Ted Dabrowski joined the Shaun Thompson Show this week to talk about the why pension obligation bonds are bad news for taxpayers, why there are two classes of workers in Illinois and how close Illinois came to being the nation’s fiscal bum before the federal bailouts were doled out.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Four reasons why the state pension buyout program is problematic for taxpayers
- Illinois carjacking bill falls short; organized retail crime measure more promising
- Pension obligation bonds prioritize public sector workers, stiff taxpayers
- Woke ideology and conduct now mandatory for faculty at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Mass incarceration: a weaponized myth
- Lawmakers vote to subsidize Illinois’ border communities. It’s a failed strategy.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
The rating agencies and government have colluded to tie the middle class to all this debt. Enslaving them. Its a win win for government and the raters. The raters customers get higher yields, with the insurance guarantee that government will have no problem raising taxes forever and putting bonds ahead of all else in the event of default. Government gets easy money collateral-free loans forever, well the people are the collateral. The middle class just gets shafted, everyone else wins.
Illinois is a feudal state composed of lords, vassals and serfs.
There are too many vassals (public union members) and not enough serfs to support them. Sooner or later the lords will demote most of the vassals to the serf class. It will be a big surprise to the vassals, who mistakenly thought they were lords.
And you vassals? You do everything you can to assure one-party rule. You cheer for governance by executive order. You are thrilled when any dissenting voices are shut down.
Keep this up, and the lords will no longer need the service of their loyal vassals. With your help, the lords will have total control. Do you think you will be rewarded for your loyalty? You will be serfs like the rest of us. They won’t need you any more.
Social security has a cap on benefits; public pensions also should caped.
And in theory, Social Security will cut benefits 20% when the trust fund surplus runs out in the mid 2030’s if nothing is done. Sounds like Illinois will have to do this in the future as well no matter what the Illinois courts say.
When does the welfare trust fund run out?
when the costs of doing so exceeds the resulting value to society
Unacceptable for Illinois (#1-2 in overall tax burden; #1-2 in political corruption; #51 in fiscal condition, behind Puerto Rico; among lowest of all states in home appreciation; and captured by the public unions) politicians not to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot for pension reform. The root cause of the rot in Illinois: (1) fabulous pensions, medical and salaries for public employees, (2) decades/decades of massive public corruption; and (3) little or no effective oversight of key public sector activities (ie property taxes, unemployment payments, and effective governance/oversight). These three areas (pensions and public corruption and real/effective controls/oversight of… Read more »
We’d be in a lot better shape had they actually funded the pensions, I guess that’s part of the corruption you’re stating. Daley, Edgar, and others Declared “pension holidays and the unions said nothing. They got their raises, their benefits, and kept kicking back to those very same pols. My question is this. Where is the grass roots campaign to put some questions on the ballot? Are there any members of the state legislature that will go along with a plan for financial solvency in Illinois? Wirepoints and IL Policy have been writing about these topics for years now. California… Read more »
I don’t think there was ever a mathematically sound scenario, pension holiday or not, under which the pensions could be fully funded.
Like the saying goes, if you default after the bank lends you a little bit of money, its your problem. But if you default after the bank lends you a large amount of money, it becomes the bank’s problem.
The large debt owed to pensioners is so large the default won’t be the taxpayers’ problem, it will become the pensioners problem.
The debt is based on anticipated payments, which could be reduced. Get rid of the automatic 3% bump, cap pensions at 10 grand a month. Tax pension over 5000 a month, Raise retirement age, etc.
If that’s not enough, ratchet down all existing pensionS above 10 grand a month.
Which state legislator has proposed a referendum question?
How about that puke McSweeney? There are so many on the government cheese that it’s hard to get them to vote to reduce their own pensions Unless you get that Under control, nothing can change substantively.
We already know all those things. So, what else is new under the Sun?
Republicans like the cheese too. They’ll pose, but won’t do anythjng
I hope they all go broke too. They took and took from us and left us high and dry by running off to other states to live not spending their pensions in our state. They left us with the burden of paying for their upkeep.
I still believe that the pensions were fully funded by the taxpayer regardless of all the pension holidays. Do you recall any time when you received any notice that we received a reduction on our property taxes stating due to a pension holiday that you do not have to make your required pensions payments via property taxes? We continued to pay our yearly “required” amount which is conveniently hidden in various contracts such as the 100% pension pickups for teachers in Rockford. Now on the property tax bills are some breakdowns for pension payments. My Rockford home has approx $1,100… Read more »
The simple truth is what we all know instinctively: you can’t trust politicians regardless of party affiliation. They tend to vote in their own interest most of the time. Beyond that “promises” are soon forgotten. Remember “the new state lottery (1974-ish) will be used reduce property taxes and (exclusively?) pay for pubic education.” Well, yes, but not in the predominant way it was promoted to do when the public was asked to vote on it. What really happens is that most taxes without specific legal “ear marks” can be shuffled to other purposes at the discretion of the governor.
You are correct. What the pols say to get elected is different from they actually do for many of the voters who voted them in. Maybe like I mentioned earlier that lie detectors be hooked up to them once they take office. It’s true about the lottery. It was promoted as giving property tax relief but when the money came in at first in droves the money that was earmarked for schools from the budget was lowered by expectations of huge lottery proceeds. Look at today. How much money from cannabis taxes are going for property tax relief? In the… Read more »
There is not now nor ever was the “funding” for the lavish pensions. The Democrats made promises based upon promises and Unicorn urine. This state never had the income in revenue and then the theft and corruption combined to create the massive underfunded condition. Edgar kicked the can down the road and has it named after him, it’s called the EDGAR RAMP. He was no better than a liberal Democrat.
Daley #2 let a nephew “borrow” 80 million dollars from the CPD pension fund. It was never paid back as the nephew went bankrupt. $80 million over 30 yrs, a retirement goal, ends up being almost a billion$$$ when compounded interest rates are calculated. The fund wasnt shorted $80 million, it was shorted 1 billion dollars. That’s a hit on the bottom line.
Time for state employees to join the 21st century and fund their own retirement
Most of the private sector has a defined contribution system rather than a defined benefit system and so should the public sector. The market place has figured out over the years defined benefit systems are unsustainable.
Yes, maybe so. But, if I recall it correctly from the news of some 25-ish years ago there is another motivational reason that retirement income funding was changed to 401k’s as well. I believe that the existing pension fund assets for such retirements were deemed by the courts to have been the property of the company(ies?) rather than the property of the eventual retirees of those companies, and that created a source of wealth company managements started using for other purposes.