Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Amazing that, when I contribute $1 into my 401k that is invested in the same stock market and mutual funds as public sector pensions, that dollar is sucked into a black hole, never to return. Yet put that same $1 in the pension systems and a prosperous economy is born.