants to borrow another 20B this year to keep the game going. Ill. is now well over 100B in debt. Totally unsustainable. Tough decisions ahead.
Do you keep paying the millionaire pensions, and quit maintaining infastructure like bridges, roads, schools etc. And keep raising taxes and seizing property to maintain these super pensions.
http://www.illinoisisbroke.com/pensionmillionaires.aspx$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ar of words
The rhetoric of opponents of traditional pension plans has become quite inflammatory. “Overly-generous, gold-plated, lavish, extravagant, unreasonable, and unsustainable,” are just some of the adjectives being thrown around. Andrew Cuomo, while running for governor of New York, said, “We simply can’t afford to pay benefits and pensions that are out of line with economic reality.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, referring to poorer Californians, recently said, “They’re being robbed blind by the pensions of public employees.” In nearly every case, pension plan opponents see switching to a 401(k)-type plan as the obvious solution to public pension and government budget woes.
At their most base level, many of the calls for radical shifts in public pension policy play upon pension envy from voters. The debate is framed as an “us vs. them” proposition. “Why should public employees have a guaranteed retirement when I don’t have that same benefit in the private sector?” is the way it is usually presented. The numbers are true enough. While 84 percent of public-sector workers have a pension plan to rely on for retirement, the same is true for only 21 percent of private-sector employees—and that number is still declining.
Have you ever noticed, almost every negative report on public pensions keys in on the six figure pensions of a few highly-compensated individuals while ignoring the benefits of the average public employee? The average benefit of PERA retirees is approximately $1,300 per month (63 percent are under $1,000 a month).