-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
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.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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But, but, EQUITY.
The left is deranged.
So, compassion requires we help those who need it… But, parable time – teach to them to support themselves, DON’T JUST GIVE THEM STUFF.
Why do we bother to work 40+ hours a week? My household, two wage-earners, pay upwards 50% in taxes and governmental fees, without little genuine benefit other than nominal fire and police protection, lousy library services. I want “free monies” too.
Streeterville, your household just made one mistake. It resides in Chicago (and Illinois). Unfortunately, that one mistake erases the benefit all of your commendable choices.
That’s rich! A city that is basically bankrupt considering giving away money to the least productive of its citizens. Genius!
Chicago can’t pay the bills they have now. Hundreds of millions in debt with the useless Covid shutdowns, loss of hundreds of businesses, jobs and out migration the city is bleeding revenue but, yes but, the city leaders will reach into the secret vault and pull out a new pile of cash to throw down the drain on another wasteful program that will cure or solve nothing. Get to work white folks a ghetto resident needs your money.
Another step in the tiptoe to totalitarianism and gov’t control of the population. Blue cities leading the socialist charge with the low-hanging fruit first up.
Look for the implementation of digital wallets and digital I.D.’s for the “test group.”
The broke city guarantees income.
This is not about sensible policy, it is about getting elected. The voting public has repeatedly demonstrated that sensible policy proposals don’t win elections here. Spinning pleasant fantasies and getting the press to buy into them is what wins elections here. And if you are lucky you might get a nice big bailout from your fairy godmother and make all those fantasies come true, at least for a while longer, and get reelcted over and over until that big pension kicks in. Can’t blame the pols for giving people what they want.
Absolutely correct. Yes, politicians are crassly buying votes of the functionally-illiterate unemployed self-described “victims of society”, using taxpayer monies to assure themselves re-election.
TONS of jobs out there for those that want to work. Manufacturing is begging for workers, plenty of health care positions open, and restaurants cannot fill positions (even with generous signing bonuses!). Whoever said, “The best cure for poverty is a job” was absolutely correct…
Here’s a novel idea – how about guaranteed work? Let’s instead look at ways we can create jobs. Politicians don’t care that their policies kill jobs. Make the people that actually work provide the guaranteed income to those that don’t work and you’ll find that the people that work will leave.
When President Nixon reopened China in the early 70’s, he landed there during a winter snowfall. One of the vivid pictures on TV was thousands of men in simple uniforms standing at attention with push brooms on their shoulders. They had been sweeping the airport runways clean for his arrival. This is what guaranteed work has always meant to me. But now, we have those TSA sluggos and sluggetttes who guard empty hallways at OHare and Midway and we have the Illinois Air Team doing things they can’t explain to check the exhaust of our cars. Sweeping the runways makes… Read more »
Now, hold on a second. Do I understand your position to be that people should have to work to get a check? Don’t you understand the impact that might have on our culture?
When low income baby daddy spends his $500 before the month is up and attempts to extort the mama out of her $500 by stealing her car and kidnapping their child, we will have more and more of the resisting arrest injuries we are plagued with right now!
The road to serfdom.
Unfortunately, some are satisfied with this situation. This started under LBJ’s misbegotten Great Society “War on Poverty”, now we have generations accustomed to living on the dole, “work” is a dirty word…
Poor white people cant apply, only for the chosen ones