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.
Invest? What returns are available to the folks from whom the earnings are confiscated?
Redistribution
When one of the recipients of the free money wins the Power Ball prize this program will be celebrated as a grand success, and become a model for other free money programs.
“Direct investment in low income people.” Just make sure they’re sober on election day.
With mail in ballots and drop boxes, they don’t even need to be driven to the polls any more.
In my neighborhood the polling place is inside a public housing project and magically there are hundreds of people I’ve never seen before walking around on election day who disappear again when the polls close. Must be a coincidence.
If every level of Illinois government had a guaranteed income program, we’d all be rich. I can’t wait for the Mosquito Abatement District to offer one.
Lol! The mosquito trucks blasting a greasy white cloud behind them. Kids following closely behind on their bikes. They probably all got the jumps in their later years or thought of guaranteed income.
Sorry Toni. There’s an old southern expression that fits here: “Poor folks have poor ways.”
Cook County must have more money than it needs to be so generous. Funny, I didn’t hear anything about the county getting caught up on all its debt obligations.