Hmm, remember when the Democrats whined about the privatization of Soc Security was such a bad, bad, bad idea...lots of privatization going on here!

Maybe they didn't want all that competing with their union pension scams and giving people options rather than the usual lefty statist crap.

Makes perfect sense to me, explains a lot about the strength of opposition.

You know, the generous pensions would be absolutely no problem, if they had been fully funded when the people worked for California.

There are two fundamental rules for any pension plan:

• your pension consists of what you and your employer pay into the plan while you are working. Your employer - even if it is the government - must be required to actually part with money and put it into the pension fund.
  

• The pension management must independent of employer. This makes it impossible for the employer to borrow against - or raid - the pension fund. Ideally, the fund is managed by a financial services company, reimbursed based on the long-term performance of the fund.
  

If these rules are not followed, then you do not actually have a pension. What you have is a lottery ticket. You are betting that, when you retire, your employer will (a) still exist, and (b) be financially solvent, and (c) be in a generous mood. Odds are against you.

"Apologists for California's current public-pension schemes insist that there is no crisis, and that . . . future investment returns should easily cover the costs."

I say we leave all the government pension plans to their word: they can have all the money they collect from employees plus whatever investment returns they get, but not one f-ing penny of taxpayer bailout.

But everyone in America DOESN'T have such a pension.

What if everyone in America was paid like a CEO? What if everyone in America was paid like a welfare mom? What if everyone in America was paid like a McDonald's worker? What if everyone in America was JK Rowling?

This is rather silly.

Future investment returns didn't save Madoff, and they aren't going to save California or Illinois.

When something cannot continue, it stops. My town is pulling the same sort of scam, telling me my fully assessed house has risen 17% last year. I should buy a few more, because where else can you get 17% on your money? The damned liars are getting set to whack us with a huge tax increase, and the cowards don't want to do it the honest way.

When I retire, I am gone. I'm already paying over $500 a month in school and property taxes alone and I'm not living in a mansion.

Please notice that the same situation and argument applies to "universal" health care.

The sick and invalid can only be treated to the extent funding is provided by the healthy.

This is another reason to do it yourself.

Nicole is right - this doesn't go to everyone. It does go to so many people that California (and other states) are having difficulty paying for it.

States will pay for it by taking money from workers who are not part of the government. It seems likely that doing so will destroy those income sources (tax businesses out of existence) - meaning that it will impoverish everyone.

Should we wait and see if the interest and market returns avoids a disaster or reduce these benefits and expenses now?

"But everyone in America DOESN'T have such a pension."

You miss the point. The point is that the system is mathematically unsustainable. The example given was done just to illustrate the extent of the problem. There is no way the California system or any of these similar systems in other states can pay current and near-future retirees based on what current workers are paying in. They can and will go outside and take the money from people who aren't in the system and will never receive those pensions. It becomes a system where a whole bunch of people have to bear an additional burden in order to maintain the benefits of a privileged few. People who aren't in the system will be required to fund someone else's retirement while at the same time trying to save for their own retirements.

(In fact, it's not at all clear that current workers who are in the system will receive those pensions. By the time they're old enough to retire, payouts to current retirees may have bankrupted the fund.)

The Phx area police union is spending hunndereds of thousands of dollars asking peopel to call the govener and "sace" police pensions.

What the ads dont mention is people are really being asked to savve cops from haveing to contribute 10% to their own pension fund as oppsed to having it wholly subsidised by tax payers

...the system is mathematically unsustainable...

The very definition of a pyramid scheme. If Madoff had done this to this scale, affecting this many million people, he'd have gone to jail for 1000 years, rather than what he got.

How are the politicians and union bosses who are running this scam going to be punished proportionally when it all goes bust?

Taxpayers: Here are figures on federal employment by department. All of these employees can qualify for pensions, sometimes after just 20 years of service. Many get lifetime free medical care at government-operated clinics, that regular citizens pay for but cannot use (the VA).

Public sector pensions are indeed time-bombs for taxpayers. Probably it is time to completely eliminate all federal pensions, civilian or military.

Department of Defense 3,000,000
Veterans Affairs 275,000
Homeland Security 250,000
Treasury 115,000
Justice 112,000
Energy 109,000
USDA 109,000
Interior 71,000

Labor 17,000
HUD 10,000
Education 4,487

The treasurydept is the secrete service. I may not like the gy in the oval office, but the guy who takes a bullet to ensure or coutry doesnt become a defacto police state deserves health care.

Heathcare in the military - its cheaper to intergate. On post medical care prevent soilders wasting an entire day to leave post and drive to a doctors office two or three towns away.

As for the VA, feel free to cut it, so long as you explain to incoming soldiers that costs for injuries ending their military service wil be borne by them alone.

What do you think is cheaper? Paying all soilders enough to cover injury contigencies and disolvng the VA, or only paying those soilders who were injured? Seems to me we already have the chepest option in place - and trust me VA care aint that good.

I broke my glasses, I could have gotten them thru the VA - if I wanted to wait 6 moths to see my primary clinic doctor so she could deterrmine whether or not to send me to the optomotry clinic, and once getting that recomned waitng a couple of moths to get an apointment there. And then waiting a couple of weeks after my appointment with optomotry to get a new pair of glasses

luj,

You're responding to the resident troll who has a bug up his a$$ about the fed actually exercising an enumerated power.

He doesn't get that the military really gives you no option to fund a 401K. But the percent of active duty to get to 25 years to get 50% of the base pay is a small percentage. And the government service employees fund at least a part of their pensions.

As far as military hospitals and the military having their own medical staff -- lets send the troops to Obamastan and depend on the local doctors. The medical corps has been integral to a military force before the Hannibal crossed the Alps.

Jim-

Check out military spending after the revolutionary War, WWI and WWII. We demobilized in each case. In his first term in office, President George Washington had no military. Zilch.

When Democratic President Truman decided to enter the Korean War, we barely had the troops or equipment. Some guys went from basic training right into war. Republican President Eisenhower pulled out out of Korea. The right-wing used to disparage military spending--many righties gloated in the 1950s that nuclear weapons would eliminate the need for expensive militaries.

The idea of a perma-mobilized military is new, started in the Cold War and Democrats (along with heavy rural subsidies) Since, the military has become patronage, and a rightw-ing program, along with extensive rural subsidies. The Soviet Union is gone, and we have a more-expensive military than ever.

That said, I believe roughly the same about most federal departments, including the USDA, Education, HUD, VA, Homeland Security etc. I suspect all could take huge reductions in manpower.

But as federal payroll figures show, the federal government is mostly a military, VA and Homeland Security operation. And you know how corrupt and inefficient the federal government is.

Yes, after the war the military disbanded

And then the british invaded and burned Washington DC to the ground. In part because local militas were more concered with their local towns then the country as a whole, and in part BECAUSE THE HAD NO FUCKING TRAINING

And that was two and a half centuries before the ICBM.

There is only one type of counrty that needs no military, and that is an occupied country

Heh. The military is a right-wing program.

I can't decide if the proper expression of the term, "correct" is

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or simply

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