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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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Thought experiment As the government takes over more and more health care coverage, they set payment rates. When Illinois is out of cash they expect providers to still provide services and wait 6-12 months to receive payment that is also below cost. So if they are going to start paying tuition, maybe they should start mandating tuition levels or academic pay schedules. And the academic staff and administrative staff has to continue to teach and work even if the state is 6-12 months behind in payments. The colleges could then reduce academic and other staff salaries in proportion to the… Read more »
Not surprisingly, this is another IL pol proposal that will accelerate outward migration, especially for those with higher incomes. In other words, it’s another stupid idea.
Isn’t it amazing on how generous the pols are with taxpayers money! Forced redistribution of wealth. Tax someone into oblivion and give it to someone else. Then once we are in oblivion (totally broke) we will be the recipients of tax dollars from someone else who was taxed into oblivion IF there are any taxpayers left. A real Catch 22.
The real story here is that state universities are so -s h i tty- that the state has to give away two years tuition for free just to attract students. “College enrollment has dropped for years in Illinois, from a high of more than 930,000 students in 2010 to just under 768,000 in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available.” (9/13/2019) https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-cb-fall-enrollment-2019-illinois-universities-20190905-ajhizgv6sfbltesmim732kiuma-story.html Of course there is *fine print*. I’m sure tuition will be means tested, so that kids with ‘rich’ parents (i.e. $70,000+ household income) won’t qualify, and those who do, must still take student loans to… Read more »
Just another welfare program. No doubt they’ll happily invite those with Down Syndrome to attend college…and the congenitally blind to attend pilot school.
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually then suddenly.”
Such programs simply throw money at already-BLOATED educational institutions whose mission has so deviated from the original (providing an actual education, rather than indoctrination) that they’re caricatures of their former selves.
Also, most people SHOULD NOT go to college. It’s an expensive (and proposed “all expenses paid”) extension of adolescence for vast numbers of people. A law like this does NOTHING to hold educators and students accountable for actually USING THE LOOT WISELY.
It is about indoctrination. You notice they do nothing to put any of these kids in trade school because then it would be more difficult to indoctrinate them.
Many trades out there where you can easily make $100K a year and there’s a shortage of workers.
…and no one in China is going to fix plumbing in IL. Not to mention that in our “everyone should go to college” idiocy, half of all people don’t graduate (but they still carry the debt) and of those who do, fully half of them end up in jobs that don’t require their credential. It’s a SCAM. But you can get degrees in hobbies (e.g., photography), in arts where in reality your job depends on a try-out, not a piece of paper, and in made-up Leftist idiocy like “women’s studies” or “African studies.” We used to joke about degrees in… Read more »