-- 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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When people see a near doubling of their state income tax where every cent goes straight to “somebody else’s” pension, the exodus will increase. The last attempt at a 5% rate left the state empirically even worse. As any such increase only gets flushed into the vacuum left by decades of mismanagement and debt, debt guaranteed by laws and favors implementing what amounts to the serfdom of the private sector in Illinois, where “public service” has turned into the public servicing bought votes.