Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Saturday, April 28, 2018

The War Between Public Pensioners And Tax Donkeys Is Heating Up

The migration is only beginning, but that's only half the story.

You know it's serious when the newspaper of record finally reports it: A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash (New York Times).

It's a long article but the summary is brief: corrupt politicos promised the moon to public employees, and now the fiscal chickens of insolvency are coming home to roost.

Public pension obligations are rising so fast that even repeated tax increases can't keep up.

This is setting up a second front in the war between entitled Baby Boomers and younger taxpayers who pay most of the federal and local taxes. Public pensioners are a subset of the entitled Baby Boomers, but their pensions can't be paid with borrowed money like Social Security and Medicare; public pension obligations come out of local and state taxes, and as those obligations soar then public services must be slashed and taxes jacked up by annual double-digit increases.

So there is a war brewing between public pensioners and the Tax Donkeys: the Unprotected who pay local property taxes on their homes, state and local taxes on their incomes, sales taxes on their purchases, junk fees on local government services, and so on.

Corrupt politicos created the war by over-promising benefits to public employees and ignoring fiscal realities. By the time the bill comes due, the politicos who rubber-stamped the unaffordable promises are themselves gorging at the public-pension retiree trough.

Not every public employee is receiving gold-plated pensions and benefits, of course, but that doesn't negate the reality that nationally, public pensions are increasing faster than government revenues and the returns earned by the pension programs.

More

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Entitled baby boomers! Yup, saved nothing but wants Gen X to bow down and worship them (oh yea, and pay for their failure to adequately save). Now I have to hope the Tide Pod Eaters actually put it together to even have a chance at recouping my SS.

Anonymous said...

837
You do know the meaning of Entitlement - right?

It means one OWNS it. One has TITLE to it.
When the criminal US government took the SS money by force and established a Trust Fund, it gave those who paid the money Title or Ownership of it.

We are entitled to receive the money plus interest.

Problem is: the criminal government “borrowed” from the Trust Fund. We all know that is a misnomer, one cannot “borrow” from a Trust Fund, hence the meaning of Trust Fund. It can only be used for ONE purpose, that to which it was Trusted.

Now the US government owes money to those of us who had Title to that Trust Fund.

Thank you

Anonymous said...

So the public employees all have formed unions that funnel their dues to politicians that tax the taxpayers for pensions and perks to government employees way above what the private sector receives. Just more corruption from the lowest levels of government, to the highest. Public employee unions are just, if not more, corrupt than the government itself.