-- 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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Stop paying all stay-at-home salaries due to fiscal emergency and pandemic; THEN offer employment on a priority basis to furloughed employees to do necessary jobs. School teachers can probably learn to assist at treatment centers, hand out methadone, clean busses, file papers, take notes and write minutes, substitute for other “necessary employees” who are sick, investigate welfare rolls, search records for dead people on public benefits, etc. All those jobs governments say they need but with no budget to do. Government officials have broad power during state, municipal and national emergencies.
This article is a sad commentary on liberal progressive economics. Which is sad considering Chicago has it’s very own world famous multiple Nobel prize winning school of economics on the south side. According to them, “City government is a stimulus”, which we all know is complete nonsense. City government is a taxing entity that produces nothing, takes from residents, and redistributes to the political class and their constituents. The city is confiscating a dollar from my pocket, giving it to a politically connected streets and sans employee as salary, and they call that a stimulus. It’s not, its just taking… Read more »
the best case: government spending adds 1x to GDP. At the best case….