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.
The teacher retirees may stimulate the economy by spending some of their massive pensions, but the IL taxpayers who have to pay for the pensions depress the economy because they don’t have that money to spend on goods and services. Therefore, the point of the article is flawed.