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.
Just met an unemployed grad student from Northwestern. The student related frequent discussions about job opportunities. “Find a tenured professor and cough on him” is a widely discussed solution. It may be tongue-in-cheek but professional solidarity is on the decline when jokes like this take hold. No doubt the 50-year old adjuncts share these views — perhaps they’re the ones who started it.