“This, in my opinion, is the public issue of this decade,” according to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as quoted by Bloomberg News. “Things that used to be sacred cows, that used to be the third rail, no longer are. They’ve been replaced by the unaffordability, absolute unaffordability.” He is referring to public employee pensions and retirement benefits, and I agree, unfortunately, that it will be the issue of the decade, and the morality of it will vary from place to place.
In some places, such as New Jersey, public employees have contributed a great deal to their own pensions, and it is the employer (former taxpayers) who didn't put in the required amount, to get more spending with less in taxes. In California and some other states, the public retirees do not get Social Security. Even in those places, however, the unions are guilty for cutting deals with the politicians to get undeserved, retroactive pension enhancements and collectively engaging in schemes to inflate pension payments relative to pay earned on the job. At the other extreme, with public service recipients and taxpayers nearly blameless, is New York City. And everywhere, Generation Greed has the same solution — solve the issue of the decade, caused by older generations making themselves better off at the expense of the future, by making younger generations worse off while avoiding politically difficult conflict by not asking those older generations to give anything back.
