-- 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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Just like social security, public pensions should be capped, and double dipping made unlawful
The article and the discussion thus far do not speak of the fallback protection associated with 1) merger with state system that can’t file for bankruptcy; 2) state bailout 3) federal bailout such as Teamsters are already receiving. These would be less menacing if the Chicago Schools system were the only underfunded and mismanaged public retirement program. However, the problem is widespread and growing, alongside Social Security, Medicare, Veterans, Federal Employees together with the statistics on Boomers and their successors who haven’t saved enough. Older workers increasingly hold on to jobs from which they can’t afford to retire while younger… Read more »
Or rather, how many fat chickens in Chicago and IL can sit on the fence before it collapses? Or the ‘first law of holes’ – if in a hole, first stop digging. These common sense middle America analogies are what’s being violated by the Leftist Democrat ‘machine’ in IL every day. The latest malfeasance being Johnson wanting a +$1B ‘loan’ to be counted as income for CPS so to hand over to the CTU, for he and Democrats don’t intend to ever pay off the debt.
Rome was also once a great city before falling into total ruin.
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit and NYC aren’t far behind Chicago in the race to insolvency.
Are the chickens being over-fed? Perhaps they’ll come home to roost and Sista’ Foxx can figure out a way to send them to Austin or Martha’s Vineyard on one-way tickets or to one of Pritzker’s horse farms where they can graze with the thoroughbreds.
I’m afraid this country is being divided into two groups: government employees with rich pay and pensions, time for mandatory political activism, and political clout to control the growing national government (and thereby to increase all three of those); versus the private economy, getting squeezed in size and prosperity while having to apologize for any success and thank the government employees for letting them keep any of it. Even smart people who get coöpted by a government employer start to turn into cogs in the big government / DNC machine.
Yes, the CTU is a problem. What can be done to reduce their influence? Calling them out doesn’t seem to make a difference.
Fire all the strikers. Give them 3 days to report. If they refuse tough crap go find another 9 month job with lavish compensation.
And the brain dead clowns known as Chicagoans sit there quietly and do absolutely nothing. At the next election, a new slate of idiot democrats will be run out and the clowns will dutifully vote for them. No resistance. Not even a peep as to why there is no resistance. Does that not tell you all you need to know about a docile subjugated group of slaves. At least to their masters, slaves have sale value. You clowns are nothings with no value.
“I agree that the city is the greatest in the world, but it’s also among the worst-managed.”
How can this be? I call BS.