Category: News and Opinion

Then use John Bogle's rate of return, as shown in this Wall Street Journal article, as an assumption for the pension funds, and start paying up now rather than put it off with interest.

Of course, robbing future generations and destroying the future is exactly what those who control our institutions have been doing for nearly 30 years, and there is no evidence they want to stop. I only hope that in the end, when the consequences are inescapable, people will not be fooled by some demagouge into blaming some powerless group.

So Governor Paterson has announced that local governments in the portion of the state outside New York City will be able to put off paying into the state pension funds the amount required to keep them solvent. They will not have to pay more 9.5% for most workers and 17.5% for police and fire workers — a small fraction of what New York City is paying right now! The money would be borrowed from the pension funds themselves. And what would happen if future residents of those localities are unwilling or unable to pay the money back, a near certainty? I suppose the state — including residents of New York City — would have to do so instead. With the state once again offering nothing to New York City.

Another generational theft by a member of Generation Greed, sure to be approved by all the other members of Generation Greed in the legislature. They just keep running up those guaranteed, “contractual” benefits for themselves, and deferring the costs, with no limit. As I said in my previous post, evolutionary change won’t do. Only bankruptcy — or a reduction in the value of past debts and pensions via massive inflation — can help this state now.

I read in the NY Observer that Governor Paterson slammed “good government” groups for being “drunk with power.” “Here are good government groups who are always talking about what government is doing, and no one knows who their donors are…It's about time they realize they have been drunk with power, just like the legislators,” he said. Well, I donate to one of them, because I see coverage of state and local government issues ebbing away in the for-profit media, and that group has a website that produces original new content on state and local government issues as well as links to that for-profit media. Even if I often disagree, it’s much better than nothing, and I’m free to comment there. So do I see the Governor’s remarks as those of a desperate man lashing out, well, blindly? Not necessarily.