-- 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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The pot could be made right by re-directing the Federal and State funding incentives toward those absorbing the enormous environmental/economic risk of the endeavor: foremost, Manteno property owner/taxpayers, then concentric circles of smaller risk outward from there (surrounding locations, Illinois taxpayers).
The problem with all these take-money-from-the-many-and-give-it-to-me-and-my-chums political schemes is: the pot isn’t right when profits are built upon the losses of the politicians’ victims.
The pot can be made right by distributing equitable portions of the presumed profits to those bearing the proximate risks.