-- 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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In the private sector employees create value in the form of goods and services that can be sold, for profit and is in demand. Creating economic activity and wealth. In the public sector employees are not hired to create anything of value. They fulfill decades of government “services”, can’t be downsized easily, are politically entrenched, silted into autocratic narrow and un creative positions, duplicative and inefficient. With no profit motive to create value no no incentive to control expenses, government employees are largely just ever increasing expenses with ever decreasing return to the people who pay their salaries. It is… Read more »
“Recalculating the costs of fringe benefits produced enough savings for Dart’s office to spare all but 63 employees.” Why are the costs of benefits only recalculated when there’s a budget shortfall? What’s the perceived value of these benefits to begin with? Seems like there is no actual cost savings, just some accounting gymnastics.