-- 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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Chicago and IL are, of course, national poster children for taxpayer abuse, but this one takes the cake. Suburban teachers also, on average, easily outpace private sector employees for rate of income increases. No wonder why your PTs, already outrageously high, continue to become even more so.
AND ARE THE KIDS GETTING A BETTER EDUCATION??……..NO
Market forces are at play here as is the case the for nearly every other service or product. Apparently the public at large is willing to pay so far.
Market forces are at play? Market forces do not reward utter failure to accomplish the goal of the business. If market forces were at play, the public school system would have been shut down years ago. That’s why unions fight school choice tooth and nail.
You seem to be confusing unions buying politicians with market forces.
Maybe, but maybe not. Again, the public gives tacit approval every time a salary contract causes expenses to increase without a general uproar causing things to be quite different next time. I have no such recollection of that occurring to any notable and lasting extent anywhere at all, do you? Apparently any such uproar fades quicly and become accepted as the “cost of doing business.”
You seem to think the public only pays agreeably when a product or service notably improves. Not so much! Why, for example, do so many jars or other containers take almost inhuman amounts of effort to open without some mechanical device as help. Think of, say, a jar of pickles where you have to struggle mightily to get the lid unscrewed. Every time I encounter that idea I’m wondering how the companies who are so lacking in intelligence as to how their packages can be easily opened are not only still in business but charging more every year for the… Read more »
Yes! The American packaging industry is awful on that opening problem. Seriously.
If my choices are a difficult jar of pickles, or botulism, I’ll take the tightly sealed jar of pickles, thank you very much.
My point is that there MUST be some better way to store something in terms of the ease of opening it. How can a company be in business selling a particular product and seem never to consider that issue? The concept applies to various sorts of food products even to include cereal boxes where the glue holding the carton together is way too strong, followed by an inner sealed package that can also be very hard to break open. There are many other such examples. I mentioned this aggravation only because of Prozac’s comment: “Market forces do not reward utter… Read more »
Mark, I wrote a rather lengthy rebuttal to the pickle analogy, but your system said it was quarantined to the spam folder?
Seems we have some very intelligent downvoters here. Downvote a post about a technical issue with a reply. This is why I pay no attention to downvotes.
Fixed. It’s live now. Don’t know why the spam software Thing didn’t like that.
Let me try my hand at the pickle analogy: Pickles are an important component in the health of the community, so the government sets up pickle factories for which each citizen must pay taxes. The pickle factory produces jars that don’t open easily, but the pickle producers insist that it is impossible to produce jars with better lids. An entrepreneur wants to open a competing pickle factory, believing he can produce better lids. The government allows him to do so, but continues to impose taxes to support the existing pickle factory. They insist that is the only way to make… Read more »
I applaud your clever reply here! But, as long as government workers are allowed to bargain for wages the public will have to decide whether their demands MUST be met. If they want social peace and continuity of service the public will cave in to such worker demands. If they place a higher value elsewhere they will win but at the expense of disruption of such daily services. Winning by either side comes at the expense of the other as has always been true. Do you want continuity in your life, or do you want life-disrupting discontinuity while trying to… Read more »
So Dirty Harry finally shows the true face of what we’re dealing with here. Not market forces at all but threats that keep the long-running game going. Give me what I demand or I will hurt you!
Maybe sometime we can see a defense of the actual product being provided. Until then, we can expect more threats.
The public “appreciates” government workers’ service every time a higher wage contract is signed by its representatives without sufficient uproar to create a different result next time.
Work for this low wage or we will hurt you by taking away your pay and insurance. Sounds like a negotiation where both sides use their respective leverage. Muh…seems like a fair contract.
You misunderstand. I don’t want to pay them low wages. I want to fire them, and the administrators also, for non-performance.
If that’s what you want how could they hurt you by not working? You should want them to strike.
I would want them to strike, if we could fire striking teachers and hire replacements, as happened with air traffic controllers under Reagan. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, as the saying goes. Pretty sure if we survived replacement air traffic controllers, we could survive replacement teachers and administrators.
But that’s not the case, is it? Teacher unions also know they could be replaced without much difficulty. That’s why they made sure that striking teachers cannot be replaced, but must be “bargained” with.
===That’s why they made sure that striking teachers cannot be replaced, but must be “bargained” with.===
The Illinois voters decided that. If you want to change it you will need 71 and 36 along with support from the voters.
Once you get that done let us know who all these teachers are that are sitting on the sidelines waiting to replace the current teachers for less pay and benefits. lol
You pointy wire doom grifters sure are funny.
Ah yes, it’s always “the voters”. As for replacement teachers, not sure they could do any worse than what we have now. But I bet the fired teachers would enjoy their replacement jobs at Starbucks. Maybe then they would find out that they don’t own the job they think they are entitled to.
Still waiting for someone to defend the schools on the basis of the value of the product they provide…..
71 and 36. That’s all that matters. The voters are happy and it doesn’t matter what the 9% Facebook doom grifters think. Your dream of firing all the teachers and not having any replacements will never happen. Get 71 and 36 and then your opinion will matter. Until then just keep on grifting.
You are very confident in your political power. I wonder why that would be? Because the general public just loves paying some of the highest taxes in the nation, while the schools churn out “graduates” who can barely read and do math? We all just love teachers and are willing to impoverish ourselves to make their lives better? Aww, that’s so sweet. Is that really what you are trying to sell?
We all understand the source of your political power. We also understand that the only way to improve education is to break that power.
Extremely confident. When the opposition dreams of firing all the teachers without any plan to replace them I know they will never be in power. 71 and 36.
Why do you assume that there would be no plan to replace them? Because I didn’t specify anything in a comment?
Bill, if Springfield wanted to limit teacher union power or fix schools it could do it in many other ways without changing the constitution. The new amendment only grants the right to bargain collectively for whatever teachers want, but that doesn’t mean saying yes to all demands. If Springfield, including the AG, argued for a limited interpretation of the amendment our courts (correction, their courts) would likely go along. And there’s always the nuclear option of entirely reconstituting the Chicago school district, as Michigan did with Detroit’s. Yes, the supermajority of radical progressives will block any of that, but they… Read more »
===If Springfield, including the AG, argued for a limited interpretation of the amendment our courts (correction, their courts) would likely go along=== Argue away mark. Didn’t you argue one of the dangers of this clause was how broadly it could be interpreted? Did you not mean it at the time? Just grifting? The clause that states “no law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively” might be interpreted broadly. Withholding labor is a technique when collectively bargaining and the courts could see any change as a diminishment of those… Read more »
Isn’t it telling that this conversation started with a teacher trying to sell that teacher salaries and benefits are just the ordinary result of “market forces”, and ends with Bill from Oswego smugly asserting the unbounded political power that teachers command?
Pretty much says it all.
Bill, you needn’t keep reminding us that your side holds all the political power. That’s what makes IL a national showplace of the failure of progressive policies, excessive public union clout, the arrogance of one-party rule and more. That’s part of why we are here. It’s why we already get so much attention from the national press. It’s also why I said earlier, correctly, that our courts are likely to interpret the amendment expansively.