California’s pension hole now monstrous
By Teri Sforza, Orange County Register
Within the span of only 11 years, the hole at the bottom of California’s state and local pension funds increased a staggering 3,046 percent.
The monstrous growth of the gap between what public agencies have promised workers upon retirement and what they actually have – from $6.3 billion in 2003 to $198.2 billion in 2013, according to figures gathered by the state controller’s office – matters to all Californians, reformers argue.
If it’s not filled up with meatier investment earnings and heftier contributions from public workers and employers, that hole will continue to expand, and taxpayers must fill it directly.
Why? Because in California, the promises made to public workers on Day One of their employment can never, ever be broken – at least, not outside of federal bankruptcy court. And even in court, officials from Vallejo and Stockton and San Bernardino did not request permission to modify these burdens, fearing they’d have trouble attracting and retaining workers if the city next door offered something better.
And yet, as I travel around the world, I find so many angry conservatives who are very unhappy with this paradigm. However, many of the most vocal are also retireees from State government. Ironic, they can only see the problem after they get theirs.
Everywhere I go I see angry liberals unable to promise those with pensions, especially Social Security, they will ever be able to collect them from a failed welfare state and nation that is draining all public funds to pay for massive welfare increases and the unsustainable giving away of other’s money to millions. Add the illegals given free welfare money who are on crime sprees everywhere to the tens of thousands of early release felons. The other pension systems were never properly funded in the first place and many of these city/county pensions are separate from the other major systems and the teachers system is really a mess. Time to severely cut and limit welfare and freebies and fund our employees who worked the years to earn their retirements.
I agree, skilled workers that put in their years, negotiate contracts and are paid a pension, how much of a drain is the welfare crowd pulling down the state and the illegals attended public schools free lunches, and the jail and prison system.
The issue in this article is worker payed pensions, not social security or any other blanket federal social program. Yet Justice and Look At This BOTH argue undocumented workers are to blame. WTF!?
How about we put some blame on longer life expectancy, unrealistic retirement ages to match the life expectancy growth, and a corrupt insurance environment, otherwise known as “free enterprise”?
This is about state and local pension funds being short to pay people who have worked the years to retire and were promised a retirement. It doesn’t take a college degree to know that the dollars going into welfare and entitlements for non-citizens, which are huge and in the billions, should be re-directed to benefit people who actually work. Paying this burden is not only wrong and should be illegal, it steals from every legal resident who could benefit from lower taxes, lower health care and less crowded and burdened schools and a source to pay legal residents a fully funded public retirement system instead of a prison system full of people illegally in the country. The people have had enough and they are determined to stop it.
government employee’s are the drain on the system.
over paid under worked that’s how I see Government employee’s.
City, County, State and the Feds they are all the same.
I wrote a long response to some comments, but deleted it.
As Thomas Paine said: “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
How much does spiking contribute to the problem?