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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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Nothing will come of this business no matter how offensive and damaging the leaders of this state are. We will still be led by the democrats of Cook County/Chicago. 90% of Illinois has absolutely nothing in common with them and they basically detest the rural population as a bunch of Hicks and rubes not worthy of having a voice in the politics of the state. This will never change.
You should be aware that the effort is by no means limited to rural areas. They are seeking to pass resolutions in support from communities all over the state outside of the Chicago area. Their vision is basically a new state ex-Chicago and its leftist suburbs.
I think it’s a big freaking waste of time and resources. Focus on fixing the pension problem.
There is no pension problem. The public sector unions screw the taxpayers over and ride off into the sunset. See, no problem!
So close. The public sector workers collect their pension as agreed upon by their employer and the state. The US and Illinois constitution prevents you from stealing from these retirees simply because you didn’t demand your elected representatives put aside the money properly. You are correct that there isn’t a pension problem but rather a fiscal discipline problem. Pay your bills on time and they won’t grow so large. To solve this problem the state will need more fiscal discipline by cutting spending and raising taxes.
Good point- for decades, neither the voters nor the politicians they elect have shown much interest in actually paying the pensions.
I don’t think paying your bills “on time” is the main fiscal problem in Illinois. It’s that there are too many bills to pay. Spending discipline is what the state needs and lowering expenses is what will get Illinois back on track to fiscal sanity, not raising revenue. Illinois is the perfect example of people not wanting to pay for the amount of government they want. Most everybody loves government money (both federal and state money) but they don’t want to be taxed at a rate to fully pay for it. At the federal level both republicans and democrats love… Read more »
Paying your bills on time includes making actuarial payments for your pensions so that your budget is truly balanced. Instead we short the pensions over $4 billion per year. We are essentially treating pensions like a negative amortization loan, not even keeping up with the “interest”. If we paid our bills on time our leaders would be forced to decide if we should cut spending or need to raise taxes. Instead we choose not to pay the entire bill and avoid making any difficult decisions. As you’ve correctly noted, both parties love to spend and neither party wants to be… Read more »
Thanks for the lesson on what paying bills on time includes. Now can you do the lesson about the job of educating kids includes, at a minimum, making sure they can read and do math? Apparently many of those with jobs in education missed that basic lesson, although they seem well versed in the intricacies of how to increase their pensions.
The job must be much harder intellectually than you and so many others not every having to do that contemplate. You all seem to think that teachers en masse are a bunch of ignorant, slovenly, do-nothing dolts. Undoubtedly some likely are, but surely that’s not nearly as prevalent as those who care enough to do their best otherwise. There are numerous problematic factors in this process of educating the young people almost literally all over this country that “youse guys” out there in the “real world” simply never seem to discuss here let alone even contemplate, it seems. In short,… Read more »
Yes, there is a problem educating young people all over this country. Despite spending more per pupil than any other country, our students rank 40th in achievement. It’s well past time for the people running our education system to figure out how to do better, rather than offer word salads of excuses about why that can’t be done.
Improving educational performance seems so easy to those who have no personal ongoing direct experience in doing it except within their own families. For the public at large, though, if the goals were fewer and simpler chances are they would be easier to attain. But, public education always tries politically to be all things to all people, an impossibility. We need to streamline the goals and narrow the number of students whom we define as reasonably educable to meet them. Otherwise we stay locked in a swamp of an impossible numbers of expectations blithely presuming all students will succeed regardless… Read more »
Agree. But I think you would find the biggest objections to your sensible suggestions would come from Becky Pringle, Randi Weingarten and Stacy Davis Gates.
I gave my thoughts as a general idea as to how I’d like public schools to operate. But, inevitably they are run by the states and the local school boards, meaning politics on more of a local area rather than perfectly following a national model for schools. Predominating political opinions vary from one local area to another, thus the set of objectives varies as well. What ought to well in one area won’t in another most likely. Chicago politics is more liberal than most and to some degree stems from such a variety of ethnic areas as well as sociological… Read more »
Maybe you can agree with a simple lesson I’ve learned in life:
If you consider yourself a competent person, but are struggling to do what others in your situation can do, the odds are you are doing it wrong.
39 other countries do better than the US despite the fact that we spend more money. Odds are we are doing it wrong.
My answer has to be the one you’d probably not like; I give your question a big “maybe” as my reply. Again, what a school strives to teach is bound up with local political pressures as to what’s emphasized, what’s absent or at least de-emphasized, who should be encouraged to study given subjects, how they should be taught, etc. A school doing well does so for a variety of reasons with general community support rather than active strong criticism playing a key role. Excess criticism from various divergent voices leads not to strong general student engagement but to chaotic stress… Read more »
James, the truth is I don’t hate teachers. But I am angry with them. Because they seem to want to go down every possible avenue: it’s the kids, it’s the parents, it’s the voters, it’s politics!
What they seem to resist entirely is the obvious: we’re doing it wrong.
I agree that we are doing it wrong—a truly huge arguably wasteful taxpayer expense pursuing too many disparate goals and with pitifully poor results for way too much of it.
I’m interested in 3 changes (“to do better”) you would make that would significantly improve the ranking of our educational system.
1. Change curriculum that is clearly ineffective. Go back to basics- phonics and standard arithmetic instruction.
2. Eliminate the “social justice”elements of the current instruction. Our schools have been turned into progressive madrasas.
3. Drastically reduce administrative functions to concentrate on classroom learning.
4. Set up standards of behavior and enforce them. Stop leaning into excuses for bad behavior, then complaining that this produces results you don’t like.
5. Eliminate teacher unions. They tell us they are professionals. Stop demanding to be paid as if they are assembly line workers.
Off the top of my head.
All fantastic ideas.
The first 4 are the result of the administration and its decisions. Yet you continue to blame the teachers union for demanding to negotiate wages and benefits as is their constitutional right. Perhaps you should vote to elect a school board that supports those first four positions. If you want to eliminate teachers unions you will need to change the Illinois Constitution.
Now get to work on these issues and stop blaming teachers. Clearly that doesn’t work at all.
I appreciate the response! The curriculum changes would have to be state-wide or nation-wide to have any statistical effect. Most individuals on this particular site seem to prefer local control.
I forgot a big one: stop promoting and graduating kids who can’t read or do math.
Another administration decision. Go get em PP.
The biggest issue is what Bill Gates said in 2017 to the Council of Great City Schools: “When disaggregated by race, we see two Americas. One where white students perform along the lines of the best in the world—with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America, where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece.” Few really want to discuss this but it’s absolutely true. PISA scores (a nearly worldwide test of 15 year olds, taken every couple of years) put white Americans near… Read more »
“Few really want to discuss this but it’s absolutely true.”
That’s because there is no reward to discuss this issue. That’s why most parents in good neighborhoods in the suburbs are happy with the education that is offered. They hear all the complaints about lower performing schools and they know the problem. Since there is no reward in discussing the issues these parents rightfully just worry about their own kids and we all shrug our shoulders in unison.
You’re welcome for the lesson PP. You may understand it but clearly the average Illinois voter doesn’t. Now on to the next lesson where you continue to struggle. Schools provide students with the opportunity to learn to read and do math. They do not have the ability to force someone to learn anything. Teachers are assigned duties by the school district as to what to teach and how to teach it. This is called curriculum. The curriculum is decided on by the district and approved by a the school board members. These members are chosen by the voters or a… Read more »
Keep telling us that the school system is held captive to the nefarious voters. Maybe someday we’ll believe it.
No institution in the country is more insular than the education system. It is completely run by and for educators.
Keep playing the victim and pretend the voters are powerless. That’s how the current elected leaders like it.
And nearly all of education is filled with midwits too. Nearly all the smart men and most of the smart women were mostly run out of the industry and now it’s filled to the brim with AWFLs, pink haired freaks, LGBTQP+ and MAP activists, and all other sorts of crazy people. The gatekeeping in the education industry is so terrible. You can’t make it through any education program at any university without being indoctrinated in far-left idiotic ideas: all discrepancies in scores between races are caused by racism (which completely ignore PISA scores showing that minority Americans score HIGHER than… Read more »
I totally agree with your comment. Not being serious about funding pensions really took off with the Edgar Ramp. In the mid-90’s the republicans held power and they and the democrats agreed unanimously to put off funding pensions so they could spend money on projects that would be popular with voters and get incumbents re-elected. Ted Dabrowski did an analysis of the Edgar Ramp 10 years ago and calculated that about 40% of the underfunding at that time was due to the Edgar Ramp. I wonder if Ted did a new analysis if that percentage of underfunding would even be… Read more »