And so it goes with Detroit, Gary, Newark, Cleveland, Oakland . . .With all the trouble that Rahm Emanuel has been having in Chicago lately, specifically with unrest surrounding his police department and other scandals, it’s easy to forget that he’s dealing with another serious problem: his city is nearly bankrupt. As with so many other large, Democrat run municipalities, the chief culprit here is the massively underfunded pension system for municipal workers. Their unions negotiated some real sweetheart deals for them over the years, but the costs were completely unsustainable. When the city began to go broke, no real compromise was ever offered by the unions so Rahm is left to find some way to shore up the funds.No problem, kids! Hizzoner will simply jack up the utility rates and let the taxpayers foot the bill even more. (Chicago Tribune)Mayor Rahm Emanuel will propose a new utility tax on Chicagoans’ water and sewer bills in an effort to shore up the largest of the city’s ailing pension funds, according to multiple sources who were briefed on the plan Wednesday.Under Emanuel’s plan, the tax would be phased in over the next four years, with the average homeowners’ bill increasing $50 each year until it reaches $200 in the fourth year, said Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, who was briefed on the plan Wednesday morning. The average Chicago homeowner’s water and sewer bill is $114.30, billed every other month, city officials have said.You may be wondering why he didn’t simply increase property taxes to cover the pension funds. The answer is that he’s already raised them considerably and his elected officials in the city are getting nervous about being run out of town on a rail if they keep increasing the burden in that fashion. But for middle and lower income residents of an already poverty ridden city, jacking up their water bill by 200 dollars may be a bit much to swallow as well.What makes this even more of a stereotypical Democrat move is the distinctly non-progressive nature of this plan. At least when you increase the property taxes the wealthy tend to pay a bit more. (I believe Democrats refer to that as “their fair share.”) But the utility bills tend to hit everyone pretty much equally, so the city’s poorest residents will feel the pinch the most. In the end, that’s how these things always seem to work. But more than anything else, this should have been a wake-up call similar to what we thought might happen in Detroit when they were dealing with the same issues. The era of massive pension plans for unionized government workers has led to a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. But rather than acknowledging this reality, the unions just continue to push back, demanding every penny they can soak out of the system until it collapses under its own weight.But hey… you just keep on electing those Democrats, guys. I’m sure it will all work out wonderfully in the end.
Hey, peeps, you could try the free market and knocking it off with the race-hustling and union jack booting. And lay off the dope. And learn something about courtship, marriage and alarm clocks.
Talk about class envy. You won't be happy until nobody has any retirement benefits will you? This is another indication of how late in the day it is, when only the rich can retire. I know you won't look at it that way. The Millennials and GenZ will jut have to figure out how to all be rich or how to live with less and thus far all they get is crap from cranky buttholes like you.
ReplyDeleteWhat union do the military belong to? We all pay into their pensions. And they're pretty cush. Anyhow, given that current life expectancies are much longer than initially estimated, I'm cool with delaying retirement age, in fact, I'm planning on working until my 70s or longer, if there's something out there for me. Currently there is, and my boss is retiring this year at age 72. Boomers are reinventing retirement. No use being jealous of the teachers, cops, union workers and military men & women who retired in their early to late 50s. Most of them double dip into their 60s or beyond for some real cash. Yes, I am aware that, in the late 70s, early 80s, hmm, after Neutron Jack and during the Ronnie/Maggie regimes, most corporations began destroying their plans for the salaried workers, to leave more for their hot shots and their stockholders, and again they looked to gummit for relief in the form of making private savings accounts attractive. That's the biggest joke, almost fraud, ever perpetrated on the someday to be aged and unable to work anylonger. What they did was create a huge pile of cashola for the bean counters and money grubbers to grab commissions out of. The market has taken several serious dips after this and those approaching retirement age got bit bad. I tell you, the MBAs ruined the world economies. All in favor of? Themfuckingselves!
ReplyDeleteLet's go beyond the quotes although they help to understand the context of the myths sold today by the Corporate Media and by Reagan's "admirers" in the Democratic Party. You will be surprised to learn that just 4 years after Ronald Reagan left office his popularity numbers or approval of his Presidency was of about 43% of the American public.
ReplyDeletePresident Carter's numbers, the public's opinion about his term registered over 60% of approval of what he had done.
Furthermore, and ironically Reagan's home town, Dixon-Illinois, is today pretty much dead thanks to Reagan's economic policies. The sad things is that many middle class Republicans who voted for Reagan never understood that "their President" only cared and worked for the wealthy and against them. --David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?pagewanted=2
It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received twothirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly
ReplyDeletedependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.
The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing — as suggested by last week’s news that the national economy grew at an
anemic annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter. Under these circumstances,it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant
platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets,sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.
David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under PresidentRonald Reagan, is working on a book about the financial crisis
It’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets,sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.
ReplyDeleteThis post isn't about your personal situation, not that of the military (which deserves our gratitude for risking life & limb to defend us), nor downsizing nor Wall Street nor Reagan. It's about the very provable collapse of major-city financial situations due to corrupt Democrat rule.
ReplyDeleteStockman turned out to be a weirdo, believing in such wacko concepts as a "vast war machine."
ReplyDeleteI knew you'd turn it in to my personal situation. My personal situation is fine. I told you, we need to wait longer to retire and we need to bring all the jobs back. Your ilk outsourced and offshored America. Not much can be done about the accelerating automation though, but your ilk will blame the freedom haters for the result. And you also damn the messenger whenever the message doesn't fit your misperceptions and misplaced blame. Lincoln and Ike both called the vast war machine by other names. The Millennials and GenZs are so turned off to party politics that the political parties as we knew them are as comatose as our cities and towns.
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ReplyDeleteAnd what's this lay off the dope stuff? The big cities would have been a whole lot better off laying off the booze.
ReplyDeleteBut party bosses are still in charge in post-America's poorest, most violent, dysfunctional cities. And still trying to find taxes to raise to make a feeble attempt to the unfunded liabilities of their pension programs.
ReplyDeleteAnd what effect did stock market collapses have on these funds?
ReplyDeleteThe pension funds have been in the red through several stock market fluctuations, which is why booms that has followed collapses have not saved them.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason pension funds are failing, in addition to market woes is that employees are simply living longer than originally anticipated
ReplyDeleteParty bosses have always been
ReplyDeleteI know who I am voting for in 3 lonnnnngggg months trying to crush the depraved interloper even in Indiana. And this debate will rage on amongst those in power to represent us. See you at the polls and likely here always and forever whining about your illusory post America and who you deride as its clueless cattle within
ReplyDeleteRuin Squirrel-Hair, ruin Hillionaire. That's the battle plan.
ReplyDeleteDon't we know. We'll see how it all comes out for you. I expect to hear a lot of bluster about revolution. You'll have to go up against the war machine, depending on who's in power. But, hey, the Cong did allright against it and they did not even start the fight. By that I mean they did not invade our country.
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