-- 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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Martire is a union hack fraud shill — whatever comes out of his mouth is paid propaganda from Illinois’ crooked and corrupt public employee union racketeers.
Ralph neglects to point out that Illinois provides relatively little State funding for government schools. That makes State expenditures appear low, but we pay the costs thru local property taxes, which don’t show up in the State budget.
So we only need look at the General Fund expenditures and adjust for population and inflation and we pop the champagne bottles and guzzle with relish. If this were true, then tax revenue would have more than kept pace, adjusted for population and inflation. Bull. This spending is paid for with profligate borrowing and handouts from a currently-pliable Fed (itself addicted to borrow and spend economics). While Professor Martire sits in his executive director chair pontificating about population and inflation, the total cash outlay goes up every year like clockwork. Multiple layers of essential services, along with their benefits and… Read more »
Even Ralph Martire agrees that employee raises were funded by shorting pension contributions. Time to pay that money back. I’m going to apply his tired revenue-centric philosophy to all societal woes. Living in poverty? Just get a better paying job. Not making enough in commissions? Just raise the price of your product. Second, to make matters worse, elected officials in both parties approved the irresponsible practice of underfunding the actuarially required contributions owed to the state’s pension systems for decades. They did this to maintain some of the spending on services which revenue growth was not covering because of the… Read more »