-- 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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I have a bone to pick on this issue. It seems that many are screaming, “but…free market!” The problem with this logic is that it fails to acknowledge that food trucks use the public way, exclusively. They do not pay property taxes. To be able to just plop a truck in the middle of the street in front of any restaurant that pays the bills causes a pragmatic problem of harm to the city, in that it undermines the ecosystem of taxation as it is currently structured. There is nothing barring a food truck from renting a private plot of… Read more »